Sales Skill: Taking Time Off

So, great salesperson, are you wondering how taking time off is a sales skill? You ever heard of the saying: “When sales are good, you don’t want to take time off and when sales are bad you can’t take time off.”? So we just keep working until we are burned out, tired and no use to our customers, our company or our family.

The Benefit Of Taking Time Off

It’s the pause that refreshes. We all get tied up in doing the daily activities which make us successful. And for some it just becomes rote. When we pause, do something different for a while and relax our mind and body, we come back to work with renewed vigor. For me at the end of a couple of weeks, I’m ready to come back to work. I feel refreshed and eager for the challenge of growing sales.

How To Take Time Off

Yes, taking time off is a skill. Taking time off is not carrying your laptop with your and checking your cell phone frequently. So you have to plan for it:

• Tell you customers and prospects you are going on vacation.
• Let everyone you routinely interact with at your company know you will be away.
• Arrange for a colleague to monitor your email and respond when they can or ask the customer for patience until you return.
• If key events will happen while you are away, make sure they are covered.
• Turn on an out of office message for your email explaining where you are, when you will return and how to handle urgent problems while you are away.
• On your cell phone set up a message like your email out of office and use it when a customer calls.
• I know you will respond to text messages as long as you have your cell phone with you. So answer them if you must. But don’t let them interfere with your fun time.
• And leave word at your office that you are only available at certain times to handle those real crises. (My experience: if you ignore them someone will take care of them just fine.)

I’m off to the beach with my wife and three teenaged grandkids for a week. When is your next vacation and what will you do?

No sales pitch this week. I’m on vacation!

Good Time Off,

Don Crawford, aka Papaw