Are you stuck in your current sales numbers? If you are like most people, you are asking the same question everyone in this situation asks- “How to make the sales team more productive & achieve high growth?”.
Very few people actually know how to get the most out of their sales team. But, you need not worry. Because we are going to help you. Whether you are looking to achieve more sales revenue or higher growth, a more productive sales team can help you reach your goals.
Use the following 8 highly effective strategies to boost your sales team’s productivity and gain higher revenue.
Effective Strategies to Boost Your Sales Team’s Productivity
Establish Clear Goals and Expectations
Be upfront and tell your sales team members about the expectations, be it sales targets that sales reps need to achieve, or specific metrics for specific strategies. Having specific and measurable targets for your team allows the team members to know what goals to work for. This is going to ensure everyone is on the same page and has a similar overall goal in the bigger picture.
Sales performance is typically measured with KPI (key performance indicator) for each specific objective over a period of time. They are not the perfect measurements of performance, but they will get the job done for you.
66% of sales teams have customer satisfaction as their KPI, closely followed by team and individual quota met. That being said, you should pick KPIs that suit your organization’s needs.
Setting goals doesn’t just give focus and accountability, but also a sense of achievement when accomplished. While individual goals might not be the same as team goals, they should naturally complement each other. You may need to revise the goals and expectations based on feedback and performance. These will ensure that they remain relevant and attainable.
Implement Comprehensive Onboarding and Training
Even if you hire the best talents, it does not guarantee you success. Without proper onboarding and training your employees won’t be able to maximize their full potential. After hiring, you need to onboard employees properly. Get them acquainted with the company culture. Instill them with sales values and mindset. However, there is no better alternative than starting with the basics.
When taught in the traditional way, new employees easily forget most of what they are learning. Within 90 days, newly hired workers will remember only 16% of what they learned. You need to teach them in a more visual and practical way to have them retain their training.
You should allocate more time when you are teaching to sell complex products. You should prepare new sales reps for the different situations they’ll face in the real world, be it handling fear of rejection from the buyer or the pressure of achieving targets.
Even after they become full-time employees, you will need to give more training to them. There is no ceiling for skill improvement. Letting the sales team develop and giving them opportunities will help your company in the long run. Highly skilled sales employees will help your company grow.
Leverage Technology to Support Your Team
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems are widely used to manage the entire sales cycle, from sales leads and sales processes to even managing sales teams. They help you streamline customer service processes by simplifying workflows, analyzing data, automating tasks, and building sales pipelines.
A sales-focused CRM can manage customer interactions across different channels, such as email, social media, voice, and chat, resulting in improved efficiency, team performance visibility, and market analysis. Sales CRM helps you identify sales opportunities, nurture leads, manage client accounts, generate quotes, and track proposals.
To take care of the customers, you should use software like TeleCRM. Starting from capturing leads, managing the leads, and nurturing them to become paying customers, to managing the sales team. You will get access to call tracking, follow-up reminder, and cross-sell or upsell them later.
Apart from CRM, there are more tools to make your sales team become more productive. Which tools you should use is going to depend on your business. Account-based marketing technology is for targeting high-value customers, but this wouldn’t be useful to those looking for high-quantity sales. Email management tools will help you automate campaigns, and manage emails more effectively.
You also need to implement efficient time management techniques to get the best out of your sales team. You should use employee monitoring software to keep track of employee activities. This is going to help you boost your sales team’s productivity by reducing time wastage.
Optimize Processes and Workflows
To optimize the processes taken by the sales reps, you should create a sales process and standard operating procedures for each step. The steps should include all the processes, from turning potential leads into paying customers and nurturing them.
There may be some bottlenecks in your existing framework, for example- delays in approval, complicated pricing, complex processes, etc. These might be slowing everything down or decreasing efficiency. You should identify them and solve them as fast as possible. This will allow high consistency and increases the sales success rate.
You should also implement sales process best practices. Don’t leave the sales process open to interpretation. Measure KPIs and consistently update the framework. Don’t be afraid of trying out different options and see what works best.
Focus on Prospect and Lead Qualification
One fact you should keep in mind is- Not all leads lead to conversion. It is essential that you target the leads who are more likely to be your future customers. Targeting too big of an audience will be full of low-quality leads and waste the time of your sales team.
Targeting high-quality leads allows your team to focus on customers who have a higher chance to buy. Since they know about the value provided by you, they are easier to close. Since, there is a low quantity of lead volume, a lot of time is saved. Which will increase your sales team’s productivity and lead to increased sales revenue.
Few techniques for an effective lead qualification that you can follow:
- The sales team should know which types of customers to target. You can create ideal customer profiles or buyer personas for making the sales team understand who they should sell to. For instance, you will never sell a house to someone who can’t afford to buy one.
- Use data & analytics, along with a lead scoring system for setting priorities and gauging interest.
- Segmenting the leads in smaller groups will help your stay organized and find better ways to manage each group.
- Streamline the process of lead qualification and let all of your sales team know that.
- Nurture the relationship with personalized messages and provide any support they might need. Happy customers will not just have better retention, but also going to act as advocate for your company.
Focus on the challenges faced by the customers and how to target them successfully by solving their needs. Understanding customers will lead to faster prospecting and more successful conversion.
Maintain Open Communication with Your Team
Giving your employee feedback on their work & performance is essential for creating a positive loop in a business. Correct feedback improves job performance and enhances employee morale. Positive feedback reinforces desired behavior and increases employee confidence, meanwhile giving constructive feedback tries to fix existing behaviors and issues.
Taking feedback from your employees is also important. They should be free to share ideas on how to increase efficiency. Making your sales team feel included in the decision-making will increase their sense of belonging and increase their motivation. Figure out what motivates your sales reps and try to provide them with these amenities.
Encouraging collaboration in your team is a great factor in the success of your sales team. Collaboration and teamwork can increase your sales by 27%. A collaborative environment and knowledge sharing help sales reps be more productive. Sharing experiences and knowledge can help employees get better at their work.
Reward Productivity and Celebrate Victories
You should keep in mind that- Top performers are who drive your business. Those who are bringing in more customers, and doing a lot of hard work need some form of incentive to keep doing that, be it monetary or non-monetary. You should praise and provide incentives for top-performing sales reps. Try to reward behaviors that drive results and increase performance.
People want to be appreciated for their achievements. That’s why you should recognize even small achievements. Not just individual, but team recognition is also important. Doing even little things, for example- celebrating after hitting a weekly goal, can increase the morale of your sales team.
Celebrations get everyone excited but also remind them what can be achieved when everyone is working hard. Morale is crucial for maintaining a highly productive sales team. A highly inspired team will work more efficiently and boost your sales.
Continuously Evaluate and Adapt
Despite the best efforts, your sales team might not be perfect. The world and your competitors are always changing. You can’t be complacent either. You have to make data-driven decisions by monitoring sales performance. You need to identify the pitfalls and inefficient processes and resolve them fast.
Constant innovation is hard, but adapting to change is a must for the survival of any business. That is true for your sales team as well. In an ever-changing world, change is going to be the only constant. That’s why you should embrace change. Stay agile and find any challenges faced by the team and solve them as soon as possible.
Conclusion
Whether you are establishing clear goals or continuously adapting, following the strategies mentioned will increase your sales team’s productivity. Only by unlocking the true potential of your sales team, you can raise sales revenue and drive better results for the business.
