Written By
Lori Richardson
Getting organized AND keeping organized as a professional seller can be difficult.
I’m discussing sales productivity later today in a live webinar at 1PM Eastern. It’s on the BrightTALK Sales Experts platform here. If you read this after the fact, you can still go to the link and hear the recording.
There are four possible scenarios for those of you reading now:
1) You (sales rep) are organized and goal-focused but your sales team and /or leadership is not.
2) You (sales rep) are not very organized and goal-focused and your sales team and/or leadership isn’t either.
3) You (sales rep) are organized and goal focused and your sales team and/or leadership is too.
4) You (sales rep) are not very organized and goal-focused but your sales team and/or leadership is.
Four different scenarios and unique challenges for each.
You means you the seller.
Your sales team means the “sales ecosystem” – whether you have true order and sales process(es) in place, templates for common activities, and someone – maybe a sales enablement person or maybe the company leadership who has helped give you and your co-workers parameters to do the job.
Your leader means your immediate supervisor – in bigger companies it could be a front-line sales manager, or could be a VP sales with all reps reporting to him / her. In a startup or smaller company, it could be the owner, CEO, or founder(s).
Please make sure you get that. If you are highly organized, motivated, and have great follow through, you could still be stonewalled by a poor internal system or bad leadership. On the other hand, an extremely efficient, smart seller can make a huge impact on a team-wide culture change for more accountability IF leadership is open to it. It is important to know that your style - loose with things falling through the cracks OR very thorough and proactive should match up with your “sales ecosystem” for maximum benefit to all.
If you are fortunate enough to work for a company with great systems in place, and a few formal processes it can make things so much easier and a great place to work.
Many of us do NOT work for companies with strong sales processes, or value propositions, or templates for wording of many redundant tasks.
So what are you to do?
First of all, never confuse activity with accomplishment. It is not about being busy all day. It is about being productive.
If your role is to bring in sales, ask yourself this at the end of the day:
What did I do to help bring in revenue today?
If you go several days in a row commenting to yourself that all you have time for is to support existing customers, then you are not working in the capacity of a seller, you are an account manager. Your management should help you to be more focused on “net, new business” and you need to trust the system for your existing customers and clients to be supported.
True sales roles must rely on support for previously closed sales. If you can’t count on others in your company for this, you have bigger issues, and that’s a conversation for another day.
The best sales reps have a solid system and environment at their company to support them to identify, assess, qualify, and close sales opportunities.
If you are not having forward-moving conversations with buyers and referrers every day you are not doing your role to its capacity (except for extreme circumstances).
How do you get more done in your sales or sales leadership role? Tweet us your answer @scoremoresales - include #salestimehacks ---and you may win one of Jill Konrath’s new books, “More Sales, Less Time”. We will award two winners based on their creative responses on Feb. 1 at 3PM Eastern. Watch our Twitter feed for notification of winners. If you read this after Feb 1st, still send us your top productivity tip as a seller and we will award one more book at the end of February.
Resources:
Time Management Hacks for Sales Reps (Hubspot Blog)
Lori Richardson helps mid-sized companies grow revenues by solving key issues in their sales department - like recruiting, retention, diversity hiring, process, pipeline and leadership. She speaks at CEO groups on topics of sales growth. Clients include companies in the technology, telecom, manufacturing, distribution, and professional services industries. Subscribe to the award-winning blog, follow her on Twitter
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