Sales productivity can be a challenge in many businesses.
In fact, research suggests that 62% of B2B organisations say that sales productivity is their top challenge.
What is sales productivity?
In a business or organisational situation, sales refer to transactions where money or value is exchanged for a good or service. So if you go into a store and speak to a sales person about buying a new computer and you choose to purchase it, this would be a sale.
In accountancy terms, sales are the revenue a business or organisation earns from selling goods and services. In the example above then, the sale would be the money the store receives from you when you buy the computer.
Sales productivity, then, is ensuring that the sales team are effective and efficient.
Efficiency
Efficiency relates to many factors, such as –
- Amount of time in the office or selling
- Time spent making calls or sending emails
- Time connecting with clients
So Sales Person A spends 90% of their day calling potential clients, making arrangements for meetings, answering calls and emails. They spent 10% of their day doing admin.
Sales Person B spends 70% of their day doing admin and only 30% doing sales related tasks. They are likely to be less efficient in terms of sales productivity than Sales Person A.
Effectiveness
Effectiveness relates to how well a sales person reaches their goals. For example, Sales Person C makes 20 calls and arranges 10 meetings, which result in 5 sales.
Sales Person D makes 50 calls, arranges 12 meetings, which result in 6 sales.
Sales Person C is actually more effective as out of 20 calls, they make 5 sales, which is 25%. Whereas Sales Person D only makes 6 sales out of 50 calls, which is only 12%.
To have a productive sales team, we need efficiency and effectiveness.
Why Does Sales Productivity Matter?
Basically, the more sales are made, the more profit a business will hopefully make.
If you are trying to sell goods and services, you want to make sales!
Factors that Affect Sales Productivity
There are many factors that affect a person’s sales productivity.
- Too much pressure – Sales is a high pressure and competitive environment. But everyone has bad days or bad weeks. That doesn’t mean that they are bad at their job, just that they are not doing as well as usual on that day. Too much pressure can have a negative effective on sales in the long run and prevent salespeople from even trying.
- Poorly planned or random staff training.
- Lack of vertical communication in the organisation – from the top down and bottom up.
- Resistance to new tools and technologies
- High staff turnover
- Constant change
- Lack of teamwork
- Inconsistent sales strategies
- Too many distractions
- Negative sales culture
Improving Sales Productivity
The factors above can affect sales productivity, there can be many factors that can cause distractions and prevent sales staff from reaching their goals and making sales.
Let’s now look at some of the ways we can improve sales productivity.
Measuring Performance
When deciding on sales productivity, it is important to measure it. How do we know what our productivity is or if it is improving if we do not measure it.
KPIs or key performance indicators can be used to check for seller productivity. They can look at factors, such as –
- Time spent selling
- Average deal time
- Conversion rates
- Average sales per hour
Etc.
This can also help salespeople to review their own performance.
1. Avoid Multitasking
Multitasking is great isn’t it? Well, no! A few years ago, multitasking was thought to be wonderful. People could do lots of different things at once. That is true, but unfortunately, they are doing lots of different things at once, but not doing them very well!
Actually, multitasking can make people less productive. Research suggests that every time we switch tasks, we lose mental energy. We are actually around 40% less productive when we multitask.
So actually, we are more mentally productive if we stick to one task at a time.
To improve sales productivity –
- Focus on one thing at a time. If you are making calls or sending out sales emails or messages. Focus on that one message!
- If you have to complete admin, decide on a time when you are going to do that and stick to that time.
But the main point is to focus on what you are currently doing!
2. Schedule
Make a plan for your day or week. A plan can help you to stay productive and focussed during the day. It is harder to be distracted if you know what you are going to do next. If you plan at the start of the day or week what you are going to do, it can also avoid decision fatigue. This is when the quality of our decision making reduces the longer we spend time making decisions. So, if you are constantly deciding what to do next, your decisions will worsen. Decision fatigue is also mentally draining.
Make those decisions all in one go at the start of the week, or start of the day. If your work isn’t quite like this and it is hard to plan for a full week, why not have a general plan for the week, but then do a separate mini plan at the start of each day?
Things happen, meetings get cancelled, things interfere, but as much as possible, try to stick to your plan.
3. Do Less Admin
Research by LinkedIn suggests that sales people are actually only spending around 30% of their time selling. The rest of the time is spent on non-selling and administrative tasks. This means that 70% of a salesperson’s time is taking them away from selling. As an organisation, the business might be better suited to find alternative ways for administrative tasks and non-selling tasks to be completed.
4. Focus!
We have just mentioned focus and maintaining your focus on one task is important. BUT even if we are doing only one task, it is still easy to lose focus. How often are you sitting there working and suddenly start thinking – what shall I have for lunch? I must remember to pick up some dog food? I’ve got to call A and arrange a night out? I’ve got to remember to do that report later on today? Etc etc. It is easy to get distracted. Try to keep your focus on the here and now. What are you doing NOW?
If something pops up in your mind, make a note on a piece of paper so it will remind you later, then leave it.
Focus on your current task.
5. Pay Attention
Pay attention to your focus and your attention. It is easy for our minds to wander without even realising that they are. A selling role can be difficult. You will often get rejections and after a string of rejections, it can be hard to make that next call or email. This is when our attention can wander.
Therefore, this is where we have to be even more aware of our focus and attention.
6. Have Willpower
As well as paying attention and focussing, we also need to have willpower. Dealing with rejection can be disheartening, but willpower will help us to pull through, help us to keep making those calls or emails or meetings. If we don’t make that call, send that email or attend that meeting, then we have no chance of making a sale at all.
So willpower is important.
7. Turn It Off
Phones, emails, social media, the internet and other forms of software are, as you know, major distractors. McKinsey Global Institute carried out research and found that people spend around 28% of their working week on emails! That doesn’t, then, include social media, calls, and other similar distractions.
Avoid these distractions. These are some tips. They may not apply to you. They will really depend on how you work. For example, if you work on email all day, you can’t decide on set times of the day to answer email, but try some of the tips below and see what works for you.
- Decide on certain times of the day when you will answer emails eg. 10 – 11 and 3 – 5.
- Turn off your phone or turn it over so you can’t see alerts.
- Set your phone to do not disturb when you do not intend to answer calls
- If you have to do online research, plan a time when you are going to do it and focus on the task.
These are just some ideas and everyone is different.
- Look at the way that you work.
- Think about the distractions
- What can you do to avoid distractions from emails, calls, social media etc?
Develop your plan and stick to it.
8. Chat Less
Humans are social creatures. We still feel that need to interact with others. Remote working has increased for many. Some people still work in a workplace. It doesn’t matter where you work, you will no doubt feel the need to communicate and chat with others during the day and these chats are most likely not to be about work.
Gossip and unnecessary chats can be fun and interesting, but they can also reduce productivity. Think carefully about how long you spend on things like this and try to minimise them or keep them to your break times.
Noise cancelling headphones can also be useful to avoid interactions from others during the day.
9. Take a Break
It might sound counterintuitive to take a break to increase productivity, but if we are too tired or worn out, then our performance and productivity declines.
- Techniques, such as the Pomodoro Technique, suggest working solidly for 25 minutes then taking a 5 minute break.
- Perhaps work for 50 minutes, then stand up and walk around the office or room.
- Or make a cup of coffee or tea.
- Leave the office at break time or lunch time to experience a new environment.
- Stare at a plant or out of the window if you can see nature and greenery. Research suggests this improves our focus.
10. Eat Properly
What we eat and drink affects our performance.
- Too much caffeine and sugary drinks affect our ability to think clearly.
- Not eating breakfast or lunch can mean we are distracted thinking how hungry we are, or reduce our focus.
- Eating too much for lunch can make us tired.
Eat and drink sensibly.
11. Talk to Other Team Members
If you are struggling with your productivity, talk to other team members.
- Tell them if you are feeling distracted.
- Share what works for you and what isn’t working. Ask them for their tips on what works, and again, what doesn’t work for them. Be accountable to each other.
12. Share Goals
Research suggests that sales and marketing teams are 67% more effective when they work together, so share your goals. If the whole team knows what they are working to achieve and work together to achieve it, then this should improve production.
Sales can often feel like a dog eat dog world. People want to earn the higher commission, the greater status at being the best sales person, but if teams can be 67% more effective by working together, then this suggests that it could improve the chances of the whole team by doing this.
13. Keep Training
Research suggests that –
- 26% of sales reps think sales training is ineffective
- 84% say that they forget their sales training in three months.
It is, therefore, important to frequently undergo training to improve and update your sales training.
Renewing your training can improve your enthusiasm, knowledge, skills and productivity.
This suggests that there is a growing market for sales and marketing training
to help people to improve their productivity.
We offer a range of courses in –
- Sales
- Marketing
- Time management
- Logistics
- Business
- Managing remote working
- And much more.
Our courses are all studied online or by e-learning, which means that they are useful for people working in traditional offices AND those who are working remotely.
If you are interested in adding these courses to your stable of existing courses or even starting your own online school, contact us to find out more.