How much time does your Sales team spend on actually selling?

Companies hire sales professionals to SELL!

What a surprise!

Well, jokes apart.

It's a no-brainer that a sales professional’s success is measured by the number of closed deals they bring to the table by converting leads into paying customers.

But, did you know how much of their time actually goes into selling?

Just 22%. As per the published data, that’s how little a US sales professional actually spends their time in selling.

That’s it. Before you panic about this deplorable stat, let’s get into the core of this.

What Sales Reps Are Doing When They Are Not Selling?

Now that we know that sales reps are spending too little time on actual selling, you might be wondering where all their time goes!

They’re planning and preparing

Converting a prospect into a paying customer is not just about getting into a call & convincing them. The whole process comes into the picture. They first spend time scheduling weekly activities and meetings. Over & above, they are improvising on customer presentations and pitches.

They’re on customer support

Once a product is sold, the new clients approach sales people for even non-sales-related services. During the new clients onboarding, sales people end up spending a lot of their time providing customer service. To achieve efficiency in this area, they must delegate the post-sales activities, while remaining as the main contact point for the customer.

They’re busy with administration

If there’s one single area that takes up as much, if not more, time than selling, it’s administration. Administration tasks are not directly related to generating revenue, but it becomes one of the biggest time gobblers. Depending on the company, this includes filling out paperwork, generating regular reports, sending service updates and even updating databases.

They are spending time with leads who aren’t worth selling to

You can’t just sell to anyone. As Mike Brooks says, “you can’t close an unqualified lead.” One of the most common places why sales teams are spending time is on pursuing leads who aren’t qualified. The marketing team must set up a system for qualifying prospects first, before assigning those leads to the sales team.

Top 3 Ways To Increase Sales Time

Merely growing your sales team and chasing more aggressive sales goals, won’t fetch you the desired sales output. Let’s dive deeper into how to make your sales team spend their substantial time on selling.

Shorten the sales process

Evaluate and then reevaluate the sales process. Your sales team won’t just become productive overnight. As an organisation, you first have to establish a consistent process. Then, look out for ways to improve it. Continually integrate optimized processes into your workflow so that sales teams don’t end up spending time unnecessarily.

Embrace automation and technology

Marketing Automation is an area that can make the work of sales teams much more efficient. It would allow your sales team to keep track of prospects’ activities in real-time. Not just that, the online channels including website, social media, and email interactions can be properly tracked, logged, and stored using CRM. You can set up real-time alerts based on certain triggers which would allow sales to contact prospects at the perfect time.

Focus on highly qualified leads

Some years before, overconfident salespeople used to boast their incredible sales skills by saying they could sell water near a river.

But, today’s sales standards are quite different. “Selling for the sake of selling” doesn’t really work. That being said, stop trying to convince a person (or company) to buy, if they don’t need your products at all. This way you are only wasting your time and effort

Instead, get your marketing team in line & create a pipeline of qualified leads. This way your sales team would be able to create long-term value for your prospects & spend time in selling to people who are actually in need of it.

Use LeadsIntel to Tighten the Loose Strings

You don’t have to try to access data from across various systems. It can be confusing and would lead to human error. We at Leadsintel, strive to make your sales process quick, fast, and safe, by providing highly qualified leads.

Email Us: hello@leadsintel.io