10 Bad Industrial Equipment Sales Practices That Can Hurt Your Productivity

Productivity is a defining factor in the success of equipment companies. Whether an industrial company sells a product or service (or both), productivity will influence the number of customers it attracts, the number of customers it retains, and the amount of money those customers spend on purchases. Some equipment sales reps, however, unknowing engage in the following bad habits that hurt their productivity. If you own or manage a an industrial equipment manufacturing or distributor company, you should avoid the following bad habits.

#1) Not Working with Marketing Team

Industrial equipment sales reps should work closely with their company's marketing team. When a company's sales team and marketing team work independently of each other, they won't be able to share data and optimize their approach for the highest possible conversion rate. While industrial sales teams and marketing teams have different functions, the primary goal of both is to generate leads and ultimately sales. Therefore, you should instruct your company's industrial equipment sales team to work closely with its marketing team.

#2) Too Many Meetings

Meetings are a regular part of running a business, and industrial equipment or distributors are no exception. It's not uncommon for industrial companies to hold meetings on their past performance as well as future goals and strategies. But if you're going to host meetings in your workplace, you should be conscious of how much time they consume. According to a study conducted by Brain & Company, senior executives spend an average of two days per week stuck in meetings. You can still host meetings, but try to keep them short and on topic so that they don't hurt your company's productivity.

#3) Spending Too Long on Sales Calls

Industrial equipment sales reps should avoid spending too long on sales calls. Whether it's a warm call or cold call, sales reps should set a reasonable time limit for each call. So, how long should your industrial equipment or distributor sales reps spend on calls? According to HubSpot, 30 minutes to one hour is the sweet spot, with the former being slightly better. Researchers found that prospects are 12% more likely to pick up the phone if the sales rep scheduled a 30-minute call rather than an hour call.

#4) Not Creating a To-Do List

A to-do list is an invaluable tool that can help industrial equipment and distributor sales reps perform their tasks more efficiently throughout the day. It helps sales reps stay focused by showing them what task they need to perform next. Research has shown that workers who create and use a to-do list are more productive than their counterparts who don't use a to-do list.

#5) Failure to Embrace Automation

About 71% of companies use automation in their marketing or sales strategy, according to a recent report by Ascend2. If your industrial equipment company is reluctant to embrace and use automation, you can expect to consume more time, resources and labor to generate sales. This, of course, will lower your industrial equipment company’s productivity while giving your competitors an advantage in the process.

#6) Spending Too Much Time Creating Content

Statistics show that sales reps spend up to one-third of their workday creating content.

Industrial sales reps often create content like emails and call scripts before contacting prospects to pitch their offer. If your company's sales reps create content, though, you should train them to use their time wisely so that it doesn't hurt their productivity.

#7) Juggling Too Many Tasks at Once

A typical industrial equipment sales rep is responsible for performing dozens of tasks, some of which include verifying leads, scheduling calls, responding to emails, providing product or service pricing and more. When an industrial sales rep attempts to juggle too many tasks at once, though, his or her productivity will decrease. Your equipment distribution company's sales reps should focus on a single task at once to maintain a high productivity.

#8) Using Generic Sales Messages

Using the same generic sales message with all leads and prospects may sound like an effective way to increase industrial equipment sales productivity, but it actually backfires by hurting productivity. If an industrial sales rep uses the same message with every lead and prospect, they'll probably generate few (or no) sales. Investing just a little bit of time to creating custom sales messages will pay off in the form of a higher conversion rate and more sales, which means higher productivity for your industrial equipment company.

#9) Not Using a CRM Solution

All industrial equipment companies need a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. This software offers a variety of features and tools that can streamline the sales process. Rather than using multiple databases or tools to store customer data, for example, industrial sales reps can use a single CRM solution.

#10) Manually Building All Leads

Does your industrial equipment company harvest all its leads manually? If so, it may suffer from a lower productivity than its competitors. Harvesting leads manually is a laborious and time-consuming process. The good news is that you can purchase high-quality, targeted leads, allowing you to shift your resources to other tasks associated with your company.

So how can you turn this around to be more productive?

SalesLeads helps to focus your time and efforts with Industrial Project Reports. Our team of researchers do all of the work so you get industrial project reports to call and follow up on. The Industrial Project Reports include the contact name, title, direct phone and direct email address. Contact us to try a couple free sample reports. You’ll get to experience for yourself the various types of industrial reports we report on each day.