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To increase sales productivity without increasing personnel, smart sales managers research how salespeople spend their time and then channel their efforts into higher-yield activities.

Time is money. Nowhere is this truer than when managing a sales force. If you don’t understand how your sales force is spending their time, you really don’t understand how, or if, sales goals will be met.

The challenge, say the experts this writer has encountered in six years of consulting, is to make sure job roles are clearly defined and that salespeople are focusing on high-yield selling.

Decontaminating a sales organization can usually be accomplished by stripping out all nonessential activities and increasing selling time and accountability for results.

This takes away the obstacles between an ambitious sales force and its goals.

The key to making improvement is to use solid information to make effective change. Companies that use time profiling to make these improvements with three components: time diagnostics, change implementation, and results tracking.

Time diagnostics give the sales manager benchmarks to measure whether the sales force is focusing on target market segments, key products, and activities that directly contribute to meeting the sales goal.

Diagnostics can also identify how sales people spend their time in both customer and non-customer related activities. Defining the activities, profiling time, and analyzing data should all be part of the sales managers involvement with the project.

To begin, the company must identify and define the sales team’s primary activities. Sales managers should review all pre-sale, sale, and post-sale activities with the sales people to prevent misunderstanding and ensure that everyone is working from the same definitions.

Time diagnostics, conducted manually or with an automated system, should categorize all the sales person’s activities into:

Customer vs. non-customer-related time.
Channel of customer contact.
Time spent by product type.
Time spent by market segment.
Time spent by aspect of sales strategy (account maintenance, penetration selling, business development).
Time spent on unproductive activities.

Senior executives in successful companies almost always agree that time profiling is critical.

With an ever-increasing pressure on sales people to act as customer service representatives, it’s important that those duties are balanced with time for selling.

The manager should first establish baseline numbers for a typical salesforce selling day. Once that baseline is established, the manager can identify improvement areas, create action plans, and begin an ongoing improvement-tracking program.

An ongoing survey can ideally monitor post-implementation progress for years and become and integral part of the company’s sales management process.

When profiling the sales organization’s use of time, sales managers should give as little notice as possible to minimize sales people changing their tasks once under the microscope. Survey results should be kept confidential and every participant should have a code name or number - this contributes to profile validity.

Training — explaining the survey process and defining the survey choices - is critical to the project’s success. A good, thorough introduction to the profiling project, right before the project starts, minimizes errors and makes the survey the least impactful on sales force performance.

What are typical findings of surveys like this? Surveys show that front-line sales people spend 41 percent of their time on pure selling activities and 15 percent of their time on service-related activities.

Typically, they spend the remaining 44 percent of their time on non-sales-specific tasks like administrative work, travel, and internal projects and meetings. About half of the time spent on account-specific sales and service focuses on current account development - 20 percent of that time is focused on new accounts, the remainder of time is spent on account maintenance.

Depending on the industry, complexity of sale, and features of the product, these results suggest the need to increase time spent on pure selling - undoubtedly the most valuable thing a sales person can be doing.

Once a company understands how it uses sales force time resources, it can change work procedures to increase productivity by shifting sellers’ attention to more important activities (simple and obvious), to realigning sales and support divisions to match jobs to targeted market segments and products.

During this organizational realignment, sales managers should ask:

Is it a good idea to separate sales and service?
Can less well-compensated employees handle more non-selling activities?
How much increased revenue can the company expect from the revamped sales organization?

A regional manager for an office supply store has stated that proper implementation planning creates a linkage to company growth objectives by tying the individual sales person’s account plan to the company’s target growth and retention objectives.

A few years ago, a major financial services company evaluated its current account sales organization. These were the sellers responsible for maintaining and enlarging the relationship with current clients. The company deployed account people in local offices to get closer to the customer and spend more time with them.

Their time profiling project revealed that representatives only spent about 13 percent of their time, six hours per week, with customers. The company had allocated a large slice of their marketing budget to revitalize sales for its retirement product, so managers were surprised when they found representatives only spent 5 percent of their time trying to sell it. They also found that sales reps were spending the lion’s share of their time with the company’s smallest customers.

The company realigned the sales organization’s focus toward major accounts and strategic products. The company also identified a way to reduce its costs by transferring smaller customers to a centralized customer service center.

A results tracking system lets the sales organization measure trends, changes, and to redirect the sales force. Ongoing data sampling provides metrics to monitor the activity on specific tactics and resultant increases in revenue.

Remember, it’s true that time is money, but what’s even more true is that how time is spent determines how much money its worth. A good time profile project will put the time/money issue in a perspective that will probably make it painfully obvious what changes will make your sales force more efficient. As the old saying goes: You can take that to the bank.




