16 minutes and 12 seconds – What does this have to do with increasing sales effectiveness?
Dave Varner
![Dave Varner]()
Dave Varner
I help tech companies accelerate their sales performance, increase win rates by 10-30% and grow margins by 10-15% within 90 days.
An article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago calculated that in the recent Florida State - Ole Miss football game, there were only 16 minutes and 12 seconds of “action” during the entire game – which lasted 4 hours and 4 minutes.
What does this have to do with selling?
Out of the 40 plus hours per week an average salesperson works, what is your typical salesperson’s “action” number, i.e. how many hours per week are your salespeople are actually selling? Obviously, we all want to improve this.
How do we increase this number?
Coach your sales team to:
- Focus on accounts that are a good fit for your organization; don’t waste time and resources.
- Ensure they are utilizing a sales process that results in them executing the right behaviors, on the right opportunities, at the right time.
- Remove non-essential tasks from their daily activities.
- Embrace losing fast; your sales process should provide you and your salespeople with the visibility if they’re not positioned to win. If nothing can be realistically changed, encourage them to lose fast and apply their valuable selling time and organization resources, on higher quality pursuits.
I wonder how many of us have the guts to "fire" a client when we know it isn't a good fit or we won't win the sale?
Senior Technical Recruiter
8 年Very cool!
I help tech companies accelerate their sales performance, increase win rates by 10-30% and grow margins by 10-15% within 90 days.
8 年Scott, that makes sense; the reality is that there is so little actual selling time available, anything we can do to add to it will increase our results. Good thought!
Helping sales teams find, keep, and grow customers.
8 年I like the analogy and sound advice. I would, at the risk of offending the work-life balance folks, reps need to push as many non- selling activities to fringes of their days, even after hours.