As your sixteenth birthday approached, you no doubt sat through driver's education classes and learned some pretty basic stuff designed not only to help you drive correctly, but also to save your life. While you most certainly knew what each of the colors of a traffic light already symbolized, a review was part of the class procedure because the colors on a traffic light are standard knowledge for driving effectively. And a few months later when you took your driving test, you probably made sure to pay close attention to the traffic lights on the road. You stopped when you came to a red light. You gave the car a little gas when the light turned green, making sure to not go too fast. And, as ridiculous as it may seem now, you probably even slowed down for a yellow light instead of speeding up.

But when you got your license, it was a different story. You just wanted to go. Didn't matter when or where. You just wanted to drive-the faster the better. Red lights suddenly became nuisances. Yellow lights became lighter shades of green. And green lights became icons of your newfound freedom. But, eventually you probably learned that there's more to driving a car when you received your first ticket or were involved in your first accident. There are laws for a reason, you learned. Laws that can be broken, yes. But laws that carry penalties if broken. Penalties that can even take away your freedom.

I bet when you first started your sales career, something very similar happened. You learned the rules well enough to be given a license to sell something. And I bet you were even careful to do things by the book when you started, because you probably had someone watching your every move. But once you were given the keys to your selling independence, you just hit the gas pedal. Speed became the key to your success and freedom-selling to anyone and everyone as often as you could. Slowing down was out of the question-you had money to make. Therefore you considered anything that required you to slow your pace to be a hindrance to success.

That's how most new sales professionals are taught to sell isn't it? Full speed ahead-never mind the signs. Quantity matters most-never mind quality. The problem is, you'll never be highly successful in the sales profession that way. That's because there are standards in the selling profession that regulate the speed at which you can sell effectively. Traffic lights of selling, so to speak, that indicate when you should go, when you should stop, and when you should slow down if your goal is to earn loyal, lucrative clients. Sure, you can always ignore the traffic lights, and even get away with it for a while. But eventually you'll get caught, and the results could be very destructive to your business.

Imagine what would happen to your sales business if you started to heed the traffic signals that lead to success. What would happen if your green-light activities-those that build high trust and earn you more money-increased? What would happen if you began to remove red-light activities-those that don't build high trust or increase your profits-by strategically heeding yellow lights long enough to determine then hone your most productive activities? The fact is, your days should be ordered this way.
Red-light activities include things such as:

* Filling out and filing paperwork
* Faxing and copying
* Managing crises
* Dealing with high-maintenance/low-profit customers
* Coping with telephone interruptions
* Answering E-mail interruptions
* Taking long lunches that aren't necessary
* Hanging out with whiners instead of winners
* Gossiping with coworkers
* Randomly calling on prospects, or calling on "easy" prospects or clients who don't provide good business

These types of activities should be removed from your workload as much as possible so that the majority of your time is spent on green-light activities such as:

* High trust relationship management and growth
* High trust partnership planning
* High trust referral follow-up
* New client prospecting
* High trust selling and reselling
* Adding value to key clients
* Adding value to key partners

Of course, to remain successful you will still need to observe yellow-light periods in order to ensure maximum efficiency; but when you're running your sales business efficiently, those periods of time will simply be a matter of strategy, not major restructuring. Some typical yellow-light activities successful salespeople invest time in developing are:

* Improving product knowledge;
* Ascertaining the right prospects;
* Generating and managing leads;
* Improving presentation skills;
* Improving objection- management skills;
* Creating marketing and advertising material; and
* Creating follow-up material

These are the types of things in which it will take some time to reach maximum efficiency, especially if you have just inserted them into your daily or weekly routine. But whether your sales business is stopped, moving slowly, or a constant stop and go, now is your chance to clean things up. Slow down long enough to understand what it will take to move forward. Then strategically begin to remove the red-light activities from your day while adding the activities to your day that keep the lights on your selling path green. And once you've done so, you can run your business as efficiently as possible, slowing down only at strategic times to determine if anything can be done better.

