{"id":465,"date":"2006-11-28T13:28:34","date_gmt":"2006-11-28T19:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/?p=465"},"modified":"2006-11-28T13:28:42","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T19:28:42","slug":"sales-time-wasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/11\/sales-time-wasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales Time-Wasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sales &#038; Marketing Management has a short article about what holds back sales reps &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.managesmarter.com\/msg\/content_display\/sales\/e3ib9776be7e7550d8b6a58da8834b73e3c\" target=\"_blank\">Companies Hamper Their Sales Reps<\/a>. Some of the findings from the study:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>* Salespeople spend <strong>just 8 percent of their time prospecting and qualifying new customers<\/strong>. Yet they spend 23 percent of their time dealing with problems and mistakes, searching for information and expediting orders. <\/p>\n<p>* Salespeople spend <strong>62 percent of their time on non-revenue-generating activities<\/strong> and 38 percent of their time selling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;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 &#8211; 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 <em>rather<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<p>As we often preach &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.selectmetrix.com\/Assessing_Sales.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>always<\/em> assess sales candidates<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sales &#038; Marketing Management has a short article about what holds back sales reps &#8211; 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&#8217;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 &#8211; how much&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/11\/sales-time-wasters\/\">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],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-7v","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465"}],"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=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->