I am seeing a lot of time wasted by sales staff aimlessly chatting with clients.

How often are you left with the feeling that your sales people are seeing clients, but beyond the “hello” and general chat, nothing of substance is happening?

I call it the phenomenon of “professional visitation”.

Often the cause can be isolated to a sales person’s reticence to ask the “hard questions”. Preferring to operate at a more superficial level, there is little chance the sales person will ever become involved in negotiating their way through customer demands and price issues.

Contact time with customers should always be productive. It …