3 Steps to Improving Sales Productivity

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Increasing sales productivity is one of the most powerful growth levers that sales managers can use to scale their business. The more productive your reps are, the faster they’ll build lists of target prospects, create meaningful relationships, and close deals.

But optimizing sales productivity isn’t as easy as implementing a new tool or hosting a team training. It’s a combination of calculated, strategic efforts rooted in testing, reporting, and reiterating.

So, how do you build a process for improving sales productivity and quality control? We partnered with NoCRM.io to explore three important steps to creating an effective strategy.

Accelerate sales onboarding

An effective sales training program for new hires guarantees your reps start their sales journey with a clear path to success. A clearly defined sales training process includes:

• Setting expectations for a rep’s average workload

• Detailing your ideal customer profile (ICP) and target market

• Teaching best practices for leveraging your sales tools

• Practicing giving a successful sales pitch.

During the sales onboarding process, encourage your reps to take detailed notes. Make sure you give them an opportunity to regularly practice and implement the strategies you teach them. Lastly, schedule frequent role-play meetings for them to practice your workflow and give candid feedback when your expectations aren’t being met.

The more streamlined your sales onboarding process is, the faster your reps are able to begin driving revenue. Be sure to give your sales training program the attention it deserves before your new hires join your team.

Build strong sales workflows

A successful sales workflow is both repeatable and scalable, with a clearly defined journey from prospect to customer. The stronger your workflow, the faster you can expect your business to grow.

There is no “one size fits all” strategy to guarantee growth. Sales workflows are strongly dependent on your market, product, ICP, and other factors. However, there are many things that are still within your control when looking to build your sales workflow from scratch or gut-check your current strategy.

1. Research your prospects – Understand if a prospect fits your ICP and set the groundwork for building rapport

2. Connect via sales calls or email – Use the first touchpoint with a prospect as an opportunity to build a meaningful connection

3. Qualify your potential clients – Ensure that the problem your prospect is looking to solve can be successfully solved by your product offering

4. Demonstrate value – Show how your product solves the problem your prospect has, and alleviate any doubt that you are the right solution

5. Close the deal – You’ve worked hard to get the deal this far, and now is your chance to take it across the finish line

Track team performance

Sales teams should always be tracking high-level metrics like overall sales growth, amount of pipeline created, and win rate. These are the numbers your executives and board members need to see to ensure you’re growing to plan.

But a sales manager looking to improve productivity needs to look more granularly, down to the rep level, to understand how efficient their team is at executing sales workflows and delivering results.

Thanks to tools like Aircall and NoCRM.io, there are more ways than ever before to monitor and track your sales team’s performance, including metrics you should be closely watching like:

• Number of outbound calls/rep

• Average call length

• Conversion rate

• Hit rate

• Call quality

• Call sentiment

• Pipeline generated/rep

• Win rate/rep

Scaling for the future

Improving sales productivity is undeniably an uphill battle. The amount of tweaks and tests you can perform with your strategy is endless. Strive to find the right combination of levers to pull to align your team’s productivity with your company’s growth goals⁠.

Don’t forget, even the smallest changes can make a big difference in the outcomes of your reps’ efforts.

Further Reading

Simple Tips to Accelerate Sales Onboarding

How to Structure a Sales Workflow that Closes Deals Faster

Power Dialer Tips: 5 Quick Wins to Improve Sales Efficiency

Published on July 19, 2019.