Your sales team is probably the busiest part of your organization.
There’s just so much to do.
From lead generation, qualification, nurturing, and even closing.
It’s so easy for teams to be all over the place.
That’s why today, we will do something a little different.
We’ll show you how we at BAMF organize our daily sales schedules and how you can adapt them to your organization.
By the end of this guide, you should have a good idea of what sales activities you should be engaged in, organize them, and tips on running everything smoothly.
Daily or Weekly or…?
Well, that depends.
A lot of the activities that you’ll find here you can perform daily, even for single-person sales teams. However, if you have a larger group, you can assign people to do one activity throughout the week or periodically.
Another efficient way to do sales scheduling is to assign particular days of the week assigned only to a specific activity; for example, you can spend Mondays and Tuesdays prospecting and Fridays just for checking up and monitoring.
If you’re working with B2B clients with long sales cycles, you can even opt to stretch schedules longer and have general monitoring and meetings every two weeks.
The choice depends on the organization’s needs.
We’ll provide you with an example daily sales schedule for each section.
Prospecting
Prospecting essentially powers most of the sales activities your team will engage in, so it’s one sales process that has to occur regularly in any organization.
Most of the time, we’ll schedule most of the prospecting towards the beginning of the week, but this can easily be broken down into multiple instances during the week, depending on how many mediums you’re using.
You can have daily prospecting for larger organizations if you have the workforce to do so or have prospecting assigned to one to three people who do it regularly.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn still remains one of the best sources of leads since it’s home to the largest network of professionals.
If you’re using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it might be tempting to send connection requests right away and start people in your sales funnel.
However, it does help if you pause for a bit, build lists, segment, and do additional research on your prospects before sending them a connection request. This allows you to create personalized campaigns that resonate well with your prospects.
Facebook Groups
If you’re prospecting on Facebook Groups, we strongly advise that you’re active on the groups you’re in and that you visit them at least two or three times a week. This helps keep you in the know about new members coming in.
Regular Prospecting
This can involve a combination of LinkedIn, web searches, actual connections, and referrals, and it’s essentially a tedious process, so it requires a lot of time.
Although you can prospect at the start of the week, you can also try prospecting towards the end so that you can send out your cold emails by Monday.
Working with VAs, Dedicated Teams, or a Third-Party
If you have dedicated people that handle prospecting, then there are two ways to schedule them into your main sales schedule:
- Daily – Have them report and turnover new leads daily, preferably at the beginning of the day, so that the third-party can add them to your CRM or database.
- Weekly – Opt to have them report to you on Monday mornings so that you’ll be ready with a fresh batch of the leads to use for the entire week.
Larger organizations can benefit from weekly lead digests since it simplifies the process, or you can do it daily if you’re working with automation or the like.
Lead Enrichment
Your marketing campaigns might be able to stand on their own with the information you already have on them, but if given a choice, always aim to assign a part of your week for lead enrichment.
Set one day of the week just for lead enrichment, preferably right after your prospecting day.
This should help you create better messaging for your leads.
Adding New Leads to Your CRM
We like doing this at the beginning of the week to keep things organized, but you can do this daily if you’re prospecting on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for example.
Sales Calls
It would be best if you typically had sales call daily.
Preferably at least once a day.
Why?
This ensures a steady stream of new clients coming in.
Now your sales calls don’t necessarily have to be closing calls; you can also interact with high-value prospects.
I advise scheduling this to a time of the day when you’re full of energy and where your prospect is relatively free.
Don’t schedule your phone calls at the beginning of the day, and your prospect is likely busy and you might be interrupting their workflow. Reserve the beginning of your day for internal meetings or initial rounds of prospecting.
Initiating Cold Touches
We don’t usually initiate cold touches such as first emails or connections on Mondays.
You see, Mondays are sacred.
Since it’s the first day of the week, your prospects usually deal with their high-priority tasks, and you don’t want to get in their way.
Yes, they might be able to run into your email, but you’ll be fighting for their attention spans.
We like initiating cold touches on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays where you can give prospects enough time to simmer down so that they can focus on whatever you send them.
Also, avoid a cold touch or scheduling a sales call on a Friday, there’s a high possibility your prospects are more concerned about the weekend.
Lead Nurturing
We like doing lead nurturing during the middle of the week.
