Woody Allen’s famous quote, “80% of success is showing up”, couldn’t be truer for field sales. Field salespeople do their best work…..well, in the field. Since they have very little chance of taking an order while pushing papers around their desk, office time should be limited as much as possible. If you’re running a field sales team, please ask yourself the following questions:
1. How many hours per month do your salespeople spend in the office on administrative tasks?
2. In an ideal world, how many hours would you like them to spend on these tasks?
3. What is the value to the organization if you can achieve this reduction? This value may be expressed in terms of additional sales visits per month, additional orders taken, ability to handle more accounts without adding staff, etc.
4. What is preventing you from achieving this?
In many cases, technology can give you the results you are looking to achieve. I have personally witnessed some dramatic increases in field time and major reductions in hours spent in the office working on administrative tasks. For example, the Virginia Lottery’s sales reps spent at least one full day per week in the office before implementing OrderPad; today, they spend one day per month. This means that the average sales rep now spends an additional seven weeks per year in the field visiting customers, taking orders, and merchandising their products; the equivalent of adding a new full time sales person for each seven they currently had on staff. In another case, the number of days per month in the office was cut from six days to one, adding about 12 weeks in the field per sales rep.
The last question you should ask yourself is “What am I waiting for?”
