Nov
26

By CommenceCRM

Sales Q&A #28 – How do we get more calls in when driving?

This is a Sales Question and Answer article from guest poster Dave Kahle author and leading sales educator. Follow Dave’s latest Tweets at @davekahle.

Q. How do we get more calls in when driving time is so long?

A. I’m going to answer this on two levels. First, when you have a big geographical territory with lots of windshield time, you have to do a better job of routing your calls to maximize the time with the customer. Plan your basic itinerary at least a month in advance, and try to schedule your calls in a logical pattern so that you are not driving back and forth. Schedule the longest drives before your first appointment, during lunch, or after your last appointment so that you are using the 8:00 to 5:00 selling time to its maximum advantage.

Make “ish” appointments. In other words, instead of making the appointment for 10 AM, make it for “10-ish.” This gives you a window of about 15 minutes before the appointment to 15 minutes after when you can still be on time. It takes the pressure off of you and provides you a bit more flexibility.

Here’s another way to consider the problem. Instead of focusing on more calls (quantity), focus on better quality calls (quality). If you can only make four calls a day, for example, consider which are the highest quality, highest potential four calls you can make. Understand that you can’t get to everyone, so focus on the most important.

This article is available in an expanded version.
Visit www.davekahle.com/qa/driving-time.html to read it.

This issue of focusing more on quality than quantity is one of the best practices of the most successful sales people. If you’d like to dig in a bit more, I’d recommend picking up my book, 11 Secrets of Time Management for Sales People.

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Dave Kahle is one of the world’s leading sales authorities. He’s written ten books, presented in 47 states and ten countries, and has helped enrich tens of thousands of sales people and transform hundreds of sales organizations. Sign up for his free weekly Ezine. Check out our Sales Resource Center for 455 sales training programs for every sales person at every level. You may contact Dave at Kahle Way® Sales Systems, 800-331-1287, or info@davekahle.com.

Copyright MMXIII by Dave Kahle

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Photo Credit: Witthaya Phonsawat at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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