3 Sales Time-Wasters Killing Your Revenue Growth Potential

6 Minute Read

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Failing to hit your revenue growth goals? These sales time-wasters could be the culprit. Here’s what’s killing reps’ performance, and what to do instead. KEYWORDS: Sales time-wasters, Revenue growth, Sales time management tips

As a sales leader, you know it’s your job to set aggressive goals and ensure your reps have the support they need to meet their numbers. But sometimes, even when you’re seemingly doing all you can, teams still fall short.

In our experience working with enterprise sales teams, we’ve discovered almost every organization falls prey to the same few performance-killing culprits.

Here are the Top 3 Most Deadly Sales Time-wasters likely keeping you from hitting your growth targets, and three sales time management tips to help boost performance:

1. Directionless Internal MeetingsThere’s nothing more frustrating for a rep than sitting in an unnecessary and meandering meeting, watching the minutes tick by and thinking about their ever-growing to-do list. Plus, internal meetings cost companies a lot of money. Poorly organized meetings will cost US companies a whopping $399 billion in 2019 alone, according to a study by Doodle. And 44 percent of employees said attending these meetings means they don’t have enough time to do their work, according to the same study.

As a sales leader, it’s vital you keep your meetings structured and concise. Additionally, it’s essential you empower sales reps to turn down internal meetings when their presence isn’t absolutely required.

2. Excessive and Complex Technology StacksTechnology is crucial to your processes. It helps reps work more effectively and arms them with all the intel they need to clinch sale after sale all day long — at least, in theory. But, more often than not, the time it takes to manage various pieces of tech cuts into time they should be spending on important conversations and engaging new leads.

Take stock of your tech stack and consider whether the investments you’ve made are helping or hurting your team’s performance.

3. Scheduling Calls“Tuesday doesn’t work for me, what about 3 p.m. Thursday?” “I’ll be at a conference Thursday afternoon, but what about Monday afternoon?” “Monday is no good, can call me on Wednesday?”

If you tracked all the time your reps spend going back-and-forth with prospects choosing a time to meet, it would probably make you nauseous. Or, worse, the number of leads who leave reps on radio silence.

And even if you use a passive scheduler (like Calendly), you can’t guarantee your most critical meetings will get preference over lower-value calls.

Scheduling meetings consumes a significant amount of time — and if reps don’t engage leads immediately, they run the risk of losing them for good.

That’s why it’s critical you equip your team with a more active scheduling solution instead — preferably one with built-in intelligence to know which meetings deserve top spots.

7 Sales Time Management Tips for Sales Leaders

1. What's the common theme among all these tips? Change meeting culture! Tons of research and studies show meetings are massive productivity-killers, but it’s tough to end unnecessary meetings without changing your organization’s meeting culture.

Here’s how:

• Ensure every meeting has an agenda
  
  
• Don’t wait for stragglers — always start on time
  
  
• Enforce a no-phone/ closed laptop policy
  
  
• Only invite people who are necessary to the discussion
  
  
• Give reps the choice to turn down non-essential meetings
  
  
• Choose technology that eases the burden. There’s a lot of robust and impressive sales technology on the market today. As a sales leader, it can be hard not to be entranced by every shiny new object promising a meteoric rise in revenue. But any technology that has to be managed by your sales reps will cut in on the time they should be spending with prospects and customers. Make sure the tech you choose significantly eases their burden without adding to their task-list.
  
  
• Prioritize your high-dollar meetings. We all know the 80/20 rule — 20 percent of your time yields 80 percent of your results. The same can be said of customers, too. (About 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your customers.) But often, sales reps are so overwhelmed with responsibilities, they don’t always have the time to organize meetings by value or ensure top-dollar customers are getting a fair cut of their time and energy. By prioritizing high-dollar meetings, you can increase your revenue potential.
  
  (Psst! Kronologic can do that for you.) 
  
  

No one likes to waste time, but sometimes the worst offending activities are disguised as some of the most useful. By identifying your sales time-wasters and taking a proactive approach to eliminating them, you can boost your revenue growth and meet your goals faster than ever.