Time, or lack thereof, can be the biggest factor keeping your sales team from consistency and results. Here are some of the biggest “Time Killers” that keep your sales team from full productivity every day.
Lunch
Meals may be one of the biggest time thieves of a day. Some clubs have their employees work nine hours in a day, so that they can get in a lunch and two 10-minute breaks. I think this is wise.
Other clubs tell their employees to squeeze lunch in during work hours, whenever they have a spare moment. This can cause some problems. If that’s the case — let’s just say lunch is 30 minutes every day — that’s 2.5 hours per week on a five-day work week your employees are spending on lunch.
So if you are one of the clubs who say to just squeeze meals in during an eight-hour day, be careful. Your employees are now down to 37.5 hours of work per week (based off of the average 40-hour work week). Those 2.5 hours could make a difference in your employees getting everything accomplished.
Conversation
Member conversations or employee conversations that are not related to prospecting or member bonding are a major time-suck. I believe that we should talk to as many members as we can, but when we know that the conversation is not based around the club, then keeping that conversation to two minutes is a must.
You will have many senseless conversations — about your love life or sports events or concerts — two minutes is plenty of time to share and wrap it up. Many employees just can’t help but getting caught up in meaningless conversations, and it’s stealing their day. I would guess that most employees are stealing 30 minutes a day on conversation, so that’s another 2.5 hours per week that your members aren’t being productive. Combine that with the time lost from meals, and your employees are being productive 35 hours in a work week.
Errands and Community Outreach
Many employees participate in some form of community outreach several times a week. I clearly encourage working within the community, but I don’t encourage working on projects while on the clock. In addition, running errands is unacceptable, such as getting gas for the car, stopping at home and/or picking up lunch for the sales team. These errands easily run up another 2.5 hours of missing productivity.
The Internet
How many hours are spent searching for things online that lead to one wondering off into the cyber world? Facebook, Twitter, or any social media site (unless being used to make posts from the club’s page) are time thieves. Most employees are probably losing about an hour of productivity from just the Internet alone.
So how are you employees doing? Are they getting 40 hours of work in per week? Are they maximizing their opportunity? Is it possible that expectations are not being met because you, as the manager, keep thinking that everyone is working 40 hours a week, when in reality they’re maybe working 30? If productivity is down, checking the schedules is a great place to start. Most importantly, make sure you’re not fostering an environment where Time Killers are acceptable and go unnoticed.
Chuck Hall is the executive director at Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs.
