Rotten Economy? Tune Up Sales Productivity

Do you know what your sales force costs you? Our clients helped us figure it out, and they came up with the average cost of one hour of selling time. Guess what, it's pretty high - at least $1,100 an hour. That's for a sales person with a million-dollar revenue target. Higher targets, more customer or service delivery time, and the Opportunity Value goes way up (one client weighed in at $18,750/hour).

So if your sales people waste five hours a week on unproductive activity or unqualified prospects, they are throwing away a cool $5,000 or more. Each. Every week. Times 52 weeks. Ugh! I know you're cutting costs on everything else; why not look at this one?

We've been running a study on sales force productivity since February 2008. So far the results are troublesome. 63% - yes, you read it correctly - of the people surveyed report that their sales productivity is either "Leaking Like a Sieve," the lowest level of productivity, or "Call the Productivity Helpline," the second lowest level. Only 8% were already at the highest level. Many of the things that improve productivity are surprisingly easy to find and fix.

Now that the economy is "deteriorating," "troublesome," "turbulent," or just plain miserable, this is the best possible time to repair the productivity of your sales efforts.

Download our interim report on sales productivity and see how you compare. You can also assess your own productivity, even get a report on your entire team.

Is Your Pipeline Leaking All Over Your Bottom Line?

Sales force productivity - it's the last frontier for improving sales performance! Sales professionals have invested in basic sales training for a hundred years, but not too much attention has been paid to the real driver of sales performance and that's productivity. A successful sales team can produce business. But a productive sales team produces business that is profitable, retains high-lifetim-value customers for the long term, experiences low rates of turnover in the sales force, and does it all at optimum (i.e. low) cost. We have made it our business to understand where sales forces 'leak' productivity - which they do, and often in surprising ways. We find those productivity leaks, fix them, and keep them fixed!

This is the first edition of our blog and we have a favor to ask you. We are conducting a national study of sales force productivity and we need you to participate. Please complete a "Leaky Bucket" productivity assessment. It's free, it only takes about 5 minutes, and you will receive your results immediately. And as soon as we obtain sufficient entries, we will send you the final report.