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Deadly Sin #5: Sales: The least time-effective process in all of business

Written by: Neil Mahoney

Article Overview: Sales is the least-effective process in all of business, but there's nothing you can do about it. Sales people are supposed to sell -- persuade prospects to buy your products by highlighting your product's strengths vs competition, and demonstrate your products. But they only get to do that for about ten percent of the time. For the other 90% they're doing other things -- at least ten of them.

Deadly Sin #5: Sales: The least time-effective process in all of business

On average, salespeople spend about 30% of their time in front of the customer or prospect, andonly about 1/3 of that actively selling. There are at least ten major reasons for that -- and none of them is unavoidable.

Here are the ten other things:

A&B: Call Reports and Expense Reports have to be submitted weekly

C&D: Travel time-- they have to get to the prospect's office so there's drive time and flying time that's unavoidable. Then there's the wait time when they get there.

E&F: Once in front of the prospect, there's time spent establishing or re-establishing rapport. In addition there are questions that have to be answered -- legitimate questions, frivilous questions, repetitive questions.

G&H: They have to follow up on orders and spend time handling complaints -- even the happiest customer has a complaint every once in a while.

I&J: Time has to be spent reassuring the customer or prospect they made or are making the right decision, plus there's the unavoidable task of maintaining relationships -- lunch, ballgames, theater tickets, etc. These are the fun chores everybody back in the office resent.

L,M,N: The list goes on.

When only ten percent of your salespeople's can be spent actually "selling" you and they want to be absolutely sure their presentations are powerful and pointed.

That's where Positioning Statements come in, and we'll discuss them next.

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Article Tags: br, c amp, chores, drive time, establishing rapport, flying time, handling complaints, legitimate questions, lunch, maintaining relationships, nbsp, repetitive questions, right decision, salespeople, travel time, wait time



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