Today, most businesses are focused on improving the productivity of their sales teams, as with the growing pressure of constantly increasing revenue targets, companies are seeing that the situation with sales reps’ productivity is getting worse.
We’ve picked up these 6 actionable sales teams productivity tips for you to help you stay on top and show your sales teams how to better manage their time and achieve better results.
1. Leverage sales technology
According to CEB, more than 80% of sales leaders take for granted that complexity kills productivity, so they recognize the huge importance of complexity management. Creating a powerful and flexible sales tech stack allows companies to improve both sales effectiveness and efficiency and meet the demands of modern customers.
But with more than 1000 vendors in today’s sales tech space (and they just keep coming!), it can be quite a tough task, even for the most skilled salespeople.
You should choose productivity tools based on the challenges you face in a particular area, for example:
- utilizing sales playbooks simplify following sales guidelines and processes;
- using predictive lead scoring allows to close more deals by prioritizing leads;
- integrating CRM with a sales enablement platform is crucial for collecting helpful data;
- using sales asset management software helps in searching for relevant materials, as well as personalizing and customizing your presentations;
- utilizing digital calendars and appointment setting software helps to optimize your everyday schedule and harmonize it with your prospects;
- connecting your CRM to your email will help you save plenty of time on switching between applications, automating data synchronization, and insuring you against data duplicates or data losses.
Let;s go with the last example. If you use Salesforce as your CRM, you’ve probably heard of Einstein Activity Capture or even used this tool. It helps keep data like emails, events, and contacts between Salesforce and your email and calendar applications up to date. However, the solution has some serious flaws, like the fact that your data is stored offsite, no API/standard reporting access, no editing/deleting, no workflows triggering, your activities and emails aren’t backed up properly, etc.
In this case, you better opt for complex, advanced solutions such as, for example, Revenue Grid, the best Einstein activity capture alternative. Revenue Grid is an award-winning Salesforce-native Guided Selling platform that provides your salespeople with step-by-step guidance on deals to help them be in the best possible position to win:
- controlling your data: your sensitive personal data will never end up in Salesforce since with Revenue Grid it can be synced based on allowlists, denylists, and custom rules;
- staying secure: the platform provides full encryption for all data that passes to Salesforce. Revenue Grid also supports Microsoft Graph Security API for companies that require fullest data security;
- getting accurate reporting in SFDC: Revenue Grid allows capturing and saving data to Salesforce, that is completely reportable in SFDC, allowing you to create reports for important metrics like sales activity, customer engagement, and communication data.
Also, the platform offers benefits such as:
- free implementation and support;
- customization and flexibility;
- enterprise training and consulting;
- custom object and rule support;
- custom deployment options.
2.Spend more time researching
You may need a lot of time to study your potential buyer who suits your offer thoroughly. Give yourself enough time to complete this important task, determine if your lead is a decision-maker, and only then contact him.
Try not to send out regular, massive emails to your customers; it’s better to use modern advanced research tools that will allow you to discover the most valuable information about leads, creating the most effective messages for them, so you can confidently assume that these messages will grab the attention of your potential customers.
3.Improve your follow-through
In 80% of cases, sales require multiple calls after the meeting. But almost half of the sales representatives are ready to give up right after the second try!
Just because you got feedback from a lead doesn’t mean that you closed your deal. Be persistent and do your best to keep in touch with the prospect after contacting him for the first time.
4.Use Sequences to increase your pipeline activity
You must be an extremely persistent person to get your prospect to answer you, let alone start a productive dialogue with you. By using multichannel sales sequences, you can free yourself from many chores and still attract leads!
A multichannel cold email sequence is an easy way to communicate with your leads via two or more channels. Learning how to use these tools correctly will help you to skyrocket your sales.
Such software tools will be able to send letters to customers for you, schedule your tasks and calls, and even provide voice capabilities, give you suggestions on how you can improve messaging with potential customers, and help you to analyze the results of your communication.
All of this will not only save you tons of time but also help build long-term relationships with potential customers.
5.Encourage referrals
The ability to motivate an existing customer to recommend your company to other people is a significant advantage. Moreover, thinking through successful referral incentives (for example, credits, coupons, or points) will help increase your sales and save you a lot of time on each deal.
6.Use analytics to always be improving
Analytics plays a critical role in creating successful business strategies and provides a solid foundation for making well-informed decisions. Organizations that use sales analytics boost team quota attainment 4 times faster than those companies that don’t do that.
Define the metrics that are most important to you (call rate and win rate, pipeline conversion rate, the average number of touches, sales cycle length, etc.), and the sales enablement software will help you to visualize trends and provide insights and analytics with the help of dashboards.