Are you busy or are you productive? The question is innocent
enough. But can you handle the truth?
Recently I was doing some consulting with a client who carefully
examined how his sales representatives spent their time. He
concluded that they actually spent less than 5 percent of each
day engaged in the act of selling! Imagine, 95 percent of each
sales day spent on nonselling activities. Writing letters,
putting together information packets, filling out paperwork,
telephone prospecting, and traveling consumed their days.
As you can imagine, my client wanted to grow sales revenues.
Some sales trainers attempt to convince prospects that training
is the answer for everything. While I encourage the acquisition
of knowledge and new skills, I disagree with the blind
assumption that training is always a cure for poor sales
performance.
Let’s pretend that he sent his entire staff to a sales training
seminar, and they learned skills that made it possible for them
to double their closing percentages. The improvement would only
be useful during that 5 percent of each day they spent selling.
Adding salespeople isn’t always the answer either! If each rep
is spending 5 percent of their day selling, it would take
another 19 reps to achieve 8 hours of selling time. Common sense
will tell you that the costs of recruiting, training, and
managing such a force would be an awful waste of potential
profit.
So let me get to the point. Are your salespeople spinning their
wheels? Are they spending time, money, and energy keeping busy
or producing results? If you’re not sure, be on the lookout.
Watch and see if your reps are doing things that less-skilled
and lower-paid support personnel could be doing for them. Do
your representatives spend time doing things manually that could
be done better, faster, and more efficiently using technology?
For example, are they writing and launching mailing campaigns
that could be done better and faster by an assistant with a
computer and automation software? Are they spending hours each
day leaving messages in prospective clients’ voice mail boxes
instead of having sales assistants with Direct Voice Mail
Marketing Systems make calls for them?
Let me encourage you to rethink the assignment of individual job
responsibilities and list the tasks necessary for successful job
performance. Take a look at which tasks require the specific
knowledge and ability of a salesperson and which ones don’t.
Build teams of support personnel and leverage technology
wherever possible to cost effectively and efficiently accomplish
the simple, yet time-consuming, tasks that hold your salespeople
back.
Copyright 2001, Mason Duchatschek
|
