{"id":1761,"date":"2008-10-23T08:04:09","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T13:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/10\/prep-vs-admin-time\/"},"modified":"2008-10-23T06:35:23","modified_gmt":"2008-10-23T11:35:23","slug":"prep-vs-admin-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/10\/prep-vs-admin-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Prep vs. Admin Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh does this Selling Power article hit close to home &#8211; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sellingpower.com\/html_newsletter\/article.asp?usr=SP9477331254&amp;NLid=1&amp;Layout_ID=817&amp;ARTid=3656&amp;nDate=October+20%2C+2008\">In 2009, Increase Sales Prep Time<\/a>.\u00a0 I have seen numerous companies place onerous admin tasks on their salespeople to the point where there is a real loss in revenue.\u00a0 Inefficiency is the main culprit, but department structure, sales tools and antiquated technology are typically the pieces of the inefficiency.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the pull quote from the article:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Prep Time:<\/strong> The number one complaint among tech buyers is that sales reps are coming in unprepared. They don&#8217;t know the account, don&#8217;t have an agenda, and do not have good product knowledge. To combat this problem and move more sales beyond that initial call, prep time &#8220;needs to expand,&#8221; says Vancil. &#8220;It&#8217;s 20 percent now; it should be as much as 45 percent.&#8221; That&#8217;s right \u2013 all the time you gain from reducing admin time should be shifted into sales prep, not customer-facing time. That way, the time your reps do spend with customers will be far more effective than it is now. One note of caution: don&#8217;t simply give your reps more planning time and expect miracles. Coach them on good call planning procedures if you want to see results.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We have seen this development over the past few years and it is continuing to expand.\u00a0 &#8220;Buyers&#8221; (don&#8217;t like that term) are stretched thin these days due to the productivity expectations of most companies.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve said this before, the days of starting a call with &#8220;What does your company do?&#8221; are gone.\u00a0 Call prep is key.<\/p>\n<p>Prospects and customers expect salespeople to bring value.\u00a0 That expectation cannot be strategically met without knowing some of the basics of the prospect&#8217;s business &#8211; their company, their market, their competition, etc.\u00a0 This knowledge is money to a salesperson.\u00a0 Administrative tasks, though necessary, should be limited as much as possible to reallocate that time to revenue-generating time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh does this Selling Power article hit close to home &#8211; In 2009, Increase Sales Prep Time.\u00a0 I have seen numerous companies place onerous admin tasks on their salespeople to the point where there is a real loss in revenue.\u00a0 Inefficiency is the main culprit, but department structure, sales tools and antiquated technology are typically the pieces of the inefficiency. Here&#8217;s the pull quote from the article: Prep Time: The number one complaint among tech buyers is that sales reps are coming in unprepared. They don&#8217;t know the account, don&#8217;t have an agenda, and do not have good product knowledge. To combat this problem and move more sales beyond that&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/10\/prep-vs-admin-time\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[1057,1056,1053,1054,1055],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-sp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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