Sales processes should be streamlined and stabilized for the seamless functioning of a business. Sales productivity is a crucial deciding factor of how far your sales team is able to attain their sales quotas which in turn decides your business growth. Hence, it is important to focus on the activities that help in increasing the sales productivity of your business. In today’s digital world, buyers are becoming smarter and more educated about a product even before they contact your sales team. Hence, have a sales team and sales processes that adapt to the existing scenario and sell effectively.
Your sales team should be able to multitask, right from prospecting to closing deals and timely follow-ups. Empower them with appropriate tools and techniques. Boost their morale by motivating them and involving them in team-building activities. This will make them feel inclusive and stay enthusiastic at work. Hiring the right people and utilizing their selling skills completely are the challenging yet rewarding parts of sales productivity.
How To Measure Sales Productivity?
Choosing the right metrics will help you measure the sales productivity of your business accurately. The type of metrics you should measure can be categorized into 4 types:
- Activity metrics include the measure of activities such as the number of calls made, emails sent, social media engagement, website click rate, and no.of demos made within a particular time period.
- Time metrics, such as average time spent on cold calls, average lead response time, sales cycle length, etc are time-bound measurements of your sales team’s performance.
- Revenue metrics like average deal size, customer lifetime value (CLV), return on investment ROI, etc are basically money-based metrics that give you the amount of money spent and earned through various sales processes.
- Last but not least are the performance metrics, which help measure your sales rep’s performance. All the tasks performed by your sales reps cannot be measured in numbers and that is where these metrics come into the picture.
From the above types of metrics, pick the ones that suit your business needs. Track and analyze them at regular intervals to understand the ways to boost your sales productivity.
Steps To Improve Sales Productivity
Reports say that “A company loses between 10% and 30% of its customers each year.” This is huge for small businesses. So, your first aim should be to reduce this customer churn by at least 5% each year. As we all know, customer retention is economical when compared to new customer acquisition. Make your sales team ready to achieve this. Here is a step-by-step guide to boosting your sales productivity:
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Focus on quality hiring
Sales productivity starts with forming a highly-skilled sales team. Spend time picking the right candidates who can adapt and learn. Create a nurturing work environment and engage the team members in team-building activities. Once you form a good sales team, set realistic sales quotas for individuals as well as the team.
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Equip your sales team with the necessary tools
The next step is to equip your sales reps with the necessary tools and techniques that save their time and energy thus improving their productivity. Make use of sales automation tools that take care of manual, repetitive tasks. In this way, your sales reps can concentrate more time on selling. CRM tools, sales activity tracking apps, sales training and engagement tools, etc are some of the types of sales tools available in the market today.
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Set individual as well as team goals
Goal setting is an important part of sales productivity. Evaluating the performance of sales reps and setting realistic targets according to their capabilities will benefit both the employees as well as the business. Achievable targets will boost employee morale and revenue too. Sales can turn out to be stressful for employees sometimes. Hence, sales managers should offer possible help and keep them motivated at work.
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Invest in sales engagement
Sales engagement refers to the activities that involve meaningful interaction that adds value to your customers. 90% of sales leaders are planning to invest in sales engagement platforms. The interactions may be through phone calls, emails, or in person. Make them more personalized to increase customer engagement. Other sources like social media branding, reviews, and testimonials also play an important role in showcasing your product value.
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Track & measure your sales performance
Data analytics and reports are a boon to analyzing sales performance and forecasting future opportunities. Only if you start measuring the performance of your team with relevant KPIs, you will get an idea of which areas are performing better and the areas that need improvement. To increase sales productivity, you should analyze the effectiveness of each process such as prospecting, sales pitch and presentations, closing deals, and follow-ups.
Wrapping Up
In short, increasing sales productivity means improving the way your sales team utilizes the tools, resources, and processes to close more deals and improve revenue. The entire process should make optimized use of time and resources. Aligning your marketing and sales teams with your business goals will help you in creating a more stable sales process. Instead of copying others, establish your own processes to stand out in the market. Ending this guide with a powerful quote, “Consistency of performance can be the most powerful differentiator of all.”
Read Also: 5 Ways to Leverage Your Analytics for a Larger ROI
