The 15 Time Wasters of Typical Sales Departments

The 15 Time Wasters of Typical Sales Departments

This series of articles discusses the observations we have made over the last three years by watching the sales or marketing efforts of nearly five hundred customers.  My company is in the business of web-based software designed to increase productivity in the area of sales and marketing.  It has been my job to find the areas where salespeople typically waste time and develop technology solutions and techniques to generate more leads and make more sales.  I have organized the many things I have observed into these fifteen areas where time is wasted. Several of these fifteen time-wasters cannot be addressed with technology alone.  We were hoping our technology could solve everything, but in many cases new techniques or disciplines are needed for optimal productivity; hence this series of articles.

TIME WASTER SERIES #1 of 15: Poor Sales and Marketing Strategy

A poor marketing strategy will lead your company to make costly mistakes, select the wrong market, or fail to reach the right target audience. While executive management has the primary responsibility of defining the sales and marketing strategy, every VP Sales, Sales Manager and Salesperson should ask him or herself:

What battle should you be fighting? If your main competitors are well-established and several times larger than your company, you may find it impossible to gain a significant footing in the industry. You may be better served if you find a niche where your product excels and go after success in that area.

In which market segment or industry will you have the greatest chance of success? Your product may serve a large market well, but some segments will give you a greater ROI than others. Define where you stand to make the greatest profit with the least amount of effort and focus on that segment.

What is the most effective way to target the correct market segment? Tailor your marketing to your target audience: while senior citizens watch a lot of daytime television but shy away from Internet search engines, small business owners are often the opposite.

What is your most successful and low-cost source of leads? Some businesses lend themselves well to the internet; probably more than is realized. Some businesses that are locally or regionally located who don’t think the web will work for them should look closer at the new options in search engines and city directories to localize web search marketing.

Once you have defined these core issues, further define it by asking yourself:

What is your core message? If you are trying to do to many things, you will end up dissipating your energies and resources and will never hit critical mass.  Keep your message simple.  Focus.  Boil your core message down to 30 seconds or less.

Who is the target decision maker? What title do they usually have? What department do they work in? List each possibility.  Can you purchase lists of people like this with opt-in emails?  Will you have to use telemarketing resources into these accounts?

What are your products’ key features, benefits, and impact? What pains or possibilities do we address in our target marketplace? List the top 5 of each.  Survey your customer base to find out why they buy from you.  It may be different than you think.

What is your advantage over the competition: price, quality, speed, or service?  If you don’t know these advantages take the time to compare yourself to your top five competitors.  Ask your customers either informally or with a formal survey to have them rate you in these four categories.

What is unique about you: the single, coolest, most powerful (and profitable) stance you can take in the market? This is almost always the place you should focus your efforts.  You shouldn’t be fighting the battle on many fronts.  On the other hand, if you have cash-flow from many areas you can’t immediately change your business, it has to be a slow but purposeful evolution to the areas where you have the most impact and profits.

Best Practice: Take the time to answer these questions and then make sure you and your people know the answers to these strategies and can discuss them and use them in making decisions.  Review these strategies once per quarter to make sure your corporate direction is still in alignment with your strategy.