Jane Floyd had been in the sales industry for six years before she realized the amount of time her job had been taking from the things that were most important-namely her family. In 1997, Jane hired a sales coach, and things began to change. Her first item of business: spend three weeks recording everything she spent time on at work. So that's what she did-and she was astounded at the results. Things like spending an average of thirty minutes a day at the fax machine suddenly became more than unproductive lulls in the day-they became time stolen from the things that mattered most; and she wanted that time back.

As a mother of two, Jane quickly realized that two unproductive hours on the job equaled two hours she could not spend with her kids. Motivated to better utilize her time at work, she determined to delegate everything that she didn't physically need to do herself. The process began with delegating typical tasks like making copies, faxing, and filing, but over time evolved to delegating tasks like getting gas in her car and picking up her dry cleaning. Her goal was to become as efficient as possible so that work time would no longer get the best of her-her best time was what she wanted to give to her family and top clients.

Before making any changes, Jane worked an average of sixty hours a week. Today, Jane works about thirty-five hours a week, spending all of her work time doing one thing: building relationships with her clients and strategic partners. And if you're wondering whether her sales business suffered as a result of her cutback in hours on the job, it didn't. In fact, it's quite the contrary. Last year was her most profitable year in the eleven years she's been a sales professional. But while she made more money than any year before, she'd quickly tell you that was not where she realized her greatest profits. Her greatest profits were realized at home with her family-a result of learning how to steal back the time that inefficient selling had once stolen from her.

What would your business look like if you could spend 100% of your time doing the one or two things that had the greatest impact on your profitability? I am not asking what your sales business would be like if you worked twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. I simply want you to start thinking about your time capacity in new terms, with fewer boundaries. Then I want you to consider how things would be different if you were actually able to spend all of your time doing the few things that you enjoy most and that produce the greatest impact on your business. What would happen to your productivity? What would happen to your cash flow? What would happen to your client relationships? How would your best clients be served better? What would happen to your level of satisfaction? Wouldn't you have more time for life? What would you do with that extra free time? How would your life be different? How would it be better?

If you're willing to seriously consider these questions then your answers probably aren't far from being reality. It's not complicated. You see, tantamount to your satisfaction off the job is a better approach to productivity on the job: You must begin spending more time doing what you do best and delegate or dispose of the rest. The 100% question above personifies this approach. If you are willing to focus on doing what you do best as a salesperson for the greatest possible amount of time each day, and let everything else be handled by a system or a person managing a system on your behalf, then you understand the key to getting more life from your business. There's not really a five-step formula to making this a reality in your life. It's really as simple as it sounds. If you foster sales relationships well, order your business hours in such a way that you are furthering relationships for the majority of the day. If you are accomplished at winning a customer's trust in the initial stages of a sales transaction, spend you days prospecting and launching relationships, and partner with another sales associate who is an expert in follow up and fulfillment. Together you will do more business than you could have ever alone. If you are an expert at follow up and fulfillment, find a partner who is high on prospecting and building trust and formulate an efficient plan so that the two of you are spending the majority of your working hours doing the things you love and at which you excel.

Many sales books will tell you-in a round about way-that in order to become successful in sales you must be willing to make sales your life. But I'm here to tell you that's a ridiculous approach. After all, who wants to work more? Is your aspiration really to spend more time in the office-so that even if you have more money, you don't have time to enjoy it? I doubt it. The truth is, selling is not your life; and it never needs to be in order to be successful in the sales profession. But the sales profession can give you more life if you're willing to invest your selling hours wisely-if you're willing to exploit the minutes of every hour the best that you know how so that the outcome of each day remains in your hands. And that comes when you get creative and purposeful about the moves you make each day. That comes when you quit spending time at the office and instead begin investing time at the office doing the things you do best-and let a partner or system do the rest.