Customer Reviews

Time Traps: Proven Strategies for Swamped Salespeople

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One sentence summary: Build an effective and efficient team, don't waste time on nonproductive tasks and do what you enjoy doing.

NOTE: You may think that this book is not for you since it specifically states that it is for "Swamped Salespeople," but when you think about it, we are all salespeople in one way or another.

As a small business owner and entrepreneur, I am always looking for ways to make more time. Of course, everyone knows you can't make more time, but as Todd Duncan and his book Time Traps demonstrates there are ways that you can make better use of your time. The key is task management.

Here is a one sentence summary of each of the chapters:
1) Chasing the Wind - Don't try to manage your time.
2) The Identity Trap - Determine how to spend less time "working" while still being productive.
3) The Organization Trap - Stop wasting time (e.g. checking email every 5 minutes)
4) The Yes Trap - Stop saying yes all the time.
5) The Control Trap (get ready for a reality check) - Build a team!
NOTE: At one time or another we have fallen into the Control Trap. Remember, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. :)
6) The Technology Trap - Use technology only if it makes you more efficient.
7) The Quota Trap - Quality over quantity.
8) The Failure Trap - Don't cry over spilled milk, learn from the spillage and pour better next time.
9) The Party Trap - "Success in never final." Winston Churchill
10) Freedom (the touchy, feely chapter I liked which you MUST read) - "If a deep voice inside is telling you there's something more, something better, something you're still longing for, something worth striving for and fighting for, then your heart is still beating and there is still time to do something about it." (Time Traps)

One other thing that I like about this book is that there are executive summaries for every chapter, so you can get a really good idea about Duncan's recommendations in an hour (or as long as it takes you to read through 9 executive summaries and the last chapter on Freedom).

This is another definite addition to the Corea Properties and Esenai libraries.

Gotta go continue building the team...

If you are like me you are looking at this book because you have a busy schedule, or a seemingly endless list of tasks that mutates and grows with each waking moment. Todd Duncan has been there and offers some help as to how to stop the bleeding. This book was recommended to me by a Pastor who put the points of this book to good use in his own life with very positive results.

This book isn't really a strict time management text as the title suggests. As the author points out, there are many books for this. Rather, Time Traps tells you how to be more efficient by freeing up time to do what you do best (in this case, making sales). So rather than be a slave to email or the phone, the author offers practical suggestions as to limit tasks that are not really that important to the bottom line. For example, if you have necessary paperwork, find someone else to do it by hiring an assistant or seeing what resources your company has to offer. Don't spend your time filling out paperwork, spend the time doing what really matters, the task for which you were hired. As a research faculty member, who seems to have to spend more time doing academic busywork than actual science sometimes, the themes of this book ring frighteningly true to me.

Although the book is marketed towards salespeople, there are important efficiency improvement techniques that can be learned by people of all professions. The book quotes stats that the majority of salespeople spend 43% of their time managing problems and administrative tasks (it could be worse in academia!). There is a discussion on how salespeople say yes too often ... the same applies to researchers who sometimes take on too many projects and thus devote to little time to actually doing the projects well.

Some of the items here aren't immediately applicable to other professions. For example, as a research faculty member I have a responsibility to train students, which is a inefficient but rewarding task. It is not something that can be completely delegated, although after reading this book I see how what I am doing can be improved. And research is a highly non-linear process. In other fields the concepts taught here might be more exactly on the money, so I would definitely invest time to read the book. But the idea that we define ourselves by our work is right on for all professions; how many times do we think that 80 hour work weeks sound impressive ... only to see the effects this has on marriages, health, and children. This book will help in at least some ways to keep that output but require less hours to do it.

The book has a slight Christian theme, but the author has a lot of neutral "live life to the full" concepts that should not be too offensive to non-Christians. The book is a quick read, and easily accessible with many modern-day references. In all I think you will find a lot of uplifting and helpful information here that just might improve your life.

Early on in my career, I was given the advice to "touch each piece of paper only once". This is a utopian ideal, that doesn't actually occur on planet earth. In my line of work, there are up to eleven individuals involved in the average transaction, and i am supposed to somehow coordinate ten or so such transactions each month.

This book is for anyone who has worked a 12 hour day, and still had work spill over into tomorrow. Put another way, if you've ever thought to yourself "there must be a better way", then you ought to not only buy this book, but also read it from cover to cover.

No matter how efficient you may consider yourself, you will be surprised at how much room for improvement there actually is. This book offers simple commonsense solutions to the various "time traps" that tend to steal away hours of our valuable time, often without us being aware of the extent.


One of the major concepts is that you can't manage time, but you can manage "events". The book suggests various ways to study and perfect how you use your time, and suggests that if you "take care of the minutes, the hours will take care of themselves".

