“Sellers, I need to see your calendar”

The quarterly ups & downs are part of every business. We had just finished a rough quarter and suddenly the Sales Manager announced on the team call that everyone needed to share their calendar with him so he could see what each seller was doing.

With a heavy heart, I had to share my calendar just like everyone else in the team and remind myself not to put any personal meetings/reminders in the work calendar. I’ll admit I used a few more tricks but those are not for public sharing ;)

This manager was smart because he had tried enough and realized that it was the only way for him to “see” the Invisible Pipeline which is usually 3x — 4x of what’s in the CRM.

During the research phase of SalesTing in 2016, we found this behavior to be pretty commonplace. There were a few big surprises that I had not anticipated -

1. It happens at a much larger % of companies than I had imagined.
2. It happens at large F500 companies and small companies. No one is immune.
3. It happens not just for Inside Sales reps but for Field reps too.
4. It happens not just in Sales, but also in other roles including Marketing.

While I can understand and empathize with management’s need for transparency and visibility, asking for calendar access in Outlook just feels awkward.

This topic has come up so often in our conversations with prospects and clients that we decided to do add some capabilities to our product to address this.

In order to solve the root cause of the problem (the invisible pipeline) and remove the awkwardness of asking for calendar access, we’ve added an intelligent module that provides the needed transparency & data without the intrusion and awkwardness, and while limiting management’s accidental ability to see a rep’s personal meetings.

Technology’s sole purpose is to help humans live a better life. All 3 sides (Sellers, Sales Leadership, Marketing) get better when software becomes the intermediary that can intelligently provide the data and transparency without putting people into awkward situations.

Dear Former Manager — you don’t have to ask for calendar access anymore ;)

Smart companies find technologies to solve human problems. Others waste time on creating more work for employees.

PS — the AI/ML module isn’t 100% accurate but does an acceptable/good job of knowing and learning what is personal vs what is corporate.

SalesTing provides a simple, intelligent software to solve the Invisible Pipeline problem for Sales & Marketing teams. Visit us at www.salesting.com

Like my articles? Get them in your inbox. Sign-up at salesting.com/newsletter.html