DOUBLE YOUR PRODUCTIVE SELLING TIME

How much time do your sales people actually devote to selling and how much of it is productive?
There have been many studies on this subject and as many answers. The only way to be truly accurate is to carry out a study of your own sales team, but first of all you have to define selling time. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “sell” as “Give or hand over (something) in exchange for money”. Sounds good to me as it implies that selling is to do with customers. It doesn’t say anything about forecast reviews, order processing or sales meetings it is just about the act of selling. In this the first of two newsletters I, with your help am going to explore what sales people do, and in a later edition, I will identify how you can make it more productive.
Here is a list of tasks that sales people and their managers do. What I would like you to do is to identify if your people do them. When you have done that you can get our view of its value.
Account planning
Customer research
Forecast reviews
Campaign planning
Customer meetings
Customer support
Call planning
Bid/Risk/Ad hoc reviews
Lead follow up
Prospect qualification
Order processing and management
CRM System management
Training courses
Coaching/being coached
Writing proposals
Writing sales collateral
Chasing outcomes of customer meetings attended by other people
Ad hoc business reviews
Progress chasing
Chasing price authorisations
Sales Meetings
Customer presentations
Building customer relationships
Receivables chasing
Travelling
Collecting competitor information
In SalesPulse 112 I talked about reducing non customer work. If you click on this link you will be able to see our views and identify where you can free up time to sell more.
STOP PRESS – Is partnering part of your sales strategy? If so why not accept our open invitation to our partnering conference in April. You can find out more and register HERE