Seven Strategies That Boost Sales Productivity

Sales is a difficult job with representatives working long hours to meet demanding quotas while keeping clients loyal and returning for repeat business. While good sales reps remain dedicated to hitting their company’s goals, the chance for employee burnout while doing so is high. There are seven strategies that boost sales productivity.

You’ll need strategies that boost sales productivity, as competitors will always be looking to swipe your prospects.

Fortunately, sales reps are naturally competitive individuals driven by a desire to win, increase personal excellence, and be their company’s top performer. It falls on sales operations to find the right tools and processes to enable those sales reps to maintain that edge and continue hitting their targets.

The following are seven practical tools and strategies sales reps can use to help their reps work more efficiently without feeling the burnout. Ultimately, well-planned strategy will boost productivity and drive your company revenue.

Clean and Actionable Sales Performance Management (SPM) Data

Data must be usable. There is a lot of SPM data everywhere, but until it’s clean, organized, and centralized, it is nothing more than a lot of names and numbers. Ironically, sales data contains some of a business’ most valuable information.

This SPM data will provide critical insights into the all-important, but often elusive, customer journey. Much of the sales data has gone unmanaged, and CRM data has taken priority. This does a disservice to organizations since CRM data is subjective and dependent on sales and marketing people to update it.

Sadly, both the sales and marketing departments have been responsible for procuring information and adding updates. The habit of having departments with somewhat unique goals — leave inaccurate information in the file. We now have the most erroneous data source in the archives.

Companies with large salesforces in highly competitive markets are starting to understand that the data unlocked by their sales performance management (SPM) systems.

Your SPM system might hold the keys to the kingdom for your company. The most advanced SPM platforms will already have the capability to pull data in from almost any source in a matter of hours (not days). Use this accurate data accessible to help sales leaders readily identify geographies with ease.

Note how quickly you see the potential for business growth and cross-selling productivity opportunities.

Combine accessible, accurate data and no-code application development capabilities. That enables quick development of focused reports; sales leaders can quickly and easily activate that data and provide sales reps instant access to the key insights that will help them achieve their goals quickly and efficiently.

No-Code Apps

Fast and actionable data is crucial for salespeople to close deals quickly. It’s essential for sales people to promptly analyze actionable insights to make more informed and impactful decisions. Sales reps will focus on the right opportunities using no-code data management tools.

Gaining instant access to information about customers and prospects in a timely and efficient manner is the key to boost sales.

No-code applications enable sales to validate and pre-process data via no-code extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities. These capabilities allow the data to be consolidated and organized without sales having to work with additional third-party tools or write complicated code.

Automating the time-consuming code writing process enables sales to pull aggregated data in a matter of minutes. You’ll give your salespeople more time to do what they do best quickly and efficiently – sell.

Real-Time Performance Metrics

In order to help sales reps succeed and achieve professional satisfaction, they must have visibility into their performance metrics. How many calls are they making? How many meetings have they scheduled? How many deals are they closing?

The data shared through SPM data provides sales with this valuable information, allowing them to measure their own performance. Salespeople can see where they want to pick up the pace to close more deals.

Sales Pipeline Analysis

Sales must perform ongoing analysis of its sales pipeline – tracking opportunities from the first contact to a closed sale. Sales pipeline analysis enables the transactions data to monitor the unfolding sales process and reveal which areas have the potential for improvement.

Analyzing the data helps reps achieve their objectives by allowing them to make accurate forecasts based on the number and quality of leads in the sales pipeline. To perform this analysis successfully and to achieve the desired results, sales reps need to identify the pipeline stages in the particular selling process.

You’ll see the number of deals in the pipeline, the average sales cycle, win rates, average deal sizes, and even the stagnant opportunities. These stages should flow logically, smoothly leading prospects from one step to the next, all the way to closing the sale.

Mobile Alerts and Accessibility

Mobile apps are geared toward the always-on-the-go sales rep. They ensure reps get instant access to crucial information about clients and prospects. You’ll facilitate collaboration and communication with managers and colleagues. By using mobile apps to visualize and act upon real-time business metrics, sales reps are empowered to exceed across individual and team goals.

Additionally, mobile productivity calculators allow sales reps to gauge their own performance against their coworkers wherever they might be, providing clear, concise “need-to-know” intel that helps them reach their next sales goal quickly.

Gamification

The use of mobile apps has also spurred on greater interest in gamification, which is a great tool that resonates well with competitive sales reps who want to win and be recognized for their efforts. With things like leaderboards, gamification naturally taps into this competitive nature. Allow reps to see how they are performing against their colleagues. Gamification can also be used for administrative tasks, like filling out forms and updating sales data. Giving sales recognition for doing these tasks may seem trivial, but it keeps them motivated.

Communication

Sales reps want to know how they are performing at all times. As a result, many organizations are increasingly utilizing technology to support those on the frontline.

Digital platforms that combine messaging capabilities with incentive compensation systems enable sales operations to inform sales reps. The sales rep needs information about comp plan changes, territories, contests, and other vital matters that affect the quality of their performance.

This includes clear communication of targets and goals, ways to close more deals quickly. The reps will learn how to strengthen relationships with customers and turn repeat customers into champions for the organization. Also, sales ops have robust reporting analytics to coach their sales reps in these matters effectively.

Conclusion

Sales reps work hard to earn their compensation year-round. Your reps should be equipped with the tools and strategies that help them hit their quotas, and close those long-lead sales more quickly and efficiently. By using strategic tools that enable them to sell more effectively, sales reps can work more efficiently during the day and hit their organization’s goals, all without feeling the burn.

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