Tools

Activity Management

We need to ask you a question. “Are you part of a high-activity sales effort?” If you are, then your sales cycle is very short (20 min. – 1 hour) to ninety days. For your business, you must constantly prospect and sell new business each month.

In this fast moving sales world, cash flow or income depends on activity management.

Prospects turn into appointments, which turn into quotes, which turn into sales. A direct mathematical relationship exists between sales activities (prospects found, appointments held, quotes presented) and sales results vs. sales goals. Consistency in prospecting and appointment setting leads to the level of quote production that provides sales consistency.

Many salespeople keep track of prospects on a yellow pad or slips of paper. They set appointments but they do not do this at a rate that will lead to enough sales. They operate without a clear understanding of how activity affects results. Our online tool, Salesactivities.com, was developed to help people manage their activities to achieve sales goals. It is our best attempt to model the brain and thinking pattern of great high-activity salespeople.

[Note: Some sales teams are part of a major account sales effort with sales cycles of 6 months, or two years and beyond. They require another form of management – strategic management – not high-activity management. A third type of sales team involve themselves with account management – building a base of customers and managing the relationship and account growth … more about how to manage sales time for these teams in future links.]