Your sales team is an essential part of your operation, and you need them to operate at a peak level of efficiency. The more efficient you can get your sales team, the better your revenue, the more successful the entire organization.
You need your sales team focused on goals and objectives, and a lot of that is going to rely on what business leadership is doing to help.
The following are some specific ways you can boost sales team productivity, relatively easy
Automate Whenever Possible
An organization is going to benefit in almost every area when manual processes are replaced with automation, and this is particularly true with your sales team. Look for areas where sales reps are doing things manually, or where their support work is being done manually, and identify potential places to automate them.
One example is the use of CRMs, which are becoming increasingly advanced and intuitive, helping an entire company save time, money and resources. Another area to consider automating is expense claim software. It’s imperative to recognize the pitfalls of manual expense reporting. Sales professionals tend to be on the road frequently, so look for a solution that allows them to manage their expense reports and submissions from their mobile phone.
The more things you can effectively automate, the more time can be given to the actual selling.
Onboarding
A lot of people think that sales professionals have a unique talent and when they join a company they can hit the ground running. That’s partially true, but onboarding is still important.
It’s key to train your sales people as thoroughly as you do other employees so they’re not wasting their time trying to figure things out that they could have learned during the onboarding process. When you pair a strong onboarding program with talented sales professionals, you’re going to maximize productivity and overall success.
Check In With Them
Your sales team probably operates pretty independently, and each individual may also do their own thing.
With frequent traveling and unique schedules it can be tough to know what’s going on with sales reps, but if you check in regularly, you can mitigate potential productivity killers before they occur.
You can use these check-ins not only to identify where there are obstacles to their productivity, but you can also use the time to motivate them.
Work on Grouping Tasks
When you constantly have to move between very different tasks throughout your day, it can become overwhelming and exhausting, leading to a reducing in productivity. Rather than demanding that your sales pros change gears often throughout the day, try to work with the sales department to create a schedule of bundling certain tasks.
What this means is that you could encourage supervisors to have sales reps focus on calls and emails one day, administrative work another, and then have them traveling on set days. This keeps them from feeling like they’re to juggle it all at once and constantly moving from task to task.
Finally, while sales can be somewhat informal and can rely a lot on the individual’s work style, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some set processes and methodologies. You want to let sales rep do what they do best, but within a framework of consistency which will help eliminate hiccups and promote productivity.