Averages and Superstars

Every business is looking for efficiency gains and improvements in productivity. Your company is no different. So how can you, as a Sales Engineer, contribute towards those efficiency gains?

Firstly, some background on labor efficiency. As a rule, the more complex the job the greater possibility there is for a larger variance between the average and the superstars. For example, in manual labor, a superstar may be able to carry 25-30% more bags during a day, unload a truck that much faster, pick grapes etc.. In sales, especially in this economy, many reps will end up the year at 60-75%, a few stars will finish the year at 250-300% or more.

Simply being able to conduct one more presentation, demonstration or sales call a week will put you in the minor productivity gain arena – so how can you leverage your Mastering Technical Sales skills to fully maximize your productivity. Here are a few ideas:

1. It’s not just you. By building a new demo, sharing competitive data in a new way and generating Pre-sales ready messaging you can make everyone more efficient. A 10% gain applied to, say 50 people in your company, results in an overall 500% gain based on your hours.

2. Look back on all the sale calls you have participated in over the past six months. How many of those have required “re-do’s” when you needed to set up another call to cover some technical or business point that was omitted? How often do you need a “recovery” call because you missed something in discovery? How many pointless RFPs or POCs have you completed, knowing that you weren’t going to ever get the business. THOSE are the sales activities that you need to fix – because that is where you can claim time back from the demo gods, and accelerate the sales cycle because you execute perfectly.

Think about it.