SiriusDecisions recently published an infographic highlighting the top five sales challenges they uncovered via interviews of sales leaders in companies with revenues of $50 million to $2 billion. We recently wrote about challenge #2 and offered our perspective on getting new reps ramped up quickly. But that’s not the only issue we see regularly in the field; in fact, we work with Clients to help address all five challenges and #3 is a big one:

According to SiriusDecisions, reps spend over one-third of their time on non-core activities. That puts a massive dent in productivity – and in your pipeline potential. Our own research shows that on average, inside sales teams are responsible for two or more primary duties; in fact, 28% of respondents noted three or more primary duties for their inside sales team. This can have a negative impact on productivity.

The question posed in the SiriusDecisions infographic is actually two separate, but related, challenges. First, how do you improve rep productivity to get more business out of your sales force? Your reps’ time is best spent on activities that have a direct path to revenue: sales meetings with real potential and relationship-building. All other tasks, no matter how important they are, take away from time spent on these activities – and that comes with a steep opportunity cost.

One such activity is cold-calling. There’s no doubt that cold calling is incredibly important, but it’s also incredibly time-consuming. Our research reveals that 52% of inside sales reps are tasked with cold calling. And our experience tells us that it takes 130 dials on average to get one meeting.

Offloading cold calling to the experts lets your reps focus on nurturing relationships and closing deals. Appointment Setting is where we started and we’re still the best in the industry. We’ve set more than 550,000 appointments to-date, enabling our Clients’ reps to spend more time on activities with direct revenue impact.

Solving the Sales Productivity Challenge