Time management is an essential key to the success of any business or individual. You are a senior at a consultant firm and you keep meeting many clients at a time. Off-course you have many consultants for each client, but personally meeting them once in a while is very important. Your inbox is flooded with client emails, and you are not able to keep track of all of them on your own.
This is how our 34th President managed time.
Here I will tell you how you can optimize your time as a senior partner or owner at a consultant firm.
1. Rely on your team
Depending on your team and trusting them is very important. Your consultants are capable that is why you hired them right? Rely on your consultant team to do your day to day tasks and solve any minor issues. Set a company decorum so that during a major problem you have been informed. This will give you more time to concentrate on how to increase your business profitability and to diversify your investments or starting new ventures.
2. Make time for face-to-face meeting
Whenever you get free time make, schedule back-to-back, face-to-face meetings with your clients. This is very time-saving as you don’t have to waste your time on emails or phone tags. Your client will feel that they are very important to you. This will build a sense of trust in them.
3. Implement a tool with high visibility
You want to check out a client engagement status, but you are not able to track the team lead or the email. To solve this invest in a project management system that allows you track every client on a higher level. Through this tracking system, you will know who is the team lead and consultant for that client. You can even track details of the last meeting with the client. Consider consulting a CRM to resolve this problem.
4. Filter your inbox
You may receive hundreds of emails in a day and all the mailers want immediate response to the mails. Every morning bifurcate your letters with trash ones and important emails. Delete the junk mails. Prioritize your emails and mark the important ones and not so important ones accordingly. This will save your precious time when you are replying to all your letters.
5. Allot time accordingly
Allot some part of the day where you are not responding to calls and emails. This will help you use your time in other productive work of the firm. This will save your time in answering unconstructive calls. Put a do not disturb sign when you don’t want to be disturbed at all.
6. Use tools
There are fantastic free tools and plugins available on the internet like Evernote, Trello or one note for recording your notes and sharing essential files and folders. These tools will help you connect with your client efficiently.
7. Block distractions
Social media can be an excellent way to connect with friends, family and business clients, but this can get addictive. You might end up surfing social media endlessly without any purpose. You should cut your time spent on social media. Use it wisely for business purposes only. Instead of wasting your time on twitter and facebook news feeds use this platform as a marketing tool for your business and generate enormous traffic.
8. Plan
Planning is one of the most crucial tools for time management. Without planning your business will be a mess and you won’t have any idea of what is happening in your company. Before starting your day, you should list out your entire day’s work beginning with the critical tasks for the day. I always plan my monthly calendar and write content accordingly. You should have a weekly plan on every Monday and distribute your work as per requirement and importance. By the end of each day, you should review crucial tasks to be completed. This system will help you keep track of tasks you are doing and you can move your business forward by implementing all the planning.
9. Time audit
Make time audits to see where you went wrong and how did you utilize your time. Did you follow your calendar? When are you wasting most of your time? What are the things you don’t enjoy and you are wasting your time on? This will help you follow your schedule efficiently.
Conclusion
I am a consultant myself, I believe following these tips are essential as we are humans and tend to procrastinate at times. So to avoid procrastination and utilize your time efficiently you need to take the above procedures seriously. Thrive the market, give your knowledge to your clients and maintain good relations just by using these simple methods.