Just sitting here on the beach, doing some field research of course, and thinking through the relationships of time and sales.  All of us who are in the profession of sales, no matter what our level or experience, are measured by some metric related to time.  Quota/month, Y/Y sales, ramp speed and countless other metrics measure our abilities to perform within  specific periods of time.  Time is the name of the game; it’s the measure of top of the pack and bottom of the heap; it’s how we get paid and it’s the one metric that measures us against our peers as to who goes to “Club” and who goes to “On Plan”.

So, since I’m just a salesguy, I have a couple of choices-I can worry about the crunch of the month, or I can plan out my time and not think about the month, but think about 20 selling days and how I’m going to divide my very limited time between closing key accounts in July and working on my call plan for Q4’s opportunities.  I can charge ahead every month and do “the best that I can do”, or I can take one full day at the beginning of every month to plan out the fact that at most  I only have about 125 actual effective selling hours during any given month, and I well know that July and August (It always amazes me when I get the excuse of the summer vacations every year as if it were a big surprise) are going to be slower than April and October.

Sales Management Effectiveness is about building a definitive sales process, tools and metrics with my sales team that makes their time with their customers and existing customers much more effective.

Sales Management Efficiency is providing my salespeople with tools and technology to make their time on calls more efficient so that they can be more productive in their actual calling and account execution.

Sales Management Enablement is making sure that I’m providing my salespeople with the correct balance of experienced salespeople and detailed and consistent training that will enable them to shrink their sales cycles while increasing their levels of customer satisfaction and retention.

Effectiveness, Efficiency & Enablement-the three most critical responsibilities of any good sales manager today since our #1 issue must be how we can create more time for our salespeople with their customers and prospects…especially now in this very uncertain economic morass and time of uncertainty over the next six months.

As I go back to reading my book (Dharmesh Shaw & Brian Halligan’s Inbound Marketing-Getting Found) here on the beach as I take some time off, I'd like to ask you to think about what you’re going to do to make your salespeople’s lives more effective, efficient and enabled?  How would you rate yourself as a manager in this today?  Be very objective and then set a December goal, stick it on the wall and start to plan out what it will take to improve the overall productivity of your sales team.  No better time to think about this than right now because come Labor Day, there ain’t much time left before the end of the year, and what time there will be will be at warp speed.

Jack
Head Coach

DERBY Management-Associated Industries of Massachusetts
Annual Sales Management Boot Camp: 9/30-10/02
As an incentive to sign up, we're offering a free Whiteboarding Session at your place or ours conducted by one of our senior managers to explore in detail any sales issues, questions and opportunities that you might have.  It’s a $2,000 value which you can use as soon as you sign up or any time within the year following the boot camp!

Click HERE for a quick overview and email me to set up time for a call if you have questions.
Click HERE for full agenda and pricing. Early Bird pricing ends August 15th