On average, salespeople report that only one-third of their time is spent talking to prospects. What if you could increase the amount of time your salespeople spend selling by just 5% or 10%? Even a small improvement like this can have a profound impact on your revenue.
That’s the idea behind sales productivity. Instead of hiring more reps to increase sales performance you simply boost the productivity of your current team. This way, not only do you make more sales, but you also have a happier sales team.
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Most companies have onboarding and sales training programs in place for new hires. Unfortunately, this process usually only lasts a week and then employees are on their own. If you really want to get the most out of your team you need to continue to invest in ways to grow their knowledge and skills.
Make sure to give new team members access to the training and resources they need to be successful. After onboarding is complete, check in with them on a regular basis to identify areas they need to improve upon and create a plan to get them the help they need.
Offering ongoing training exercises and classes is another way to ensure your team is always learning new skills.
At the start of this article, we mentioned that salespeople only spend about one-third of their day actually selling. That’s because the rest of their time is spent performing tasks like writing emails, data entry, and scheduling meetings. By automating this work you free up your team to talk to more prospects.
Look into tools that reduce your reps’ workload. There are many sales engagement platforms available that automatically enter data into CRMs, create email templates, and limit the amount of admin work that’s required.
To further our previous point, your team should also utilize tools that automate the sales process and help them identify better leads.
Some of the most important tools a salesperson needs include:
As a sales manager, you also need to embrace tools. Make sure you have analytics in place to track your team’s performance and use sales territory planning software to create effective territories that let you maximize your resources.
Before you begin improving your productivity you need to know where you currently stand. Make sure you have a dashboard in place to measure a variety of key metrics. These might include:
The metrics you choose will depend on your business and your sales goals. Once you have your KPIs in place use the data you collect to determine where you’re meeting expectations and where you’re lagging behind. From there, set goals and track your results to ensure you’re getting the most out of your sales team.
CRMs and spreadsheets are great, but all that data is overwhelming at times. The information you collect holds valuable insights and you need a way to clearly identify them. This is why sales mapping software is so important.
By plotting customers, sales, sales reps, and other data on an interactive map you’ll spot new opportunities that weren’t previously visible. Maybe most of your sales come from a certain area. Or maybe there are neighborhoods that you’ve been overlooking.
Sales mapping software allows you to make the most of your data and use it to its fullest potential.
Your sales reps have a lot on their plate. There are dozens of tasks they need to complete each day and it’s often difficult to determine what’s most important. Make sure to clearly communicate what activities are a priority to ensure those get done before anything else. Generally speaking, sales-related activities should always come before any other type of work.
You should also review all the tasks your salespeople are performing to determine what’s leading to sales and what isn’t. If they’re doing a lot of busywork that isn’t resulting in sales see if there’s another area of the business that’s able to take that work on.
In addition to admin work, field sales reps also spend a lot of time on the road. Naturally, you want your salespeople to get to customers as quickly as possible so they can make more stops per day.
Luckily, there are a number of route optimization tools available. For example, Maptive allows you to find the fastest route between two or more locations. Simply enter your starting point and all your stops, and then Maptive will reorganize your destinations and create the most efficient route possible.
While we like to think that a job well done is its own reward, that’s not always the case. Salespeople want to know that their hard work is being appreciated and noticed.
Celebrate and reward your team for reaching their goals and achieving milestones, but don’t stop there. Make sure to acknowledge the little victories as well. It only takes a moment to thank a salesperson for staying late to make a sale or going the extra mile to secure a new client, but it makes a massive difference in the long run.
Optimized sales territories provide you with a number of benefits that improve productivity, boost morale, and increase sales. By creating balanced sales territories you will:
Use sales territory mapping software, like Maptive, to create territories based on the locations of your customers and reps. Track the progress of each territory and make adjustments as your needs change to ensure you always have the right resources in the right place.
If you follow all of the above advice you should establish a sales process that helps you achieve your business objectives. But don’t stop there. Your customers, markets, and products are constantly changing, and you need to adapt along with them.
Track your sales results and continue to come up with ways to improve. It’s a good idea to reevaluate all your processes every quarter to make sure they’re still working as intended. You may find that some of your productivity improvements begin to fail over time, so be sure to stay on top of things and make changes as needed.
Looking for an easy way to plot customer locations, optimize sales routes, and create effective sales territories? Try Maptive for free for seven days and start improving your sales productivity.
Fred Metterhausen is a Chicago based computer programmer, and product owner of the current version of Maptive. He has over 15 years of experience developing mapping applications as a freelance developer, including 12 with Maptive. He has seen how thousands of companies have used mapping to optimize various aspects of their workflow.
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