Are you on your calendar?

That wasn't a typo. Welcome to a new week. Are you one of your priorities and have you scheduled time on your calendar for yourself? It seems like every week I talk with a manager who is trying to solve a problem. Finding new talent, developing better marketing pieces, coaching sellers to better performance and achievement of standards. There is no shortage of problems for today's managers to solve.

"A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry; but money answereth all things." Ecclesiastes 10:19 (King James version)

You've heard the old cliché that in business, money solves all problems. Bet you didn't know it had biblical roots. In context, the Bible verse is suggesting that in the preparation of a feast, money solves the problems. Money, as we all know, does not solve everything. But in feasts, or in our case, business, money solves a lot of problems. There are only two ways to grow your revenue in this business:

Sell more to your current clients.

Get more clients.

From a management perspective that translates into:

Get more from your current sellers.

Get more sellers.

Read any of our trade publications, attend any conference and likely the subject turns to the difficulty in recruiting new sellers to the team. Not to be cynical or accusatory, but only speaking from personal experience, how hard are we trying – really? Which gets back to my question and the title of this sales tip: Are you on your calendar for this week? Have you scheduled a dedicated amount of noncancellable time with yourself to devote to recruiting new sellers? Whether it's scrolling LinkedIn for potential candidates, talking to the local college or attending business networking functions. Are you intentional about your recruiting strategy?

This week while coaching a manager, I suggested that she give herself a goal of having a minimum of one conversation a week with someone she would like to hire in the future. One conversation a week. You see, she's dealing with performance issues with some of her sellers and it's causing all sorts of frustration and anxiety. If you have a full team and people waiting to join the team, suddenly individual performance issues don't hold you hostage.

So the first thing to take control of is your calendar. Whether it's recruiting, or whatever issues are most pressing for you, schedule time on your calendar and be intentional about your solutions. We give everyone else who needs our time room on our calendar. For important problem solving, don't we deserve some of our own time?

Jeff Schmidt is SVP-Professional Development at the Radio Advertising Bureau. You can reach Jeff at jeff.Schmidt@Rab.com or follow him on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn.