Getting Rid of Time Stealers

Over the past decade of selling through my networks, I've discovered a phenomenon that seems to keep re-appearing again and again. In my line of work, I keep coming across some people whom I spend my time with, whilst a very small number of wonderful individuals whom I invest my time with.

Looking back over the 10 years, I've noticed that the business people who I spend my time with account for 70-90% of my appointments. These very same people only account for 20% of my sales revenue.

So I decided I'd do a bit of mathematics. Let's say, at a conservative estimate, I work 40 hours a week as an entrepreneur/sales consultant; and I work only 40 weeks of the year; this amounts to me working for 16,000 hours or 2000 working days over this 10-year period.

Here's the scary bit:

In the 10 years, I've spent (not invested) 1600 days with people who only account for 20% of my business. That leaves the 20% of people who account for approximately 80% of my business.

You've guessed it right. I am talking about the 80/20 Rule or Pareto's Law. So here's today's tip:

Instead of running around like a headless chicken spending time with people like I used to do, find people who you can invest your time with. This is how you do it :-

* Get a simple spreadsheet of all your customers and identify how much income they are providing for you and your company.

* Tabulate next to each customer the amount of time you spend with them (in hours)

* In the next column, divide the income by the hours in order to obtain your return-on-time-invested (ROTI)

* Make customer review appointments (more on this later) with the 20% of the customers who are giving you the greatest ROTI

* Ensure that out of the total customer appointments you have, 80% of these are with your top 20% of existing customers

* During these meetings make sure you always ask for 3 or more referrals. (If you have problems asking, then drop me an email and I will talk you through it.)

So how do you get rid of time stealers?

Every year, cull (that's right, get rid of) between 15% and 20% of your least profitable customers, i.e. the 20% who give you the least ROTI. (By the way, in some of the Asian languages, 'ROTI' also means 'bread'. Oh, the irony!) By culling your biggest time-stealers, you will find that, your profits start increasing exponentially. Furthermore, these very same people will usually give you the greatest headaches. What a fantastic way to get rid of stress without resorting to drugs.

In a future episode, I will show you how you can do this without upsetting too many people. Some will get upset anyway. C'est la vie.

PS If you have a great referral story to share, then why not email me to this address: thepersuader@harunrabbani.com. In fact, if you have a horror story, I would love to hear from you, too. Perhaps many more people can learn from your experiences.