You might also consider checking out "High Trust Selling" from the same author. Both of these books introduce their ideas as laws or concepts which fit into an overall business and life philosophy. The ideas introduced are based on a study of top producers and superstars in various industries.

These books are both an excellent investment and a good read, and will probably change your entire outlook on time management and running your business "by design".

Don't let the title fool you- this is not just for sales people. After all, you're an entrepreneur and have to sell AND do accounting AND market AND answer phones... the list goes on.

If you are like me, making the most your time takes constant attention. The concept behind the book is simple: figure the two most valuable uses of your time and maximize the amount of time spent on these two activities. The goal is to be so productive that you can take your life back- literally in some cases. Shrink your work week from 80 hours to 40, take real vacations, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce the stress in your life.

Their are several great things about this book. First, it is not a one-size-fits-all. It takes you through steps to achieve your ultimate goal- time spent on your most productive activities. Second, there are very specific action items, some that you can implement today that will help you. Other steps will happen over time. Some ideas are free, some require you to take a leap of faith and pay others to do your less productive tasks.

Some ideas you may know, others may be very new. Either way, this is a great book. I just purchased two more copies from Amazon.com, one for each of my partners.

gorillapreneur.blogspot.com
David Safeer

Most of us in the workplace know someone that seems to be constantly busy but they never seem to get anything done - almost reminiscent of the Tasmanian Devil from Bugs Bunny cartoons - always in motion but never going anywhere. Sales expert and author Todd Duncan warns against such wasted effort and energy in his book titled - "Time Traps." While Duncan recognizes the many activities that occupy our time and thoughts he clearly draws a distinction between being productive and being busy. He proposes that the problem is NOT a function of too little time but rather a misplaced focus on time management. The author suggests that we jettison the failed practice of "time management" and embrace the idea of "task management." Soundview recommends this book because the author applies a holistic view to the concept of life-work balance, which is the reason why we work in the first place. His assertion that your "work is not your life" but that "life is why we work" is a profound insight that frequently gets crowded from our thoughts by the daily grind. Additionally, he challenges the reader to invest and prioritize time in those areas that will truly deliver maximum dividends including: your life purpose, knowledge, health, relationships and financial fitness.

While the book is a little dry at times, the ideas within it are very helpful. I have already implemented several thoughts that I read from this book and they have bought me at least one hour per work day. I am already fairly good about time management and I am a focused professional, so I suspect others might event see a greater benefit from the tips. Either way, you should buy and read this book.

Thank you Todd Duncan! This book continues and finishes Referral of a Lifetime. Basically, what Mr Duncan does is call attention to what we are doing with our time. He then presents a clear, concise way in which we can prioritize better. He may have been inspired by John Maxwell's Thinking for a Change. This is because Todd believes in managing your tasks during the day. It is akin to the concept of writing out 6 tasks that need to be accomplished today and work at them until finished without letting any other task interrupt you. What is even better with Mr Duncans approach is to set up folders in which to place these other tasks that arrive in our lives so that we can categorically and systematically face them at or before their appropriate time. Todd does a great job in finishing this book which will undoubtedly lead to more writings from him. In the Party trap he speaks of Health, financial and spiritual fitness, purpose, and Knowledge. This is a book worth reading even if you are not a "salesperson".

Countless tasks compete for a salesperson's time every day. Salespeople who fall into these "time traps" sacrifice the hours they need to invest in their ultimate purpose: selling. Sales and work-life balance expert Todd Duncan identifies the eight most common time traps that snare salespeople (and other businesspeople, also), including the "identity trap," the "organization trap," the "control trap" and the "party trap." He explains how to dodge these traps and streamline your workday so that you devote most of your time to selling. He offers strategies for selling more in less time, such as nurturing relationships with high-value customers to generate repeat business and referrals. Duncan also suggests ideas about how to use all your new free time, offering guidelines for balancing your life outside of work. There is a Christian flavor to his advice, but it is subtle and shouldn't deter those who are not spiritually oriented. This isn't a magic formula for increasing sales or buying time; in fact, much of the information is not new. But we recommend it as a nicely packaged approach to maximizing the value of your time as a salesperson, not only in your workday, but also in your life.

Time management books and seminars can easily be a little vague and "fluffy". Duncan's book - particularly the first half - is filled with sensible, hands-on techniques and inspiration to regain control of your time and consequently your sales accounts.

I particularly appreciated the "Yes Trap" chapter which included a study on how salespeople spend their time (only 20% selling or prospecting, 80% admin, trouble shooting, etc).

The last few chapters felt less useful to me. In particular the Party Trap chapter ("wasting time celebrating success") is not something that I or my sales force could relate to, and the final chapter on Freedom citing Morrie from Tuesdays with Morrie fame held no value whatsoever for me. What I wanted were practical, concrete tools and techniques to improve the effectiveness of my sales force, and that is what I got in much of the first part of the book.