Sales are a key measure of business performance. Everyone can relate to sales. Often the morale of the organisation will be determined by whether sales are growing or declining.
The early indicator is order capture. But even before that is the prospect list, the quote bank and the sales team activity.
So do you know how your sales team is spending its time?
A recent team I reviewed had 120 active customers between 4 salesmen. The team rarely filed call plans or visit reports and at the claimed call rate of 2 sales calls a day, potentially every active account got a sales visit every three weeks.
It was no wonder that the company had won no new business in recent memory. No one was monitoring who the sales team was visiting, the outcome of the visits or even targeting sales activity.
Here technology can help. A CRM (customer relationship manager) program can help capture the customer sales activity data and help better plan the use of the sales team. Many tasks can be interlinked so that other functional teams get early notification of new customers or changing requirements.
Understanding how your sales team spends its time is a key first step to ensuring that their time is focused on achieving the business’ objectives for growth.