How To Use Your Time Wisely With Sales Planning | Sales Management Training | Sales Leadership Training

For the past several years, I have been surveying my sales audiences to determine how much time salespeople actually spend selling. Let me define what I mean by selling: the amount of time you spend in front of a prospect or customer or on the telephone selling them. This does not include:

• Travel time

• Meetings

• After-sales service

• Waiting time

• Problem solving

• Administrative responsibilities

I realize that all of the above are important and often required by either your boss or your client or prospect, and that they can indirectly contribute to satisfying a customer relationship, repeat business, and customer loyalty. Having said that, how much time do you think the typical salesperson spends selling (and that’s what you get paid to do)? Eighty percent? Fifty percent? Thirty percent?

You may be surprised to find out (and please keep in mind that my research is very unscientific, but fairly consistent) that the actual amount of time salespeople spend selling averages 10–20 percent of their total work time! Now consider if you will: what you are currently earning is based on spending less than 30 per- cent of your time (on the average) selling. Imagine what could happen to your income if you could increase that to 50 percent? You would still be spending less than 60 percent of your time selling. Could you increase your income by at least 10 percent? I’ll bet you could, easily.

Turn It Around

Use your sales time wisely by planning everything.