What to put in your diary instead of "sales time"

"I block out one hour every day for sales. But I never actually do any sales during that time."

Norma told me this during our weekly Diary Detox session. She was annoyed with herself, which was understandable. Her calendar looked organised and every day she'd set aside a full hour for sales.

On paper, that looked like discipline but, in practice, nothing was happening.

The problem was the word in the diary. "Sales" sounded useful, but it didn't tell her what to do. It gave her a subject area rather than a task.

When you run a small business, a vague diary block can look productive while quietly giving your brain too much work before you've even started.

Why "sales time" often falls flat

A block called "sales", "marketing" or "business development" can feel reassuring.

You've made space for the thing you know you should be doing. Your diary looks sensible and you feel as though you've taken control of your week.

Then the time arrives. You sit down and immediately have to make a string of decisions.

• Who should I contact?

• What should I say?

• Should I follow up old leads or look for new ones?

• Should I work on partnerships?

• Should I update the CRM first?

• Is the pitch good enough yet?

With no clear starting point, it's easy to drift into safer work. You might check emails, tidy your notes or do a bit more research.

You stay busy, but the work that could lead to sales still hasn't happened.

It wasn't a lack of discipline that caused Norma to avoid sales. She simply hadn't defined the task she wanted to do.

What was really happening in that hour

When we looked more closely at Norma's daily "sales" block, the pattern was obvious.

She would open her laptop, stare at the screen and spend the first few minutes deciding what counted as sales work that day.

Then she would research potential contacts, tweak her message, look again at old notes or convince herself she needed to prepare a little more.

All of those actions felt reasonable in the moment. None of them moved the conversation forward.

Her sales block had three problems:

1. No clear starting point

2. No defined action

3. No obvious finish line

That meant every day began with fresh decision-making. And when you're already making hundreds of decisions across your business, that extra friction is enough to stop the task before it starts.

Finding the real sales task

Three weeks earlier, Norma had mentioned something almost in passing. "I want to explore partnerships, but I don't know where to start."

She wasn't starting from nothing. She'd worked with around 40 to 50 collaborators in the past. These were people who already knew her, trusted her work and had some reason to reply.

So we stopped treating "sales" as one big block of time and turned it into a series of smaller actions.

• The first task was to create a list of 20 previous collaborators.

• The next was to draft a simple outreach email.

• Then she would contact the first 10 people, followed by the next 10.

• After that, she would research five speaking opportunities.

Nothing about this was complicated, which was the point.

Each block now told her exactly what to do. She didn't have to interpret the task. She just had to open the right document and begin.

Turning vague blocks into useful diary entries

Most founders have some version of this in their calendar.

But a better diary entry uses a verb and a number. It tells you the action, the person or group involved and what completion looks like.

• "Sales" becomes "email five past clients to check in".

• "Business development" becomes "research three potential partners".

• "Marketing" becomes "draft one LinkedIn post about last week's client result".

• "Follow up" becomes "send proposals to three warm leads".

This might sound basic, but it changes the way the task feels. You're no longer asking your brain to build a plan from scratch every time you sit down. The plan's already there.

Why we shortened the block

We also changed the length of Norma's sales time. Instead of one hour, she moved to 30-minute blocks.

That made the task feel lighter and forced her to be more precise. A one-hour block can quietly expand to include preparation, hesitation and distraction. A 30-minute block asks for a smaller piece of work.

When Norma opened her diary and saw "send outreach emails to collaborators 1–10", there was no long build-up. She knew where the list was, she had the draft message ready and she could start immediately.

What happened next

Within three weeks, Norma had sent 20 outreach emails.

From those emails, she received 12 responses. She booked four partnership conversations and confirmed one speaking engagement. The potential pipeline came to £18,500.

Before that, she'd carried "sales time" around in her diary for three months with nothing to show for it. The time hadn't changed much, just the wording.

That's what many business owners miss. A calendar can be full and still be unhelpful. The value comes from what the block asks you to do when you arrive there.

A better way to plan sales time

If you've got a regular sales block in your diary and it keeps slipping, don't add more time. Start by making the task smaller.

• Choose one clear action.

• Name the people involved.

• Set a number.

• Make the finish line obvious (for example, "Follow up five warm leads from last month's event.").

That's a far easier place to start than "sales". It's also much harder to avoid, because you can tell straight away whether you've done it.

And once you've taken the first action, the next one becomes easier to plan.

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