Are you looking for a way to lose sales time? Here are a few ideas we got from our many discussions with sales/marketing managers at all levels:
18 ways to lose time
- The time-consuming preparation of non-standardized presentations to support strategic meetings with clients’ head offices.
- The entire team having to deal with a constant flow of non-targeted emails every day… can you imagine the time wasted in Outlook!
- The necessity for systematic clerical work to prepare for store visits… and the time wasted in Excel!
- Non-optimal, lengthy, inadequate sales reports… and the time wasted printing and highlighting them!
- The required preparation of time-consuming reports by the representatives for directors every week.
- Seeking information in different documents and information systems of the enterprise and clients.
- A long and inefficient update of the forecasts.
- A complex budget creation process that lasts for months.
- People on the ground not being able to know which stocks are available.
- Sales goals that are too vague and difficult to follow.
- The lack of alignment between the upper management and the people in the field, between the marketing and the sales, etc.
- A complex promotions management difficult to follow.
- Frequent price errors causing an abnormally high volume of incidents.
- A poorly coordinated opportunities management process.
- The impossibility to effectively make reservations in the field.
- A complicated and non-optimized management of the sales visits, roads and territories.
- Inadequate communication tools and information exchange between sales and marketing.
- Inefficient team meetings.
I could very easily identify 50 more ways to lose time…
I focused here on the most frequent items that were mentioned to us over the past few years.
A disturbing observation
During our interviews, most representatives and sales/marketing managers spontaneously answer that they spend between 30% and 50% of their time not selling.
Many studies show that the situation is in fact even worse than that.
The excellent investigation “States of sales productivity report” made by “Docurated” has come to the conclusion that:
“Reps spends only 1/3 of Their Time Selling and Pitching Customers”
Representatives’ time distribution
The obvious…
Sellers know it: they’re at their best with the customers, in a sales situation. Spending time not representing is a waste of time.
Directors, VP or any other member of the sales/marketing team waste time when they accomplish repetitive and unstructured tasks that are not aligned with the strategy and tactics of the enterprise.
Opportunities everywhere !
You will have a huge return on investment if you ask your teams how they could save time.
There are templates that can help you gather the essential information during your interviews. If you want a free copy of our sales steering diagnostic grid, you can simply submit your request using the comments box below.
By increasing the productivity with better processes and tools for your teams, you will improve your sales!
And you, how do you lose time?
Tell us below or send me an email at dblouin@dev-id.com to let me know.
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