	Increase Your Sales without Adding Personnel By Mike Rose, President, Infotensity To increase sales productivity without increasing personnel, smart sales managers research how salespeople spend their time and then channel their efforts into higher-yield activities. Time is money. Nowhere is this truer than when managing a sales force. If you don’t understand how your sales force is spending their time, you really don’t understand how, or if, sales goals will be met. The challenge, say the experts this writer has encountered in six years of consulting, is to make sure job roles are clearly defined and that salespeople are focusing on high-yield selling. Decontaminating a sales organization can usually be accomplished by stripping out all nonessential activities and increasing selling time and accountability for results. This takes away the obstacles between an ambitious sales force and its goals. The key to making improvement is to use solid information to make effective change. Companies that use time profiling to make these improvements with three components: time diagnostics, change implementation, and results tracking. Time diagnostics give the sales manager benchmarks to measure whether the sales force is focusing on target market segments, key products, and activities that directly contribute to meeting the sales goal. Diagnostics can also identify how sales people spend their time in both customer and non-customer related activities. Defining the activities, profiling time, and analyzing data should all be part of the sales managers involvement with the project. To begin, the company must identify and define the sales team’s primary activities. Sales managers should review all pre-sale, sale, and post-sale activities with the sales people to prevent misunderstanding and ensure that everyone is working from the same definitions. Time diagnostics, conducted manually or with an automated system, should categorize all the sales person’s activities into: Customer vs. non-customer-related time. Channel of customer contact. Time spent by product type. Time spent by market segment. Time spent by aspect of sales strategy (account maintenance, penetration selling, business development). Time spent on unproductive activities. Senior executives in successful companies almost always agree that time profiling is critical. With an ever-increasing pressure on sales people to act as customer service representatives, it’s important that those duties are balanced with time for selling. The manager should first establish baseline numbers for a typical salesforce selling day. Once that baseline is established, the manager can identify improvement areas, create action plans, and begin an ongoing improvement-tracking program. An ongoing survey can ideally monitor post-implementation progress for years and become and integral part of the company’s sales management process. When profiling the sales organization’s use of time, sales managers should give as little notice as possible to minimize sales people changing their tasks once under the microscope. Survey results should be kept confidential and every participant should have a code name or number - this contributes to profile validity. Training — explaining the survey process and defining the survey choices - is critical to the project’s success. A good, thorough introduction to the profiling project, right before the project starts, minimizes errors and makes the survey the least impactful on sales force performance. What are typical findings of surveys like this? Surveys show that front-line sales people spend 41 percent of their time on pure selling activities and 15 percent of their time on service-related activities. Typically, they spend the remaining 44 percent of their time on non-sales-specific tasks like administrative work, travel, and internal projects and meetings. About half of the time spent on account-specific sales and service focuses on current account development - 20 percent of that time is focused on new accounts, the remainder of time is spent on account maintenance. Depending on the industry, complexity of sale, and features of the product, these results suggest the need to increase time spent on pure selling - undoubtedly the most valuable thing a sales person can be doing. Once a company understands how it uses sales force time resources, it can change work procedures to increase productivity by shifting sellers’ attention to more important activities (simple and obvious), to realigning sales and support divisions to match jobs to targeted market segments and products. During this organizational realignment, sales managers should ask: Is it a good idea to separate sales and service? Can less well-compensated employees handle more non-selling activities? How much increased revenue can the company expect from the revamped sales organization? A regional manager for an office supply store has stated that proper implementation planning creates a linkage to company growth objectives by tying the individual sales person’s account plan to the company’s target growth and retention objectives. A few years ago, a major financial services company evaluated its current account sales organization. These were the sellers responsible for maintaining and enlarging the relationship with current clients. The company deployed account people in local offices to get closer to the customer and spend more time with them. Their time profiling project revealed that representatives only spent about 13 percent of their time, six hours per week, with customers. The company had allocated a large slice of their marketing budget to revitalize sales for its retirement product, so managers were surprised when they found representatives only spent 5 percent of their time trying to sell it. They also found that sales reps were spending the lion’s share of their time with the company’s smallest customers. The company realigned the sales organization’s focus toward major accounts and strategic products. The company also identified a way to reduce its costs by transferring smaller customers to a centralized customer service center. A results tracking system lets the sales organization measure trends, changes, and to redirect the sales force. Ongoing data sampling provides metrics to monitor the activity on specific tactics and resultant increases in revenue. Remember, it’s true that time is money, but what’s even more true is that how time is spent determines how much money its worth. A good time profile project will put the time/money issue in a perspective that will probably make it painfully obvious what changes will make your sales force more efficient. As the old saying goes: You can take that to the bank.

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