Sales & Marketing is one of those departments that has the highest burnout rates. But why? What’s the major reason behind this burnout rate?
Many businesses struggle with sales productivity and this is even exacerbated by the increasing pressure to exceed or meet the ROI targets. Most of the time, salespeople end up losing motivation. This is because the sales activities are too hectic or sales reps aren’t good enough in their roles.
Companies, in turn, when they don’t get the results, put more pressure on the employees. Ask the sales team to work harder, make more calls, send more emails, but this will likely result in worst outcomes. They set more aggressive sales goals, but scale their practices and processes at the same rate. As a result, the sale’s team productivity continues to decline.
Why do Sales Companies fail to perform better?
First and foremost, companies need to realize that they cannot improve their sales productivity unless they work on their customer services.
A report shared by Sirius Decisions has found that the salespersons spend 30% of their time on prospecting. They spend only 18% of the time actually connecting and engaging with them. So the real problem is in prospecting efforts!
If you really want to enable your sales team to perform better and sell better, here are six points to consider:
1- Embrace Social Selling Tools
As we have discussed earlier, the sales team spends a lot of time and energy in finding the right prospects and less on actually interacting with them.
With so much time being spent on prospecting, there is a glaring need that industries and companies embrace marketing automation tools, automating their repetitive and unproductive tasks. This, in turn, will help the sales team to save a lot of time and focus on more important tasks.
Marketing automation tools have a lot of importance due to the fact that they significantly reduce the amount of time spent on repetitive and redundant tasks like data entry and finding the right prospects.
Another way to utilize automation tools to your full advantage is through triggering events. This is quite beneficial when it comes to other things like sending follow-up messages or emails.
Companies who have embraced automation tools are likely to be high performers!
2. Keep Record of Sales Activities
If you want to improve your sales team performance, you need to observe all the key metrics to know where the team currently stands. For this purpose, you can use automation tools with a dashboard that automatically keeps records of all the sales activities. This will help you to assess the trends, get valuable insights, and make decisions accordingly.
You can keep an eye on the major metrics related to field sales managers to get an idea of how the team is actually spending their time. The key to a successful analysis of the team’s performance is consistency. If you check sales team activities randomly or once a while, you won’t be able to set a benchmark and measure the productivity properly.
3. Monitor Ongoing Sales Coaching Regularly
When you train a sales team, 8% of them forget the content and information within weeks. Once-and-done training is not going to help you much so you need to give your team training and make them learn new techniques with the time.
The sales environment is constantly changing and buying processes are also evolving. Your sales team must be trained as per the latest selling & marketing requirements. For this, you must monitor sales team coaching. Make sure it is productive and as per the ongoing strategy.
A good sales coaching can improve productivity by 90%, yet most of the sales managers spend the least time on coaching. Good training and coaching of a month can boost the revenue of the country by 25% and improve the close rates by 70%.
Sales coaching is a valuable opportunity to develop the sales force. It’s not about micromanaging reps or attacking their processes and performance. Rather, it’s about finding actionable solutions and strategies to drive revenue, to help your reps prioritize and effectively allocate their time and resources, and to enable your team to develop professionally.
4. Make A Schedule & Routine
The beauty of the sales field is that there is ample opportunity for creativity and flexibility.
The sales teams usually have schedules that are slightly busier as compared to other departments. Things often get messy when they fail to get things done on time. For best performance, the key is to get things done on time it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you do it right! So ask your team members to make their own schedules and work as per their convenience because what works for one individual may not necessarily work for another.
Once sales teams have laid out what needs to be done, it’s time to prioritize items. Sales reps should be encouraged to share their problems and say no to things that don’t help them meet their business objectives.
A certain level of structure formation is required if you want to enhance sales productivity. All of the tasks and meetings should be done on time. To make it more precise, put your long-term and best clients on the top of your list and make sure they get the best services. New clients should be prioritized after your existing ones because nurturing your long-term and loyal clients is necessary to maintain a good relationship.
Conclusion
It seems difficult to make the most of each day because there are so many in a year. However, by scheduling things and considering the suggestions given above, you can reduce the daily burden and perform better. Also, if you are a company owner, prioritize your employees’ ease and happiness. Customers often give bad performance when they are not happy with their boss or company’s behavior. Happy employees are 31% more productive and have a 40% more sales number.
