Hi,

Only two hours per day. That is how much salespeople are actually selling. I’m not making that stat up. It came out of the research that HubSpot did for their Sales Trend Report . Let that sink in.

I didn’t pick saving time just for the fun of it. My whole journey in sales tech started with me wanting to save time. To meet my targets back in the day without losing my mind, I needed to have more time for sales instead of all the other tasks that were asked of me. And I did. Even back in 2011, I could win back one to two hours per day as a sales with some small changes.

If you want your sales team to sell more, you need to work on the 75% of tasks they must do to keep the deals flowing.

So, what do they do during that time?

It differs per sales team and the role of the specific person in that team, but here’s a list of stuff they do when not selling:

• Building lists of people to contact
• Scheduling
• Working on reports you’ve requested
• Searching for information in the different tools your company uses
• Trying to get information from people within the organization
• Helping other people to get invoices paid or solve issues
• Writing offers and getting contracts adjusted
• Getting deals to be accepted by your operations team

Step 1: Remove tasks that don’t belong

Most of the stuff mentioned is not their core job, but it has to be done. Before you dive into any tools, rid your teams of the tasks that don’t belong to them. Lists shouldn’t be built by salespeople themselves; problems in delivering your services are not part of the sales job, just as getting invoices paid. It sounds easy, however you will find some strong resistance in your company to do so. Keep pushing because most salespeople are always eager to help others. You need to remove the question being asked.

Step 2: Dive deep into the process

Once you’ve freed them of the non-sales tasks, your next step is to get a good view of where time is consumed. Even though most sales teams have a process, it usually doesn’t go as far as determining how tasks should be done. It just states the linear steps to be taken. That leads to salespeople doing the tasks as they think best. Most of the time, it’s not a very efficient way. Work out the process step by step and task by task. Define the order of tasks to be done and how these tasks should be carried out. If you are looking for examples of where to look:

• Scheduling meetings
• Calling and logging calls
• Writing emails
• Logging meeting notes
• Writing proposals
• Getting the right pricing
• Answering tenders
• Contracting
• Filling in CRM
• Getting deals approved internally
• Getting deals ready for the organization

If you work on making all these steps easier by fixing the way of working for sales and the people around them, it will save up a lot of time. For instance, writing emails can be much faster with template emails or snippets. Writing proposals is a no-brainer if you work with templates and content blocks.

Step 3: Automate

If you want to move forward from here, start at the deepest level of the process: the tasks. For every task, there are tools and smart automation that will help you speed up big time. I couldn’t resist to map the list with how we would automate it:

• Scheduling meetings → Meeting scheduler + snippet tool
• Calling and logging calls → Call from your CRM + conversational intelligence
• Writing emails → Template mails + automated sending based on a trigger
• Logging meeting notes → Conversational intelligence
• Writing proposals → Proposal tool
• Getting the right pricing → Connect CRM with ERP or financial system
• Answering tenders → Bid management tooling with a knowledge base
• Contracting → Proposal tool
• Filling in CRM → Create views + automate filling know information
• Getting deals approved internally → Automate with CRM + operations tool
• Getting deals ready for the organization → Automate within CRM

It’s possible to give back two to four hours per day. Can you imagine what this would do for your sales results? Calculate it. Now they are only selling two hours per day. They would double their order intake…

That amount of growth cannot be reached with just a little bit of this and that. It does require serious effort. Those three steps described take most companies a year to complete, and they will cost money. Nothing this good is easy. You’ve been around long enough to know that.

With the tough market, wary buyers, and serious competition, can you afford not to make a move?

These are the posts I published on LinkedIn that are worth to check out:

My journey in Sales Tech started earlier than I realized. When I was working on the first manuscript for my book Sales Tech, I looked back on my career in B2B Sales and noticed that it didn’t start with the birth of Stryfes but 15 years before that.

Those years taught me so much about patterns and processes within sales. I always thought sales was all about human interaction, but that’s just a small part. Most of the work is repetitive and solitary thinking. And success can be designed. Deep within myself, I know that with Stryfes, we cannot serve every B2B sales team out there. And I don’t even want to. But I do want to help all those salespeople out there to do better. The English version of Sales Tech is coming out in late April. It’s my way to help you to speed up your sales team. My way of contributing to this beautiful yet complex profession.

The book’s launch will be an exciting LinkedIn Live, with industry experts from all over the world joining me in a deep conversation about using sales tech. If you want to be part of that, please let me know by replying to this email.

See you soon and remember: