To start with, it's obvious that everyone on this planet is entitled to 24 hours per day; including our top sales reps. Yet, it is only this 8% of high performing sales persons who seem to secure 80% of total sales
These high achievers are clearly the ones making the most out of, or managing the allotted time exceptionally well.
An average sales rep is estimated to make 8 dials per hour and prospect for 6.25 hours to set 1 appointment. That may seem like a decent amount of work to be completed in the 8-hour-per-day work shift, but given the estimates which claim that 71% of sales reps spend too much time on data entry – one does begins to wonder.
Are the average sales reps spending most of their valuable time on secondary activities like database management or administrative works, rather than engaging on actual sales activities?
Under the umbrella of typical ‘sales activities’ one may encounter are various activities including; cold calling, calling existing customers, responding to and prospecting via emails, sales visits, qualifying leads, presentations, reporting, CRM related tasks, and even writing columns and marketing, when needed.
Courtesy: Getmoredone
The pie chart above splits the total hours for a sales person (here 48 hours, including 3 hours break), into various typical broad categories of work undertaken in a week.
If we look at the hours devoted to actual ‘selling’ activities, it rounds up to about 10.8 hours per week, or just 22% of their typical work week.
How can one carve out a bigger chunk of their day to actually focus on ‘selling’ activities rather than using up their time and effort on secondary and miscellaneous activities that doesn’t fill their sales funnel, or bring in a steady stream of business?
Let's look at some of the ways in which high performing sales reps manage their time, or rather - manage their activities around the given time:
1. STOP Multitasking!
I’m sure we’re all aware by now that, there’s no such thing as ‘multitasking’. It is only a myth, as science has proven that no humans can actually do two or more things at once.
Those who seem to perform multiple tasks are in fact switching very rapidly from one task to another. And switching between tasks actually slow down the work at hand, because one’s focus is diluted when the brain has to re-focus and re-adjust when jumping to a new task from the old task and vice versa.
From the sales ‘angle’, imagine you’re working to qualify leads, and when you’re done qualifying with one, you immediately proceed to make a sales prospecting call, then work on email lead generation.
Such ‘jumps’ from one task to another will only drain your energy, slow and stress you down to mire your performance. The trick is to batch similar activities and finish each batch before you jump on to the next set of activities.
For instance, if you’re prospecting you’d normally dial a prospect, leave a message on the voice mail, compose a follow up email, send the email, document the activity on you CRM software or ensure automation software has logged it, then set a new activity to reach the prospect – and only then you move on to another prospect to repeat the cycle.
A much quicker way would be to pull out the complete list of prospects you’ve scheduled to call for the day and dial each one of them and leave a message. This will be done in record time, then you can schedule the next set of activities, say recording each activity on CRM, followed by sending follow-up emails, for a later time in the afternoon.
This simple ‘batching’ technique rather than ‘multitasking’ will bring more focus and speed to your work.
2. Eliminating /Automating Administrative Tasks
Top sales reps are very skillful at eliminating non-essential tasks, or automating them in order to make more room for urgent and revenue generating tasks.
Administrative tasks and other non-urgent urgent tasks on internal operations can also be scheduled for non-revenue generating hours.
There are many tools in the market that can assist you to automate such activities, such as: Todoist, which is a to-do list app, created to intuitively learn your productivity habits via AI and will automatically schedule your overdue tasks accordingly.
Another nifty tool is the PandaDoc, it integrates with HubSpot to help reps send sales collateral and quotes. It automatically pulls data from CRM and in a few clicks a professional looking proposal can be created.
The idea is to automate as many administrative tasks as possible and also find ways to automate most of the tedious, repetitive tasks involved in the sales process.
3. Swallowing The FROG
This metaphor of ‘swallowing the frog’ actually stems from a story told by Mark Twain. He said that, “If the first thing that you do when you wake up in the morning is to eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that’s probably the worst thing that’s going to happen to you all day long.”
Meaning if you ‘swallow the frog’ first thing in the morning, you’ll have tackled your most pressing and most challenging task for the day. And it's always the one you’re most likely to procrastinate on.
We all procrastinate and get into the habit of acting ‘busy’ by doing mundane tasks, but tend to avoid the one that really matters, the one that we fear the most.
High performing reps are the ones who ‘attack’ the most dreaded task, or swallow the ‘most ugliest frog’, very early in the morning. That makes rest of the day a ‘breeze’; and you’ll actually be more energetic and confident to finish off other little tasks remaining for the day.
4. Prepare To Pivot At A Moment’s Notice!
What would you do if you got stood up by a prospect on a scheduled meeting? Would you wait and chill in a coffee shop until the next appointment?
Now that would be a case of not being able to ‘pivot’ on a moment’s notice. Successful sales reps anticipate such hurdles and always plan for the inevitable. Such times call for immediately regrouping and connecting with nearby prospects, with the goal to secure a new meeting right away.
Returning back to office will only rob you of ‘revenue-generating’ time. So the lesson is always be prepared to pivot, but the catch is not to change the momentum or shift gears into a completely different activity (much like batching one set of activities and not multitasking).
For instance, if you’re all set for an exploratory call with a prospect for the next 45 minutes, but the prospect cancels due to some unforseen emergency, it keeps your performance level and focus intact if you immediately spend the rest of the time preparing for other exploratory calls scheduled down the week, rather than taking that time to prospect or make follow-up calls.
5. Adjust Your Day Around Your Prospects
Would you be calling a prospect that runs a busy restaurant business during the afternoon? Maybe not, because that’s when they get extremely busy serving lunches for their guests.
Or say calling contractors, around 10:00am is not going to bring out the most favourable conversations for, because they’ll already be busy on the job sites.
The appropriate time to call your prospects, user personas varies according to their industry, buying behaviour etc., so to make the most of it, you’ll have to plan your sales activities according to your prospects’ availability, their work routine and culture.
To Sum it Up…
These are just of the few tricks top sales reps use to make most of their ‘selling’ time. You can always try to incorporate these tips into your work habits, but most of all it makes sense to experiment, tweak and adjust your activities, so that you have more control over the time available to execute your most pressing sales challenges!
If you'd like further assistance or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
