The Sales Manager’s Most Strategic Job#

As the officer-in-command of your sales team, one of your top responsibilities is to keep your people focused on the activities that actually produce sales — every day, all day long.

A Columbia University study found that the average salesperson works only about 90 minutes per day.

The rest of the day is spent warming up, cooling down, chatting with coworkers, surfing the Internet, drinking coffee, and going for breaks and lunch.

When this finding was tested by giving stopwatches to a 300-person national sales team and tracking actual working time for a month, the team averaged exactly 90 minutes and 42 seconds per day of real work. Companies are usually astonished when they measure this for the first time.

When Are Salespeople Actually “Working”?#

Brian Tracy’s definition is brutal but clarifying:

Salespeople are working only when they are ear-to-ear, face-to-face, with qualified prospects who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time.

They are working only when they are prospecting, presenting, and closing. All other time is filling space.

That definition is the lens through which a sales manager keeps the team focused.

Story: The Branch with No Desks#

A sales manager friend of Tracy’s was promoted to fix the worst-performing branch out of 2,000 in a multinational. Every previous manager had been chewed up and spat out. The 32 salespeople drifted in Monday morning with Starbucks coffee and newspapers, ready for another easy victim.

The new manager did two things.

Day one — at the morning meeting:

“What do you notice that is not in this office?”

Silence. He answered: “There are no customers in this office. If there are no customers in this office, you should not be in this office either. The sales meeting is now over. Please go out and call on customers.”

Day two — every desk and chair had been removed and sold overnight:

“Since you will not be spending any time in this office during the day, you won’t need any desks or chairs. We can have our morning sales meetings standing up.”

What followed:

• 12 of 32 quit within a month.
• The remaining 18 began making more calls and earning commissions.
• 6 months in: branch went from #2,000 to ~#1,000.
• 2 years in: #1 branch in the worldwide company.

The lesson is not the desks. It is that everything an office encourages other than selling is a force pulling salespeople away from sales.

Apply the 80/20 Rule Relentlessly#

The Pareto principle — 20 percent of activities account for 80 percent of results — applies more sharply to sales than almost any other domain:

• 20% of your salespeople produce 80% of your sales.
• 20% of products produce 80% of revenue.
• 20% of prospects produce 80% of business.
• 20% of customers produce 80% of profit.
• The 20% of activities that drive 80% of results are prospecting, presenting, and closing.

Discipline yourself to focus your time and attention on the top 20 percent — the people on whom your business depends.

Teach Everyone the 80/20 Rule#

Your job as sales manager is to make sure the 80/20 rule is operating at every level:

• 80% of each person’s business will come from 20% of the products and services they offer.
• 80% will come from 20% of their prospects.
• The activities in that critical 20% are prospecting, presenting, closing.
• Make sure salespeople spend more and more time engaged in those activities.

The Mantra That Made a Career#

When Brian Tracy started in sales, someone shared this mantra. He used it for several decades:

Every minute of every day, ask yourself: “Is what I am doing right now leading to a sale?”

If it is not, stop immediately and begin doing something that will.

This single discipline pushed Tracy to the top of every sales force he ever joined. When everybody on your team practices this mantra, you become a superstar sales manager.

Action Exercises#

1. Teach your salespeople the 80/20 rule again and again. Make sure they know exactly what their highest-value activities are — and aren’t.
2. Buy a stopwatch for each salesperson. For one month, have them track minutes spent face-to-face with customers each day. Then set a goal to double that number the following month.