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Officer, I'd Like To Report A Missing Sales Department

By Carl Davidson

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 05Jun2008 Word count: 1091 Viewed: 391 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

We were doing a small seminar last week when we noticed that only one company in the room actually had a sales department. The rest thought they did and probably would say they did but when we analyzed the situation, they realized they actually had misplaced their sales department a few years ago and hadn't noticed.

This led us to the realization that sales departments can be inadvertently misplaced and closed. This is extremely detrimental to the 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 to find out.

Percentage Of Time Analysis

One of the companies at the seminar was composed of the owner and 4 salespeople. Sounds like a large sales force. However, a time analysis revealed that all but one spent 10% of their time (about 4 hours per week) on sales. The rest of their time, they did service and sales of other products, paperwork, service calls etc.. Counting heads is not as accurate as counting hours. We suggest you take an accurate count of the amount of time each employee spends on actual sales activities - prospecting and doing demos. The result may surprise you. How much time is your sales department actually selling?

Number Of Sales Presentations

Another way to measure the size of your sales department is a game we 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 quotient you calculate represents the number of active salespeople on your team. If it is less than you expected, you need to hire or refocus your current team on sales.

Hours Of Operation

It is a proven fact that customers prefer to buy when they are too busy. Consumers don't want to take time off to meet the sales guy. 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 nine to five mentality?

One way to estimate the "force" in your sales force is to see what percentage of the golden 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, we 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 furniture store yesterday but did not buy. 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. Remember that your costs don't go up as you focus on sales but your income does. No matter how many sales you make each month without a sales department, you deserve to sell a lot more.

We 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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