Question and Answer for Sales People
Q. You have convinced me that spending time face-to-face with customers is the best use of my sales time. How much of my week should I spend entertaining customers; taking them to lunch, ballgames, etc.?
A. Great question. Let me answer this is two ways. First, spend as much time as you can interacting with your customers in social settings. That means that you should try to have lunch with a customer every day. You should entertain in the evening as often as your family, your boss, your life style and your
budget will allow.
Having said that, here’s a second answer. The issue has more to do with the quality of the time than it does the quantity of time. You shouldn’t spend social time with a customer just to meet some quantity goal. It’s not time for the sake of time; it’s time for the sake of some objective. If, for example, you take the same customer out to lunch
every week because the two of you are buddies, that’s not quality time. If you take people out to lunch or to a ball game, and those people are minor players in an account, having little, if any, influence on the decision, that also is not quality time.
Too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it? The typical salesperson today is overwhelmed, with too much to do and not enough time in which to do it.
Dave Kahle contends that smart time management is not about cramming more activity into each hour, but about
working smarter to achieve greater results.
In 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople Kahle provides powerful, practical insights, including
hundreds of specific, practical, effective time-management tips from dozens of salespeople who are on the front lines every day.
Keep these secrets with you on your tablet, reader or smartphone.
Instead, be thoughtful and strategic about the investment of your time in your customers. Make a list of all the people who are important decision-makers or influencers in your “A” accounts. Then, think about which of them
do not know you very well. This is a critical issue.
Remember, it’s less important that you know them, than it is that they know you. If they feel like they know you and are comfortable with you, you will have significantly advanced the personal relationship and made it easier for them to do business with you. So, your primary objective in spending social time with a customer
is to have them become comfortable with you. Your secondary objective is to get to know them better.
With that clearly in mind, identify those powerful people in your “A” accounts who should know you better, and try to spend social time with them.
If I found myself free for lunch on Tuesday, for example, I’d start at the top of the list, and invite my number one candidate. If he/she couldn’t make it, I’d go to number two, and so on. That way, I was always focusing on... [click here to read
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