Part-Time Sales: Top 6 Time Management Strategies & Tips!

Do you have a part-time sales role? If you do, it can be a significant challenge.

What are the chances your prospects are available when you’re trying to reach them? Selling part-time has some unique nuances and challenges versus full-time selling. It’s mostly based on your availability.

In this post, I’m going to share with you some part-time sales tips and strategies to use to get better results sometimes than even full-time salespeople do.

3 Time Management Strategies for Part-Time Salespeople

There are three areas that you need to focus on if you want to be effective in selling part-time.

1. Part-Time Sales Availability

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The first is your availability. Let’s be honest. If you’re not available all day, every day, you might believe that, oh my goodness, my prospects, they’re going to reach out when I’m not there going to miss the opportunity. That could be true, but what I would suggest you do is simply communicate very openly to everybody as to what your availability is.

Here are some simple examples:

You can add your email signature or a little box that’s along the bottom of your email signature that states the days and times you’re typically available.
Or, you could use a link like Calendly and add note in your signature, “Hey, reach out to me on these days and times. Use this link.”

People go in and they see the days and times you’re available.

You see, your prospects may be reaching out when you’re not there, but it doesn’t mean they’re not patient enough to wait for you. They don’t really care when you’re there.

Let me give you an example. Some full-time employees get prospects, contact them after hours and they’ve got the same concern. But as long as you’ve got methods in place to communicate to prospects when you’re available, most often they’ll use those times.

2. Maintaining Sales Momentum Strategy for Part-Time Sales Roles

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The second thing you need to consider is momentum. How do you ensure momentum with each and every prospect?

Again, the key there is communication. When you’re interacting with a prospect and it seems to you like things are going to move forward, just communicate what the next steps are, and obviously in every interaction you have, try and schedule them with the prospect.

So you can say, “Look, typically from here, the next step is for us to have a deep-dive conversation around your specific needs. If that makes sense to you, if you’re okay with that, how does next Tuesday at 10 or next Thursday at noon look for you?”

I say that in the call or through email. I book it, and there it is on my calendar.

As long as you communicate your availability and you’ve made the next steps clear with your prospects, most often they’ll follow your lead and book the times that you provide them. It’s all about communication.

3. Managing Possible Missed Opportunities

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The third thing you’ve got to consider is missed opportunities.

What happens if you’re away on Wednesday? You don’t work Wednesdays and your prospect gets back to you? Well, look, it’s no different than somebody who works full-time and has a prospect reaching out on Sunday (if they’re not working Sunday, let’s assume.) You’ve got to decide what’s important to you.

My motto is always, “Hey, if a prospect’s reaching out to me and I think they’re serious, I’m going to pursue it. If that means I spend some time on my off day working with the prospect, that’s okay. I’m simply going to take that time and bank it and use it against time that I’m supposed to be working.”

Now, you’ve got to clear this with your boss, but most bosses I know, most sales VPs won’t have a problem. If you’re using some banked time and you’re closing deals with that banked time, they’re not going to have a problem with you taking some of that real-time off.

So try those three strategies for those three challenges I think you’re going to find that’s going to help.

But wait, there’s more!

3 Top Tips for Part-Time Salespeople

When it comes to selling part-time, there are three more tips that I want to share with you. (Everything seems to come in threes here, but that’s the way it is.)

1. Plan Your Part-Time Sales Work Days

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So first off, you have got to be very diligent on your time, right?

You’ve got to know when you’re working and you’ve got to make sure you’re highly productive in those days.

Don’t get distracted, don’t get bogged down.
Plan your “on” days, the days you’re working the night before so that when you can hit the ground running, you can be effective.

What I’ve often found is that it’s easy for part-time and full-time sales professionals to come into the office and get their day going then. “I’m going to open emails and see what happens.”

Well, you can’t be productive. You’ve got to plan that time and come in and hit the ground running. So, in order to be effective, just plan out your days. Be strict with your time, right? Because if you do that, you can get more done.

So that’s the first tip I want to share with you.

2. Part-Time Sales Mindset: Focus on Activities That Help Generate Sales

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The second is mindset.

