TW3 Marketing

You Hired Your Team To Sell More

What’s weird is that you hired your salespeople to sell. But, did you know that salespeople on spend on average 60% of their time on tasks that aren’t selling?

That’s right – InsideSales found that salespeople on average spend 60% of their time on tasks that aren’t actually selling?

That means your sales team could be selling more.

How to Get Your Team To Sell More

So, what types of tasks are your sales team actually doing?

Here’s the bigger problem: good sales talent is hard to find and if they’re only spending 30% of their time actually selling – that is – closing sales, is that the best use of their time (and your budget)?

This article will show you how to build out a sales development team that allows your closers to focus on what they’re best at: closing.

First, let’s look at what sales teams actually spend their time on.

In most cases, they’re doing lead gen, prospecting, and admin work. According to Hubspot, sales people actually spend 66% of their day on administrative tasks.

That’s a shocking statistic to say the least. Your sales team is a valuable asset that needs to use its experience and skills to close sales. Not prospecting. Not doing admin work. Your sales team needs to be the hunter, not the gatherer and you need to provide support for them to be able to focus on hunting, or in other words, on spending more time on using their talent to close sales.

Outreach.io agrees,

“Since a hunter should have one job and one job only — hunting — your team should be comprised of members in supporting roles whose job is to give your hunters the tools
they need to work as effectively as possible at all times.”

If you feel that your sales team isn’t as productive as they could be, or that they are focused on tasks other than closing, it could be indicative of a deeper problem…

Ask yourself: Is your current sales process helping or standing in the way?

It’s likely in the way.

Here’s why:

Sales pros spend only 36% of their time on selling-related tasks. (Salesforce)

And…

42% of sales professionals say prospecting is the hardest part of their job. The rest say it’s closing (36%) or qualifying (22%). (Hubspot)

What this means is that most B2B businesses have their sales team spending 60% of their day doing tasks that:

  • Are not the main reason they were hired.
  • Are what 60% of sales professionals’ struggle with the most.

So not only are your closers doing work that does not directly result in revenue, but you are also risking burnout by having them do tasks that they do not fit into their core competencies.

Frankly, it’s likely that your sales team could be selling more.

You should care about this. Here’s why:

According to Forbes Agency Council, “Optimistic sales professionals outperform pessimists by 57%. That’s even true when pessimists have better selling skill sets.” (Forbes, Seligman)

If your best salespeople are spending the bulk of their day doing admin tasks, they are likely underperforming. The numbers will show.

Your closers should be closing.

Not tinkering around on LinkedIn. Not writing and sending one-off emails. Not prospecting. Not cold calling a leads list.

Overloading your sales team leads to missed opportunities and communication breakdowns with prospects.

Schedule a strategy call today to get more qualified sales appointments.

The Goal is to Sell More

For your sales team to focus on closing sales, you need to provide a way to manage prospecting and admin tasks, without bogging down your sales team’s time.

Because of the common approach of tasking closers as both the hunter and gatherer, many businesses develop leaks in their sales pipeline.

It’s no wonder that 44% of executives think their organizations are ineffective at managing their sales pipelines. (Harvard Business Review).

They’ve got their sales guys focused on the wrong tasks!

If effective sales development means maximizing the productivity of your sales team, it’s worth it to look at how your sales team uses its time – and it might be time to consider adding lead gen and sales development support.

Too many businesses hire sales reps, SDR’s, and a whole sales team with expanded job descriptions – things that distract your hunters. That will reduce your team’s productivity and their capacity to sell. Instead, you need your team to focus on what they are best at. You want them dialed in on the work you hired them for: closing.

This means that you need to provide a way to manage prospecting and admin tasks, without bogging down your sales team’s time.

The bottom line: Effective sales development means maximizing your sales team’s productivity. They need to focus on what they do best. You want them dialed in on the work you hired them for – closing. This means you need to build out your team with others who can cover lead gen, sales development, and the admin tasks.

The Easiest Way to Build Your Sales Development Team

Your job as a leader in your space and in your company is growth. To do that, you must be able to forecast the next month, quarter, and year, so you can make plans for growth.

You want an integrated multi-channel outbound approach that gets results and positions your brand and team as trustworthy leaders in your space.

And you want a lot more leads with prospects that both need and can afford your products and services – Without years of trial and error.

That’s what we do here at TW3-Marketing. It’s why we should talk about your options.

We’re lead gen experts, and our job is to do the prospecting for your sales team. So, if you’re interested in partnering with an expert lead gen team who can do the prospecting and allowing your sales team to focus on what they do best – closing the sale, we should talk.

Click below to schedule a call with us to talk about your current lead gen approach and how we can help you streamline and ramp-up your sales development processes.

Bobby Christy

Bobby Christy TW3-Marketing Lets Talk
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