Sales team plays a pivotal role in any enterprise’s success. If they are too busy with other tasks along with meeting sales objectives, it will likely cause sales to drop and decline in sales team productivity, hitting the company’s profitability. Forrester, a global market research company, conducted a study to analyze the activities of sales executives in more than 150 firms. They found that these sales execs were only spending 23% of their time selling, and 27% of their time involved in less productive activities, such as preparing expense reports.

Reducing this time spent on internal activities would result in an increase in sales productivity. But focusing purely on sales improvement figures is only half the equation; sales representatives need to be supported through mentorship and effective coaching, as well as training for selling responsiveness and monitoring performance.

So, how do you resolve issues your sales team is facing, while motivating them to effectively and sustainably increase sales? Here are five practical strategies for sales leaders to enhance their sales team productivity, morale, and efficiency.

5 Productivity Hacks for Your Sales Team

Build a strong team spirit and set a roadmap
Every sales member wants to feel successful and a valued part of a wider team. The sales leaders can unite their salespeople around organizational goals, resulting in sales improvement.
1. Promote collaboration and the exchange of best practices between your employees. Experienced executives guide their younger employees by giving tips on how to close more sales. Bringing value through collaboration is rewarding – play on the group effect: together, we are stronger.
2. Treat your team members fairly and avoid favoritism or discrimination. As a sales leader, you should avoid arousing discouragement and demotivation.

The sales heads are also responsible for setting up the strategic direction of your team. This involves in particular:
1. Defining and clarifying objectives;
2. Developing an action plan to achieve these objectives (short-medium-long term goals);
3. Analysis of results;
4. The implementation of corrective actions;
5. A dynamic system of information transmission.

Additionally, it is the job of the sales leader to provide their team with the necessary tools to carry out their tasks: sales assistance, pipeline management, marketing alignment, dashboards and KPIs, just to name a few. These tools can change and improve your sales team productivity, as well as the way the team interacts with customers.

Value your team efforts and tailor rewards accordingly

Rewarding the progress of your salespeople is one of the best ideas to improve sales performance and team morale. It is a tried and true way to motivate each salesperson to achieve their targets or even exceed them.

When we talk about rewarding salespeople, we often think of financial incentives or bonuses. However, there are other types of rewards that you can offer that don’t always depend on the state of your company’s finances.

1. Recognition: Through company wide emails, “salesperson of the month” notices on the bulletin board and so on, an organization can communicate how their company values the efforts of its salespeople. Put your best salespeople in the spotlight and motivate the rest of the team;
2. Offer experiences: It can be a trip, a cultural outing, or a team dinner for top performers;
3. Trainings and Conferences: You can send your best salesmen to attend conferences, lectures, talks, or trainings to learn new skills, make new connections, and step away from their daily routines to experience something new.
4. Certificates or awards: Also a form of recognition, but something more tangible, awarding trophies, or certificates for top performing sales reps can be a powerful motivating force for sales teams.

Important note: Do not count only the increase in sales performance, but also highlight involvement, effort and customer satisfaction. If a team member delivered less than usual this month, it may be because they deepened certain relationships with clients, locking in greater returns in the future.

Measure team performance to increase productivity

Much more than a simple tool for processing and managing customer relationships, CRM software is both useful for testing the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies, as well as for and evaluating your salespeople.

In addition to knowing each profile and the corresponding needs, sales executives must also systematically communicate with their prospects. As a place to store and utilize customer information to generate leads, CRM software can be extremely useful.

A CRM has the following advantages:

• Improved customer/prospective customer knowledge;

• Automated digital prospecting set up;

• Optimization of commercial performance;

• Additional sales;

• Customer acquisition costs reduction and time-saving;

• Ease of exchange between your sales teams.

When you lead a team of salespeople, you can measure their performance with the help of a number of indicators such as:

• Average sales value;

• Sales productivity;

• Costs per converted lead;

• Customer satisfaction rate;

• Market share by segment;

• Repeat purchase rate;

• Number of contracts signed;

• Current business valuation / target ratio;

• Ratio of deals concluded / lost market.

CRMs also automate routine manual tasks such as data entry, so sales reps can focus on their main mission — selling. It also offers managers real-time insights on the progress of individual team members, using the centralized platform to document the sales process and keep the team on the right track.

Record sales calls and meetings to improve your team’s performance

Especially since the start of the pandemic, companies are having more sales calls and meetings than ever. For the sales team, these calls and meetings can be valuable sources of information, helping to better meet customers’ needs and close more deals.

We recommend using Notiv – an AI-based meeting note taker that records and transcribes all details related to your prospects, and automatically identifies key moments, so you can utilize important details with ease. When speaking to customers, salespeople are dealing with so many things as the conversation proceeds – asking relevant questions, discovering their needs and concerns, and explaining the benefits of a product/service. Notiv preserves all calls/meetings, so you don’t have to ask the client to repeat the information. You can replay these recordings to take note of key information whenever you want, and prepare relevant offers for prospects.

Effective team coaching via internal meetings

Sales coaching is not a task performed once or twice a year, it should be done on a regular basis. These meetings are important touch points for the sales team, and managers can use this time to teach something new, boost the team’s commitment, review performance, discuss important issues, and share key insights. Unfortunately, sales executives come out of these meetings with discussed action items that are easily forgotten, as no one was taking any notes. This makes their implementation unlikely.

Notiv seamlessly syncs with several video conferencing tools and even transcribes recorded videos, helping your team work with what was discussed. Notiv’s smart AI highlights key phrases, lets you create actions and tasks, and then distribute them internally. Additionally, these records can be turned into a digital document for collaboration, where teams can follow the guidelines and refer to any tips when communicating with their prospects.

Conclusion

This article offered practical advice on how to improve sales performance and strengthen a team’s skills over the long term.

Companies can beat the competition if they invest in promoting the productivity of their sales teams as much as they invest to improve their production process. By embracing technology such as the use of CRM for leads intelligence and using Notiv to document all information shared during meetings or calls, you can definitely improve your team productivity and improve your margins. That’s the wonderful thing about Notiv – it empowers salespeople to do their jobs better.

Want to know what Notiv can do for you? Chat to us today!