Don’t worry so much about people being available when you’re not or vice versa. You’re not available when they are. Again, if you communicate when you’re available, most people are okay with that. There will be the odd prospect that’ll push back and then you can decide, do I deal with this person off hours or not?

But most people, if you communicate when you’re available, they won’t question it because they know you’re not just sitting by the phone all day waiting for them. They know you have other things to do. Again, there’s the rare exception, but that’s not the norm. So focus on the norm.

The last thing I want to give you is this. When it comes to selling part-time, you can really zero-in right on prospecting and closing activities.

A lot of people that work in sales full-time, end up getting other stuff added to their plate:

more internal meetings to participate in.
Maybe they get some account management activities added to their plate.
Maybe they’re doing some customer service,
or maybe there’s more reporting they have to do.

When part-time, my experience has been that you’re left just to sell, which is good for you because it allows you to focus down and spend your time on the activities that will help you generate sales.

So there are three tips to use that’ll help you ensure that you’ve got the right mindset going into this. But wait, there’s still more.

Using Scarcity to Influence Sales

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If you’re in a situation where you’re trying to move a prospect forward and you’re only there part-time, you’re only there on certain days, you want to focus on using scarcity as a way to influence your prospects to connect with you or to close the deal on days you’re there.

What does that look like?

Well, back in the days when I used to sell cars, I didn’t work every Saturday, and a lot of times prospects want to come out to see you on Saturday, and the last thing I wanted to do after working a full week was work a Saturday that I was supposed to have off.

So if I had somebody that looked like, “Oh yeah, I think I might drop by this Saturday.” I wouldn’t say, “Oh, sorry, I’m off.” I don’t want to seem like that guy. But what I would say is “Saturday might work. I’ve got some appointments that I’m trying to juggle around here, but I’ll suggest right now if you can make it on Friday, there’s a chance that the car you’re looking at may be gone. I know some other people are looking. So would we be able to make something happen Friday?”

Now, I’m going to be honest with you, that wasn’t a lie. I mean, I wouldn’t make that up if there wasn’t somebody interested in the car. My point is, you’ve got to be crystal clear and you’ve got to set the agenda relative to some scarcity that may need to exist in order to influence a prospect to stick with your schedule.

So don’t lie, be truthful, but spend some time thinking through, well, what are some things that I could share here that might make this a scarce opportunity.

What might threaten this deal that might slow things down for the prospect?
What might affect the price for the prospect?

When you start to think about those things, you come up with some ideas. If you share them using the right language, you’re going to create scarcity, which influences the prospect to come see you when you want them to.

3. Part-Time Sales: Focus on Your Top 3 Priorities

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One more thing to share.

You’ve probably heard me talk about time blocking. Now, time blocking is a really good strategy for full-time. People who I mentioned earlier, often times their play gets loaded with a lot of non-selling activities, right? Administrative stuff, and that can take up a lot of your selling time. So time blocking works well in that environment.

But if you’re part-time and you’re really just expected to prospect and close and everything in between and you don’t get dragged and do a lot of other stuff, time blocking doesn’t always work because you don’t have a lot of time in the day. What you need to do is (as I mentioned earlier) make a plan and pick your top three priorities every day.

So here’s what that might look like. Let’s say tomorrow

I’m going to be reaching out to some prospects.
I’m going to follow up with some prospects, and
I’ve got one meeting where I’m hoping to close, and
one meeting that’s an initial meeting where I’m hoping to get something going.

Well, what are your top three priorities? It’s probably the meeting I’m hoping to close. It’s the other meeting, and then maybe it’s reaching out to five prospects, right? I would plan tomorrow with those three at the top of my list.

Those happen first. Those get booked in my calendar. Nothing else, anything else I want to do. I make a plan around it and I execute. But if I don’t get it done, that’s okay.

When you’re part-time in sales, instead of time blocking, I’d strongly suggest you focus on your top three priorities each day you’re going to be in there. Plan them before you get there.

Don’t let the day run you. You run the day, and ultimately you’re going to find you can be more effective and stay on track.

So there you have tips on how to be more effective as a part-time sales professional. Hope you’ve enjoyed them. Make sure you comment below with any tips you use, being a part-time sales professional. What works well to help you stay on top of things?

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