Are you Taking Maximum Advantage of Your Customer Contact Time?
Posted on 05/01/2009 in Time Management for Sales"Time is the scarcest resource. If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed" - Peter Drucker
Which Salesperson Do You Resemble?
Compare two different salespeople and decide who you or your salespeople resemble the most:
Seller #1 makes time to plan for each face-to-face sales call and schedules a full day of appointments with key accounts and prospects. He/she schedules follow-up actions for each sales call, even if it means there are fewer unscheduled sales calls made by the end of the day.
Seller #2 calls on many customers throughout the day alternating between the big and the small clients/prospects, depending upon what makes sense geographically, even if it means stopping without an appointment. His/her busy schedule often doesn’t allow time for careful pre-call planning, and also results in infrequent follow up.
As a former sales manager, I can personally attest that many salespeople do a poor job of time and territory management. Busy schedules and poor planning unfortunately place more sellers into the category of Seller #2. Successful salespeople plan their sales calls, schedule their time strategically and make time to follow up by building it into their day/week/month.
Sales professionals must take maximum advantage of all customer contact time, including face to face visits and telephone calls, and time and territory management is more essential than ever for salespeople.
During STAR’s Time Management for Sales workshop, we work with sales teams and sales managers to identify common sales time wasters and then brainstorm solutions to minimize these time wasters.