When asked how efficient sales efforts are within an organization, the first place that is thought of is revenue. If revenue is up, people will assume the sales process must be working. But that’s not always the case.

The truth is, most organizations don’t have a handle on how much time sales people actually spend selling. Many sales people set their own schedules for the day. From checking emails, communicating with leads, logging prospects, pipeline meetings and more - many of the to dos of someone in business development include keeping the rest of the team up to date with what’s going on in sales.

In larger organizations, the hierarchy may include a VP, Director, Manager, Junior and the admin work is distributed to the less experienced members of the team. In smaller organizations, the sales teams are typically smaller too - which means the person responsible for revenue growth can also be doing their own data entry.

To ensure your designated sales team is doing more sales, less admin. Conduct a quick audit and check on where time is being spent and what activities can be optimized to be done more efficiently.

What are all the activities that your sales team does in a day?

Start with the activities that take up a significant amount of time in the day for each person that is part of the sales team. For each of the activities, calculate how much time is spent (minutes) is spent on that activity. Note where that activity takes place, what tools are used and most importantly what the level of friction is (1-10).

As a first step, here are the things we want to cover off in the audit:

• Activity
• Time Spent
• Tools Used
• Level of Friction

Does time spent match up with your company sales goals?

Add up time spent for the key activities identified and bring to your larger team to discuss.You may want to involve the executive team. At a smaller organization, maybe it’s the whole team. Looking at the time spent per activity (like a pie chart) does the time spent make sense for what the company goals are? If not, where is the misalignment on priorities? This is a great conversation starter that can open minds to optimizing your company’s sales process.