How much time does your sales team spend selling?
I’m not referring to how many hours they work but how much time they spend speaking to prospects and closing deals.
Can you take a guess?
They only spend 25% of their time selling.
Crazy, right?
Imagine what your team could accomplish if some of the repetitive admin tasks that consume their time were streamlined.
And imagine how much the increase in sales productivity would affect your bottom line.
In this guide, you’ll learn why it’s crucial to improve sales productivity, how to improve it, and what metrics you should track to generate more sales in less time.
Table of Contents:
- What is sales productivity?
- Why is sales productivity important?
- What are the best metrics to track sales productivity?
- 5 tips for boosting sales productivity
- The best tools for sales productivity
- Use Clari Forecast to predict and grow your revenue
What is sales productivity?
Sales productivity is how effectively a sales team utilizes resources to reach its goals.
This can include:
- Time
- Labor
- Strategies
- Technology
The purpose of sales productivity is to do two things:
1. Find new strategies and tactics to increase the percentage of time a sales team spends on activities that close more deals.
2. Optimize the “sales” activities to maximize company efficiency.
Sales productivity helps to spend a higher proportion of working hours selling and maximize those selling hours on the activities that move the needle the most.
It’s not just about sales rep efficiency. It’s about the entire sales process.
This means analyzing your lead generation, sales calls, and overall revenue operations to get the most out of your sales team (and sales activities).
Why is sales productivity important?
To drive revenue, you need to increase your sales team’s productivity.
Here’s why:
Reach your business goals
If you find the right tools and tricks to best utilize your people, you’ll find that their contribution to business goals is greater than ever.
Achieve more accurate sales forecasting
By helping your sales reps work smarter and with the right tools, you’ll better understand where new business growth will be in the weeks and months.
Happier customers
When your sales team is more productive, they’ll get more done in less time. They can offer better customer support and communication with extra time, so your customers feel cared for. The result is greater customer satisfaction.
Increase revenue
When you reduce the hours your team spends on time-consuming but non-mission-critical tasks, the impact will be reflected in profits.
Your sales team will focus more on pitching leads, hopping on discovery calls, and closing sales. More time on calls means more sales.
What are the best metrics to track sales productivity?
In a HubSpot survey, sales managers were asked about their top sales productivity metrics, and customer relationship management (CRM) usage and calls made came out on top.
How easy is it to accurately predict and track deal close times in your organization? As you set about examining your sales productivity, there are some straightforward sales productivity metrics that you can drill down on:
Number of outbound sales calls made
Ask each person on your team to use a CRM or similar tool to track when they make an outbound sales call and assess how proactive your team’s overall sales strategies are.
Average lead response time
Are people who reach out waiting for minutes, hours, or days?
You need to ensure you’re jumping on opportunities quickly with leads. There’s a short window of opportunity to draw leads into your sales funnel.
Length of a lead cycle
This could vary from weeks to months or even years, depending on the nature of your business and the complexity of your product.
Number of proposals sent
Tracking this alongside demos and closed deals will help you assess which part of your sales cycle needs extra attention.
Number of deals closed each month
The gold standard in sales productivity is linked directly to business revenue.
You need to track your conversion rates and deals closed monthly. And you need to be doing everything in your power to increase this number, whether it means:
- Hiring more sales reps
- Improving revenue operations
- Optimizing your sales productivity
5 tips for boosting sales productivity
To boost sales productivity, you don’t just need to think about the sales productivity metrics. You also need to focus on a few best practices:
Leverage the right technology
To advance your sales team, you must rely on modern sales tech.
Revenue ops helps you collect, analyze, and interpret sales data to accelerate your team’s productivity and revenue growth.
Clari is a leading revenue intelligence platform that helps sales leaders and teams collect, analyze, and interpret accurate data to get more done quickly and drive revenue.
With Clari, you can:
- Forecast revenue
- See revenue goals from every angle
- Unify your sales data to drive sales productivity
Utilize data from successful deals
When something works well for your salespeople, make sure it's repeatable. For example, you can capture and analyze the critical moments for closing deals with a tool such as Clari's revenue conversation intelligence.
A lot of factors play into the sales productivity data at your organization. Some common ones include:
- How quickly and successfully deals are closed
- How sales leaders manage and motivate their teams
- How effectively the sales team are using technology and tools in the sales process
Automate where possible
Anywhere you can delegate or automate, you should. This is true in any aspect of business, including your sales department.
Improve training
A well-trained sales team is more effective, so consider whether you need to level up your initial coaching for recently onboarded reps and regular refreshers for more seasoned salespeople.
Optimized sales productivity begins with effective training from the get-go. If you can optimize your sales training and onboarding process, you could potentially save days, if not weeks, on training new reps to get them to close deals fast.
Encourage collaboration
Are your key stakeholders on the same page as your sales team? Transparent timelines can keep everyone accountable, and a revenue platform can help keep everyone on target.
When your teams collaborate properly and communication is on point, your sales productivity will rise since everyone will know their role and what they should be doing at any given time.
The best tools for sales productivity
According to McKinsey, AI and automation can free up approximately 20% of a sales team’s capacity.
Today’s sales leaders can choose from various sales automation tools. Here are some of the best sales productivity tools available now:
Clari: Ideal for RevTech
Clari is a unified platform that can help you reclaim control of the revenue process, predicting the full lead and deal lifecycle. With Clari Groove, your sales team can have their tasks and sales information at their fingertips across their email, calendar, CRM, and mobile devices.
monday.com: Ideal as a CRM
This customizable CRM can help your team to automate repetitive tasks and keep track of their opportunities.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Ideal for outreach
Building relationships takes time and energy. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool can help your sales reps find your target prospects and make the right connections.
Calendly: Ideal for scheduling
An intuitive scheduling platform, Calendly is a simple way for your team to keep track of their appointments.
DocuSign: Ideal for contracts
When it’s time to close a deal, a smooth experience means faster revenue. DocuSign is an eSignature platform that works across multiple devices, making the last step in your sales process a breeze.
Use Clari Forecast to predict and grow your revenue
You need to support your sales team to grow your revenue and improve conversion rates.
The best way you can do this is by doubling down on sales productivity.
With Clari, your team can improve its sales effectiveness and build repeatable processes for maximum sales productivity.
Clari helps you cut down on manual tasks and create predictable revenue for your business.
Our world-class RevOps platform streamlines the tasks of sales leaders, giving you an easy way to:
- Drive accountability
- Improve forecasting
- Share pipeline information
- Deliver the right tools to your team in real-time
Ready to start boosting your sales productivity to grow your revenue?