Are You a Salesperson or a Clerk?

October 2008

Are You a Salesperson or a Clerk?
(by Steve Hacket - Director of Sales - The Brooks Group)

It has always been my understanding that accountants are supposed to work with numbers. Physicians treat patients. Teachers teach students. Cooks prepare food.

But what about salespeople? Following that same logic, one would naturally assume the primary responsibility of salespeople would be to sell their products or services. Strangely enough, many sales professionals are finding themselves with less and less time to do just that. Instead, they are spending more and more time wrestling with reports, data, paperwork, computers, delivery, customer service, technical support, administrative and even operational issues.

Over the course of the last decade I have heard an all too familiar refrain — “I’m not selling anymore. I’ve become a clerk.” One of the culprits behind this tedious phenomenon is commonly referred to as ‘Sales Force Automation’. Under this system, salespeople have to spend inordinate amounts of their time struggling with computer programs that start out as a simple data tracking tool for their benefit, but end up pulling in inquiries more relevant to marketing, product management, pricing and more. As a consequence, having to handle this influx of hodgepodge, salespeople get caught up in handling everything but prospecting, selling and servicing their accounts.

Let’s take a look at a quick, not so scientific audit to analyze things. As a salesperson, how many hours per week do you spend:

Handling paperwork?
Inputting data into a computer?
Attending meetings?
Interfacing with support staff?
Solving customer problems?
Handling assigned, non-sales duties?
Dealing with office politics?
Providing information to others?
Traveling?
Prospecting for business?
Face-to-face (or ear-to-ear) selling?

The cost to sales team efficiency is huge — resulting in less selling time, resentment, confusion and diffused effort on the part of salespeople. In its simplest terms, we have made “results-oriented people” (salespeople) into “process oriented people” (bureaucrats), who feel as if they have been transformed into customer service representatives.

Does that mean salespeople are above such tasks? Certainly not. It simply means that salespeople are not free to use their skills in the manner that would provide the greatest value to their organization.

Ask yourself how much face-to-face selling time you or the salespeople in your organization really get. I don’t mean time preparing for appointments, in meetings, processing paperwork, handling details or inputting data. I mean hardcore, nose-to-nose selling!

I have long been an advocate of sales assistants to help salespeople handle the not-entirely-relevant details related to sales. I have lead the charge for simpler, easier sales contact/automation systems. I have also urged that organizations take a hard look at what non-sales related functions are expected to be done by salespeople – and eliminate them. Easier said than done, you say? I don’t think so.

Let’s take a look at some real how-to’s here:

Log your time. Actually record, hour-by-hour, what you do with your time for a one-week period. Be brutally honest with yourself. Determine how productive you really are.
Discuss your results with superiors. They may be shocked too!
Determine how many sales opportunities have been lost – and what stole them from you. Was it time spent on tasks like paperwork, meetings, unrelated requirements, customer complaints, delivery glitches or computer problems?
Determine what the average sale is worth to your organization – and see how much revenue or opportunity has been lost just for one week. Then multiply it by 52 weeks per year!

There is no doubt that organizations and their complexity have both increased. Laser printers and computers have made the amount of paperwork that can be generated grow by leaps and bounds. Sales Force Automation systems have, in many cases, collapsed under their own weight when they were not carefully analyzed and designed correctly. Unfortunately, the last ones to be consulted on their effectiveness and ease of use are the salespeople who will be expected to use them.

Analyze your situation and determine if you spend your time prospecting and selling – or if you are a clerk, meeting attendee or data gatherer for other people. The answers might surprise you.

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