First, how many hours should a sales person work?
The most recent survey I’ve seen indicated that the average sales person works about 49 hours a week. That seems like a good standard to me. Sales is not an 8:30 to 4:30, 40-hour a week job. I’ve never worked just 40 hours. So, let’s say that a good work week for a field sales person is around 45 – 50 hours.
Now, rather than look at how many sales calls should be made in that time frame, I’m more concerned that the sales person is using those 45 – 50 hours most effectively.
To me, it’s ultimately about the quality of the sales calls rather than the quantity. There is a relationship between the two.
The greater the quality of the sales call, the fewer calls are possible. The lesser the quality of the call, the more calls can be made. I suppose that a sales person could make 100 calls in the course of a week, if each of those calls were in and out in five minutes.
But would they be worthwhile? Probably not.
When I was selling, on my best day, I made one call in the morning, and one call in the afternoon. But those two calls to great accounts contributed about 50 percent to my total sales. To judge the quality of a sales call, you must first look at it from the perspective of the role this particular
call plays in the penetration of the account.
For example:
- If the sales person had created powerful business relationships with all the key people in an account
- If the sales person spent time understanding the customer at deeper levels (see my ‘peeling the onion’ analogy)
- If the sales person created and presented creative proposals
- If the sales person helped orchestrate the implementation to a new product
- If the sales person leveraged his/her relationships into more and more opportunities within an account – in other words, if the sales person was good at what he/she does – that takes time
Beyond that, you can judge the quality of a sales call by looking at it through the perspective of the four key objectives to every sales call. I believe that every sales call should accomplish not one objective, but rather four of them:
- To what degree did the sales person connect with the customer?
- To what degree did the sales person learn something greater or deeper about the person or the account?
- To what degree did the sales person educate the customer on some idea, product or process?
- To what degree did the sales person gain an agreement with the customer for the next step?
You can see that the real issue is the quality, not the quantity, of the sales call.
So, everything else being equal, I’d prefer that the sales person make fewer rather than more sales calls.
Is that an excuse for a sales person to leave the house at 10:00 every day, spend a couple of hours in the office, and be home by 3:00? No! See my 45 – 50 hour a week rule.
I’d also want the sales person to be guided by all the principles of good sales time management that I describe in my sales time management book.
- Stay out of the office
- Make cold-blooded business decisions about which customers to invest in
- Nurture helpful relationships
- Stay balanced
In my Kahle Way® Distributor Selling System course, we teach sales people how to make good decisions about in whom they should invest their time. That is the one practice that will impact the quality of the sales call more than anything else.
When a sales person works a sufficient quantity of time, and works in an effective way, producing high quality sales calls, then that sales person is working in such a way as to be successful.
Those are the more important issues:
- Quantity of time
- Effective decisions
- Quality sales calls
Hope that helps!
