Are Your Salespeople Selling?

Now, more than ever, it is important to create selling opportunities for your reps.
Some firms, however, are doing just the opposite.
Allen Minster, author, sales coach and president of Integrated Marketing Systems, studied the sales habits of insurance reps and the findings were shocking. His study found that the average sales rep spent only 5 hours a week actually selling and 1 1/2 hours a week prospecting for new business. That comes out to 6 1/2 hours of a 40-hour work week.
As owner of your business, are you contributing to this problem? The trend today, especially with layoffs and corporate downsizing, is to make salespeople a jack-of-all-trades. Some owners expect sales reps to be closers, presenters, collection agents, proposal writers, graphic artists, etc.
According to Minster, salespeople should be focused on only these activities: presentations to decision makers (qualifying and closing), cross marketing to existing clients and resolving client issues that no one else in the company can fix.
If your salespeople are not doing one of these three things, they are simply not selling, and you are losing money on them.
All businesses are trying to watch expenses these days, but make sure you're still helping your sales reps increase their selling opportunities.
--Ron Ameln, SBM