Article

The Key to Sales Time Management

2 December 2020

Becca Eddleman

Salespeople are the revenue generators of a company. They close deals and generate new business. However, when their time is spent running reports, updating technology, and building plans, they may have sacrificed another potential account. This is where Sales Operations come in.

Sales time management involves balancing operational requirements with sales quotas and this is incredibly more effective with a sales operations team. Sales Operation teams can absolutely mitigate lost sales time for the selling experts.

In this article, we’ll cover what individual sellers can do to improve sales time management, as well as the areas Sales Operations, comes in to further optimize their time.

Where Does the Time Go?

Let’s ground this work in data. Did you know that an average salesperson only spends 32.5% of their time actually selling? That’s right- the primary function of their role is compromised due to other competing tasks, including approximately 15% of time spent on administrative and operational tasks.

There are two viable approaches organizations can take to improve sales time management.

First, salespeople need to free up their sales time by eliminating or decreasing non-selling tasks.

Sales time management hacks
Sales time wasters
Scheduling and prioritizing your day

Second, they need help to optimize their time.

Improved processes
The right technology and training

1. Free Up Sales Time

As a salesperson, what is one thing you wish you could take off your plate? (Hint: If you said, “Selling,” you are in the wrong field).

Hopefully, you love the core function of your role but would like to hand-off some auxiliary responsibilities. A Sales Operations team can support you by reducing some of the non-sales work you are doing.

Sales Operations defined.

How do you know if you have a sales operations team? A Sales Operations team is defined by SalesHacker as, “the unit, role, activities, and processes within a sales organization that support, enable, and drive front line sales teams to sell better, faster, and more efficiently.” They are the people setting salespeople up for success and although “Sales” is in their title, they are not actually closing any sales – they make sales more efficient including their time management.

At its core, Sales Operations handles all of the non-selling processes and tasks within the sales process to reduce friction and help Sales close deals faster.

If salespeople feel stretched too thin, It’s time to take control of sales time management by deploying a Sales Operations team.

Sales time management hacks.

Guess what the first of these thirteen sales time management hacks is? “Eliminate administrative tasks.”

Boom. Eliminating and automating such tasks is right in Sales Operations’ wheelhouse.

There are also streamline repeatable tasks and create email templates on this list which are other technical and procedural tasks that Sales Operations should be managing.

There’s a hack for everything these days and creating “hacks” to allow you to spend more time selling is no different. But for the more complicated and technical areas, you need more of a support team than a simple hack like “create your to-do lists the night before.”

Sales time wasters.

Reviewing a list of things you should do seems obvious, but what about the things you should not waste your time doing?

Fewer people want to discuss these items, but when it comes to sales time management, we should absolutely shine a light on the tasks that are draining time and energy away from critical accounts and quotas.

For example,

Although research and strategy are imperative in sales, are you spending hours each day on those tasks?
Are you spending hours trying to “hack” your sales tools to do what you really need?
Creating pitch decks and SOWs that should only take you about 30 minutes to an hour of customization but sometimes take multiple hours?
Pulling reports (sometimes incomplete reports) and trying to understand the data?

Guess what…Sales Operations teams are gold when it comes to taking these time wasters and running with them.

Here are a few more important, yet less obvious time wasters that you can control: 7 Time Wasters for Most Sales People.

Scheduling and prioritizing your day.

Now that you have a list of hacks and an idea of what you should not be doing, let’s talk about how you can schedule your day.

Sales Operations can only take you so far in removing technical obstacles and automating processes and improving efficiencies, but it still comes down to the organization and motivation of the seller.

Based on leading research, Forbes has outlined the most effective way for salespeople to schedule their workday between analytical, creative, and monotonous tasks. Along with optimizing schedules, it always helps to re-approach each team member to align goals and objectives with day-to-day operations.

2. Optimizing Time

Once you have made every effort to free up your sales time and by working with a Sales Operations team, you can focus on optimizing the time you have.

Improving processes
Utilizing technology

Improving processes.

From automating to streamlining, process improvement requires some hard work upfront by a Sales Operations team but result in improved processes down the line. A Sales Operations team can identify tasks that consume your time, then brainstorm ideas for reducing the frequency, length, or scope in which salespeople perform these tasks.

Another approach to take for improving processes is a more quantitative, data-based strategy. Salespeople are all about numbers, so at the end of the day, their time should also be managed according to numbers. Check out these four data-driven strategies to potentially improve the selling process for sales professionals.

Utilizing technology.

Technology oftentimes makes our lives easier, but without proper training or understanding the technology’s full capabilities, incorporating it into your daily routine can feel like a chore.

Although salespeople have admitted that adopting new technologies can prohibit them from making desired gains, if implemented correctly, technology can actually be the catalyst they were waiting for to help them manage their time better.

Although a sales operations team is better suited for utilizing sales technology, it doesn’t mean salespeople must surrender to the confusing and time-consuming reality that they understand sales technology to be.

In fact, armed with the reasons sales teams struggle to adopt sales technology, salespeople can proactively request the tools and training to effectively implement technology in their sales world to help with time management and complement the efforts of the Sales Operations team.

As a preview of the types of technology that may increase productivity for salespeople, let’s take a look at a few tech must-haves:

LinkedIn is of course the #1 social platform in B2B so do you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
Social media scheduler: If you’re on multiple social media platforms to reach customers and post relevant content, then a social scheduling and monitoring tool for managing multiple social platforms is a huge time saver.
Video conferencing tools: Depending if your job consisted of more outside than inside sales pre-COVID, you may not have a great understanding of how to use breakout rooms, the chat feature, and webcast backgrounds. Using technology and video conferencing correctly and smoothly can make or break an online meeting.
Sales Engagement and email platforms: Tracking metrics in real-time and customizing emails at scale can help you get more done faster with the needed levels of personalization prospects expect. These types of tools also have analytic features so you see which sequences and messaging works best.