How to improve Sale Productivity?

Every organization is aiming to improve their sales productivity. It has become more important nowadays because of the increasing demand and a shrinking economy. There is huge pressure on achieving the exceeding target so that the required outcome is achieved. This can be possible only by improving and increasing sales productivity.

But what is sales productivity? Sales productivity in simple terms means to maximize sales by minimizing the resources. Resources involve time, money and efforts involved. This is the basic goal of every organization. It helps the organization to generate good revenue. The business is bound to fail without efficient sales productivity. Sales productivity is nothing but to bring efficiency and effectiveness in sales generation and conversion. With proper sales productivity tools implementation, the organization is able to generate extra revenue.

The sales environment is a dynamic environment, and nothing is certain here. One has to adapt constantly to overcome challenges in order to flourish. When sales productivity is improved, the organization is in the best place to face the environment. Sales productivity can be improved only when the organization is committed to bringing the require change and sales force must be ready to embrace this change. Sales forces are the direct one that will be seeing whether various strategies are put to use in order to improve and increase sales productivity. One must remember that sales productivity is possible only when there is effective and efficient customer service, and for this sales force plays a major role as they are the one dealing with the customer.

There are strategies through which sales productivity can be enhanced. These strategies include:

• Perfect Team: To improve sales productivity, it is important to develop a perfect sales team. A perfect sales team is one which is highly skilled and knowledgeable. Select the team that is creative, talented and hardworking. One needs to carefully evaluate the existing team to see whether they are efficient and effective enough to improve sales productivity. Also, one must look into the size of the sales team. Make sure as per your business requirement. It should be of perfect size. Otherwise, goals will not be attainable. One selecting the team, it should be noted that how well they understand the product, how well they can manage it as they are the one who will be persuading others to buy it , hence it is important for them to have clear understanding.
• Work on leads: Sales teams are involved in generating leads in order to bring more sales for the organization. But not all the leads are capable of being generating the sales. Following and work on leads will only add the cost with no return and thus will lead to decrease in sales productivity. So the focus must be on right leads that have potential to generate sales for the business in future. In order to have quality lead, it is important for the sales force to know what the product is , what needs its fulfills and what is target customer for your product and then works on leads that fulfills all these requirements. Sometimes a company target audience is else and it keeps following leads related to else. This will result in wastage of efforts and cost. So in order to save these valuable resources, work only on quality leads.
• Training: It is very important for the sales force to be effective in order to work in this dynamic environment. For this it important that they are properly trained with latest and advanced techniques which plays an important role in improving sale productivity. Online sales training session with video lessons, study material can help to enhance their capabilities will be ultimately prove beneficial for the business. It will provide them with required confidence that will go long way. For sales productivity to increase, sales force must add value to every step in the sales cycles. This will help to generate more sales. This can be achieved only when the sales training is an ongoing process and not just one time activity. The businesses must develop a habit of conducting training seminars once a week in order to keep up with the changing pace.

Make way for Automation: The time of sales force is very precious. It should be utilized towards generating more sales with minimum resources but often they are trapped in redundant and useless activities which borne no fruit to anyone. 

• Hence in order to increase the sales productivity, it is essential to give more time sell and not to waste any of their time. This can be made possible through automation of sale process. Cut out the extra manual work by automating it. Focus must be on reducing the administration work for your team such as data entry and automate by investing in appropriate tools. There are number of ways through which automation can be implemented, all one has to do is to invest in these wisely.
• Use of Social Media: Social Media can be a great tool in one’s hand in increasing sales productivity. The social media helps you to connect with number buyers with not much effort. It is a perfect way to generate the valuable leads for the business and thus increasing the revenue of the business.
• Aligning Sales and Marketing: Every department in the business is a complement to one another. Sales and marketing are the departments that are depended on each other so it makes sense to align them. Sometimes they start working in isolation of each other and these become a major problem for the business. Instead of working as separate units, there need to be alignment between these two so that business grows and flourish.
• Motivation: Motivating your sales force is very crucial for their self-confidence. It is important to recognize and appreciate their efforts. When their efforts are being appreciated, they become more effective in achieving their sales target and thus leading to improvement in sales productivity.

Hence these are the ways through which the sales productivity can be improved. One must work to implement these for desired outcomes.