Aug 22 2009
The 215 Movement
The JF Guest Author Spot
Nancy Nardin
There are 365 Days in the year. No surprise there. But let’s think through how much of that time is really available to sell. It breaks down like this:
Take away:
• 104 weekend days
• 15 Vacation and sick days
• 24 days for non-selling meetings (e.g. internal sales meetings & events), training and travel time
• 7 paid Holiday days
That leaves 215 days we can spend selling. On average, we end up with only 18 days a month when we can do something to dig-up, advance, and close a sale. But wait, often we must also use that time to follow-up on a delivery, straighten out an invoicing mistake, help our client resolve an issue or any one of a list of non-selling, but crucial tasks.
No wonder salespeople can come-off pushy – Snap/snap – Let’s go – Time’s a wastin’!
I think sellers are super-human beings. We are expected to find prospects (or sift through a “lead” list) find a way to contact them, attempt to contact them and keep attempting until we do, but before all that, we had better know a little about them or their business so we can sound interested and credible. We need to close on an appointment, and if we don’t we need to at least learn their interest, and when to call next and then we have to remember to call them and decide what to send them via e-mail to make sure they remember us, just the right amount of communication – not too little – not too much. Once we have an appointment, we need to prepare the collateral to bring, find and print directions, make sure we have all the hardware we need and put together our objectives for the meeting. We may need to prepare a presentation and it better not be too generic or the prospect will quickly lose interest – so remember that rest and relaxation you planned to get over the weekend? Forget it! You’ll be gathering information and analyzing it in order to not blow what could be your one chance with the prospect.
If I wrote up the entire list of what a seller has to do to accomplish their job – you’d agree with the whole “super-human” theory (if you didn’t already).
Let’s add a few more to the list. You better also make sure you can quickly summarize the status and provide any bit of detail your boss wants because he or she will want to know the extent of your progress in a 15 minute snapshot. Never mind the nuances and psychology of the sale other-wise known as the “art” of selling. You better have the science down as well and that means pipeline numbers, close percentages and BANT status (budget, authority, need and timing).
Is there something we can do to make our jobs a little easier: A little less stressful? Yes! Invest the time needed to find good selling tools and then buy them for yourself or for your team.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Salesforce Automation (SFA) is a start but there is so much more. We have to think in terms of what’s needed to reduce the time sinks. How can we free up more time so we can either spend it with customers and prospects, or so we can spend it doing smarter, more productive tasks?
We need to invest in sales tools and a sales tool isn’t just a CRM or SFA program. It’s also a Microsoft Outlook plug-in like Xobni or Gist that (almost) instantly finds that person we needed to respond back to, or the attachment they sent us. It’s a subscription to Jigsaw, so that we can quickly purchase the contact details we need in order to avoid 15 minutes searching the web for the same information.
Have you ever needed to provide a customer reference? How much time did you spend chasing down a reference you could use and then soliciting permission from them? There are reference management tools like References_Online which automate the process in such a way to reduce the time sink dramatically (and while you’re at it, reduce reference fatigue amongst your good customers).
Not sure whether your prospect has actually read your email? Would it be helpful to know if the presentation you sent along has actually been seen – and how many times? This type of knowledge tells us where to spend our time and when. And there are tools designed to provide this knowledge.
There is a vast list of sales tools to make our jobs more productive and enjoyable. Here are a few more examples.
1. Reduce your prospect research time with a tool that automatically monitors and aggregates data from traditional business sources such as Hoover’s and Thomson Reuters, and new social media and web sources such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs. This aggregated information gives you ready-made research and knowledge on your prospect.
2. Automatically Qualify and Route the best sales leads to your sales reps based on their web-visit and click-stream history. Transform web analytics into a system that prioritizes and distributes leads in real-time.
3. The nightmarish task of creating fair and sound sales compensation plans turns into a dream with the right software. Run scenarios to see how various plans play out financially. What happens if you incent the reps and 75% are able to attain the goal? How about 90%.
4. Quickly select and obtain the best, customized content for a particular sales situation. Easily find information and knowledge you need for any sales situation. Share and garner great advice and insight with the entire sales team.
5. Create equitable sales territories even though they may be more complex. Even a territory based on zip or area-codes can be complicated. Not all are equal in opportunity. Save the spreadsheets (and errors in formulas) for less critical tasks.
Where do you start? Take a look at where YOU are spending your time and then systematically look for tools to eliminate or reduce the time and hassles of that task. Invest money in sales tools and get the most done in the 215 days. But don’t just get more done, get more of the things-that-matter done. The things that lead to a sale.
Nancy Nardin is the Founder and Editor of Smart Selling Tools: where sales professionals go to find and recommend sales tools.
To help sellers identify problem areas, Smart Selling Tools is compiling the world’s most comprehensive list of “things-we-do with our time”. We call it the “215 list”
Be part of the 215 movement and identify and eliminate time wasters. www.smartsellingtools.com/215movement
Excellent article, Nancy! In my past life we were required to Market and/or Recruit for 3 solid hours in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. The daily “phone time” that was to be logged per day was 250 minutes. The mantra was just pick up the phone and call – no need to research background, industry, products/services – just “do it”. Shame on us that we should take the time to respect our clients’/prospects’ time in actually understanding their role and the industry that they serve!
I had to laugh (OK, cry!) because the 2 hours a day that were set aside for Planning calls for the following day were used for internal meetings and training! Tack on the amount of detail required to ensure the integrity of information in your Database, client calls, prep. time for presentations, interview preps/debriefs, references, face-to-face interviews, telephone prescreens, profiling, background checks….you see where I’m going with this! It’s no wonder sales people are on the ledge! Did I mention I have a toddler at home??
A couple of timesavers that I’ve found of value are dual screens so that I can pull up website information, etc. while I’m dialing and smiling, a great headset that enables me to multi-task without being tethered to my phone, and clustering my calls or appointments into chunks of time so that I don’t waste time refocusing (for those with ADHD you will appreciate this tip!).
The bright side is that those with Type A, mile-a-minute/hair on fire, personalities this is the best possible profession on the planet! Now, off to my Therapist
[...] Nardin, the brilliant and resourceful founder of Smart Selling Tools has come up with the 215 Movement and figures that once you deduct weekends, and holidays for training, meetings and non-selling time, [...]