Time is money, and wasted time is wasted money. In “I want to make more time for my sales people to sell”, we find that half of the ICT leaders surveyed believe that sales people miss quota because they are forced to spend too much time on tasks that squander their selling potential.

Business leaders seeking to improve their sales performances need to realise that sticking to Old World selling habits is no longer an option. The high cost of low win rates demands remedial action to properly qualify prospects and add more revenues to the bottom line.Time is money, and wasted time is wasted money. Half of the ICT leaders surveyed believe that sales people miss quota because they are forced to spend too much time on tasks that squander their selling potential.

This #HelpMe guide explores Larato’s survey findings and the many options available to emphasise the value of time. For example, sales people who know their time is valued behave differently. Processes can be established that, like a template, replicate best practice and systematically remove the labour cost of background spadework, thereby creating more time for sales people to sell.

Chapters in this guide:

1. Who is wasting your sales people’s time?
   by Ian Hunter
2. What is a sales person’s time worth?
   by Adrian Bridgewater
3. Are your sales people plugging faults in your business?
   by Adrian Bridgewater
4. #HelpMe action plan
   by Dr. Lucy Green

Extract from “I want to make more time for my sales people to sell” #HelpMe

According to research by Larato, almost a quarter of a typical sales person’s time is spend generating leads and researching prospects. So how do you value your sales person’s time? Less than an admin team that could do the research and less than a marketing team that should be sourcing sales leads?

Here’s another sales time waster that is often not apparent. Are your sales people plugging failures in other parts of your business? How much of your customer service, order fulfilment, billing value is being delivered by your sales people, taking time away from selling? How many visits to customers do your sales people make to smooth the waters over service faults?

If you find out exactly how much of the sales persons time is actually spent selling then that is a good starting point from which to eliminate sales time
wasting and eliminate as much of it as you can. It’s a sobering thought to know that the technology industry average selling time is a mere 34%.