The Canberra Times

4 Strategies to drive sales productivity

4 Strategies to drive sales productivity
4 Strategies to drive sales productivity

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Business owners, sales managers, or team leaders will constantly look for ways to generate more sales.

They want to make their sales productivity level as high as possible. After all, sales are every business' primary goal.

However, improving sales productivity means you have to maximise results and minimise used resources.

For many businesses, this remains an elusive goal. In fact, two-thirds of sales representatives fail to reach their sales quota every year.

This stat tells us that there's a huge productivity gap and an opportunity to educate salespeople to help them improve. (1)

What's the problem?

Most sales teams have many responsibilities that aren't related to selling.

So it doesn't make sense that some business owners or managers are quick to assume that their salespeople are lazy or don't try hard enough when failing to meet quotas.

They should employ measures to address and improve poor workflow instead of their team's attitude and motivation. (2)

What can be done?

To improve workflow and make your sales representatives more productive, follow these strategies:

1. Automate as many tasks as possible

From a sales perspective, multitasking is counterproductive.

In fact, a study found that the majority of salespeople struggle because they work on many things at once.

There's room for improvement, though. And the best way to improve is to give your sales team some of their time back.

Is it possible? It is-by automating their tasks. (3)

Simple steps like using call call transcription so salespeople can say goodbye to note-taking during zoom meetings with prospects can cut down on their busywork.

A call scheduling tool and customer relationship management (CRM) software can also help.

Providing the necessary automation tools allows your sales team to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

2. Harness the power of "smarketing"

Sales and marketing alignment, or "smarketing," is the process of combining marketing and sales.

Its primary objective is for a business' sales and marketing functions to have an integrated approach.

Sales productivity improves when marketing and sales forge an intimate partnership with each other.

That's why, with smarketing, sales and marketing teams define what a high-quality lead is, together.

They also work hand in hand in creating sales personas and determining prospects and customer pain points. (4)

By integrating your company's marketing and sales functions, sales reps feel invested in lead generation efforts.

Of course, marketers also feel invested in converting more prospects to paying customers.

4 Strategies to drive sales productivity
4 Strategies to drive sales productivity

3. Perform CRM data visualisation

We've mentioned how essential CRM software is for sales organisations. It automates repetitive, manual tasks, thus, helping salespeople achieve a higher productivity level.

However, as processes become more complex, achieving good CRM user adoption can be a struggle nowadays.

In fact, salespeople waste so much time trying to acclimatise themselves with CRM software. Even the rate of interpreting and organising data in the system declined recently.

One of the best ways to improve CRM user adoption is data visualisation.

Here's why:

It supports visual learners:

As you probably already know, learning styles vary among the population. Some people are auditory learners, and others learn kinaesthetically.

However, 65 per cent of the population still are visual learners. It means that data visualisation could make it possible for your sales reps to comprehend how your CRM works quickly.

It helps sales reps find information faster:

Organisations that use data visualisation tools find timely information faster than those that don't.

Moreover, even without IT staff assistance, 48 per cent of salespeople from these companies can find the information they need in CRM or other software systems.

The time saved from increased CRM adoption means greater efficiency for the sales team and the whole company. (5)

It gives actionable items:

Actionable items can result from performing data visualisation. That's because the process helps your sales team see where they performed better and where an improvement is needed.

For example, a visual report reflecting calls per salesperson and progress to call goals can motivate your sales team to do better in meeting their quota.

All of these aforementioned benefits of embracing CRM data visualisation have been proven to lead to revenue growth. (5)

4. Measure your results

The absence of consistent metrics tracking is one of the reasons why many business organisations fail at improving sales productivity.

On the other hand, data-focused companies have sales teams that succeed at hitting their annual sales targets, these organisations rely heavily on analytics. (5)

Increase sales productivity in your own company by organising data, making them more visible, and measuring results based on set metrics, tracking the following KPIs:

Conclusion

Practically all sales organisations struggle with sales productivity these days.

The growing revenue targets set by companies further aggravate the problem.

They're pursuing more aggressive sales goals without scaling their processes for efficient selling.

The strategies mentioned and discussed in this article can help you improve sales efficiency.

Although the list isn't exhaustive, automating tasks, combining marketing and sales teams' functions, and visualising CRM data can significantly help.

Of course, don't forget to measure your result so you know where tweaks can be made for better performance.

References

2. "Sales Reps Spend Only 37% Of Time Selling According To Research From InsideSales.com", Source: