What is sales productivity?
In simple words, commercial team productivity means increasing profits and reducing costs. The concept is simple: the sales of the product or service are increased while minimizing the use of resources, and therefore the profits are increased.
Are not companies already doing this? The answer is yes. Sales productivity is the number one focus of any business. Whatever the business model, one of the main objectives is trying to optimize your sales process as much as possible. However, there is always room for growth.
How to increase sales productivity?
The sales productivity can be easily optimized from an analytical point of view of the sales process, trying to eliminate those unnecessary tasks and streamlining workflow. Although optimizing the productivity of the sales team seems simple in most cases and could be increased by making small changes to workflows, often it is necessary to go much further to fully optimize the sales process.
This happens because most commercials do not meet their sales quota, which culminates in a company or business that is not able to achieve its annual sales goal. This could easily be avoided by an effective sales management strategy.
Sales management has different definitions depending on who asks and also who answers:
- If you ask for a human resources profile, the answer will be found in continuous training processes and professional development plans for the commercial department.
- If it were up to the marketing team, they will say that it is the content produced by their department and that this is what helps to close subsequent commercial agreements.
- If that same question is thrown at the development department, they will answer that technology, etc.
The interesting thing is that all of this is correct for any company since sales management is the set of all of the above. It is the continuous process of training, communication, and equipping the sales team to close more offers and generate more income.
Why do companies need to improve the productivity of the sales team?
The commercial department of a company is undoubtedly one of the fundamental pillars of any business. In this sense, they are the people in charge of increasing the income and profits of a company. 80% of sales reps do not achieve their annual sales goals, and this is due to several factors:
- Sales reps spend more time on redundant and repetitive tasks like data entry, writing and answering emails, etc.
- There is a lack of training and qualification in this area.
- Selling trends, which change continuously, are unknown.
The improvement of these problems means that any business can double the income by improving the productivity of the sales team.
It will be done by developing a good sales management strategy focused on eliminating or automating redundant tasks. The training, qualification, and continuous improvement of the sales staff effectively. As well as the motivation of the worker with incentives or other incentives.
Eight productivity tools for salespeople
The sales process goes far beyond commercial visits. It is a complex journey that must be managed and controlled if one wants to close the sale successfully. Or, at least, secure the next visit. To this is added the pressure of the competition and the amount of supply and channels. That is why it is important to increase our productivity. There are several productivity tools for salespeople that will help users focus more on the customer.
Personal productivity tools
Every salesperson should have these types of tools on hand:
Contact management: How does it help us not have to “research” a contact on social media before adding it to the online CRM?
Post tracking. Who opened our last email? In what time slot do our clients respond best? Do you open the links to our offers? There are several tracking apps, some free. If we send our commercial emails from an online CRM, we will also receive notifications in real-time and a campaign monitoring report.
Notes. If we use an online business management program, it must come with a Notes and Documents application. Simple tasks such as uploading a diet ticket, a photo of a business card, or a pdf, everything is in the same place and safe.
Productivity and marketing tools
RRSS follow-up: Many hours of the marketing department are invested in knowing what they say about us. There are apps developed to do this monitoring. We can receive alerts with the comments made on our keywords. It can be a product, it can be our general and personal brand, and it also helps us monitor our customers and the competition.
Schedule posts incorporate its follow-up alerts. Above all, it allows us to schedule publications and manage different profiles, reducing the management time of RRSS and also the “lapses” when confusing the account. It unfolds in tabs so that we can select what we want to see and when.
Productivity tools for business teams
Project organization has a common space for all team members to share and manage in real-time, as well as storage spaces. This is an easily developed task in any online CRM. The team leader has user permissions so that clients, notes, documents, and everything else can be shared.
Video Conferences and webinars. Videoconferencing applications, such as Skype, Google Hangouts, give us the ability to record conversations to be broadcast later on a delayed basis.
Final Thoughts
It is pertinent to note that efficiency and effectiveness are the key elements that go a long way in improving the sales productivity. Aiding the team with the required tools enables them to upscale themselves and boost their efforts in not just meeting but surpassing their sales targets. It makes good business sense that the sales productivity tools are implemented in the organization on priority basis and are also integrated with the existing CRM. A data driven approach of measuring as well as mapping of results will provide the benchmark for future strategies.
