A lot has been written about the fact that being busy is not the same as being productive, activity doesn’t equal results, etc. Much of this writing is about effective prioritization of tasks and time; allocating our time to what’s truly important to achieving our goals vs. the “tyranny of the urgent”. I want to take a look at this theme from the perspective of selling.
We may know we should block time for critical sales activities like prospecting, planning our sales calls and creating meaningful plans for strategic opportunities.Yet too many of us find excuses to avoid these things. There’s always other stuff that keeps us “too busy” to do these important things; “urgent” emails (in the mind of the sender), playing customer service hero, meetings we don’t really need to attend but think we have to show up because someone invited us, you name it. I found an old post by Anthony Iannarino that succinctly drives home this point. And Sales Managers are not immune to the avoidance of important activities either. Inconsistent discipline (and sometimes competence) around running pipeline reviews, deal reviews and coaching are among the top sales management fails for the teams I’ve worked with. They’re often “too busy” playing super sales rep, creating reports, attending useless meetings and other types of “busyness” that don’t actually help their teams to grow and be successful. I won’t go further on this issue because so much great work has already been published by others. [For more on this topic I highly recommend two great books: The Sales Manager Survival Guide by David Brock and Sales Management Simplified by Mike Weinberg.]
I want to pivot back to the individual salesperson and focus not on the activities referenced earlier like prospecting and planning, but instead on how the same “busyness” afflictions is often present at the micro level of what happens inside an individual sales engagement with a prospect. Perhaps the best way I can articulate this is through my personal experience in conducting deal/opportunity reviews with countless salespeople.
They too often come to the review with all kinds superficial information but little valuable insight. They can tell me about the demo, when the RFP is due, what the customer service problems are, what they’re doing to resolve them (they can’t trust the service department to get it right), that they’ve spent countless hours struggling to get the configuration “right”, complaining about the product and that the price is too high, and so on. But when I ask questions about the REAL sales work though; things like the business problem or aspiration they’re addressing, who the key stakeholders are and what is important to them, their plan to collaborate with them to gain consensus, and other fundamental real sales work; they are often dumbfounded. I’m amazed by some of the reactions I get. Most disturbing is when they look at me like I have two heads! Some don’t even see the relevance of my questions. Others treat my questions like they’re an unnecessary annoyance; a distraction from getting (yet another) proposal out to the prospect or tending to other “busyness”. For sure, they are busy. But they are busy with the wrong things and ignoring the right ones. Now, shame on their sales managers for tolerating and often reinforcing this emphasis on the superficial at the expense of their core responsibility as sales people. Yes, some of the busyness is necessary, but not all of it and not to the exclusion of the truly important things that will advance the sale (or qualify it out).
Fortunately, not every salesperson operates this way. The best do the REAL sales work and their results show it! They find a way to tend to the “busyness” that is truly necessary without forfeiting the important stuff. I think the sad fact is that “busyness” is an excuse, a victim mentality. And it’s comfortable. It’s really not hard. The hard work is doing what we’re paid to do: prospect, position, qualify, collaborate, and influence to become the prospect’s best choice for addressing a real business issue and acting now! But it’s this hard work that creates success and, after all, it’s our jobs. Anything less is not really selling!
