Boosting the sales productivity of your sales team should always be a priority, whether they’re struggling to meet expectations or demolishing the competition by every metric. You’ll eventually hit a wall, where you’ll need to consider other angles for improving your bottom line, but for the most part you’ll find you can get more out of your sales team without increasing stress or the burden on each team member.
To that end, we’re going to discuss five sales productivity tips today–tips that should get you that extra bit from your team. Each will have widely varying effects on individual team members, but hopefully with all five you’ll see an across-the-board improvement in your sales productivity!
Knocking out difficult tasks early is perhaps the single greatest thing an individual can do for their sales productivity. It sets a tone for the day, makes sure the early-morning hours don’t waste away as they too-often do, and leaves lighter tasks for those hours when focus begins to wane in the afternoon.
For that reason, you should make a pronounced effort to encourage that sort of ‘heavy’ morning in your sales team. Consider ways to discourage the ‘lazy morning’ that’s natural to so many.
It pays to keep everyone on the same page and make clear to your sales team what you expect in terms of sales productivity. Hard goals to aim for and surpass do wonders for sales productivity, so long as they’re thoughtfully planned to be ‘difficult but reasonable’ for your team to achieve.
You should also acknowledge success louder and more frequently than failure; recognizing those who meet your expectations may not come as naturally as dressing down those who fail to do so, but it does more for sales productivity in the long run than ruling by fear.
If you’re paying attention to the individuals on your sales team as you should be, you’ll know who excels in which areas. Make sure you have the guy who is best at cold calls making the hard cold calls, the best who is best at writing handling the email copy, etc., etc.
Putting the right man or woman in the right place at the right time will do wonders for sales productivity–random placement means inefficient placement, which means man-hours lost to the void.
Having your things in the right place for maximum work efficiency is important, but frequently overlooked. Your sales team will find it difficult to build momentum if their workplaces aren’t properly arranged for extended work sessions.
Consider how many hours can disappear over a year when your team members constantly need to hunt for a pen, or a white sheet, or post-it. Encourage your sales team to keep their workstations set up for individual productivity–whatever that means for them.
Incentives can encourage inefficient behaviors if positioned poorly. Make sure you reward the right behaviors the right way–that means two things: Understanding which metrics to look at when analyzing your team’s performance, and understanding what makes people work hardest. The first one will vary with industry and team goals; you’re on your own, more or less. The latter one we can help with, however:
Incentive systems should be simple, intuitive, and not cash-based if possible. You want to build a clear, coherent, lasting connection between doing the right work for maximum sales productivity and getting a reward. Arcane, incoherent systems don’t do that well. Cash doesn’t work well because it loses its association with the work done very quickly in a worker’s mind (according to numerous studies), so stick with benefits and personalized rewards where you can.
Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.