By Todd Duncan

To be a highly successful salesperson, you must envision your goals for the future of your business. One of those goals should have to do with the volume of sales you expect to receive. To set this goal, you must understand the value of your time, one hour at a time.

Professionals from lawyers to mechanics to computer technicians know the value of an hour’s worth of work. And so do you if you hire one. Why? Because the value of each service is quantified with an hourly rate.

For example, when you hire a mechanic to install new brakes, you going to pay not only for the parts but also for the number of hours the car must be serviced. And as we all know, the longer the work takes, the more expensive the service becomes. In fact, in many cases the cost for the service is higher than the cost of the parts. That’s because a mechanic’s time is more valuable than the parts he sells. A mechanic understands that without his time, parts don’t have much value to you.

Therein lies the beauty in this exchange (if you’re the mechanic, that is). If the mechanic—who let’s say is the best in town—wants to charge you one hundred dollars an hour for his time, he can. Without him you just have a bunch of brake parts and a car that won’t stop—two things that do you no good if you don’t know how to put them together. Of course, it’s your prerogative to take your business elsewhere. But if you want first-class work, it’s going to cost you one hundred dollars an hour. That’s what this mechanic has determined his time is worth. Will he work on your car for less? No, because there are always people with car troubles who will agree to the value he has placed on his time—especially if they’ve used his services before.

The bottom line is that the one-hundred-dollar-an-hour mechanic doesn’t do cheap work because his time is more valuable than that. Furthermore, he doesn’t waste his time because it has a real dollar value. We should all heed this bit of blue collar wisdom because the more time is worth, the less we tend to waste.

Lesson Summary

Think of your job. Would your customers say that the time you give them is more valuable than the product you provide? Do you fill your work hours with activities that increase the value of your time? Or does the value of your time diminish the busier you get? Determine the real value of an hour of your time and it will change how you do business and who you do it with.

When you know the value of an hour of your time, your job is then to never spend time on a task that produces less than you’re worth, now or in the future.

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