While doing a small seminar last week I noticed that only one company in the room actually had a sales department. The rest actually thought they did - and probably would say they did - but when we analysed the situation, they realised they had effectively misplaced their sales department a few years ago and hadn't noticed.
This led us to the realisation that sales departments can be inadvertently misappropriated and closed. This, naturally, is extremely detrimental to any business because a business without a sales department is just a ghost of what it could be.
Has your Sales department disappeared or been misplaced? Here are a few ways for you to find out.
A Time Analysis
One of the companies at the seminar was made up of the owner and four salespeople. On paper, it would appear that this is a large sales force. However, a time analysis revealed that all but one spent just 10% of their time (about four hours per week) on sales. The rest of their time, they did service and sales of other products, paperwork, service calls etc. This example shows that counting heads is not as accurate as counting hours. I suggest you take an accurate count of the amount of time each employee spends on sales activities such as prospecting and doing demos. The result may surprise you. How much time is your sales department actually selling?
The Number Of Sales Presentations
Another way to measure the size of your sales department is a game I call "Count The Presentations". Take an accurate count with customer names of the presentations or sales visits performed last week. First, calculate how many presentations is a day's work in your industry. If you sell complex products to businesses, it could be one per day. If you sell in-home to consumers, it could be two per day. If you sell by phone, it could be 30 per day. Take your total presentation that should be done each day and divide by the number of presentations per day that should be done. The number you get from tthis formula represents the real number pof salespeople on your team. If it is less than you expected, you need to hire or refocus your current team on sales.
The Hours Of Operation
It's a proven fact that customers prefer to buy when they are too busy. We actually do a lot, lot better when we make it easy for the customer to buy. So for most consumers that means evenings and weekends are the prime selling time. Business people don't want visitors at their busiest times and restaurants want no salespeople during their peak traffic periods. Does your sales staff work these prime selling hours or are the stuck with the old nine-to-five mentality?
One good way to see how much actual selling is going on is to see what percentage of prime selling time your team is in the field. If you set the "golden selling time" as 5 to 9 Monday to Thursday and Saturday, that is a total of 24 hours per week. Measure what percentage of those hours your staff is out selling and you have a good measure of the percentage of a sales force you actually have. If you have 4 salespeople who are in the field 50% of those hours, I believe you will find you should discount the size of your sales force by 50%.
It is also interesting to me that many companies who struggle in sales have new recruits and part timers working the best sales hours. This is a serious handicap to success. It just doesn't pay to have your experienced and talented staff in when fewer customers come by and your least experienced and successful team on the floor when most buyers come in.
Call Back Success
Another measurement of sales success is the number of sales generated each week from calling prospects who did not buy at their initial appointment and getting another chance to get the sale get the sale. Good companies add about 15% to total sales from call backs. If your percentage is less, you are leaving money on the table that could be in your pocket. For example, my wife and I visited a large retail store yesterday but did not buy anything. Could a call from a manager, asking why, get us back in? Yes, it could. Further, they would find out from the call why we did not buy. This would allow them to make decisions from actual (and valuable) customer feed back.
Focus & Importance
Another interesting measure of your sales department is the focus of your company and the importance of sales. If you company believes that anything other than presentations and sales is important today, you don't have a sales department. If the first question on everyone's mind today is how many did we present and sell last yesterday, how many will we do today, you have a sales department. If that is the last thing on the minds of your staff, you do not. Ask each of your staff members what is the most important thing on their minds today. The result may surprise you. If the answer is anything but presenting and selling, you will benefit from changes.
Sales Or Customer Dis-Service?
Another interesting measurement of your sales department, is its membership. Is anyone a full time salesperson? Just as important, is EVERYONE focused on selling? Do you keep track of the number of appointments generated per call-in? Do you train your entire staff on how to use calls to generate sales? Does your delivery staff call on neighbors of your customers to see if they your products or services? Do your techs ask customers if they have any other needs? If not, these staff members are overhead when they could be an important part of your sales department.
If you take these tests and find you have misplaced your sales department in the years since you opened for business, now is the time to take steps. Without sales, a company withers and dies. You have the power to direct every member of your team to sell every day. Costs do not rise from focusing on sales but income rises dramatically. No matter how many sales you make each month without a sales department, you deserve to sell a lot more.
I strongly suggest you keep this article and take these measurements monthly to see if you are making progress. The funny thing about sales departments is the moment you take your focus of them they begin to disappear.
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