Adapting GTD to managing sales and clients
August 13th, 2009 Chip Joyce - Staff ContributorCategories | Community Contributions | Implementation
This is how to apply GTD to managing sales and client accounts. Keeping true to the technologically-agnostic principle of GTD, I am going to describe the system as it would work in a paper-based way. You can adapt it to the various tools that you prefer or that are mandated by your employer.
A sales cycle is something like: prospecting, establishing the relationship, discovering a need, defining a solution, and closing the sale. Let’s put it in a GTD framework.Perhaps you get a list of leads from marketing: these are people you need to call. Keep the prospecting list separate from your other calls. There are several reasons for this that, including mostly having to do with the calls being less time sensitive so they can be postponed if a sales opportunity arises that takes over your day. So let’s call this list @Call Prospects, which will be on a sheet of paper.
When you call @Call Prospects, most of the time you get voicemail. Each time this happens mark the prospect’s name as “VM.” If you connect with a prospect, cross the name of the list. If there is no opportunity, you’re done. If there is an opportunity, cross off the name and then I create a Project for it. (We’ll get to that in a minute.) When you are done making calls, take that @Call Prospects list and put it in your Tickler File for one week out, so you can try calling the incomplete ones again. That is how to manage your prospecting.
Each qualified prospect now becomes a Project and (pretending you are only using paper), so label a folder with the prospect’s name, and put a sheet of paper in the folder, which is for your notes. Write the date of the call and everything you have learned up until that point. That sheet should remain on the top of the folder stack, and it will be a log of all calls and exchanges. Under it you can put website printouts, meeting notes, email exchanges, etc.
All interaction with Client-Project — all calls, to-dos, waiting-fors — will be kept in your general GTD system: handle the Client-Project like any other project. The Client-Project folder is not where your next-actions reside: it is your support materials, including your notes.
Your next-actions might be on your @Calls list, or @Online to send an email, or @Waiting if they are supposed to call you back, or on your calendar if it’s a hard deadline, such as when someone asks you to call then next Friday. If someone says to call them in Q4, put their name on @Calls list in your October Tickler Folder.
All projects have a completion. A Client-Project is completed when you either close the sale or lose the sale. If it is postponed for six months, move the Client-Project folder into your Archives, make a note in my tickler for when to resume it, and replace the folder in your Active category once the sales process resumes.
If the client is a repeat buyer, still treat each sales opportunity as a separate project. The client in this case is an Account, which may have multiple, ongoing projects. So in this way the Account is, in GTD terms, an Area of Focus. Depending on what it takes to nurture an Account, you should have reminders in your GTD system to check in on them, meet them periodically, etc.
Whether it is part of your weekly review or it also includes reporting to your boss about your sales status, the top sheet of each Client-Project will have all the summary information you need to review where you are. Anything you or your boss thinks needs to be a next step goes into your general GTD system: “Call Mary to see if I can provide more support documentation to speed up the IT due diligence,” or “Call Bob to ask when he is going to send back his comments on the contract.”
GTD works very well for when you are wearing your salesperson hat. In summary:
- Prospect calls need to be treating differently than your @Calls
- Each potential sale is its own Project
- Each Client-Project has a top-sheet that summarizes all activities, and supporting documents go underneath it
- Client-Projects have a completion and need to be moved to Archives or out of your Active area when they either stall or conclude (i.e. you either win or lose the sale)
- All next actions go into your overall GTD system to keep them integrated with the rest of your life
- Weekly reviews or status updates with your boss refer largely on the top sheet of each project, and identified next actions go into your overall GTD system.
Regardless of what software applications you may use, this is a workflow that works, and as always, make sure your software doesn’t over-complicate the process.
Chip Joyce is a director of business development for the David Allen Company. You might enjoy his other posts too. You can also reach him by email.
What a great description of your GTD system! it somewhat matches my own, although you may be ahead of me. In my work, the clients are doctoral students or patients. It took a few years before work with patients/students began to have that well-organized, systematic GTD approach and feeling. Now, I don’t know how I functioned in these two major areas of my life, without GTD. Today I have systematic notes on all of my work, and they are always easy to find, because they have a real home.
