Field Sales: How to Improve Your Sales Productivity Quickly

a sales team experiencing improved productivity

As a sales leader, your efforts directly impact the company’s stability and growth. However, with increasing competition combined with a limited budget and sales personnel, reaching your quotas can be challenging.

However, it’s not due to a lack of effort by the sales team. While you may want your sales team to focus on selling, they also spend much time on administrative tasks. Moreover, sales personnel face several challenges that affect their efficiency.

Therefore, you must work smarter to improve sales productivity to help your organization increase revenues. In doing so, you can give your reps more time to sell while helping them reach more qualified leads.

So, if your team has been wondering ‘how can we improve sales force productivity’, you’re in the right place. In this article, you’ll learn how to measure sales productivity and find insightful tips for enhancing it.

Grab a warm coffee ☕️ or tea 🍵 and let’s get started!

Download Now: The Big Blue Book of Field Sales

Field Sales Reps & Managers — flip to Chapter 3 to discover the top strategies for successfully improving your sales productivity in 2024! 

Get Your Free Ebook

What Is Sales Productivity?

Sales productivity measures how your sales teams and reps convert inputs (effort, time, and resources) into valuable outputs such as revenue. Essentially, sales productivity showcases your ability to generate value from your resources.

Therefore, with higher sales productivity, your organization will be more profitable than rivals with similar resources but lower sales productivity.

How to Measure Sales Productivity

photo of sales reports on a CRO's desk

There are different ways to measure your company’s sales productivity. Of course, the method that suits you best will depend on the nature of your business, including factors such as products, pricing models, and revenue cycles.

With these in mind, you can measure sales productivity by tracking one or more of the following sales productivity metrics:

  • Conversion rate
  • Revenue growth
  • Profitability of each customer
  • Contact to conversion ratio
  • Number of cold calls made
  • Number of cold emails sent
  • Revenue generated per salesperson

Factors Affecting Sales Productivity

Before going into the strategies on how to increase sales productivity, you must understand the limiting factors. Having such insight sets the proper foundation for enhancing productivity.

Some of the factors that could be affecting your sales team’s performance include:

  • Little to no qualified leads: Translates to allocating resources to leads that have a low likelihood of buying
  • Vague sales process: Without a clear sales process, reps will primarily rely on instincts, leading to disparate results
  • Repetitive tasks: Many repetitive tasks reduce the amount of time reps dedicate to selling
  • Unrealistic goals: Setting unrealistic goals sets your teams up for failure as it demotivates reps, affecting their productivity

How to Boost Field Sales Productivity

Now that you have a rough idea of what’s limiting your sales productivity, it’s time to focus on the strategies you can implement to improve it. These range from strategic alterations to investments you can make that will have a transformational impact.

1. Improve Lead Prospecting

At the heart of successful sales efforts is lead generation. Rather than spend your resources on a large audience, you should focus your efforts on those who are likely to convert. But with more businesses competing for a limited client pool, lead generation is becoming harder.

This is why 61% of marketers suggest that lead generation is their primary challenge. As such, improving your lead prospecting is a great way to enhance sales productivity. Doing so allows you to identify and qualify potential leads for your services before initiating sales efforts.

Some of the steps you should take when prospecting for leads include:

  • Research: Determine the ideal customer profile to target and research to identify potential leads
  • Lead identification: Setup a lead scoring strategy to create a list of leads based on the likelihood of becoming paying clients
  • Outreach: Establish contact with prospects to start a conversation to gauge the level of interest
  • Qualification: Determine which leads are worth pursuing further and focus on them

During outreach, it’s essential to understand that you’ll hear no four times from 60% of customers before getting a yes. So, you should encourage your sales reps to remain persistent and get easily discouraged.

Use the Revenue Growth Calculator

Curious how an improvement in sales productivity metrics can generate 2X more revenue in 2024? Use our calculator now!

