This shapes your sales team’s behavior in powerful ways.
When Tony measured his top sales person he discovered she was only getting four hours a week of “DST”. That was a wake-up call for him and his company.
Step One: Meet with your sales team and introduce this concept of “DST”.
Formally list out the behaviors that count as DST, and the avoidant behaviors that don’t count.
Step Two: Have each of your sales team track and report daily on their DST number.
How many hours today did they spend in direct sales conversations? Have your sales admin populate and aggregate these numbers to a tracking spreadsheet to monitor them over time.
Step Three: Once you have your baseline measured, brainstorm ways to increase your DST.
Could you leverage a sales admin to give your sales people more time to meet with prospects? Could you use a lower level sales qualifier to set appointments for your senior sales people? Could you just get your sales people to block out and consistently do the prospecting calls they need to do to set the appointments they need to set each day and week? When you realize how valuable DST is, you unlock your creativity to remove blocks and distractions so that you get more of it.
Step Four: Watch and marvel at how measuring this simple metric shapes and improves your sales team’s daily behaviors.
As the famous saying goes, “What gets measured gets done.” So measure and show your sales team how they are doing on this key sales behavior.
As for Tony, a few months into this process her sales team had doubled their DST, which led to a boost in sales.
The same thing will happen for you. When your sales people consistently increase the amount of hours they spend each week in direct sales conversations with prospects you will see a clear lift in sales.