Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

More often than not, it seems discussions with sales executives eventually lead to the subject of sales team productivity—and, of course, how to improve it. And while it’s a very broad subject ranging from automation to motivation, what‘s surprising is how little attention is given to understanding how much time each salesperson actually devotes to selling!

A recent survey showed that the amount of time the average sales rep spends selling is just over 35%—a 12% drop from two years ago. You would think that with the adoption of sales-force automation solutions, web meetings, etc. that things would be getting better, not worse.

I was intrigued. And while unscientific, with a few calls it wasn’t hard to come up with the top-of-mind activities that are taking sales reps away from revenue-generating activities:

• Travel/Meetings: Of course, these are necessary parts of the sales process, so you may not want to consider them “non-revenue generating,” however, if not managed, they can be a great source of inefficiency. I have had more than one sales rep ping-pong around Asia because they failed to schedule meetings far enough in advance to build a logical and time-efficient travel schedule. And while web-based presentations won’t replace a face-to-face meetings, it’s often easier to get a group together on-line than in the same room.
• Administrative and Support: By far the biggest complaint was following up on often unnecessary administrative activities or supporting a customer because they can’t get through to technical support. While these two issues aren’t sales related, a customer’s best leverage is with the sales rep when he can’t get the help he or she needs. And though the solution is obvious, it’s surprising that companies don’t see the true cost of cutting back on administrative and support services.
• 1:1 Marketing: I was surprised to hear how many sales reps felt as if they had to do their own 1:1 marketing emails to build relationships. Coming from a company that markets Demand Generation software, this was music to my ears. Companies using software and services to help each salesperson email any volume of prospecting or nurturing messages is not only inefficient, but potentially counterproductive! Inconsistent messaging, poor timing, and conflicts with marketing efforts are just a few of the pitfalls. Again, not a hard problem to solve—just automate the marketing department with an effective demand generation program, and let the sales team do what they do best—sell!

As your company tries to continually improve efficiencies in other parts of your organization, you too may want to take a closer look at how much of the time your sales teams spend actually selling!