Salespeople don’t spend nearly as much time selling as you might think. One study from The Center for Sales Strategy found that salespeople spend less than 30% of their time engaged in actual selling. This is especially true for sales professionals with a robust book of business. Some of the non-selling activity is important, but not all of it.
Brian Nordli, a senior staff reporter for Built In, says that many sales reps fall into the trap of thinking every phone call, email or LinkedIn activity is valuable. However, he says the best reps know where they can make adjustments to be more effective.
In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we outline Nordli’s suggestions on five sales activities you can drop from your list — and better ways you can spend your time.
1. Following up without adding value. It’s important to follow up with prospects, but make sure you do it in the right way. If you let too much time go by or you send a vague “Hey, just checking in” message, you risk damaging your credibility. Instead, Nordli recommends agreeing on next steps at the end of every communication. This might simply mean agreeing to follow up in a week or setting an agenda for your next meeting. Once you set those next steps, your follow-up email isn’t a waste of buyer time — it’s delivering on what you promised, Nordli says.
2. Forgoing customer research. When you’re pressed for time, you may want to skip researching prospects. However, Nordli says that buyers know when a call isn’t personalized and don’t want to spend time with sales reps who can’t address their issues. Instead of bypassing the research, he suggests spending just a few minutes researching the prospect. This is often all you need to learn the basics.
3. Trying to determine the ideal cold calling time. Not many people enjoy cold calling, and everyone wants to know tips and tricks for how to be more successful at it. Should you call at 10 AM on a Tuesday? Leave a message at the end of the day? It can crush your morale and your focus if you try to pinpoint the perfect time. Instead, Nordli says it’s a good idea to make your cold calls together. This is known as batching. If you’re consistent with it and work on ways to handle objections, you’ll be scheduling meetings over the phone in no time, he says.
4. Relying on LinkedIn too much. Over the years, LinkedIn has become one of the most valuable tools at a sales rep’s disposal, making social selling a staple in the prospecting process, Nordli says. But know that scrolling LinkedIn or liking posts are largely ineffective on their own. It’s better to use LinkedIn to supplement your phone calls. Once you’ve interacted with the buyer a few times, it’s time to pick up the phone and call them, he says.
5. Going overboard with the personalization. It’s great to personalize your emails but remember that sales is still a volume game. It can be easy to get lost spending hours crafting unique messages for your buyers and still end up well short of your quota, Nordli says. What to do instead? Focus on super-relevant outreach instead of personalized ones. This means adopting an email or cold call approach that addresses a challenge or experience shared by a group of people instead of just one person.
Are you spending your time at work as wisely as possible? Reflect on the activities above and consider how you might scale back on some of the less-important activities to make room for more valuable tasks.
Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: Brian Nordli is a Built In senior staff reporter covering trends in sales and account management.
