Sales & Marketing Management has a short article about what holds back sales reps – Companies Hamper Their Sales Reps. Some of the findings from the study:
* Salespeople spend just 8 percent of their time prospecting and qualifying new customers. Yet they spend 23 percent of their time dealing with problems and mistakes, searching for information and expediting orders.
* Salespeople spend 62 percent of their time on non-revenue-generating activities and 38 percent of their time selling.
I don’t doubt these numbers. In fact, we have seen entire salesforces that subscribe to these percentages (and sales managers who allow it). But my initial thought was this – how much of these time wasters are forced upon the salespeople by the company? Sales is a rather autonomous role within a company. The greater risk here is that the sales team may be comprised of salespeople who would rather spend their time on tasks other than prospecting for new business. The excuse of working on these other tasks provides cover for a salesperson who has an aversion to prospecting.
As we often preach – always assess sales candidates.