Effective Time Management in Pallet Sales

Working in pallet sales can be a rewarding yet challenging career. There’s a lot to do in a day as a pallet sales professional, but the payoff can be quite lucrative with some hard work and solid time management skills.

With online commerce taking off in recent decades, the need for logistics and warehousing has exploded, meaning pallets are more in demand than ever. Because of the fast-paced nature of pallet sales, available time to get things done in a day can feel like it gets less and less. If you work in sales and have found it increasingly difficult to get everything done in a day, below are some time management tips for pallet sales:

Audit Your Workflow

Before you can discuss and improve the details of effective time management, it’s often a good idea to audit your workflow. This means examining how you’ve been managing your time to find ways to reduce unnecessary tasks or make them more efficient.

When you audit your pallet sales workflow, consider which tasks are necessary and merely beneficial. Separating tasks into “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” can help you set priorities and restructure your workflow for greater efficiency.

As an added bonus, you may reduce costs by auditing your workflow. As with anything in sales, time is money, so anything you can do to reduce the time spent on unnecessary tasks equals more revenue.

Look for Ways to Delegate Tasks

Delegation of tasks is frequently found at the top of the list regarding time management tips for pallet sales. Delegation has traditionally meant offloading tasks to others in your organization when those tasks could be handled by another qualified individual.

In the digital age, you can also think about delegation as handing off tasks to automation and software. Supply chain software, pallet inventory artificial intelligence (AI) apps, freelancers on the web, and other resources can all be used to delegate tasks to save time.

For example, suppose you need to create a historical sales analysis of inventory sorted by pallet size. In that case, you can feed your raw data into AI software to get a rough idea of which pallets are your best-sellers within a given period. By delegating sorting and analysis tasks to software, you have more time to focus on tasks that need the attention of a sales professional.

This must be approached on a case-by-case basis since some tasks must be handled directly by a human and cannot be delegated to software; however, you may be surprised to find out how much of your workload can be delegated when you analyze your workload.

Stick to a Schedule

Sticking to a schedule is another common time management tip for pallet sales professionals. Optimizing pallet sales processes often involves scheduling tasks in advance, and sticking to a schedule helps avoid wasted time.

For example, pallet sales professionals typically have funnels that contain prospects and leads at various stages in the buyer journey. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can help organize all these people within a funnel. Still, you must schedule various meetings, emails, and other tasks to keep your funnels on track.

Something else to remember is that while effective pallet sales require a schedule, that schedule must have some flexibility. As a sales professional representing quality pallets, you don’t want opportunities to pass you by because you’re so rigid in your adherence to a schedule. There should always be some room to adjust your scheduling, at least to some degree, to accommodate changes.

Ask for Help From Management

Asking for help when feeling overwhelmed at work can be tough for anyone. Nobody likes to admit they’re struggling, but everyone needs assistance occasionally.

If you’ve found you’re struggling to meet deadlines and keep up with all of your sales tasks, talk with management. After all, your management is there to ensure the company succeeds, and they will likely be happy to help improve your time management by adjusting your workload, helping you find more efficient approaches to tasks, or providing additional assistance temporarily. Remember, if no one knows you’re struggling, no one can assist you.

Be Mindful of Multitasking

The ability to multitask at work is often cited as an advantage, but multitasking can easily turn into a distraction if you aren’t careful. Sales professionals in the pallet industry typically have to juggle multiple clients and relationships at once. Multitasking has the potential to be a benefit here, but it can also become a detriment.

Because sales are so relationship-focused, you can easily harm client relationships if you aren’t able to give them the attention they deserve. If you’re on a sales call via video and you’re trying to also create spreadsheets and answer emails at the same time, it’s likely that your client or lead will feel neglected. This can sour existing relationships and dampen the prospect of new relationships.

While the ability to multitask isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, try to be mindful of how thin you spread yourself. Never do anything that has the potential to damage client relationships, and try to schedule things so that leads and prospects receive your undivided attention and time.

Contact Pallet Market Inc for Solutions in Inventory Management

At Pallet Market Inc, we specialize in helping professionals in the warehousing and logistics industries get more done faster. Our team provides pickup for damaged pallets and other services, as well as high quality pallets Los Angeles warehousing professionals trust. Let our pallet management pros make your life easier.