The Ideal Day: Agency Sales Rep Edition

There are a lot of different activities that an inbound sales rep can do on a day-to-day basis. That’s usually a blessing and curse, depending on how organized the sales rep is as they weigh their priorities.

Sales is a balance. One the one hand, there is your current month’s paycheck to worry about. On the other hand, there is your future self that needs you planning and so that your job is easier in 6 months than it is right now.

To help you better plan your day and help both your current and future selves, Gray and I have outlined 8 different activities to do daily to help improve your sales.

Please note — activities do not have to occur all in this order.

The 8 Activities Inbound Reps Should Do Daily

1. Follow-ups from the prior day — This is my first activity every morning.

This includes follow-ups for clients, prospects, and your internal team.

Realistically, this should be 1 hour at maximum.

Prioritize the order of importance, I always prioritize prospects first. The quicker you get back to your prospects, the better.

Try to consolidate how people are getting in touch with you. For the internal team, we use Slack. For prospects, it’s likely email, website live chat, or occasionally social.

2. Prospecting — Two main sources for prospecting, inbound leads from the night before that you need to follow-up with ASAP, plus outbound leads you can source.

Find new targets and start working your way in. Pre-templated email sequences help with this, but personalize them and track your efforts.

Leverage the content you’re producing!

3. Content creation — This would fall under the “helping your future self” bucket.

There should be some element of this every day.

Quick LinkedIn post, jot down a blog post idea, create a canned response or video, write a lengthy post to answer a prospect’s question, etc.

The more that your prospects see your face and know you before the sales call the easier your job will be.

4. Calls and meetings — You should be having calls and meetings every day. Hopefully this is at least 1-2 hours of your time spent each day.

I’m lumping post-meeting homework in with this, and realistically that will take some time.

Whether it’s follow-up emails, proposal creation, or asking someone internally a question.

Document the meetings that you had and what happened, and get the homework done right away.

5. Follow up with closed customers — Are they happy, is there anything else they need?

Make sure your customer is satisfied, make sure you set their expectations correctly (and learn from mistakes if not), look for upsell opportunities, referrals, and testimonials.

It’s easier to upsell a current customer that is the right fit for another service you offer than a new prospect you have no relationship with.

Check in every couple of weeks with your current customers and make sure they are happy with how the relationship is going.

6. Check in with the client servicing team — Do they have any questions for you, is there anything you need to smooth out or do better for next time? Anything you need from them?

Communicate with them clearly.

Be sure you are setting realistic expectations that your client servicing team can meet, and then make sure they are rising to those expectations.

7. Manage the CRM — Are you inputting all necessary data and notes? Are deal stages in order?

Your CRM should be open all day long.

Every action or future task that relates to a client needs to be documented and handled through your CRM.

The best way to lose good leads is to have a disorganized CRM that you use once per week.

8. Bonuses — Here are a few bonus activities to consider that have made a huge difference for our agency.

The first is manning live chat and new responses that come up during the day. Live chat has been a huge game changer for us and allowed us to greatly speed up our sales process.

The second is learning. Get involved in the communities that are there to allow you to constantly learn and improve yourself as a business professional.

The last is working on bigger rocks to help the agency this quarter. Maybe that’s putting together a video series to help prospects understand what a partnership with your agency really means.

Any tips or ideas of activities you do on a daily basis?

Pass them along!