Time Enough for Selling

I often have conversations with people regarding their sales targets. If you have been in the sales and marketing game long enough, you will recognize these simple rules: 

• Next years targets are always higher than this years.
• These targets will be achieved by increasing the quota of every sales person.
• To ensure that sales knows we are serious, there will be a process of tracking the sales person's progress. This process will take up the time of the sales person, leaving them LESS time to pursue the increased sales goals.
• To ensure we are getting the most profit from our sales, we will approve all quotes at headquarters. We can't trust our sales team to make the right decisions.

In summary, the strategy is by making life difficult for the sales team we will achieve increased sales.

Sounds crazy? If you want to be horrified, find out what percentage of time your sales team actually spends selling. If you ask your sales team you will hear a number from 25% to 50%. If you do some actual research, you will find out the number is closer to 10%. What are the biggest time wasters? Administration and problem solving. Together the can eat up more than 45% of a sales persons time. That great new process you implemented that has the sales person filling out forms, building spreadsheets, reporting, etc. just ate up 30% of available time. Add another 15% for the time a sales person spends on trying to find out the status of the order they have already closed. Go down the list and add up all the time wasters.

Are there ways of getting more out of your sales team? Of course there are. But if your sales team doesn't have the time to learn and implement them, they are all for naught.

Step 1. Ask you sales team what the time wasters plaguing them are.

Step 2. Eliminate them.

This may seem simple, but it likely won't be. Things that waste time have a way of justifying themselves. Question anyone who says something is necessary. Force them to prove it. Opinion doesn't count here.

"What are the facts? Again and again and again -- what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" -- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"

- Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love