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Focusing on sales productivity performance refers to maximizing sales at a low cost using a few resources. This is measured only when a company’s revenue is increased, and of course, all this comes down to efficient use of your time, especially when selling.
According to a study conducted by pace productivity, most sales reps spend time on administrative tasks sales reps spend much time on administrative tasks, and only 22% is spent selling while in the field.
Aja Frost, a Hubspot writer, says that sales performance metrics measure a business or employees’ tasks and activities. They are often quantifiable and can be measured over days, weeks, months, or years. These metrics are tracked, and ranges are selected to identify ideal performance. A business uses performance metrics to determine if its outcomes align with the set goals. If a performance metric falls below the set range, this indicates underperformance. And if a product falls within or above the scope, the business is meeting or exceeding its goals.
Performance sales metrics are vital since they support businesses in performance evaluation and making informed decisions based on the analysis made. For instance, if you have a technology-based company and monthly recurring revenue keeps reducing, you might want to find out why this is happening; auditing can be done to determine the problem and how it can eventually be addressed. Performance sales metrics are many; however, we will discuss a few of them, including conversion or win rate, revenue, percentage of sales hitting quota, average deal size, sales funnel leakage, and many others.
The Best Practices To Optimize Sales Performance
1. Give credit where it's due
Everyone wants to be appreciated. That is what we love, and it motivates us. Human beings will always want to feel that people acknowledge their work and the efforts they have put in. Credit needs to be given to both the direct and the indirect involvement teams whenever there is success in the business.
2. Make sure Sales and Marketing speak the same language
Communication is an essential aspect between marketing and sales teams. This means that the information they give to the clients out there should be uniformly the same because variations might cause trust problems in a company’s products, thus losing out on the market. If you get people to work together, the first step is to ensure they can understand each other (marketing and sales qualified leads) and the company’s product information.
3. Open Communication channels
People in sales are the ones who are involved in groundwork, and so they know the customer’s preferences and interests; thus, it would make sense to advertise or market something in line with what customers want to hear or see as contrary to something that would sound new into their ears. It becomes easy for the salespeople to pitch a sale if the target customer already has prior knowledge, which would ease their work. Marketing content is what draws customers and potential buyers. It is the first point of contact long before a salesperson steps in. But, it is not only used by the marketing department. Salespeople utilize marketing content as they go about their business. Marketing content should first be evaluated before it is put out, and these areas should be given a core focus.
What content is available?
What content should be used for marketing?
Who should use this content first?
Where should this content be used?
Why is this content preferred over the other?
Will this content give us the best we expect out of it?
Both teams should evaluate to ensure there is no contradicting information. Some studies have found that a sales team sometimes creates its knowledge, impacting your market performance.
4. Define your goals
When it comes to sales, the endpoint defines what matters most. Sales objectives are goals supporting the company’s growth currently and years in the future in terms of revenue, market share, or profit margin. By establishing clear sales goals, you explain what success will look like in the most straightforward terms while also giving your sales team targets to follow.
Start by choosing the sales metrics that matter most to your business. This could be:
Annual or monthly recurring revenue (ARR or MRR)
Retention or churn rates
Average conversion time
Average conversion rate
Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Look at last year's results. Were you being realistic or overly expectant? Did your sales revenue increase? Did you hit the desired numbers? Answers to these questions will help inform your new targets and help with the sales plan to achieve them. Break these targets down and have milestones set for each sales team member. These should challenge and motivate your sales team without being so difficult they kill morale.
5. Define Your Target Market.
Jason Zook explains it best; "When you try to create something for everyone, you end up creating something for no one." Therefore, knowing your target market and audience is crucial for your business.
To know your business, you might need to have a buyer persona in place; this helps you know your target audience, what things they like, where they are, and their preferences. Additionally, your buyer persona should include; demographic information about your supporters or purchasers.
On the road to building your audience profile, ask yourself these:
How big is the market?
Is there a built-in demand for what you're selling?
What’s your current market position?
Who are your competitors? What are their strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats?
Once it gets confusing, return to your strengths, see what makes you stand out from the rest, and start from there.
6. Organize your sales team
Have a clean and organized house. If your organization wants to be at the top of the rest in selling, you must recognize that it’s time to sell. A company’s sales representatives are the company’s head because they speak on behalf of the company and are the face. According to research, formal continuous training can yield 50% higher net sales per sales representative. In addition, training the sales team helps them to know which duties to execute accordingly.
You want a team that will impact your sales and increases your investment return; it must be well-trained and perfect. A well-trained sales team understands how best to pitch and make a sale. But, of course, having a good sales team also depends on how much time you dedicate to it and how much you value the team.
Here are three basic structures for your sales team:
The island: Individual reps who work alone.
Assembly line: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role, such as lead generation, SDR (qualifier), Account Executive (closer), or Customer Success (farmer).
Pods: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role in a pod or group responsible for the entire journey of specific customers.
7. Encourage the use of sales tools
Get started today, use sales management software and save your team’s time up to 80%, invest that time in other sales-generating activities, and earn more revenue for your business. Salespeople wear sales management software to trace their daily activities, maintain track of pipelines and deals, manage contacts, monitor prospects and customers, manage tiresome managerial tasks, and make the sales process more straightforward. In addition, the software provides updated sales tools for data entrance and management. Managers also use it to discover trends, opportunities, and team wins and check out valuable insights that could have a huge blow.
You’ll need tools for these areas to cover all aspects of the sales process:
CRM software (like Monkeypesa)
Lead generation and prospecting tools
Internal communication software
Engagement and outreach tools
Documentation Software
Sales enablement stack
8. Do Prospecting
Sales prospecting refers to a process whereby a company’s sales representatives make outbound calls or send outbound emails to leads/prospects to create new business by searching for new potential buyers/customers for your products or services.
Making mobile calls, sending emails, SMS text messages, notifications, and reminders to people who have shown interest in your products or services is what we call sales prospecting. All the above are forms of prospecting with hopes that we may turn those specific interested people into future customers.
Given that sales representatives approach people or companies that they already know, the chances are high that they are likely to pitch through and get a deal. One good thing about sales prospecting is that it keeps new customers/leads flowing into a business; when they are convinced, they could become lifetime supporters of a company.
While doing prospecting, the sales process can make it easy for sales prospectors to determine whether a lead can qualify to be a prospect and whether prospects can qualify as potential buyers or customers for your product/service.
9. Track, Measure and Adjust The Plan
This is very important. It informs on the success of your entire plan concerning goals and targets. Regarding sales, most businesses tend to focus on 2 metrics; how many sales have been made and how much revenue has been completed. These 2, however, paint a quarter of the accurate picture of what is happening in your sales. Tracking these only shows the end of the funnel; hence you end up missing.
Tracking:
It helps you understand what could not be working within your sales process.
It helps you get insight into how each of your sales reps is performing
To gain insight into employee morale