Are you a top performer in sales?
Indice
One of the most common excuses given by sales teams who do not reach their assigned target is the limited time they spend with customers.
On the other hand, it is true that recent research conducted by Salesforce, shows that in a week, sales managers spend only 28% of their time… selling.
Administrative tasks, service tasks, internal meetings, and travel are the activities that most often take up sellers’ time, yet they are also the ones that take them away from their focus. And therefore, from their results.
How can a sales manager “attack” 72% of his time spent on non-sales activities and recover a good chunk to devote to customers to more easily reach the assigned targets?
4 pratical tips to increase the time dedicated to sales
For those involved in sales, and for department managers, it is essential to recover time in their week to devote themselves to generating added value for customers. Let’s look at 4 organizational routines that can cut the time spent on non-sales activities in half:
1. Transform half of the internal meetings into appointments in which instead of projecting presentations of products and sales data, comparisons are made with the offer of the competition, to focus on the factors of our proposal that can make the difference in the eyes of the customer.
2. Devote more time to the study of purchasing interlocutors:understanding their profile and identifying what kind of people they are allows you to adapt your behaviors to be perceived as more aligned and similar.
3. Explain to customers the back-office activities that are carried out for them. It is important to communicate and explain the quantity and quality of the work that the commercial department carries out “behind the scenes” because this increases interaction with customers and therefore the perceived value.
4. Spend more time analyzing the sales cycleand sharing the results with the sales teams; because it is true that a portion of administrative tasks is important and necessary, but it is also true that you cannot improve what you do not analyze and that it takes time, analysis and countermeasures to improve and grow each person and each team.
In the end it is a matter of making choices: the focus must be on adding value time for sales and for the customer and it can be done by subtracting from that 72% of the time spent doing other activities!
The habits of top sales performers
Fortunately, not all salespeople rely on the excuse of lack of time! Some view the scenario and know that they will perform the assigned tasks at the appropriate time. They make precise choices and will turn their full attention to the activities that will allow them to have the closure of the budget for the period at hand.
These salespeople treasure the old 80/20 rule: 80% of sales will come from 20% of customers. They have a high awareness of the sales process and their interlocutors to avoid focusing their action on opportunities that do not have a concrete closure vision or that are not sufficiently strategic.
Let’s take a closer look at how top sales performers can correctly qualify the opportunities they have in hand and distribute their time among them to guarantee themselves a higher-than-average success rate.
1. Map the territory of business opportunities
This is the way to organize the sales action in the “field”. The configuration of the territory is closely related to customer segmentation. Having a mapping of the territory in which to position the best prospects is essential to obtain targeted actions with a reduced cost of travel, and without wasting time.
2. Prioritize and correlate efforts and timing
It is necessary to correlate the time and effort to be devoted to each account considering also
- its potential to confirm orders in a period useful for us to achieve the objectives set
- the innovation of the proposed solution and the level of measurable value given by it.
Ideally, you choose to focus your efforts on accounts and opportunities that are both very “attractive” and highly “achievable”.
3. Spend active time with the right customers
It’s important to spend active sales time with the right customers, those who will give you the most return on investment. Being able to put this skill into practice requires a careful combination of mapping the opportunities in the territory and setting priorities.
4. “Time is money”! Don’t waste it.
“Customers hate it when we waste their time!”
It is about taking care of the quality of the relationship and the sales, to add value to the quantity and offer of product and/or service. To learn how to be effective on this point you need to focus on the client’s agenda, not yours!
The Sales Director: guidance and mentoring, not just selling!
And finally, to find what really makes the difference we go back to the Sales Director and his role, what can really make a difference in a sales team.
Without breaking the list of skills that must possess (characteristics now known by all and published in a redundant way from any site dealing with topics related to sales) we like to point out that the first skill of a commercial director, to be constantly trained, is the ability to communicate every day with the people of your team and know how to deal with their problems.
Every day, the sellers will discover, despite themselves, that:
- They are not determined
- They lack creativity
- They always go the usual way
- Do not respect the client’s agenda
- They can’t say, “I don’t know how to do it.”
- They are unable to ask for help
- No risk taken
- They are slow and too reflective
- Lack of initiative
- They dream “the already seen”
A sales manager faced with these obstacles must put himself in the game: helping his/ her people to find their way to generate value and knowing how to build mentoring chains where each colleague helps the other to fill knowledge gaps or behavioral gaps.
In conclusion, optimizing sales time is crucial to the success of any sales team.
Through a range of practical strategies, such as reducing non-essential internal meetings, personalizing the approach to clients and focusing on the most promising opportunities, sales managers can maximize the efficiency of their time and reach target targets more easily. Learning from the behaviors of top performers in sales also provides valuable lessons on how to properly qualify opportunities and manage time efficiently. Finally, the key role of the sales manager in inspiring and leading the team to success cannot be underestimated: cultivating a supportive and mentoring environment can help sellers overcome challenges and reach full potential.
With a focused approach and committed leadership, you can turn the time spent on sales into tangible results and customer satisfaction.
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