If you’re on the second week of nurturing, you can do a slight lead nurturing on a Monday, but it’s always best that you do things on a Wednesday.
But, there’s an exception to the rule.
If you’re running an organic Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter campaign, you want to post updates throughout the week regularly. This helps with brand awareness and recall – and it’s highly effective with pre-suasion or retargeting techniques.
I would advise posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
It doesn’t have to be anything significant; just a tiny post will do to remind people about you and your brand.
Sending Follow-Ups and Replies
Follow-up messages can be tricky, but we follow the no Monday rule if you ask us.
Replies you can send automatically, but don’t do it so fast that it seems like you’re overly eager or that they’re speaking with a chatbot.
Messaging
Never send a follow-up message on a Monday on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook; there’s a good chance that your prospect is on the platform to take a break from their regular Monday routine.
Do it from Tuesday onwards.
Hacking LinkedIn read receipts for growth!
Emails
Email follow-ups on a Monday are forgivable unless they’re the first emails that you’re sending out.
For replies, on the other hand, reply immediately on a Monday, prospects will love that, and it’s also an indication that you’re a priority.
Calls/Voicemail/Text
Reply at their earliest convenience, but don’t follow up at the beginning of the week.
However, if you want to book a meeting via voicemail, doing so on Monday isn’t a bad idea. Unlike email, it’s more engaging and won’t easily be ignored. If they do ignore you on Monday, feel free to drop them another voice message on Tuesday.
Appointment Setting
We like doing appointment setting towards the beginning of the week.
Tuesday or Wednesday is a good day to set an appointment because you avoid the Monday rush, and it frees them for an immediate Thursday appointment if they want to – usually, you’ll want to book in a couple of days or a week from the call.
This gives both parties time to prepare.
You can schedule most of your appointments on Tuesday without too many problems springing up.
Updating the CRM and Admin Work
If you’re using sophisticated prospecting software such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, updating the CRM can be done from SN itself, and the same is true for other software solutions.
Aim to update your CRM at either the beginning or end of the week for significant updates, and do your minor updates as you can go on with your campaigns.
However, when we mention CRM updates, we don’t just mean adding information or new leads into your database; a lot more goes into this.
You can opt to do a little more segmentation at the same time, enrich the current lead data that you have for campaign creation, and also perform other tasks such as email hygiene.
These tasks help your internal system stay up-to-date and minimize issues with your channels.
(Before I forget, take this time to make sure that your omnichannel is synced up as well.)
While you’re at it, you can use the end of the week for other admin tasks such as finding new software solutions, improving systems, or monitoring.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is always advised, but you shouldn’t do it daily.
Why?
Too much competitor analysis will make you too dependent on the moves of your competitor.
You should just be aware of what they’re doing so you can be flexible.
A regular time to do competitor analysis on the sales level should be every two weeks at the very least for highly crowded markets.
Content Creation
Coordination with your content team should be a daily affair.
It could be trying to figure out new scripts would your writers, working with designers to develop better visuals, or coming up with new campaigns.
It would be best to set aside a significant amount of time during the day to coordinate for content as it forms the bulk of your outreach.
Automation
Automations might make life easier, but setting them up, tweaking them, and troubleshooting can be a chore.
You want to set your time to deal with your automation on either Monday or Friday.
Weekly Meetings
I’m a fan of two meetings, one at the beginning and the end of the week.
The first meeting should be a quick huddle to discuss the plans for the entirety of the week; it shouldn’t be a complete presentation unless absolutely required.
The Friday meeting is the most critical because this is where you start to collect, collate and analyze data.
It allows your team to look back at the week and present their findings.
This is the time where you should look at:
- Problems, bottlenecks, and issues that have come up
- Points for improvement
- Results of campaigns
- Audits of current strategies
- The numbers
I also use this time to look at the results of any A/B testing that we did throughout the week and determine which ad or visual sets should stay.
If you’re working with multiple teams, make sure you use Friday to check up on them, especially for remote workers.
You can also use this time to plan the tactics and strategies you’ll be using in the following week.
Takeaways
In sales, timing is everything.
But, with so many moving parts, it’s so easy to get carried away, lose track of time, and worst, not time your prospects right.
That’s why having a schedule in place is critical.
I hope that this daily sales schedule planning guide will help you plan out your own schedule and empower your team to stay organized.
Happy selling!
