Every salesperson MUST know the answer to this question.

Something has been bugging me since a recent conversation I had with a senior sales person. Let's call him Nate.Nate is a little stuck. Feels like perhaps he’s hit a plateau in terms of his ability to produce.So I asked Nate..."How many sales hours does it take you to bring an opportunity from the initial point of contact to an order?”*Crickets*He had no idea what I meant.Friends, if I'm your Manager or VP and you don’t know how many hours it takes you to close a deal, you’re worthless to me.Every salesperson MUST know the answer to this question.How many hours. Not days, weeks or months. Those are meaningless. Hours.Next question. And this one’s for YOU, not Nate...Can you correlate the number of hours you spend on a deal to your win rate?Next question. Look at your book of business for the past quarter.Can you correlate the number of hours you spent on each deal you won to the size of the deal?Not all opportunities are created equal.How can you decide where and how to spend your time if you don’t know your hours?Ask yourself this question: how do I decide where to invest my most precious resource: my time?If you don’t know your hours, then you'll have no idea how to invest to improve your productivity. - Andy