Plan Your Entire Week in 25 Minutes
Building Your Sales Engine
Weekly planning doesn't need two hours — Mark McGraw walks through the timed 25-minute process he's run every week for years to get fully prepared for the week ahead.
Weekly planning is where most salespeople lose the week before it starts. In this solo episode, Mark McGraw shares the exact 25-minute process he's used religiously for the last couple of years, built by taking the Pomodoro technique and overlaying a hard agenda with a countdown timer on every step. His honest confession up front: he used to sit down on a Sunday with the best intentions, work for two hours, and still feel like he'd done 30% of what he needed.
The fix is five steps with the clock running. Three minutes to get ready — goals out in front of you, do not disturb on, every app closed except your calendar and task list. Five minutes to find a Kaizen moment, one small improvement that creates leverage for the rest of your life. Five minutes to interrogate your calendar: two weeks forward looking for landmines and conflicts, two weeks back looking for loose ends and dropped follow-ups. Five minutes to triage the task list and name the few tasks that actually define a productive week. Then seven minutes of time blocking, aimed squarely at what's important but not urgent.
Mark also makes the case for the uncomfortable part: if you look at Tuesday and see a week full of white space, that's not freedom, that's a time management problem. Block 30 minutes for this process as a recurring event, indefinitely, and then celebrate it — because almost nobody prepares at this level.
Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine
In This Episode
Why two hours of unstructured Sunday planning leaves you 30% prepared, and how a countdown timer fixes it
The Pomodoro technique turned into a 25-minute weekly prep agenda with a fixed time budget per step
Step 1 (3 min): goals in front of you, do not disturb on, everything closed but calendar and tasks
Step 2 (5 min): identifying a weekly Kaizen moment — small, compounding improvements that create leverage
Why Kaizen time is planning time, not doing time, and how Mark automated bill pay, 401(k) statements, and even the planning timer itself
Step 3 (5 min): interrogate your calendar — two weeks forward for landmines and conflicts, two weeks back for loose ends
Step 4 (5 min): triage the task list, kill or park stale items, and name the week's real priorities
Step 5 (7 min): time blocking around the Eisenhower matrix, including TBD prospecting slots, exercise, and family time
The 75% calendar rule, and why white space mid-week signals a time management gap
How discipline in the moment buys flexibility in advance, and why you should block this process forever
Links
Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com
Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/
Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine
Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/
Weekly Planning Timer tool: https://weeklyplanner.dontwimp.com/
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