It should be easy to keep your sales people focused on selling since selling is the first bullet point in a sales job description. Yet distractions, expansions in duties, and other issues can set in and prove costly to your sales numbers. These tips will facilitate the search for areas where streamlining routine processes can reduce diversions and keep your sales people focused on selling.

Keep Sales People Focused on Selling: Delegate to Support Areas

Sales people often adopt sales habits that distract from the core business of selling. When these sales people are not looking at the big picture, they may think that habits like babysitting accounts are supporting sales when the opposite is true. Some of these functions are necessary to your business, but it is not necessary that your sales people perform these tasks. In fact, customer service is frequently better suited for tasks such as following up on orders and tracking, filing, and maintaining internal paperwork such as compliance documents following a sale.

Reassigning tasks such as these to sales support areas is one of the most effective things that you can do to keep your sales people focused on selling, as sales people who are not burdened with unnecessary tasks simply have more time to sell. The improved productivity from delegation in these instances may be all that is necessary to refocus your sales people on the business of selling.

Keep Sales People Focused on Selling: Maximize Tools to Drive Efficiency

There are a multitude of sales tools available that can keep your sales people focused on selling and help drive sales force efficiency. First and foremost if your organization is using a customer relationship management (CRM) system, you should make sure that all of the sales people on your team are regularly and thoroughly updating the system with personal sales activities. As add-ons to the CRM system, you can also consider:

• Implementing accountability systems based on CRM activities so that sales people are meeting key sales metrics
• Mapping sales goals with sales people on an individual basis, and referring to these in regular one-on-one meetings to keep sales people focused on selling
• Customer tracking applications that help sales people see where sales are coming from and where more sales can be pursued

Keep Sales People Focused on Selling: Eliminate Unnecessary Distractions

Distractions can creep into the work environment in any organization. When such distractions become rife, your sales people will be less focused on selling. All too often, however, these distractions come in the guise of routine business, and can include unnecessary or disproportionate time devoted to meetings, distracting work environments, and excessive paperwork requirements for day to day tasks. If your sales people do not seem focused on selling, look for external causes such as these and address any issues promptly by removing or at least reducing the distraction.

Keep Sales People Focused on Selling: Reiterate Key Goals of the Sales Role

The frequency with which you reiterate sales objectives and goals is key. If reminders on key metrics only occur monthly, quarterly, or even less frequently, you will likely find your results are falling short of the marks you want to see. Regular reviews on a team basis as well as on an individual basis can help you remind your sales people what sales activities are the most important to drive consistently superior sales numbers.

Note that although there are many things that a sales manager can do to keep sales people focused on selling, it takes commitment from each individual sales person to meet sales goals in order to see success. Even the most diligent sales manager will not be able to keep an individual who is not cut out for a sales role focused on selling. Always be willing to explore other options when coaching and mentoring are not enough to keep your sales team focused on its primary goals.