In 2020, many organizations have had to rethink their approach to their business and adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
This gave many companies time and a chance to take a fresh look at their processes, and some — to change them for the better and maximize sales efficiency.
In many ways, they have achieved this by increasing sales productivity, as this is the very factor that leads to better sales, happier employees, more repeat customers and less time wasted.
In this guide, we are going to show you 6 strategies to boost sales by increasing your sales team productivity.
Pick up the right sales productivity tools
The right tools help automate many routine tasks, saving employees time, maintaining consistency between teams and individuals, and streamlining workflow.
But before investing in certain productivity tools, make sure they seamlessly integrate with your CRM (this will eliminate the extra steps in your sales reps’ workflow).
Today, you can choose from a huge selection of professional sales productivity tools such as Calendly, Yesware, Outreach, Mixmax, Zapier, HubSpot Sales, SalesLoft, and Salesforce Inbox, of course. However, before integrating the software into your daily business processes, consider what functionality the solution should have. And remember: there are better, more effective, and advantageous alternatives to many popular solutions!
Take for example Revenue Inbox, #1 Salesforce Inbox alternative, an authoritative enterprise-class convenient plugin that seamlessly integrates your Outlook/Gmail with Salesforce, allows you to gather new insights on every email and customize any Salesforce objects and fields you need. Offering advanced functionality that will suit any organization, the product offers richer functionality and has no “traditional” Salesforce Inbox’s flaws.
With Revenue Inbox, You are guaranteed to get certain benefits, such as:
- auto-capturing data tailored to your specific needs: multi-way sync of your emails, threads and attachments, calendar events, and contacts with Salesforce integration;
- superior calendar synchronization: sending your availability, integrating booking schedule and saving appointments to Salesforce is easier than ever;
- fully customizable sidebar: get the right insights on every email, check and update Salesforce data right from your Inbox, show Salesforce views, fields, and objects, and generate records easier;
- built and designed for Enterprise: the product natively supports Partner Community Licenses, Multi-Geo Exchange, Office 365, as well as on-premise deployments;
- greater deployment flexibility: on private/on-premise servers, and free deployment assistance;
- GDPR, ISO Security Compliance and multi-level protection of your sensitive data from accidental/malicious loss;
- first-class customer service: product specialists team is always ready to make everything possible until the product is flawlessly utilized within your org;
- native mobile extension that works within the Outlook mobile app (available both for iOS or Android).
Audit your current sales performance
Conducting an audit of your current practices will give you an understanding of where you are to begin effectively analyzing the perspectives of increasing your sales productivity. Start by giving a realistic assessment of your current business processes.
To keep track of workflows, ask your salespeople to record stages in the sales process, such as acquiring new customers, closing deals, logging sales, onboarding customers, keeping track of leads, etc. Modern specialized tools will help you make this task easier.
Determine Your KPIs for Measuring Sales Productivity
Defining sales performance metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is the primary way to measure, track, and create goals.
The list can consist of many indicators of sales productivity, for example:
- conversion rate;
- engagement rate;
- annual revenue;
- number of sales calls;
- time spent with customers;
- average sales at specific locations;
- outreach events;
- customer service rating, etc.
Define key indicators based on the specifics of your company: for some, the most important factor is the amount of current revenue, while others may be focused on tracking lead generation metrics.
As you start to improve your sales productivity, your metrics will change accordingly, so you can focus on how your actions are reflecting on them and see if you’re heading in the right direction.
Understand your sales funnel
Precise data (in particular, conversion rate by sales funnel stage) will help you understand where your sales pipeline is today.
Use data to identify opportunities for improving sales performance, such as refreshing a sales play or updating your value framework, and then train your team to address existing issues. Once your conversion rate rises, you will know you are moving forward.
Get feedback from your team
There is no better way to learn more about employee productivity than to get their direct feedback. And morning meetings are the perfect way to do this. These meetings, among other things, will help motivate the team, as everyone will feel more involved in the process. For example, discussing the results of activities will:
- help many of them to catch up in the afternoon what they missed in the beginning of the day;
- help to support the team if there are not enough employees;
- direct the team’s actions if they are spending time on the wrong activities (for example, now it is not the best time for cold calls, it is worth paying attention to learning more about smart prospecting).
Accelerate your pipeline with value
If your reps are working at maximum efficiency, but they still can’t hit the quota, then it’s time for you to evaluate the effectiveness of messaging you are providing.
Modern selling style is about focusing not on what you are selling, but on why you are doing it. It is selling value, but not product features, that allows creating a sense of urgency because it ties the purchase of your solution to customers’ key initiatives.
If these initiatives can transform your buyer’s business, and if your sales team members can connect that transformation and your company’s offering, then the customers will be more willing to purchase your product.
