Each member of your sales team was hired for their skill, expertise and natural talent for sales. You’ll want them to be using those gifts as much as possible, to bring in as much sales revenue as possible for your business. What you don’t want them to be doing is wasting their time on admin, paperwork and cold calling to find new leads – but that’s exactly what is happening in many sales departments.
Research into what sales reps do with their daily schedule has found that only 35% of the time is spent on actively selling. This is just 14 hours out of a typical 40-hour week.
The rest of the time is being spent on activities that don’t directly generate revenue for the business. These include admin tasks, working through emails and gathering sales intelligence. Worryingly, downtime tasks such as checking social media and catching up with colleagues are among the biggest time drains.
4 essential ways to optimise time for your sales team
If you’re worried that you aren’t making the most of your team’s time and talents, there’s good news. There’s plenty you can do to shake things up – from outsourcing tasks to telemarketing companies to make better use of the software.
The first step is to get a clear picture of what’s going on in your sales department. You need to see how time is being spent and wasted, and how schedules can be optimised. Then, you can implement some of these highly effective methods:
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Upgrade your CRM system
CRM systems are designed to organise and streamline sales tasks, so you should be making full use of them. A good system can eliminate the need to laboriously enter data in spreadsheets, keep written notes on clients and scroll endlessly through email chains to see where a customer is up to in their sales journey. It can automatically record data, giving your sales reps the at-a-glance info they need to know during a call, as well as prompting when a follow-up is needed.
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Outsource lead generation
It doesn’t make sense for your sales professionals to spend a good portion of their day on activities they don’t necessarily have expertise in. A key example of this is lead generation. It’s hugely important but very time-consuming – and it isn’t the best use of your sales team’s skills. Specialist telemarketing companies can ease this burden, handing fully qualified leads to your team on a plate. You’ll be amazed at how much time this can free up.
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Implement a time management strategy
When you’re involved in an absorbing piece of work, it’s easy for hours to slip by unnoticed. Your team need to be more aware of how they spend their time. You need to work closely with them to find time management strategies that work for your business, utilising tools and aligning methods with sales quotas and other daily targets.
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Invest in training
Sometimes, time is wasted simply due to inexperience. You can build up their skills and confidence with sales training, helping your staff to work better, faster and more efficiently.
We hope that you have found our blog informative. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on 0330 058 0100 or alternatively head over to our contact page to fill in our online enquiry form and one of our friendly team will get back to you as soon as possible.
