4 Solutions to Maximize Customer Selling Time

  

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You have identified a selling time issue within the sales force.  A great deal of their time is spent traveling, completing administrative duties, and dealing with internal bureaucracy.  Although 75% of the Sales Rep scorecard is tied directly to revenue growth, only 42% of their time is really focused on activities that drive growth. 

Now that you have gained this level of clarity regarding current state selling time, what do you do about it?

Here are four Options:

1. Territory Optimization – get your sales team to spend less time on the road and more time face-to-face with customers by organizing territories to minimize travel time.  Condensing territories typically leads to an increase revenue production and a reduction in cost even though the total number of prospects in the territory may decrease
2. Task Reduction/Delegation – minimize low impact tasks by delegating, offloading, and minimizing the amount of time spent on them.  Many times these tasks are driven by leadership and can easily be reduced.  Examples are useless reports, forecasting outside of the CRM, etc.
3. Virtual Selling – remove travel and windshield time by taking advantage of virtual technologies.  Determine steps within the sales methodology that can be executed virtually with the same level of effectiveness
4. Role Clarity/Scorecard Alignment - reduce any role ambiguity so conflicting priorities do not leave the sales team confused       

Example of Selling Time Survey Output:

Selling Time Impact

With a sales force of 100 reps at 50% selling time, each 5% increase in selling time equates to (5) additional sales heads without the incremental cost.

The 1^st step in the process is understanding how much time your sales force is spending selling.  If you have not gained a firm understanding of the selling time breakdown with your sales team roles, download the time tracker and exercise instructions.  This is an integral component of executing the Go to Market Strategy.

Call to Action:  Download the FREE Sales Rep TIME TRACKER and Instructions HERE

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