When It's Not A Sales Persons Job

I'm constantly amazed by clients who ask their sales people to do non-sales things. These managers feel that since the individual is on payroll, that they can support administrative, service, and other aspects of the business. All this under the guise of being a team player, but what really happens ...

When sales people fall behind on their numbers, what "work" they've done isn't considered, only what they have failed to achieve. Is it fair for sales people to pick up the slack for others (or to cover overhead roles) when they are measured only on sales?

Of course, life isn't fair, but if you want sales growth, then sales people need to be selling. Anything that is not selling must, and should, be covered by someone else. Unfortunately sales people don't always have the nerve to tell their managers "No" ... so as a manager here's what you're going to do to protect their time:

• Insist sales people spend 99% of their time selling,
• Reassign non-selling activities to overhead staff,
• Require all tasking to go through you first in every instance,
• Provide time management training specific to sales people,
• Make it policy that selling is their number one priority,
• Hire one administrator for your office dedicated to sales,
• Help your selling team focus on more profitable customers,
• Orient office time around reporting sales results not chit-chat,
• Schedule periodic non-selling team building outside of the office,

What exactly is time selling? "Time selling" includes only those activities that are moving an interaction closer to a revenue generating event. This could include customer and partner relationship building, networking, and presentations.

If you don't protect the time of your sales people, numbers always suffer, and you don't get the results your team deserves. Hold sales people accountable for their own time, if ever you ask them what they are doing, they should always respond "selling!"

The most important activity to devote a sales persons time to is qualified appointments. Everything else is taking them away from what they are measured on, the only measure for a sales person which is "total sales." If you are struggling with this, or want more on focusing sales time, then write for MAXIMIZING SELLING TIME, Dept GB-0606B1, PMB 6618, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste 120, Wilmington, DE 19808.

The only team your sales people should be on is the customers team, that means they should be out in the field (or on the phone) selling, that's it. Anything that is not sales is wasting you and your companies resources. Sorry, but someone had to say it.

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