Feeling like you have so much to do, and not enough time to get it all done? You are in good company! If we want to make the most of our work day and our sales efforts, we need to be sure we are not just working hard, but working smart. Here are five signs you might be suffering from inefficiencies in your daily sales life:
- You are generating manual reports. This is a sure sign you are not leveraging your CRM or marketing automation tool to their full advantage. In an ideal world, the entire sales team would function using the same dashboards and reporting for tracking their sales funnel and sales performance. If your team doesn’t have a uniform report library, you can and should create reports that automatically generate the insights you need. It may take a little time or outside assistance to get the reports created, but the upfront effort will pay off handsomely in time saved over the long term.
- You are continually writing reminder notes and to-do lists. Again, this is a symptom of underutilizing tools in your CRM or OS/email/calendar software. Automated notifications can be set up based on time intervals or customer behavior, to alert you when you need to take action. Not only does this practice save you the trouble and worry of having to remember or write down everything, it ensures that key milestones are not overlooked.
- You write every customer email from scratch. Every sales professional generates emails with consistent messaging and themes, and recreating the wheel every time is a waste of time. Once you have a good example of a “nice to meet you” or “thanks for the referral” email or contract cover note, use these to create templates for future use. Then keep the templates in a designated folder for easy retrieval in the future. It will not only save you time, but ensure your best writing is used every time.
- You spend a lot of time looking for emails and documents. This is a symptom that you need to improve your organization and use of topical email and document folders. Improved categorization will save you time and frustration on a daily basis.
- You often find yourself in a holding pattern, waiting for input or approval from your manager. Certainly, there are points in the sales process where your supervisor’s approval is needed; for example, final contract approval. But if you need his or her input daily or throughout the process, there may be opportunity for greater independence and efficiency. Perhaps there is skill development on your part that would facilitate your self-reliance. A constructive exploratory conversation with your manager is a great place to start, asking for feedback on opportunities to function more independently or insight on how other sales team members are able to do so.
Nearly all of the above time-wasters are related to administrative functions. Just as consistent processes and concepts in our selling process improve our sales effectiveness, eliminating waste on administrative tasks frees up our time to cultivate new leads, connect with customers and actively “sell.”
