According to Business Wire, only 37% of sales representatives’ time is focused on actual selling, while about 18% of their time goes towards Customer Relationship Systems (CRMs). The rest of their time is spent on non-revenue generating activities such as prospecting leads, writing emails, following up, tracking, and other administrative duties. Therefore, nearly half of salespeople miss their quotas every year comes as no surprise. This shows a growing need for sales reps to efficiently manage their time to focus their efforts on driving sales revenue.

So, how can salespeople optimize their working styles for better time management and higher conversions?

Check how Sara can manage it for you!

Let’s discuss this in detail.

#0 Improve your Relationship with the Prospect

It may sound irrelevant to the topic, but as a matter of fact, this is the most critical point which helps you to juggle between your tasks.
Your closer relationship with your prospects creates a more positive and friendly environment for you to focus on your jobs

#1 Work on Product Knowledge

Having sound product knowledge is the fundamental criterion to face today’s customers. We live in the Experience Age, where businesses are marketing not just their products, but their product experiences and information on the Internet is readily available. It doesn’t take long for customers to research your competition and compare your offering against theirs thoroughly. Good product knowledge can help salespeople make convincing arguments in favor of their product, even if they may not have the necessary material to share at the moment. It reduces back and forth and saves a ton of time taking the interaction forward.

#2 Keep Fewer Meetings

According to data, salespeople spend about 6.4 hours on average preparing for and attending team meetings every week – that’s three days of work in a month! Yet, most salespeople find that about 55% of their time on meeting-related activities is unproductive. This essentially means that you need to cut down on your internal meetings. Instead, you could schedule fewer meetings with a clear plan that lays down the details necessary for the meeting to proceed beforehand. The meeting could be short and designed only with invitees who have a clear purpose for the forum. It could end with definite deadlines, responsibilities, and the next course of action for everyone before they meet again.

#3 Rank Your Leads

Remember the Pareto principle – “80% of sales come from 20% of clients”. Be quick to identify leads that are most and least likely to convert. Rank them based on their probability to convert and direct your efforts towards each lead accordingly. If a prospect is showing minimal signs of converting, stop chasing them. Instead, nurture a lead who is interested. This way, you can save a lot of time focusing on the sale that matters.

#4 Plan Your Interactions with Prospects

It doesn’t matter that you planned your calls with prospects a week in advance. If the prospect isn’t available to take the call, it will still be a time kill for you, as a sales professional. Before blocking your calendar, do some research – find out about the schedule of the prospect and the best time to reach them. Always create schedules around the availability of your customers.

#5 Be Punctual with Follow-Ups

Process this.

So, at what point do you think most leads drop off?

Salespeople who reached out to a prospect within an hour of receiving a query are 60 times more likely to qualify the lead than those who waited a day. Follow up with your prospects in a timely manner, it can help you amplify the effectiveness of your sales activities.

Effective time management is a critical skill that every sales professional must develop. Following a disciplined process that is highly focused on revenue-generating activities can help salespeople meet and exceed their sales quotas.

Using tools such as SARA AI can help streamline sales focus and prioritize tasks and leads better and help with effective time management.