I never tire of hearing the specifics, of how people use GTD, the mechanisms and methods they use. Your post is inspirational, thanks.
Hi Chip,
Thanks for helping out us salespeople! I was curious how you handle new “cold calls”? Would you put them on your @Call Prospects list as well and just follow the process as if they were the same as a lead given to you from marketing? If they are a big prospect and they say no thanks for now, but I want to keep my name in front of them with direct mail, email follow up etc. How would you handle? Thanks
Mitch,
Are you cold calling from a list you have already? Please explain in more detail your present situation and I will give you some ideas.
If you want to “touch” the big prospect regularly, I would keep dropping their name into your Tickler. Again, pretend you use paper. I call John Bigfish, he said keep in touch, call in a month. So move that Next Action to a date one month out. Maybe you want to remember to send him relevant news articles you think he would appreciate, but that is sporadic and not scheduled? Make a separate list, say, @VIP Prospects. Regularly review it – maybe in your weekly review – to trigger ideas on what you can do to keep in touch. As you read the trade journals, capture interesting articles, put them in your reference files, and on your @online or whatever list, write “send Bigfish the new gidget regulations article.”
Chip I work with “reactive”leads given to me through my Corp. office via a CRM (Salesforce.com), we have created excel lists of the “Big Fish” prospects that are already in my industry, these lists come from various sources. I actually enjoy working with paper more than digital. My setup that I would like to use is my Blackberry for email, calender, contacts, and @errands. I’ve been switching back and forth with my Levenger Circa notebooks both in Letter and Jr. size (still can’t decide)
Mitch — Do you need to manage your calls in Salesforce? I suspect you do. That is one of my reasons for saying you need to handle cold calling differently than your other calls: the boss-man makes it so.
Clearly you need to keep records in Salesforce for management to run reports, forecasting, etc. If you are like me, you don’t like using for your lists, tickler, etc. If so, then keep your projects and next actions in your general GTD system, but keep the required data in Saleforce, even if it is sometimes redundant. That’s my advice.
Thanks for all of you help and ideas Chip! Have a great weekend!!!
Hi:
Thanks for a great article. I wanted to save it from Google Reader into Evernote (new feature) and it says your website is set up in such a way google is unable to do so. just thought I’d let you know..
thanks for the post Mitch. How do you manage using a tickler file for travelling? I am out on the road or via air 3 0f 5 days. I have always struggled with GTD and sales process. We use Siebel and Outlook for our corportate work. I have the GTD outlook addin. I keep project lists in Siebel for prospects and NA/s list in Outlook. Works fine if I am at my computer but when I have a block of time travelling is when I find it a challenge.
Hello I’m interesting in know if you can change experiences on use Outlook whit Add In and software Sales Siebel.7.
If anyone is interested please contact me julian.castejon@draeger.com
Chip, Do you use Salesforce.com too? I really apreciate your post. I am a Salesforce.com administrator, and GTD newbie. I am always looking for ways to help my Sales Users be more productive. I can translate much of the system you described above into SFDC functionality. I have been thinking much in the last few months about how you could bring GTD to Salesforce.com. Its so customizable. I even toyed around with adding Contexts to Tasks, so I could generate context based task lists. Of course, it breaks down in that I dont keep my personal tasks in Salesforce.com, but only work tasks.
I would love to hear any insight you have into customizing SFDC to work with GTD.
Hi, Brandy.
I have used SalesForce. It was not customized at all the way that I wanted it to be. But I imagine it has the capability.
Chip
Chip, this is a fantastic blog post. I found it via the GTD LinkedIn group in your response re sales and GTD.
I love that you shared with a paper-based system (and it would definitely work with a digitally-based system if you used a !Summary file name). I tweeted about this article (@JHaynesWriter).
It is good to see that you can use the standard / classic GTD contexts for most everything. I really, really like this. Color me implementing this immediately!!!!
Gah, there is some excitement that my fiance can only describe as “Oh, it must be a new GTD hack.” This is one of those moments!