Every business aims to improve its performance by increasing its sales productivity. But this is not an easy task. One has to change its overall approach of sales and marketing to increase sales productivity. Sales productivity implies increasing the sales of the organization with the least resources. Thus implying one has to increase its sales effectively and efficiently. To do so, the businesses have to undergo comprehensive research and analysis to find out the areas that are lacking behind and thereby take corrective actions to boost their performance.
To improve sales productivity, it is important to find out the area’s leading to the inefficiency of the sales team so that one can work upon it. These areas do not allow your organization to reach the level of greatness. Hence one should carefully identify these areas. Some of these are explained as follow:
The excessive performance pressure on the sales rep can adversely affect their performance, leading to lower productivity. The targets that are to be set for the sales rep to achieve must be practical and feasible; otherwise, it will hamper the overall performance.
The inconsistent sales strategies and processes add chaos and confusion, making it impossible to achieve the sales team’s goals.
Misunderstanding in top, middle and lower management occurs due to lack of communication. There is no clearly defined roles and responsibility of what to be expected of one another. This all contributes to performance inefficiency.
There is a prevalent negative sales culture where the sales reps do not work as a team but as competitors. Thus, they don’t work towards the organization’s common goal but for their own individual goal, which hampers the productivity of the organization.
Resistance to embrace new changes and technology has always been the major reason for the organization not realizing its full potential.
In almost all the businesses, there is no proper organization of sales activities, i.e., the proper priority of sales activity is not set, which leads to chaos and confusion.
The inefficient sales training session also leads to a decrease in the productivity of the sales team. It is important to evolve one’s sales techniques and session as per the dynamic environment in business.
Unnecessary paper works also affect the performance of the sales team. The data entry work eats up the time that must be utilized for bringing in new leads. This, in fact, eats 20 percent of their precious time.
These are some of the inefficiency that stands in the way of the organization to increase its sales productivity. Hence, it is very important for the organization to work towards improving it so that everyone is on the right track for achieving the goals of sales productivity. Certain practical ways can help the organization to do so.
- Measure: One needs to develop a mechanism through which they can measure the selling. It is important that one must be clear that there is a difference between sales and selling. Sales can be easily measured by looking at revenues, sales quotas, etc. In contrast, it is difficult to calculate selling, and it is the selling that indicates the level of sales productivity prevalent in the organization. To measure selling, key sales productivity metrics are to be identified. These include call rates, win rates, conversion rates, etc. This will measure all the sales reps’ productivity and help the salesperson remain focused on improving these metrics.
- Reduce the paperwork: Most of the salesperson spends their time in filling up the paperwork that wastes their time as it must have been utilized for more productive purposes. Therefore, the organization must work toward automating such work as much as possible as it will help the sales team to realize their full potential.
- Sales Training: Proper sales training as per the need of sales rep goes in the long way to improve sales productivity. For this, it is important for the organization to carefully identify the training needs of the sales reps and accordingly devise training methods to fulfill these needs. Proper training will ensure that the sales teams work toward achieving the common goal of the organization. Training will nurture the talent of the sales team and thus provide them the right direction.
- Focus on Quality Leads: Leads are essential for generating more sales for the company. But not all leads get closed. Hence it is important to focus on the quality leads, which have a high potential of converting into sales. Focusing on wrong leads will only lead to wastage of time, efforts, and money. There are certain factors that one must keep in mind so that the right prospective consumer is identified. Some of these are the company’s location, demographic factors, various challenges, etc.; these will help identify the quality leads for the organization.
- Communication: Communication is the key to avoid all types of confusion and chaos. It is very important for the top level to communicate regularly with the sales team so that there is no misunderstanding about them. Communication is essential so that new ideas can be shared that will help to increase productivity. Communication is also required to establish control so that proper feedback is provided to the sales team for improving their performance.
- Set Priority: It is important to organize the schedule of sales activity as per their priority. This will ensure that everything takes place in an orderly manner without any disruptions. Allocate every task in proper time so that there is no chaos. Focus on those tasks first that will help to boost sales productivity.
- Sales Tools: In today time to improve the sale productivity, it is important to utilize the various sales tools properly in such a way that will increase the revenue of the organization and also keep track of various activities of the sales teams that will help the organization to identify who are contributing what towards overall sales productivity.
Hence these are some of the tips through which the organization can improve its sales productivity.
