Getting Your Office in Shape
 

Your perfect sales office would have a dutiful assistant who could immediately retrieve the invoices, data and notes you need to manage your sales business. Your desk would be organized and your shelves neatly arranged. That’s not the world of sales. For most salespeople, they are the ones who have to manage and retrieve the many pieces of paper they need to run their business. Here are some useful strategies to organize your office so that you have more time to sell and to be productive.
 

The layout. Nancy Peham, is a professional organizer and owner of Helping Hands Personal Services (Helpinghandsps.com .) She makes business professionals more productive by creating order for them in their business. Salespeople can save time with economy of movement. Select an L or U-shaped desk. Your monitor can be placed facing one direction and you can swivel to the other and write without having to get up. Have the items you use most often close to you. Don’t waste the “prime real estate” with nonessential items if you have overhead bins. Peham asks her clients what they use most often and how their work is structured. She says, “If you have to look up pricing information on a daily basis that should be close at hand.”
 

Get it under control. A disorganized office can be distracting. What you see on your desk can slow you down. Instead of placing tape, pencils, files and other tools on your desk Peham says to put them away in a drawer. If you don’t have a drawer, get a rolling cart with drawers or wire racks and filing space. You can place it close by where it’s accessible. Peham finds that when you have too many files stacked on your desk, you start thinking about the projects in the files. It’s easier to maintain focus when you have on your desk only the papers for the project that you’re working on. Just make sure that you keep all the papers that relate to that project in one folder or file that is labeled.
 

Tame the paper tiger. Peham sees a lot of paper getting out of control and wasting people’s time as they search for it. The problem is caused by businesspeople who have difficulty filing paper away or who file too much. First, look at all the paper you have to organize. What categories describe your paper? Is it by products? Perhaps it’s customers or vendors. Find the categories that work for you.

Next to make it easier to file, ask yourself how you would think of that paper when you want to find it. Create a file with that name. You can organize the papers inside the file alphabetically if you choose. Create smaller files only when a file gets big enough to subdivide into smaller categories. You should never have a file with just one piece of paper in it. Paper management means taking the time to purge your old files.

Peham says, “Most people don’t clean out old files so they stack their current files on their desk.” The easiest way to get rid of paper is to ask, “Can someone else use this? Do I need to keep it for legal reasons? Is the information still relevant? Have I used this paper in a year? Is the information available somewhere else like online?” As you’re purging your files, have a trash box and a shred box to toss the paper. Don’t stop to shred. You can do that later.

Once you have your office under control, don’t think your job is over. Maintenance is key. Peham says if you schedule 10 or 15 minutes each day to clean up and prepare you can stay organized. You’ll also have more time. That’s extra time to close more deals.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work.  She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com.  She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997.  You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or mailto:info@bestatselling.com.

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