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Early in my career, I recorded my daily activities. It became clear to me quickly, that I wasted enormous amounts of time, and spent too little time on productive activities. For example, I was spending the majority of my time on administrative tasks and not enough time generating prospects and asking for the business. Set a plan and stick to it. This revelation could be a good first step for many salespeople who are having trouble getting started.

Stay on Schedule

Do not finish your day unless essential activities are accomplished. If you plan on 10 prospecting calls per day, do not finish the day unless this is accomplished. Keep track. If you miss one day, you need to make it up the next day. You may find that, with reasonable goals for each day, you finish earlier than you anticipate. If so, use this time to read up on industry news, prepare your to-do list for the following day and clean up your desk. Over time this effort will pay off. If you are not making your numbers within a defined time frame, usually 90 days, you may want to rethink what you are doing each day and create a new plan.

Stay on the Offense

Many salespeople think they are working hard and executing sales activities because they talk to their customers regularly. Putting out fires, following up on problems, passing the time, building relationships and working on a print job are important. But, unless you are closing or moving a sale forward, these activities should be characterized as defensive. I recommend salespeople keep track of each contact where they are actually selling something. Defensive contacts are part of maintaining and keeping the business. Offensive contacts grow the business.

Create ‘To Do’ Lists

Most successful salespeople start each day with “to do” lists. Mike Long, director of sales for Jet Mail Services of Hudson, Mass., recently told us he starts his day by creating a list of objectives and lining up his callbacks before he starts the morning. List specifically what customers will you see in person, call or e-mail. Aside from customer emergencies and critical activities, your prospecting plan is your first priority.

Many salespeople spend their time on low payback activities. This is a natural tendency. Most people like to accomplish easy tasks first. A good technique is establishing a priority for each daily task. Higher-ranked activities should be completed first.

Avoid the ‘Time Suck’ Tasks

Identify what tasks are “sucking” up too much time. It is common to go home and feel that you have not accomplished anything. By keeping records and setting daily objectives, you can often avoid common time sucking tasks. They can come in many forms, including meetings, personnel and customers who talk too much, family members who call too often, Facebook or simply spending too much time searching the Web. The best approach is to identify and eliminate or minimize them.

Limit Your Desktops

With the expansion of technology, we often find salespeople with multiple “desktops,” or places that hold information.

Most salespeople have at least five desktops. They include desktop computers, laptops, company MIS systems, sales automation software, office and home desktops, hard copy notebooks, sheets of paper and Blackberrys. Each can contain redundant bits of sales and customer information. It may be impossible to get down to one desktop, but it is worth consolidating and better organizing your information. Most professionals spend large amounts of their day looking for documents.