Most leaders who come to me want to know how to close bigger deals.
She wanted to know something far more important.
It was a freshly minted office in the Philippines. She had just been promoted to Managing Director – a role she had worked years to earn.
And as she sat across from me, she asked me, “Venkat, there is so much we could do with our customers. And yet our results don’t match up to our potential.”
Then she asked: “If there’s one piece of advice you’d give me, just one, what would it be?”
I smiled. Because I knew exactly what her organization needed.
“Do your salespeople spend 80% of their time in front of customers?”
The question landed differently than she expected.
She paused.
And as we went deeper into the conversation, a pattern emerged – one I’ve seen repeated across Fortune 500 organizations on every continent.
Sellers buried in internal reviews.
Managers consumed by reporting.
Leaders disconnected from the field.
All of them are working hard but none of them where it matters most.
We have a name for this: sales prevention activities.
The Non-Negotiable I Shared With Her That Day
Here’s the baseline I’ve held across every high-performance sales organization I’ve worked with:
→ Sellers: 80% of their time with customers. Four days a week.
→ Managers: 60% of their time with customers. Three days a week.
→ Leaders: 40% of their time with customers. Two days a week.
This isn’t a goal. It’s a baseline.
What I’d Ask You to Do This Week
Run an honest audit of your organization’s activities. Ask yourself three questions:
- What percentage of my sellers’ time is genuinely spent in front of customers… not preparing to talk about customers?
- How many of my managers’ meetings last week involved a real customer?
- When did I, as a leader, last have a meaningful conversation with a customer outside of a formal review?
The answers will tell you more about your pipeline’s future than any forecast ever will.
— Venkat
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