Top-line growth is high on the agenda of manufacturers and distributors alike, and the year ahead could be a challenging one. Many leading economists are projecting a slowing economy. The Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, as it zealously fights any hint of inflation.

Meanwhile, the world economy won’t wait around for us to pick up the pace. Growing economies around the world are pushing up the price of raw materials and energy. And no one needs to remind you that foreign competition is as strong as ever.

But here’s the good news. If you’re willing to reconsider some old assumptions, you can achieve double-digit growth without adding salespeople or increasing your sales and marketing budget.

The secret lies in your sales force. Think about it — your salespeople are the only asset you have that can go out and generate more revenue. It’s up to you to get the most out of this valuable asset.

Getting The Most From Your Salespeople
 Everyone wants their sales force to be more productive. But if your salespeople are already giving 100 percent, how can you expect more?

The truth is that your sales force can do more — a lot more — and they won’t even have to work longer or harder. The key is to change how you measure sales force performance. Doing so will help you identify opportunities to grow your business.

Sales force performance is usually measured in terms of productivity. Measures of productivity define the relationship between how many dollars were brought in per salesperson compared to the cost of supporting that salesperson. While measures of productivity are important, they do not tell the whole story. In fact, productivity numbers can create a false sense of security by masking ineffective sales force utilization. Your productivity numbers might look good, but you have no way of knowing if your salespeople could be doing even better.

For the past several months, the Industrial Performance Group has been conducting an online survey of salespeople in the jan/san supply industry. The goal of this survey has been to determine what consumes their time.

Survey responses from 116 manufacturer, distributor and independent jan/san salespeople revealed that they work long hours — an average of 51 hours per week. No surprise there. But a lot of their time is consumed by activities that have nothing to do with sales. In fact, on average, salespeople in the jan/san industry spend less than half their time selling. They spend most of their time traveling or performing various administrative tasks.

How Should Salespeople Spend Their Time?
Established benchmarks give us a good measure of the optimal utilization of a salesperson’s time. Research shows that peak sales performers spend the majority of their time — 85 percent — engaged in a specific set of revenue-generating activities. They spend the remainder of their time on activities necessary for the day-to-day operation and management of a sales territory.

Our survey results indicate that the average jan/san salesperson only spends 46 percent of his or her time engaged in revenue-generating activities — well below optimal utilization.

The most troubling finding is that salespeople in this industry spend an average of 19 percent of their time — nearly one-fifth — dealing with problems and mistakes, looking for information and expediting orders. To put this finding in perspective, think about the additional sales volume you could achieve if your salespeople spent an additional 19 percent of their time selling.

In fact, our research indicates that manufacturers, distributors and independent reps could easily achieve double-digit growth with low risk and no additional sales and marketing costs, simply by reducing the amount of time salespeople spend performing these non-revenue-generating activities.

Giving salespeople more time to sell may seem like an amazingly obvious solution.

However, it’s a solution that most sales managers haven’t paid much attention to in the past, because too many people think about sales growth in terms of finding the next big-dollar breakthrough. They are constantly looking for the latest technology or the next mega-merger that will help them achieve their sales goals. In reality, double-digit growth does not come from some magic silver bullet.

Growing Your Business
The best way to achieve constant and substantial growth is to focus on the fundamentals of your business — like freeing up your salespeople so they can spend more time selling. You can achieve double-digit sales results simply by improving the overall utilization of your sales force — one hour at a time.

Toward that end, I suggest that you and your management team find answers to the following questions:

• How well is our sales force currently being utilized?
• What’s holding them back?
• What can be done to free up our salespeople so they can spend more time selling?

Developing Meaningful Sales Benchmarks
Committing to change is the most important step in sales force improvement, says Jim Lucas, president of Lucas Consulting, www.lucas-consulting.com, in an article written for “The Chally Focus,” an online newsletter offered by the HR Chally Group.

“The most important step for effective sales leadership is to stop accepting excuses and commit to proactively and continuously improving sales performance as a key ingredient to the overall company growth strategy,” he says.

Lucas employs a four-step process in helping his clients achieve sales success. Salespeople must be:

1. Focused on the “right prospects”
Management must ensure that the sales team has identified their most qualified prospects and that they aren’t wasting time calling on those that are not likely to make profitable deals.

2. Salespeople have the “right stuff”
Before the sales leader can improve sales performance, they must know the strengths and weaknesses and “skills gaps” of the salespeople.

3. Sales team is doing the “right activities”
Salespeople who are doing enough of the “right selling activities” will secure profitable deals. Sales leaders must have leading-indicator tools to keep the sales team fully productive and be able to provide “just-in-time” coaching techniques.

4. Sales team has the “right tools”
 Salespeople must have a common sales language to more quickly qualify a prospect, plus they should have advanced questioning and listening skills that permit the sales leader to effectively debrief sales interviews in order to close more deals.


Robert Nadeau is managing principal for The Industrial Performance Group, a consulting firm that specializes in helping manufacturers and distributors increase sales volume, improve profitability, and build customer loyalty by better managing the relationships, processes, and practices in supply chains and distribution channels. Nadeau can be reached through www.indusperfgrp.com or (800) 867-2778.




POSTED ON: 9/1/2006