In this week’s Entrepreneur University we turn again to a familiar face here at the Young Entrepreneur Blog: Leanne Hoagland-Smith. Leanne has already been profiled twice before (7 Ways To Get Rejected – Entrepreneur University and Avoiding The 7 Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs Make – Entrepreneur University).

Leanne Hoagland-Smith works with individuals just like you who want improved results personally or organizationally. She works to improve human capital for sustainable transformational change by developing results driven leadership in people, teams and organizations.

Today Leanne is sharing her advice on time management advice: Make An Appointment With Yourself!:

“To be successful today, means that you must manage tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. The 21st century has a plethora of tools to make self-management much easier.

However what ever tool that you use, you need to take the following action:

Make an appointment with yourself.

When you take the action to schedule time with yourself, you may also need to adopt these 8 additional tactics.

1. Do not take any phone calls
2. Do not open your emails
3. Do not make an appointment with a real person
4. Make sure that you use your strategic plan
5. Work off a list that is aligned to your plan and current marketing goals, sales goals and revenue goals
6. Complete at least one task
7. Transfer the completed task or goal to your goal summary sheet
8. Do not leave the appointment early

Just think how you would feel if someone took a phone call during your appointment or was reading email. How effective would that meeting be?

Are you any less important than your clients or prospects? So why would you take any actions that you diminish your own value?

Once you begin to make a habit of scheduling appointments you will begin to see that dreaded To Do pile reduce. And you will have additional time within that appointment to make those necessary follow-up calls to increase your sales.

Several of my clients now make scheduling an appointment with themselves a weekly habit. Their results include these 5:

1. Billing records that go out within 5 days of job completion
2. Strategic goals that are reviewed and updated weekly
3. Calls to old customers to reconnect that have lead to additional sales
4. Calls to old leads that have generated increase sales including for one client $15,000
5. Better business weekly activity due to having more quality planning time

Take action right now and begin to schedule an appointment with yourself unless of course you enjoy chaos.”

Have you made a habit of making appointments with yourself?