“It’s not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.”

– Nathan W. Morris

When it comes to getting more out of sales reps’ efforts, automation is a one-stop solution. But there is a catch: while automation can make your workflow easier and more efficient, it ultimately depends on the sales rep’s productivity.

So, what exactly do we mean by sales representative productivity ?

Sales productivity is a measurement of how your company uses tools, resources, and processes to achieve key business objectives while reducing the time and costs associated with acquiring new customers.

Your entire organization is measured on sales productivity. Your organization’s high performers or outliers can help you identify and scale the finest strategies to increase productivity.

In other words, the term “sales productivity” describes the correlation between a sales representative’s input efficiency and the resulting sales output, i.e., effectiveness.

Two key terms efficiency and effectiveness are the pillars to the understanding of productivity. Optimizing a rep’s use of time is the key to improving sales efficiency.

An effective salesperson prioritizes high-impact chores like call preparation over low-impact ones like administrative work.

The ability of a rep to generate sales is related to sales effectiveness. A highly effective salesperson makes advantage of the tools at hand to win clients. Importantly, in order to close sales, these resources—content, direction, and training—must be accessible.

The next stage is to comprehend the significance of assessing sales productivity now that you are aware of what it is.

What is the importance of sales productivity ?

Sales productivity is a crucial factor for any sales or sales enablement leader trying to enhance their team’s capacity for generating revenue because highly productive reps close more deals.

With data-driven insights, you can determine why salespeople are having trouble and take steps to assist them.

It is observed that

  • 58% of pipeline stalls because reps are unable to add value.
  • 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.

This indicates a huge opportunity to get a competitive edge and boost your visibility into important sales activities.

Use SendBuzz to increase your Sales Representatives productiviity

Strategies to drive sales productivity

Constant sales coaching and training: 

  • Sales representatives can start selling effectively sooner with shorter ramp times. Sales training is more than just a week of orientation seminars and shadowing.

  •  Effective sales coaching and training is instead continual and tailored to the specific rep. Learning and coaching systems must advance in order to properly train sales representatives and guarantee that they retain information. 

  • Organizations must first look outside the conventional in-person boot camps for training. Sales coaching and training should go digital as more corporate operations do.

  • One such innovative technique to increase your sales rep’s productivity is through the use of sales engagement software. Sales engagement solutions with an intuitive UI can dramatically increase your sales rep’s productivity. 

  • Most importantly, sales engagement enables sales professionals to automate administrative tasks and enhance prospect comprehension.

  • When a seller has mastered managing objections, their individualized sales training plan can shift to another skill, like comprehending the interface of sales engagement, which will enable them to become more effective and productive.

Align sales and marketing on common objective:

  • The foundation of sales productivity is the alignment of sales and marketing. Marketo claims that when sales and marketing teams collaborate, deals are closed 67% more successfully.

  • But what does alignment mean for the sales and marketing teams? Aligning sales and marketing teams is based on the knowledge that both teams have common objectives that must be met in order to provide the best possible customer service.

  • Both teams can create a shared strategy and decide the actions their teams will take to achieve it when sales and marketing leadership work together.

  • Sales and marketing directors can decide how many leads need to be generated, how many calls need to be booked, and how many demos are required if, for instance, the organization’s pipeline target is $20M.

  • Go-to-market (GTM) teams can increase efficiency by putting in place structured procedures when they work together to construct client journeys.

  •  Sales representatives can distribute the appropriate content at the appropriate time and keep deals going ahead when marketers produce content for each stage of the buyer journey.

  • Send Buzz AI writers can help you with the appropriate content at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Evaluate and enhance performance

  • A good sales engagement strategy requires constant monitoring and development. Your sales operations produce useful data and insights, from sales training and effort workflow to the personalized outreach your prospect has access to.

  • Your organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) should be in line with your objectives for salesperson productivity. 

  • Your company can find opportunities to increase salesperson productivity by keeping track of crucial sales indicators like average ramp time, content utilization, average deal time, and time spent selling. 

  • It’s also advantageous to regularly go over your sales data dashboard with salespeople so they understand how the team and they as individuals are performing during the quarter.

Some situations and key problems related to productivity of the sales rep’s and how those problems can be solved.

  1. Set high-impact, urgent tasks as priorities.

    The problem:
    Reps should give customer-facing tasks a higher priority, but they are unable to do so due to other obligations.

    The solution:
    To address administrative and technical chores, use sales engagement. Investing in sales engagement will increase rep effectiveness and make sure that the appropriate content, direction, and automation are available and simple to access.

  2. Delegate important but not urgent tasks to technology.

    The problem:
    When account management, services, marketing, and other departments can carry out these tasks more effectively, reps conduct customer-facing tasks outside of sales’ area of expertise.

    The solution:
    Drive close alignment between administrative and sales operations. Templates and technology enable technology to perform the labor-intensive tasks so that sales may concentrate on what they do best—sell.

  3. Automate quick, low-impact tasks

    The problem:
    Although repeated, recurring activities aid in closing sales, their frequency takes up too much of the time of sales representatives.

    The solution:
    Integrate sales tools to cut down on duplication of effort (such as CRM updates). Automate end-stage chores and early-stage activities like prospecting and proposal generation. Utilize a sales enablement to scale up personalization of outreach and do away with time-consuming processes like content research.

Want to grow your outreach? Try SendBuzz today!

Conclusion

Start by providing the framework and materials your sales representatives need to properly engage their clients. Sales report can help you with these practices metrics like click-through rate, open rate, reply rate helps you analyze the best practices that has been working for you. Your sales force can go to market more effectively and track performance to get better over time with the correct sales productivity tools and plan.