If you sell a product or service, increasing your company’s sales is a top priority. Customers have more options than ever before, which means businesses need to find ways to stay ahead. For a sales team to generate revenue efficiently and effectively, your organization will need to focus on sales productivity.
In this post, we’ll discuss the key factors influencing sales productivity and effective improvement strategies. Plus, learn why measuring sales productivity is important and how analytics empowers you to maintain it over time.
What is sales productivity?
Sales productivity measures how much revenue a company generates per salesperson or per sales hour. But it goes beyond just the numbers. Sales productivity is about maximizing sales results while minimizing the time and resources needed to achieve them.
When looking at sales productivity, organizations must consider the quality of interactions between salespeople and customers. Effective communication, understanding customers’ needs and building strong relationships contribute to sales productivity. It’s not just about closing deals quickly — it’s about creating long-term value for both the business and the customer.
4 benefits of boosting sales productivity
The most obvious benefit of improving sales productivity is increasing sales and revenue. But other benefits of increased productivity may not be as clear at first glance.
1. Close more deals with fewer resources
If you want to close more deals, you can either hire more sales agents or help your existing team be more productive. While the ideal situation is to consistently apply both strategies, you’ll gain better returns by focusing on your current team. Hiring new people costs money and requires a ramp-up to receive ROI, and some sales agents may not work out. By comparison, improving the productivity of your existing team empowers people to do more with the same amount of resources like time and leads. By optimizing factors that positively and negatively affect productivity, you help maximize performance of your existing team to close more deals with the same or even fewer resources.
2. Improve employee well-being
Sales is a stressful role, as agents are constantly under pressure to hit quotas or meet expectations that prove their value. In fact, some sales roles pay salaries primarily through commissions which means agents who don’t perform may struggle to pay living expenses. When you improve productivity, you’re supporting agents to work more effectively so they can meet goals. This reduces stress, leading to less burnout, lower turnover rates and improved efficiency. Improving employee well-being feeds into the cycle of increased productivity, too. When employees feel effective and supported, they’re more devoted to work.
3. Decrease onboarding time
When you increase sales productivity for existing team members, apply key findings to improve the onboarding process so new agents can ramp-up and contribute faster. Did you uncover high-performance behaviors among your top agents? Encourage new employees to apply those same sales strategies. New agents will also benefit from process improvements that make sales activities easier to learn and more effective. Offering advice and streamlining processes is a great way to decrease onboarding time and position new agents for success.
4. Enhance customer satisfaction and retention
When sales reps spend more time on each customer, satisfaction increases. Instead of spending time on administrative tasks and meetings, agents build relationships with customers. These happy customers provide repeat business and help you build a reputation for quality customer service, which increases your sales pipeline.
7 factors that limit sales productivity
Before you can improve sales productivity, you have to understand what factors detract from it. Watch for these common impediments to sales productivity:
- Too much pressure on sales professionals to hit quotas
- Inconsistent strategies and unachievable goals
- Lack of communication between teams or from sales leaders
- Not using data to make decisions
- Poor sales training and development programs
- Lack of prioritization for sales objectives
- Not identifying your ideal customer
The 4 pillars of sales productivity
While each organization takes its own approach to sales productivity based on unique sales cycles and activities, it’s important to keep four key concepts top of mind when implementing any changes:
- Consistency: Create a structure that helps every team member accomplish goals.
- Concentration: Eliminate distractions so employees can focus on important work, including building relationships and closing sales.
- Constant innovation: Assess what’s working to find new ways to empower sales employees to work more effectively and accomplish goals.
- Prioritization: Focus on what matters most to hit sales targets and outsource non-productive tasks to automation or other teams.
6 strategies to increase sales productivity
Not sure where to begin? Start with these six essential strategies to optimize your sales processes and boost productivity.
1. Measure sales productivity with productivity management software
The most important step is measuring sales productivity with real numbers. It’s easy to start with basic data like how many sales a rep makes, how long it takes them to close, how often customers come back and how much revenue each sale generates. But to get the whole picture, you need to dive deeper.
