Sales productivity is a core to business success. A streamlined sales process plays a critical role in increasing brand credibility and business revenue. Today, sales technology specifically automation is grooving as a regular module of business infrastructure. Sales automation employs advanced algorithms and technologies that help eliminate manual operations. With no more manual leads and sales funnel management, automated solutions increase productivity.
Research shows that today the professional salesperson spend less time selling products/services. Instead, more dedication is towards the administrative tasks management that surrounds sales. The regular tasks are automated to mitigate time and work-intensive tasks. The resources thus can be used for additional priority tasks accordingly. For a salesperson, meeting enough sales targets is the daily requirement. The increasing competition in the market thus demands innovative business solutions that give hand to slaesp[erson such that an actual difference could be made possible in regular business operations.
Read: 7 Customer Retention Strategies for your Business to Grow
Before diving into the strategies, it is crucial to understand the potential challenges common for the salesperson.
Sales Productivity Challenges
For a business to run smoothly, there are several against which a salesperson is required to cope up. These sales challenges need to be addressed from the root to accelerate the sales productivity that actually contributes to business success and development.
Complex Selling
Today, technology is revolutionizing with each passing day. Selling a product/service is becoming more complicated. l the competition in the market makes the adoption of the latest technology crucial for businesses. The sales department is innovating with the use of intelligent business tools that automates the workflow of a sales funnel and provides enhanced capabilities and functions to the business.
Customer Interests
Identification of customer interests and providing tailored business solutions is always a challenging task to be done by the salesperson. The deals are more likely to get closed when a customer gets a customized solution that meets the business needs in an efficient manner.
Traditional Selling
Today, salespeople are at a contextual disadvantage. The alignment with respect to the traditional selling process is getting complex when it comes to combining them with modern procedures.
Operational Remodelling
In the past few years, the industries have experienced a significant change in selling practices. The remote retail environment has introduced efficiency and convenience for customers in buying. The increasing competition thus demands an enhanced approach by businesses to build a strong brand image. The salesperson is required to adopt intelligent sales solutions that meet customer demands. To ensure this, businesses are remodeling the operational framework that aligns well with customer expectations. Another potential advantage is that the sales representatives are now happier as they do not need to spend much time and effort on the tasks that they don’t like and can give time to other high-priority tasks.
Also Read: 12 Amazing GTM Strategies for Small Businesses
Strategies to Enhance Sales Productivity
Below are five strategies described by HubSpot that sales representatives can employ to increase individual sales productivity:
1. Implement the Customer Acquisition Process
The process of customer acquisition should be designed in such a way that repeatable processes could be identified and streamlined. You must determine the mini processes that remain ta their process and they are repeated every time with every customer. There could be some variance as well that needs to identify as well. Streamline all the processes in such a way that design a seamless customer acquisition process by adjusting the processes that repeat every time. In this way, manual operational management could be mitigated.
2. Establish a service-level agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement tends to define the meaning of each stage involved in the process of sales management. It is a commitment between the service provider and client in which particular aspects of service are taken into consideration. These include the availability, quality, responsibilities, etc. in particular to sales, SLA corresponds to the identification of situation, leads, and progression. Dedicated SLA ensures seamless velocity and maintenance of de4scipline in the sales process.
3. Design Contextual Plays
Execution of successful contextual plays is very important. For a sales representative, it is critically important to take into consideration the contextual aspect while he/she is in conversation with the client. During the conversation, contextual aspects should be strong enough to fully satisfy the prospect that is a customer in this case. Engaging a customer through contextual plays helps increase sales productivity.
4. Automate the Playbook
Playbooks eliminate the overhead of intensive manual work. Playbook automation prevents the sales processes from dragging and helps in enhanced predictability. The playbook is then integrated with the existing systems.
5. Efficiency
Efficiency comes with process automation. With all the discussed points, the major focus is on the acceleration of processes through automation. Sales funnel management would not require any additional cost or effort and it will introduce efficiency in the overall operations.
In a nutshell, the sales productivity can be maximized by creating and executing the processing by optimizing them and enabling them to employ the energy in high-valued actions instead of common processes.
Also Read: 10 Essential CRM Software Integrations to Optimize your Business