Administrative support, and all the benefits that go with it, may seem like a perk to give only to your top performers. They’re the ones who have earned it, after all. Their solid performance and consistently strong numbers have shown the company that their time is valuable.
So valuable, in fact, that offloading their daily admin chores to an external party is worth the cost. The extra time that your rock stars will gain from this support will result in more selling time, a bigger number of closed deals, and more money in your pocket.
All of that is true. However, the benefits of admin support extend across the talent spectrum of your team. There are three main ways that providing administrative support will bring up your lowest performers’ performance and increase their sales productivity.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel or Get admin support experts to do what they do best
Just because your business is successful at its core competencies doesn’t mean everyone on staff is an administrative support expert. And why would you be? The sales team’s focus is on nurturing your pipeline, refining your product and bringing in customers. Salespeople aren’t wired to do CRM or airline bookings.
Providing them with a support structure would ensure that your sales guys are able to focus on selling. An admin can offload tasks that pull time and energy away from core functions. Not only will they take them off your salespeople's plate, but they’ll do the tasks better (no, really).
Admins have best practices around scheduling meetings, managing calendars, and updating a CRM. These best practices convey professionalism and competence to clients. They ensure meetings and opportunities don’t fall through the cracks.
And while it may be every executive’s goal to do this, your lowest performers definitely aren’t equipped with the time, energy, or expertise to do all this while managing their sales quotas.
Spread the Good Stuff or share your top performers’ best practices
What your lowest performers need most is a good example. You can make your top guys spend time “mentoring” their struggling colleagues, but that will (1) diminish your overall sales resources and (2) create tension and stress among the team.
Having a centralized admin support team allows for top performers to share what they’re doing right with their colleagues – without taking any of their team. Teams of personal assistants can confer with each other, sharing successful processes from one exec to another within the same company.
Say one top performer has their sales assistant send follow-up performance stats to companies once a month. This keeps clients happy with constant contact and transparency.
Admin support teams share these successes with one another, allowing for this type of industry best practice to be implemented across the team, bringing up the satisfaction of low performers’ clients. This common layer of support helps your team spread your all-stars’ tips and tricks.
Teach Old Dogs New Tricks or Allow admin support to implement new procedures from HQ
Whether it’s rolling out a new product, updating an IT system or implementing new expense management processes, getting employees on board with new procedures can be difficult. That’s especially true for field reps who are already struggling with their core work.
By utilizing an admin support team, HQ initiatives will be driven down and implemented by assistants. Assistants can internalize the new procedures for their execs. They will understand how to effectively and, with minimal impact, insert them into their exec’s workflow. This will make it easier for headquarters to drive the direction of their team by reducing resistance to change.
Admin support is a nice reward for top-performing execs. But offloading the burden of daily tasks, sharing best practices and spreading new processes is especially helpful when it comes to your lowest performers. Helping them focus on what they do best will inevitably bring up your bottom line.
What You Should Do Now
If you need help with sales support, here are a few options to help you:
- Download our eBook "Spend More Time Selling with a Virtual Assistant" and get a better understanding of how a virtual assistant can handle tedious sales tasks to give sales leaders and teams more time to sell and take care of customers.
- Book a free consultation call with Prialto. We can help you regain more of your time to sell by offloading repeatable tasks to a fully managed virtual assistant. One of our experts will help you create a plan to delegate your tasks and we will even train your sales assistant for you.
- If you know someone else who’d benefit from sales support, share this post with them via email, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.