Sales Management (The Brian Tracy Success Library)

THIRTEEN

Keep Them Focused

As the sales manager, as the officer-in-command of your sales team, one of your key responsibilities is to keep your people focused on the most valuable activities they can engage in every day, all day long, to generate sales results.

According to a study done at Columbia University, the average salesperson only works about ninety minutes per day, approximately one and one-half hours. The rest of the day is spent warming up, cooling down, chatting with coworkers, playing on the Internet, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, and going for coffee breaks and lunch.

We confirmed this statistic by providing a national sales team of 300 people with stopwatches to monitor the amount of time they actually worked. The company ...