Steps to increasing your sales teams productivity
In order to increase the productivity and efficiency of your sales team follow these steps to solve some common issues that hold sales performance back. Evaluating these with the help of a strategic business mentor or coach like Phil can give you the added benefit of increased insight and experience.
1. Increase Sales Reps time spent on selling.
Today’s salespeople are spending the majority of their time on activities other than sales. On average sales reps are spending only 35% of their time on actually selling. Are you tracking how much time your sales team are actually spending on sales? Find out what things are keeping them from growing sales and make a strategic plan to alleviate them in order to improve performance.
2. Decrease Sales rep time spent on administration.
Administration tasks can take up a good part of a day with emails, preparing for upcoming calls, scheduling, creating documents such as proposals and contracts, and checking in with other team members. What strategies and tools do you have in place to balance these tasks.
It is likely you are using a customer relationship management (CRM) database, but make sure you’re using it to its full potential. Is your data flow automated from your website to your CRM to your reporting. Are you using other tools which integrate seamlessly for scheduling, emails and team communication. While too many tools can drag down productivity the right mix can increase time spent on sales.
3. Align your sales approach with your marketing
Do you sales reps struggle to find the information they need quickly to complete or follow up on leads. To ensure your team always has great content at their fingertips, your biggest ally is going to be the marketing department. Your sales reps know your business’ customers inside and out and can provide marketing with valuable insight to create targeted, persuasive sales content for each stage of the sales funnel.
4. Increase time spent on prospective sales
Your sales team might spend too much time with existing customers instead of focusing on prospective sales. Is this because your company has not clearly defined what is important? Is your communication clear on which markets and products are priorities, if not sales reps will create their own rules about how to spend time. Coaching, performance management, and sales goals will help to reinforce this communication and improve sales performance.
6. Decide what reporting is important to your growth.
It is important to pay the most attention to the specific metrics that are going to make your team more productive and put you closer to your goals. Getting distracted by shallow metrics that you can not take action on is no help in hitting ambitious sales targets. On the other hand, if your sales reps are drilling so far down into the numbers that they get lost, again, they’re taking their eyes off the sales prize.
5. Match your Sales Reps with the right roles.
When it comes to sales hunters excel at prospecting, generating new opportunities, and closing deals. Farmers on the other hand are better at managing and growing current accounts. They enjoy spending time with prospects, customers or clients and servicing their needs.
To improve short-term revenues maximise the value each personality type brings to the table by coaching and training to augment their inherent skills set. It’s rare to find the qualities of both hunters and farmers in one person but you can cultivate it, instead. To create a high-performing sales organization, you must know your sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses.
7. Find ways to motivate your Sales Team to achieve.
Salespeople are motivated when they perceive value from their efforts: career success, recognition, personal satisfaction, money, or all of the above. Remedies for sales force motivation issues include changing the incentive plan and/or modifying the criteria for recognition programs while acknowledging those who are successful. Salespeople should be able to track up-to-the-minute achievement of all their goals.
Building an effective incentive plan requires a company to align elements within the business in a way that communicates a clear behaviour standard to its employees. The plan must have a purpose; a potential outcome and identify the people that are in a position to impact those outcomes. It must also have a way to standardise the benefit or reward it is going to provide employees and how its value will be measured.
8. Remove any barriers to closing sales
You should start with clear sales processes which include methodology, prospecting strategies and script and prompts which specifically target quality leads. Your sales team should be masters in building valued relationships with prospects who are most likely to buy.
Have your Sales Team been trained to handle objections that are holding them back from converting a sale? A salesperson should be equipped to respond in a way that alleviates customer concerns and allows the deal to move forward. Price objections are the most common type of objection, and are even voiced by prospects who have every intention of buying. Stop focusing on price as a selling point instead, circle back to the product’s value.
Ask yourself....
Have you clearly defined what characteristics your best prospects possess?
Have you developed a clear plan to attract and convert those prospects?
Does your marketing material directly target that specific audience?
Lastly do you need some expert help to get it right?
Contact Phil Today