Are your salespeople planning their workdays to maximize prospecting time? In other words, whatever the optimum time is to contact your company’s prospects/customers, are your salespeople’s schedules cleared to make cold calls, face-to-face meetings, setting appointment, making conference calls with prospects or servicing client accounts? Or, are you scheduling travel time, sales meetings, training, etc during the most opportune times to talk with prospects and customers.
In my world, that’s called Pay Time vs. No-Pay Time.
Pay time activities are those that directly relate to the development of new and existing customers. For example, attending networking events, trade shows and appointments with prospects and customers are pay time activities. If your prospects and customers are by their phones, it is pay time. Typically, pay time is between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
No-pay times are those activities that support selling events, but are not directly related to generating sales. No-pay time activities include planning, administration, continuing education, outside reading, preparing quotes, reading emails, travel, expense reports and preparing presentations. No-pay times are the hours your prospects/customers are not working.
So, the next time you schedule a sales meeting in the heart of the pay time, what is the example you are setting for your team? Are you enabling your team to maximize their time when the prospects and customers are available? As the sales team leader you need to be setting the example for those working for you.
Dave Harman is an associate with Sandler Training. He has over 30 years’ experience in sales and sales management with Fortune 500 companies as well as small, family-owned organizations. He has held positions from sales to senior management with companies such as Conoco/Vista, Amresco and Ohio Awning, and owns his own business. He earned his MBA with a concentration in Marketing from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. You can reach him at [email protected] or (888) 448-2030.