If a sales rep can only touch 20 new (early stage prospect) accounts this month, or 5 new accounts this week, or 1 per day…how do you help them understand and prioritize the highest-potential accounts to spend their time on? Salespeople have a limited number of accounts they can touch each day / week / month.
It doesn’t matter how many accounts a rep can call on if they’re calling on the wrong types. Or, if they spend 30% of their time on the wrong kinds of accounts (not uncommon), your company [with $10m revenue, 20% cost of sales, 30% of revenue from new business] could be missing out on 10% of absolute operating margin!
Sales reps are often just reacting to what’s in front of them. Help the team create a method of prioritizing, each day, the best few accounts they should spend their precious time on. This could apply in, for example, three common categories:
a) Early stage prospects, with to-be-determined potential
b) Pipeline accounts with high potential, but unclear decision/budget timing
c) Accounts with active sales cycles
Here’s one way to help force a ranking method:
1) Assume that reps organize their day into four chunks for
– New prospects
– Pipeline accounts
– Active accounts
– Planning (which had better be part of their day)
2) Assume an extreme case: that a rep can only talk with three accounts in a day, one of each type (excluding the planning chunk, of course).
3) How should a rep prioritize, per type. that single highest potential/probability account most worth their time attention?
AFTER you create a more effective way to filter the highest potential/probability accounts for each stage…
THEN focus on getting reps to call on more accounts and to be more efficient with their time.
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