Measure Your Productivity

Sales Reps’ Psyches

The printing communications industry understands machines a lot better than it understands the imponderable psyches of more than 100,000 peevish and recalcitrant salespeople. Many owners and bosses say, “Keep ’em down on the other end of building. If they get too close, I might have to talk to them. They might ask me a question.”

So why can’t we measure the productivity of salespeople? Because they won’t cooperate!

Did you ever try to install a call report system in your firm? Most salespeople can conspire 40 different ways to beat your system, no matter how tight you make the rules.

Salespeople won’t let us wire them up to measure their work time against sales derived from the hours worked. Just jokin’. There is no way to implant a chip. Yet.

I am convinced that sales productivity must come from within. I’ve been selling for 45 years and, using my fingers, I count nine different bosses beginning and ending with Attila the Nun (my wife Anne), the federal government and the bank.

None of them ever motivated me or even asked me to improve my sales productivity. I imagine there are some sales managers somewhere who know how to light a fire.

I’m sure there are some fancy sales trainers who can show us the way to increasing productivity and then motivate us to do it.

But, alas, it has not happened.

There is an immutable observation that says, “Fifteen percent of the print salespeople sell 80 percent of all the print communications in America.” I wish NAPL or PIA would actually do a survey to confirm what I have observed.

Anyway, here’s what I want you to do. Start keeping a log each day of the hours you devoted to selling. This includes phone calls, looking up phone numbers, asking for and following up on your estimates, working on your prospect list, etc., but, most importantly, making belly-to-belly sales calls.