Article DetailsBest Practice #11: Regularly implements a system to prevent being inundated with useless information. |
| Date Added: June 22, 2010 05:00:00 PM |
| Author: Dave Kahle |
| Category: Business: Communications |
| On first glance, this look like a bit unrelated to the daily challenges of an effective sales person. What has this to do with your interactions with your customers?
Consider the issue of "sales time". Sales time is the time that you actually spend interacting with your customers either on the phone or in person. It is the heart of your job and the ultimate reason your company employs you. Investing your sales time well is the way that you attain better results and earn your income. Due to the strain of administration, reporting, recordkeeping, travel, etc., the typical field sales person only spends about 25 percent of his/her work week in "sales time". In our challenging economy, the demands on our time by the press of "other stuff" can be overwhelming. We must be constantly battling the allure of "other stuff" so that we are investing suitably in selling time. All things being equal, the more time you actually spend with your customers, the more profitable you will become. So, thatbrings us to this question: What constitutes the biggest proportion of other stuff? What has the potential to overpower us, to deprive us of our sales time by tempting us to invest our energies in something not nearly as beneficial? The answer? Information. We are flooded with information. Consider the amount of selling literature, technical bulletins, computer reports, web pages, emails, voice mails, and memos from the boss that we have to encounter every day. All these are types of information. If we gave in to the enticement of dealing with all the information that comes our way, we could easily spend 8-15 hours a week doing nothing but that. That would be a really bad idea. It would detract from our ability to create sales time, and immediatelyhave a negative impact on our performance. That brings us to this best practice. The best performers don't waste a lot of time dealing with useless information. They stay focused on the essence of the job - sales time - understanding that without quality time with their customers nothing else matters. So, they create methods and systems that enable them to deal with all the forms of information quickly and expediciously. The unremarkable sales people waste inordinate amounts of time processing information. |
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