SALES executives are paid to sell, yet they spend less than 20% of their time on the sales tasks for which they are employed.

A study by DaiSho Marketing involving 2612 people in sales positions, done in collaboration with Real Business, has found that the biggest time waster is travelling and waiting, which takes up almost one third of available sales time.

Another 27% of time is swallowed up by meetings, reporting, order and customer administration, and training.

DaiSho MD Peter Finkelstein says time wastage has become a serious impediment to sales productivity for many companies. It is not surprising to find that management is often less than satisfied with sales team performance. And that salespeople themselves are stressed by pressure to achieve targets, given the many distractions they face.

The study revealed that in some industries there is a crucial need for specialist salespeople who are intimately involved in educating buyers as part of the sales process. In highly competitive sectors sales executives play an important role in differentiating one product or service from another.

It is evident, says Finkelstein, that selling has evolved. The need for salespeople as “road warriors” has diminished. The study indicates that the many complexities of selling today have encroached on valuable sales time.

The result is lower productivity, larger sales forces and greater cost of sale.

Study respondents included 800 executives involved in sales management and 1812 salespeople at various levels in the sales chain. They consisted of people trained by DaiSho over the past 30 years and sales personnel who responded to an article in Real Business.

Respondents indicated their disappointment that in an age of automation many companies have not made optimal use of information and mobile technology to reduce the time that salespeople spend managing orders.

Salespeople are anxious to perform better, says Finkelstein, but say their companies are reluctant to invest in technology that would improve sales activity. The fast-moving consumer goods sector is making effective use of the integration of information and mobile technology. Banking and insurance are catching up, but are still “a far cry from making full use of automation”.

Other sectors, such as plastics, chemicals, printing, publishing and transport, still rely on old and often antiquated methods of order processing.

Most salespeople recognise the need for reports, if only for governance purposes. But they also complain that too much time (11,5%) is spent on writing and filing reports and attending meetings that often have little value.

A mere 3,25% of sales executives’ time is used for training. Even then, most is related to products rather than skills or techniques. Finkelstein says: “The paucity of skills development … is an evident contributor to the overall lack of sales performance.”

Most management mistakenly believe that their salespeople are already trained (49,75%) or that selling needs no specific skills that can be taught or learned (31,75%).

Salespeople concede that they find it difficult to meet the growing demands of increasingly sophisticated buyers with more choice and smaller purses. These buyers demand more from suppliers with undifferentiated products and services. So, in a sometimes hostile competitive climate, says Finkelstein, it is not surprising that salespeople feel stressed and do not achieve quotas. No fewer than 46% said they had missed targets.

For sales performance to improve sales management will have to change. Most sales managers (79%) have personal sales targets as well as managerial responsibilities. Many appear to want to believe that specific customers would not buy from anyone else — or that they have to sell because of the poor performance of their sales force.

The reality, says Finkelstein, is that sales performance suffers because managers have too little time to develop, coach and train their salespeople. Nor do they have the time to introduce sales protocols and disciplines that would enhance the bottom line. They will have to do more to manage, focus, motivate and train their sales teams.

Yet more than 70% of sales managers who participated in the study indicated that they had not had any specific sales management training. Nor had they been able to develop broader business and human resource management skills.

Rethinking sales will mean taking a closer look not only at what sales people do, says Finkelstein, but how they do it. Training will have to be on a wider scale and include skills and business process knowledge for sales managers.

Telesales — “always the Cinderella of the sales chain” — should be considered as a primary sales operation, not just a sales support activity. “Perhaps now, with increased waiting biting into sales time, the high cost of fuel and longer decision-making time spans, the real value of telesales will become more evident.”

Finally, says Finkelstein, salespeople will have to work smart as well as hard.

If they do not change their habits, and apply these systematically, most field salespeople are likely to find the pressure to achieve targets increasingly difficult.