Creating More Selling Time…and Money!
In my conversations with salespeople about sales call numbers, one common point is the need for more selling time. For newer salespeople breaking into the profession, simply getting enough sales calls to build a territory can be challenging.
For the more experienced seller, not generating enough calls is less of a career shortcoming and more of a frustration. They have mastered the products and technologies sold by their company and now feel their growth is limited by the natural time constraints of reaching customers.
For top-tier sellers, creating more sales time becomes an instrument to increase their dominance at major customers. They plan to develop relationships with the dozens of potential buying influences at the account, but somehow find themselves constantly busy with existing contacts. Try as they may, they are limited by their inability to carve out the time for what Stephen Covey calls “activities that are important but not urgent.”
Wherever you are in this sales/time continuum, there are some tools and tricks you can use to ramp up the number of meaningful sales calls you create. If you use some of them, give yourself a pat on the back. If not, make it a priority to select a couple to try. Through this exploration, you are going to move up the scale from elementary to more advanced. None of them are difficult, and all of them work.
Plan your territory usage.
It doesn’t matter if your territory comprises of a few-mile radius from your home or one of those broad-based geographies running two or three hundred miles in all directions, there is room to improve your efficiency.
First, use real appointments. Some salespeople use the idea of standing appointments; something like “I will be here on Tuesday morning.” Some folks call these milk routes and follow the same path every couple of weeks dropping in on customers on specific days. Those who practice the milk route strategy say it works for them, but research reveals they spend a lot of time in lobbies waiting for their customer contact to break away from other activities. The results are not worth the half-hour wait when the customer sends them away without a conversation because they are busy doing something else. It’s even worse when the customer stops something important and must work late because the seller has nothing of importance to discuss.
A real appointment has a set time. It allows the customer to better plan their day, and it creates a professional environment. Your time is valuable, the customer’s time is valuable and collectively you maximize the value of time together. But appointments need to be planned and during the preparation, the salesperson comes up with a worthwhile topic.
Create anchor appointments.
Without a strategy for appointments, sellers can find themselves zigzagging around their territory, feeling busy, but achieving little to push the sales agenda forward. While driving feels like work, the real point of a sales professional is time spent with customers. To that end, work towards a plan involving “anchor appointments” that offer more meeting opportunities and live customer contacts every day.
Anchor appointments are typically set at the beginning of the day (8:00 a.m.) and near the end of the workday (3:00 p.m.) Once these anchors have been set, the rest of the time can be filled in with other accounts in the general vicinity. If no additional appointments are available, the time can be filled with drop-ins, tentative appointments, or even a moment to catch up on emails.
Further, it makes sense to plan the appointments based on travel and geography. Setting appointments around clusters of sales calls that are in the same area cuts down on wasted windshield time.
Start your workday as early as possible.
In my younger days, I was not an early riser. However, I realized that many of my customers preferred to start as early as 5:30 AM.
One point became clear. Early risers typically believe those who are not “up before the chickens” are somehow less hard-working than themselves. When someone stated they started early, I pushed my laziness aside and suggested we meet early.
Here’s how it worked. After several months of attempting to set up a meeting with Ed, the engineering manager of one of my accounts, I learned through the grapevine that he liked to start work at 5:30 and leave at 2:00 in the afternoon.
With this thought in mind, I phoned him and told him I often get up early and wondered if it made sense for us to meet in the morning. He proposed that I come to the back door of their facility at 6:00 and he would let me in. I stopped by the local C-store, picked up donuts, grabbed a couple of large coffees, and maneuvered by the yet-unmanned guard shack for our meeting. Here’s the surprise, this guy who was always short and careful in his responses was friendly, talkative, and open at that early hour. Over the years, we had many early morning meetings, and my business grew with Ed’s entire team.
Breakfast meetings are amazing.
Any meeting with supplier sales teams should be conducted over breakfast, thus eliminating the need to burn valuable selling hours with this type of meeting. But breakfast shouldn’t be set aside “just” for supplier meetings.
Lots of customers are open to having breakfast meetings before they start their workday. These meetings are convenient because the time is limited to about an hour due to the need to get to work, but the environment is ideal for gathering information or discussing a potential product application.
Overnighting in your territory.
If your territory is large and you have customers over 80 miles away, you might consider an overnight trip. While there are several advantages of being home and sleeping in your own bed, many sellers with this type of territory fail to make enough proactive calls in the remote portions of their territory. Most struggle to arrive in their territory earlier than mid-morning, and because they face a long drive home, afternoon calls tend to end early as well. The result is lots of driving for two sales visits.
A two-day trip maximizes call opportunities. The previously mentioned breakfast meeting is one such event. Further, if set up right, there can be opportunities for after-work or dinner meetings with customers.
The dinner meeting with a well-established customer deepens your relationship. For many years, I have made it a habit to not only invite my customer contact but to also suggest they bring along their significant other. The results are the creation of friendships that transcend the normal business relationship. Did we talk about business? Of course, we did, but it was never the direct function, and the results were great.
Do your customers work multiple shifts?
Early in my career, I worked with several three-shift manufacturing plants. One was a food processing plant where I called on engineering, maintenance, and production floor managers who purchased mass quantities of my products.
After calling on the company for a couple of years and getting to know the maintenance technicians personally and professionally, I was invited to a party by a friend named Herb.
At this party, Herb introduced me to Dave. Over a few shiny red cups of beer, he went on to say that his team did many of the repairs in the facility during a planned two-hour shutdown each night. He stressed that his team could buy anything they needed from anyone they wanted but salespeople never called on them – ever.
I set an appointment to drop by at 4:00 the following Wednesday morning. Through the years, Dave’s team bought a lot of stuff, and I was always welcomed with open arms. The moral of the story is simple, not every customer works from 8-5 but most salespeople do. Making sales is easy when there’s no competition!
How many sales visits are sufficient?
There may never be a definite answer to this. In conversations with hundreds of salespeople, the answer seems to always be a few more. Time constraints impede maximum success, but following these steps is a guaranteed way to push the limits.
Do you or any of your team want to master other areas in the world of selling?
River Heights Consulting is about to launch fall coaching sessions for sellers. We have coaching sessions for:
• New sellers with less than 6 months experience
• Intermediate sellers with under two years of experience
• Experienced guys looking to improve their game
Each of these involves a combination of group and one-on-one training sessions led by Frank Hurtte, the Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting.
Frank Hurtte, Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting, shares his personal
experiences with 28 years of "in the trenches" training and 18 years as a consultant. He serves as a personal coach to industry leaders across many lines of distribution. He has authored 6 books and has written hundreds of articles for national trade magazines, including IMARK Now Electrical Magazine. Frank is also a sought-after copywriter of marketing materials for technology companies. His charismatic, yet laid-back, easy-to-follow manner makes him a favorite among public speakers.
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