Sales Management: Maximize Sales ROI by Assigning Tasks to the Lowest-Cost Resource

by Alan Rigg

A fact of business life is that quality salespeople are a relatively expensive resource. Yet, many companies ask their salespeople to perform administrative tasks that could easily be handled by $8 to $10 per hour administrative employees.

Why does this happen?

Sometimes it happens because managers are penny wise and pound foolish. They are already paying salaries or draws to their salespeople and prefer to have them perform administrative work rather than hire additional (administrative) personnel.

You know what? Management absolutely IS entitled to ask salespeople to perform administrative tasks. However, doing so often reduces the return the company receives on its sales team investment.

In other cases salespeople are saddled with unnecessary administrative work because their managers have never analyzed the tasks their salespeople are asked to perform with the following questions in mind:

What is the lowest-cost resource that could satisfactorily perform each task?
If salespeople were relieved from performing these tasks, how could they apply the extra time to make more sales?

What is an example of a task that could be assigned to a non-sales resource?

One task that creates significant heartburn for both salespeople and management in many companies is populating records in the company's CRM (client relationship management) system.

CRM data can be a very valuable resource. By capturing information about prospect and customer locations, contacts, conversation notes, etc., companies can ensure a smooth transition when a salesperson leaves and is replaced by another salesperson.

So what's the problem?

The problem is the data entry required to fully populate CRM records can consume a lot of time. Based upon the number of data elements that must be entered, salespeople can spend between 20 minutes and one hour per day (per salesperson!) entering data into their company's CRM system. If salespeople were able to apply this time to activities that more directly relate to selling, how much more could they sell?

A second problem relates to a personality quirk of top-performing salespeople. One of the characteristics measured by my company's sales assessment tests is a salesperson's interest in process, procedure, administration, and financial tasks. My experience has been that approximately 80% of top sales performers have very little interest in process, procedure, administration, and financial tasks!

We all want to hire top-performing salespeople. But, when we are successful in attracting them, how much time do we want to (repetitively) invest in pursuing them for forecasts and CRM system updates? Doesn't it make sense to assign as much of this (administrative) work as possible to a lower-cost resource?

What is another example of a sales-related task that could be assigned to a lower-cost resource?

Another excellent example is cold calling. It is relatively easy to find people who can do an outstanding job of convincing prospects to schedule "discovery" conversations. These people are often relatively inexpensive ($40,000 to $60,000 per year in many markets) because they do not have the talents required to effectively manage other steps of the sales process. Why not hire one or more individuals to focus on cold calling and booking appointments (or outsource this activity to a company that specializes in hiring and managing these kinds of individuals), and focus your expensive salespeople on other sales-related activities?

Where SHOULD salespeople focus their time?

The #1 most critical task is doing an outstanding job of sales opportunity qualification, which includes the following steps:

Asking questions to determine whether a prospect has any of the kinds of business problems your company's products and services can solve
Asking questions to quantify the impact of a prospect's business problems (this provides a context for price discussions)
Asking questions to determine whether a prospect is worthy of time and resource investments by your company (to prevent scarce time and resources from being wasted on prospects that can't or won't buy)

If a prospect's or customer's business problems are complex, it may be helpful for your salespeople to be able to leverage expert resources to help them fully qualify opportunities and design solutions. However, your salespeople should at least be able to qualify opportunities from a business perspective on their own.

Other critical sales cycle activities that are good places for salespeople to invest their time include:

Motivating prospects to take the next step in the sales cycle. (A rather exacting definition of a valid next step is there is an appointment on the prospect's calendar on a specific date at a specific time with a specific agenda for advancing the sales cycle.)
Managing product demonstrations to ensure they are focused on the specific product or service features that will solve the prospect's specific business problems. (I always recommend that expert resources deliver demonstrations. Salespeople should manage the demonstrations and tactfully keep them on track.)
Reviewing effective selling proposals with prospects. Effective selling proposals minimize the amount of boilerplate and maximize the amount of content that describes a prospect's specific business problems, quantifies the impact of the problems, shows how the proposed products and/or services will solve the prospect's specific business problems, identifies the prospect's key decision criteria, etc.
Closing sales. When all of the preceding activities have been performed properly, closing sales becomes easy and natural.

Conclusion

Take a look at the tasks that you (or your sales managers) ask your salespeople to perform. How many of these tasks can only be performed by talented (and expensive) salespeople? How many tasks could be performed by lower-cost resources, freeing your salespeople to spend more time on tasks that only they can do?

Financial constraints are a reality of business. However, administrative resources and appointment setters can be pretty inexpensive to hire, especially if you pursue "fractional ownership" by outsourcing to companies that specialize in hiring and managing these kinds of resources.

The bottom line is the more you can focus your expensive salespeople on doing the things that only they can do, the higher your return will be on your sales team investment!

About the Author

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.

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