ActivTrak’s productivity management platform goes beyond raw numbers to give you a holistic view of your sales team’s productivity. See beyond closing rates to understand how your team gets work done with metrics like:
- New qualified leads, opportunities or completed tasks compared with productive time
- Time spent in collaboration or sales tools
- Number of qualified leads, opportunities and tasks created
Using ActivTrak is one of the best ways to improve sales performance with actionable insights. Set smarter goals and measure progress with a historic benchmarks report. Then empower your team to track progress and move toward success with the personal insights dashboard. Each dashboard provides deep visibility into how your sales team uses tools to make decisions and what they need to do their jobs more effectively.
2. Analyze and upgrade sales tools
Sales agents may need effective tools to find, connect and follow up with customers. Even the best agents struggle without the right tools. Auditing usage, reveals which applications people do and don’t use.
ActivTrak’s user activity monitoring shows you which tools your agents use most and how those tools contribute to your bottom line. When you know which apps are most important, deciding when to upgrade or invest in training is easy. In addition to helping agents get more from existing tools, leverage insights to cut out the tools that aren’t working and reduce SaaS costs.
3. Automate repetitive tasks
Automation reduces repetitive tasks for all teams, but is especially important in the fast-paced world of sales activity. Using technology to automate basic tasks gives reps more time to pursue new clients and establish relationships that lead to sales.
Identify repetitive tasks with employee productivity management software, which shows how much time salespeople spend on tasks that don’t contribute to their goals. Data entry is especially time-consuming for salespeople, and introducing a chatbot to collect customer information before routing to a rep can save valuable time. Other automated processes reduce administrative tasks, freeing sales teams to focus on closing deals.
4. Streamline inefficient processes
Process improvement is important to every aspect of your sales efforts. Your team needs to focus on customers, accomplish tasks and communicate with each other to hit sales goals. While effective tools play a big role in sales performance, finding and improving the right sales processes is just as vital.
Quickly identify inefficient processes with data and insights on your sales team’s productivity to cut out inefficiencies. Whether it’s a poorly distributed workload, repeated bottlenecks or miscommunications on deadlines, tracking employee performance and activity metrics make them easy to spot.
5. Align sales and marketing priorities
Strategic alignment across your organization is key to accomplishing goals. This includes making sure your marketing priorities match your sales priorities. When these departments are in step, marketing’s efforts give sales qualified leads and sales successes inform the marketing plan. This leads to a continuous cycle of productivity improvement for both sales and marketing.
Alignment takes effort and foresight. Marketing contributors should be part of sales meetings to understand how their work is contributing to quality leads. Sales teams should report which channels produce the highest conversion rates. Armed with the right data and collaboration, both teams create plans that drive sales productivity together.
6. Provide sales training and development opportunities
It’s not enough to train new employees on sales best practices and internal processes. To improve sales productivity, team members need ongoing opportunities for training and development. Using ActivTrak’s employee monitoring software, sales managers see in real-time which employees need more training to be more effective. At the same time, leaders are empowered to train underutilized employees for more engaging or challenging work.
Development and advancement opportunities also give employees a greater sense of purpose within the organization, leading to greater rates of employee engagement and satisfaction. Giving employees a clear roadmap on how to be more productive or advance to the next level adds a greater sense of purpose and can help people perform better.
Increase sales productivity with ActivTrak
Boosting sales is a main priority for any business to thrive in today’s competitive market. Understanding the key factors influencing sales productivity and implementing effective strategies empowers your sales team to enhance revenue. Measuring sales productivity, maintaining high standards and focusing on continuous improvement are crucial for the long-term success of any sales team.
Leverage ActivTrak’s comprehensive suite of workforce analytics solutions to elevate your sales productivity to new heights. Gain visibility into sales performance metrics with our productivity management solution for informed decisions on strategies to enhance sales productivity, from tools and technology to training, time management and process improvement. Contact our sales team today to get started and realize your sales team’s full potential.
