Let's face it, even the best planned day, can go to waste if we let email distract us. Time management experts suggest resisting the temptation to check email first thing in the morning. The recommendation is to go into the office and dive right in to your most important task for the day and continue working through it until it is complete.  After doing so for the first three items on your list, then and only then should you go for your email fix.

Everyone knows that the greeting on your voicemail says a lot about you, your personality, and your professionalism.  Yet very few people take the time to actually listen to themselves and how they sound.  Do you sound hurried, confident, professional, or relaxed?  What kind of image do you project to a new prospect that you have never talked to before?

Now let's talk about returning calls.  The purpose of voicemail is not to get full and then purged.  The purpose of voicemail is so that your prospects and clients can leave messages while you are unable to take their call.  Unless noted in the message, they all expect a callback! Otherwise they would not care to leave a message. So do yourself a favor and set yourself apart from all of your competitors.  Just return all the calls you get and you are way ahead of everyone else!

Speaking of returning calls, it is impossible to leave a message when your voicemail is full.  Please make sure you constantly delete the messages from your voicemail.  Unfortunately, most VM systems do not let you know that your mailbox is full, yet, when someone calls, they cannot leave a message.  This is very annoying, especially when you try calling someone a few times and you still get the "voicemail full" greeting.  Also, it shows your prospects and clients that you are unorganized and careless in handling the number one business tool of all: the phone.

 

 

Let's face it, we all procrastinate on some things.  Typically, most people procrastinate on what are perceived to be BIG projects. We think that it is going to take forever to complete the job. We are intimidated by the task and we put it off until we get to the point where we must get it done. Yet, when we actually get around to doing that BIG project, it is a lot smaller than you anticipated and you get it done it a lot less time than you anticipated.

May I suggest you become and expert in calculating how much time you need to complete a project.  Try to be realistic based on past experiences and also be aggressive in the time you allow yourself.  Proper time planning and estimation are the key to getting things done.  You would be surprised you can actually get done when you time yourself and only allow a specific amount of time to complete a task.

To start plan your time accurately, Click here to download a free time grid and go for it.  Let me know how it goes.

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