Effective Time Management – How it can Benefit Sales

Sale is an important activity of every business through which some form of products/services is delivered to consumers and revenue is generated to the company. Many times, it is combined with marketing since both these activities aim to attract customers, encourage them to buy and finally complete the process of sale. Numbers play a crucial role in the sales activity and professionals often run after time to meet pre-set targets. The need to achieve targets within the given time frame presses on the necessity to effectively utilize time. Department heads and experts are always on the quest for ways to make this happen. The write-up summarizes few ideas that are put forward from experts of the industry.

What is Time-Management and How it Affects Efficiency of Sales Activity?

Time-management is the act of allocating optimum time to each activity in a process and adhering to the plan in order to improve process efficiency and achieve expected or better results. Though it may sound simple, time-management is one of the most challenging tasks for sales professionals since there are various factors connected to each activity in the process of selling a product/service. Other than selling the product to consumers, there are various activities included in the sales professional’s day-to-day profile. The executive may be involved in reporting, relationship building, servicing, attending meetings, travelling to meet the customer etc. With so many different kinds of tasks, it becomes absolutely necessary to have a time-management plan in place to improve efficiency.

Ways to Make Best Use of Salesforce’s Time

The team should be guided on what the priorities are. If there are a list of products to be sold, sales person should be completely aware of the targets to be met for each product and the strategic priorities if any. The team can successfully achieve the goals with a proper plan in place.

Sales professionals should have enough information about the product or service. When they have the knowledge and are well-prepared to face customers, most of the queries will be answered with great confidence. This can save time and lessen the number of follow-ups required for completion of sale.

Experts also note that quality data about prospect customers can reduce time consumed and improve process efficiency. There are many digital marketing strategies used by companies today to improve the quality of lead generated. With a clear picture of the consumer’s mind-set, sales people can approach them in an effective way so as to make the sale happen.

Service is one of the activities that follows after the customer has decided to buy a product. In some cases, once the customer has decided to go ahead with the product/service there may be few formalities for completion of sales process which includes billing, receiving contact details of consumers, providing contact details of business etc. The sales professional will remain in touch with the consumer until the sale process is complete. Reducing the processing time and completing the sale process quickly can be a good way to help sales professionals focus on new business.

Experts of the domain point out to the diverse role of sales professionals in some companies. This can include services, administrative activities (sending internal Emails, providing consumer behavior data to management etc.), report generation which often keep executives away from sales activity. Companies with aggressive selling plans should ensure that the force spends more time selling than on any other activity within the company.

Sales team can come up with a proper protocol for sale process, which is constantly fine-tuned based on feedback. Weekly meeting and feedback sessions can ensure that the entire team is on the same page and every person is well aware of the long-term and short-term goals of the company and the team. This can reduce time lost from errors.

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