Do you know how much time your sales people spend actually selling? In many cases, sales reps spend too much time doing reporting, administrative tasks and other nonsales responsibilities assigned to them. If you can streamline your sales staff’s workflow to keep them better focused on selling, your profitability may benefit.
Emphasize strengths
To get started, take a hard look at precisely what your sales people are doing during their workdays. When appropriate, reassign nonessential tasks to others. For instance, delivery problems can be handled by someone in shipping. Account disputes can be solved by the credit manager. Also, reports may be typed and circulated by administrative support or become more standardized.
Typically, these activities aren’t the strengths of a sales person, who may become frustrated and ineffective when expected to perform in these areas. Do you ask your collection manager to sell your product or service? Then don’t expect your sales people to be credit managers.
Leverage technology
Many sales people’s nonsales activities consist of shifting their attention from accounts to gathering the right information. This time expenditure, however unavoidable, may be made more productive with the right technology.
How up to date and user-friendly is your customer relationship management (CRM) system? If it hasn’t grown with your company and isn’t offering the latest functionality, your sales staffers may be wasting precious time getting to the data they need. Three of the most important functions of a CRM system are being able to:
- Rapidly identify and follow up on leads,
- Relay information quickly and efficiently to the appropriate support staff, and
- Readily respond to existing customer needs.
Your team needs to be swift and agile in executing tasks directly related to sales.
Make it happen
When it comes to strategic planning, you can’t ignore sales efficiency. After all, strong sales make profitability possible. Please contact us for help assessing your sales team’s effectiveness.
