Today’s most insightful marketing professionals are substantially redefining the way they manage their sales teams. They’re rethinking their sales strategies in response to changing market conditions. 

They’re broadening their target customer base far beyond what anyone had ever anticipated. They are increasing the productivity of their sales reps not by hiring the most talented individuals, but by assisting existing reps in selling more.

A scientific approach to sales productivity is something that these leaders have in common. Here in this article, let’s get to the basics of sales productivity in relevance to businesses.

What is Sales Productivity?

Sales Productivity is a technique that envelopes the art of sales, relying not only on intuition and natural sales talent or the conventional aspects of the rainmaker—but also on statistics, evaluation, operations, and a systematic approach.

The goal of sales productivity is to maximize a sales rep’s output while reducing the assets available to do so.

Sales productivity intertwines metrics to provide a comprehensive picture of a sales rep’s effectiveness.

Why is Sales Productivity Important for Businesses?

Sales productivity provides a clearer idea of a salesperson’s ability and the obstacles they face in closing a deal. their performance just shows companies a partial picture, while efficiency gives them a complete picture.

What are the Metrics to Record for Sales Productivity?

Here is where 49% of businesses go overboard. They monitor only sales-related metrics, not other activities that give rise to the main sale. A sales representative typically devotes 22% of their time on administrative tasks, 5% in meetings, 6% in planning, and so on.

The first error businesses make is struggling to account for these tasks. These are the sales productivity metrics you should be tracking for a more accurate picture.

Choosing the Right Tools

When teams want to be more productive in sales, they need to spend more time practicing it. To do so, you’ll need to have all the key information about a lead at one place so rather than chasing data, you’ll be able to find the hottest leads and close those deals.

The CRM acts as that one spot for sales management. Sales representatives can see information in the CRM like email campaign engagement or which pages a prospect visits on your website when they use a CRM with marketing automation. 

Sales associates can accurately identify what concepts they are focused on, without having to conduct further research.

Best Practices for Sales Productivity

1. Role-playing is used in practical educational programs.
2. Sessions of mutual training and debate to address guiding principles.
3. Training programs that are up to date and provide new on-the-ground sales challenges.
4. Team leads should interview present customers to identify potential pitfalls and criteria.
5. In the ICP template, provide information for sales reps to refer to during the study.
6. Companies should teach reps to incorporate calendar notifications after each call (but this requires manual efforts).
7. Gamify sales campaigns to encourage healthy competition among peers.
8. Use time sensitive competitions to inspire ingenuity in achieving goals.