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SalesTool Talk Newsletter: Nov 19th Issue
Someone once told me "it's easy to guarantee sales". How? Drum roll please... Make something people want to buy. Clever but not correct. Offering a product that people want to buy is a necessity. But it's not enough by itself. There is only one way to guarantee more sales and that is "Spend more of your time in front of customers".
Great sales reps fiercely protect their selling time from distractions. Great sales managers know they can impact sales the most by blocking and tackling - that is, removing interruptions and barriers that get in a sales reps way.
How does this relate to sales tools? Let's take a look at Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as an example. CRM software revolutionized sales. It makes it easy and fast to find contact names, review account history, create and send emails, understand opportunity pipelines and so much more. At the same time, it makes it more difficult and slows us down in many ways.
The ONE way to sell more (protect the 215)
For instance, now we're expected to enter specific details on each opportunity. This involves transcribing our hand written notes into the CRM system. And we can only do that once we have created an "opportunity" in the system and have entered the required information. We have to take what's in our heads and put it into the centralized knowledge-base. As it is with all good things, a few negative consequences seem to hitch a ride.
Have you deployed CRM for your salesforce? If you have, do you know whether its resulted in a net increase in time available with prospects? Should we judge all things to some degree by the impact they have on time spent with prospects. This is only one dimension - I understand that. But I believe it's the most important and at the same time, the most over-looked.
As sales managers, don't we owe it to our team, to consider the impact on selling time as a critical factor when we make a decision to do or not to do something? We ask how much something costs. We ask how much time it will take to implement. We ask whether we will get value from it, but we don't often ask how it will impact time with prospects nor look for ways to mitigate any negative impact.
There are 365 Days in the year. No surprise there. But let’s think through how much of that time is really available to sell. It breaks down like this:
Take away:
- 104 weekend days
- 15 Vacation and sick days
- 24 days for non-selling meetings (e.g. internal sales meetings & events), training and travel time
- 7 paid Holiday days
That leaves 215 days we can spend selling. On average, we end up with only 18 days a month when we can do something to dig-up, advance, and close a sale. But wait, often we must also use that time to follow-up on a delivery, straighten out an invoicing mistake, help our client resolve an issue or any one of a list of non-selling, but crucial tasks.
When a sales manager makes a decision, they better darn well know whether it’s going to give their reps more days or whether it will turn their 215 into 195.
Sales reps have to be super-human. We expect them to find prospects (or sift through a “lead” list) find a way to contact them, attempt to contact them and keep attempting until they do, but before all that, they had better know a little about them or their business so they can sound interested and credible. They need to close on an appointment, and if they don’t they need to at least learn about the prospect’s interest, and when to call next and then they have to remember to call and decide what to send via e-mail, just the right amount of communication – not too little – not too much. Once they have an appointment, they need to prepare the collateral to bring, find and print directions, make sure they have all the hardware they need and put together the objectives for the meeting. They may need to prepare a presentation and it better not be too generic or the prospect will quickly lose interest.
The point is there are inflection points where we can and should figure out how to protect their 215. Can some tasks be delegated? Can we deploy better systems or processes? If we constructed the territories differently, could we cut down on travel and down time (see Mapping Analytics free report)?
CRM is a start but there is so much more. We have to think in terms of what’s needed to reduce the time sinks. How can we free up more time so we can either spend it with customers and prospects, or so we can spend it doing smarter, more productive tasks?
Invest in sales tools like Xobni or Gist that (almost) instantly finds that person we needed to respond back to, or the attachment they sent us via Microsoft Outlook. It’s a subscription to NetProspex, so reps can quickly obtain the contact details they need and avoid 15 minutes searching the web for the same information.
There is a vast list of sales tools to make their jobs more productive and enjoyable. Invest in tools that protect the 215. Don’t just expect reps to get more done, help them get more of the things-that-matter done. The things that lead to a sale.
Create Higher Revenue Sales Territories for 2009
This sales executive brief from Mapping Analytics outlines a valuable three-step process for improving the performance of sales territories. Discover how to generate more revenue from your territories, reduce sales costs, and design balanced and fair territories.