Use the Calculator

2. Invest in the Right Technology

As mentioned, inefficient processes and manual tasks take up too much of your sales reps’ time. You can easily address this by embracing sales technology to streamline sales processes. These sales productivity tools can assist with a wide range of activities, including:

  • Scheduling meetings
  • Data entry
  • Prospecting
  • Reporting

Beyond empowering your reps, field sales software will give you a competitive advantage as it offers the following benefits:

  • Enhanced data analytics: You’ll have greater insights into your sales process, allowing you to make more informed decisions
  • Adaptability: Sales tech allows your team to respond to changes in the market swiftly
  • Improved collaboration: Communicating and working with your sales teams will be easier

Without a doubt, technology is an essential part of agile and efficient sales. However, you should be careful not to rely on it too much as doing so may erode the essence of field sales, forging strong personal relationships with clients.

3. Invest in Quality Sales Training and Coaching

field sales team at a sales training seminar

A crucial part of selling is reaching the right people with a great offer. However, that’s not enough for your sales reps to close deals consistently. Your sales team should understand the art of building and sustaining relationships to outsell competitors.

This is why you should invest in sales training. With the right people promoting your brand, you won’t have to focus on discounts to close prospects. They’ll have the insight, know-how, and charisma to present your products and services as the only logical option to prospects.

Sales training offers the following benefits:

  • Deeper product knowledge: Well-trained sales reps gain a deeper understanding of the products, translating to higher confidence and more sales
  • Competitive edge: A better-prepared sales team has the skills and knowledge to outperform competitors
  • Revenue boost: Closing more leads will increase your revenues and profits
  • Better customer experience: Sales training helps reps learn how to treat and communicate with clients, allowing them to deliver a better experience

4. Set and Track Sales Objectives

Setting goals is essential for your company to consistently achieve growth targets in sales. However, this is a balancing act you can’t afford to get wrong.

If you set very high targets, you risk demotivating your team or burnout as they chase the impossible. On the other hand, if your targets are too conservative, your team may perform below their potential.

Depending on the nature of your business, the goals you set may vary. Nonetheless, with the right goals, you’ll notice a significant improvement in sales.

Here are some of the reasons to set goals:

  • Direction: Goals will help pull everyone in the same direction, ensuring your company grows consistently
  • Motivate sales reps: The right goals will motivate reps to achieve their full potential
  • Improves focus: With something specific to aim for, reps will know which tasks to prioritize at various stages

For your goal-setting efforts to yield desired results, you need to assess your current business performance and competitors’ performance.

5. Define Your Sales Process

While there are naturally gifted salespeople, you can’t rely on individual attributes or hard work to achieve goals. If you don’t have a roadmap outlining how to approach sales, you can’t expect consistent results.

This is where a sales process comes into play. The sales process will have a series of repeatable steps that your sales reps should follow to convert a prospect into a client. Along with shortening the sales cycle and increasing the conversion rate, it provides structure and accountability.

But beyond boosting your bottom line, a sales process will aid your efforts in the following ways:

  • Faster staff onboarding: Training sales reps on how to handle various sales situations will be easier with a standardized process
  • Easier to analyze team and individual performance: Standardizing the sales process gives you a better platform for analyzing sales team performance
  • You can make constant improvements: Having a straightforward process to follow makes it easier to build on it as you gain more data and feedback
  • Sales revenue predictability: When your team uses a repeatable sales process, they’ll deliver consistent results translating to predictable revenues
  • Improved customer lifetime value: Relying on a well-honed process improves prospecting, closing, and customer experience, thus enhancing the customer lifetime value

When developing your sales process, identify your ideal customer and focus your field sales strategies on appealing to them. From there, create a lead generation strategy and build a sales pipeline.

6. Assign Sales Territories Strategically

The last thing you’ll want your sales teams and reps to do is compete to close the same clients. Aside from cultivating harmful competition, it will waste company time and resources. To avoid such scenarios and establish strategic sales efforts, establish sales territories.

These are geographical areas assigned to particular sales teams of personnel. The objective of allocating such territories is to improve the company’s effectiveness, efficiency, and sales productivity.

For each territory, the assigned party is responsible for identifying sales prospects, building customer relationships, marketing, and achieving set sales quotas.

With effective territory management, you can expect the following benefits:

  • Improved sales efficiency
  • Better understanding of customers in each territory
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction
  • Improved decision making
  • Achieve sales targets
  • Increases sales visibility

If you face stiff competition in your sector or target area, setting up territories is a great mover. It will help you consolidate the markets and ward off rivals.

