Increasing Selling Time Productivity

Everybody wants to get more out of their “selling time”.

Reps want to make more commissions. Managers want to maximize revenues. Owners want to spend more time on customer satisfaction.

There are two schools of thought about just how to do this.

1) Make more calls – each call takes up as little time as possible so we can call more people. The more people we call, the more sales we’ll make. – Simple isn’t it.

2) Make each call worth more – harvesting more information and building relationships, both of which increase our chances of winning whatever business there is.

Which do you think is the more effective?

In more than 30 years of selling everything from milking machines to mainframes, and debt collection to outsourcing I’ve learned building relationships is more productive than call numbers. This has to be even more true today than it has been in the past.

Today there’s much more competition chasing the prospects, the prospects are more sophisticated, and they have more tools to avoid sales calls.

When we do get to talk to a prospect we need to make sure we differentiate from all the guys guys calling, and increase our chances of getting through the next time we call. Maybe there’s something we can do to make this prospect prefer to do business with us. Maybe a few minutes talking about something other than his/her order pad will glean us information we can use elsewhere.

An example illustrates this point clearly.

ABC Corp Inc. sells industrial consumables via it’s marketing site, but primarily through outbound phone calls.

At first sight this a business is perfect for the “more calls = more sales” philosophy. It’s competitive – a bunch of businesses sell the same stuff at similar prices. The size of the market is almost infinite. The buyer doesn’t care what he’s buying. And it’s low value commodity stuff.

The critical success factor here is catching the buyer when the requisition has just landed on her desk.

But lets stand in her shoes for a minute.

All day she gets calls from reps asking if she’s ordering today. Her answer “not today” simply gets an “ok I’ll call you next month” response. The rep doesn’t care about her, and she doesn’t care about the rep. Another one will call in a minute.

Compare this scenario with another, where the rep is a member of the same tennis club. To begin with they spend a couple of minutes catching up, then talk about the upcoming club match. They have a relationship outside of the transaction. The partly social call brightens the day for both parties.

The buyer knows why the rep is calling – looking for orders. She’ll take a look in the requisition tray or maybe suggest the rep call back later in the day.

The relationship between the two gives the rep an “edge” over the competition and that “edge” makes all the difference.

In this business as in any other standing out from the crowd makes all the difference. Focusing on numbers of calls made is what everybody else does.