Eat That Frog – Time Blocking for Online Sales Counselor Success

The other day I was in a mentoring session with one of my new trainees. She’s fantastic! She is a sponge and absorbs everything I teach her.  She has been thrown into a very busy OSC program with lots of leads being generated. Already we are realizing that we are at 50 leads per week which really means we need a 2nd OSC. But I digress.

One of the hardest things about an OSC’s job is that “snowball effect” when the leads start coming. Because each new lead, when set up properly generates months if not years of follow up. It’s part of the process. This means that tasks build up quickly and if you don’t stay on top of them it’s easy for them to become 700 tasks in a blink of an eye.

This is where time management, time blocking, automation, and having the right tools comes into play.

As we were talking I asked which tasks are the most daunting? And admittedly she said the video emails. No surprise!! This is the most personal task an OSC or anyone utilizing multiple, diverse touch points in their follow up plan will do. There are some video emails you can use over and over as part of your follow up plan, but those personalized videos are the ones that are going to capture the attention of your prospects and really encourage them to connect with you.  I know I did a quick tip on video email recently, but lets dive a little deeper.

The goal of a follow up plan is to get people to reply to you. The word video in an email subject line increases open rates by 19% and increases click through rates by 65%. So putting a video email out early on in your follow up and one that is customized with someone’s name like this one below, will give you that much more likelihood of getting someone to respond and begin the conversation.

So back to that snowball effect, eating your frog and time blocking.  As we were talking I said the best way to attack a task you don’t like, like video email is to attack that big hairy green frog and eat it first. The concept of eating a frog originates with Mark Twain when he said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Brian Tracy takes this concept and expands on it in his book Eat That Frog, 21 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.

As my OSC and I were talking about time blocking I told her to envision that thing she hates the most as that big fat hairy frog and just get it over with. That way you won’t be putting it off to the end of the day, have it hanging over your head, and then keep pushing it down the road. If you push it down the road, 3-4 videos a day become 50 or 60 overdue videos! Yikes!

We talked – they only need to be 30-45 seconds no more than a minute… they are quick, personalized, and if you’ve never heard from the person so far, they can probably be scripted and be about the same.  So divide and conquer.

How many of your video emails need to be personalized with specific details and not just someone’s name  – put those in categories. Knock out the easiest ones first, or the hardest ones first, but just work your way through. Especially if you let them pile up.

But if you say, I’m going to set aside this time block each day for these kinds of tasks, and prioritize, then you will be able to work your way through your snowball effect, while dispatching those hairy frogs.

And that’s exactly what she did!! Isn’t she cute! And a ROCK STAR!!