7. Eliminate Unnecessary Meetings

a bored sales meeting attendee

According to data, big companies lose up to $100 million annually due to unnecessary meetings. Therefore, as you seek to improve sales outcomes, take proactive measures to ensure that meetings are only held when necessary and for the appropriate duration.

Beyond affording your team more time to sell, eliminating unnecessary meetings will increase employee engagement and productivity.

8. Celebrate Small Wins

Working in the sales department comes with a lot of pressure. From the entire organization counting on you to make their efforts worthwhile to facing constant rejection, sales reps have a lot to deal with. Moreover, they often have to work extended hours and travel a lot, which can cause fatigue.

Therefore, you need to keep your sales teams engaged and motivated. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by celebrating small wins. Whenever a team or sales rep achieves a target or closes a huge client, acknowledge their efforts.

By doing so, you’ll keep everyone motivated to achieve and surpass their targets. Some of the strategies you can use to celebrate success and keep teams eager to perform include:

  • Give gift cards and other awards
  • Appreciate efforts in public
  • Sports tickets
  • Online courses
  • Travel vouchers
  • Gym memberships
  • Team night outs
  • Tech gadgets
  • Cash bonuses

As you can see, rewarding your sales team does not have to be expensive. The objective is to show them you acknowledge and appreciate their efforts.

Considering that frequent recognition improves the productivity of close to 80% of employees, the benefits will justify the investment.

Benefits of Enhancing Sales Productivity

With rising competition, enhancing sales productivity may be the best way to remain competitive. It will add value to your organization in the following ways:

  • Resource use Optimization: Sales teams and reps will enjoy more efficient use of resources such as time and budget
  • Competitive Edge: Optimizing your sales productivity will give you an edge over rivals as you’ll have more efficient and strategic processes
  • Increased Savings: The savings you earn from efficient sales processes can be channeled to other key business areas
  • Shorter Sales Cycle: Efficiency in the sales process will help close leads faster
  • Increased Revenues: Shorter sales cycles and increased conversion rates will increase revenues

Download Now: The 7 Sales Secrets to Success

Want to know how you can EASILY improve sales productivity by 142%? Read our Strategic Seven Sales Secrets eBook today!

Get Your Free eBook

Get Ahead of the Competition

When it comes to sales success in the modern business landscape, you’re better off being strategic than overworking. With a streamlined sales process, a well-trained team, and the right technology partner, you can set yourself apart from rivals.

In this regard, Veloxy is the ideal partner for your growth. We accelerate sales cycles by simplifying the process, allowing you to sell and grow faster. With our AI solutions, you’ll help your team build and maintain stronger relationships with customers, translating to more revenues.

So, schedule a free trial today to enhance field sales productivity and accelerate business growth.

Did you find this content helpful?

Yes
No
Thanks for your feedback! We would really appreciate your feedback.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Samir Majumdar

Samir Majumdar

Samir is the CEO and Co-founder of Veloxy. After spending 20+ years creating corporate systems, boosting revenue, and eliminating inefficiencies, Samir started Veloxy to help sales professionals shorten sales cycles, accelerate pipelines, and close more deals.

Sales Insight Webinars

conversation between a doctor and medical salesman

How to Get Into Medical Device Sales (Key Strategies for Success)

Dreaming of a rewarding and challenging career in medical device sales? You should be! The medical device industry is poised to reach nearly $800 billion in global annual sales by 2030. If you’re looking to cut yourself a piece of that pie, then you’re in for an exciting journey! In this guide, we’ll explore the ins and outs of becoming a medical

Read More »
inside versus outside sales graphic

Inside Sales vs Outside Sales: Different but Equally Important

After nearly four years of a global pandemic, where nearly all of the workforce worked remotely, things are starting to return to business as usual. While it might be a slow return in some places, you are probably starting to consider again how you want your sales force to work for your business. After years of remote sales work, you might

Read More »
business man finding a prospect's email address and phone number

How to Find Someone’s Phone Number and Email Address

Are you a field sales representative struggling to reach potential customers? One of the biggest roadblocks you might face is figuring out how to find someone’s phone number, especially when you’re in unfamiliar territory. Luckily, there are tools out there that can help. This comprehensive guide will explore some of the best ways to find someone’s phone number and email

Read More »