The sales team plays a very important role in the growth of an organization. They not only help in increasing the company’s revenue but also affect the reputation of the business and the retention of customers. Given the significance of their job role, the performance and productivity of a salesperson can have a direct impact on the top line of the company. If you want to ensure the growth of your business, it is important to deal with the issues related to productivity proactively.
According to some research, most salespersons spend only 39 percent of their time selling products or interacting with customers. This highlights that many organizations face problems related to sales productivity.
Salesman Productivity Issues: Why do they arise?
Boosting the productivity of your sales team is very important for the efficient functioning of your business. However, asking your sales team to increase their productivity is not something that will yield results. Most salespersons do not try to be unproductive on purpose. Their unproductivity could be a result of many additional factors. The chances are that they could be stuck in transit or are busy completing other work that is not related to generating revenue. Company meetings can also end up taking a significant portion of their time.
The one common factor that affects the productivity of salespersons is inefficient time management. As has been mentioned previously, most sales representatives spend less than 30 percent of their time selling. New entrants to the sales team often end up taking around ten months before they start contributing to the goals of the company.
Strategies for Increasing Salesman Productivity
A salesman is said to be productive when they are able to generate sales revenue using fewer resources. By resources here, we mean the time and money that is spent in selling a product or service. Following are some strategies that can be useful in boosting the productivity of your sales team –
1. Sales route adaptation
Sales personnel often lose valuable time during transit between stores, which directly affects their ability to meet sales goals. While the efficient route plan is important, it is equally important to provide sales teams with a platform that simplifies their daily operations. Mojro's shopwyse serves as a one-stop solution to manage orders, logistics, marketing, and much more easily. This helps teams to reduce disability, ensure timely travel visits and improve overall productivity. With better visibility in store-level performance and scheduling factors such as holidays and demand trends, shopwis sales allow sales teams to plan more effectively and focus on high-effects activities.
2. Leverage Automation
According to the State of Field Sales report, a majority of the productivity issues crop up due to salespeople spending too much time on manual tasks. The average field sales representative only spends about 22% of their time in active selling. Improving sales productivity begins with understanding that it is not a lack of effort but spending more time on administrative tasks rather than actual selling that is causing the dip in productivity. Therefore, there is a huge need in the industry for tools that can automate these unproductive, repetitive tasks. A great way to use automation tools is through triggered events, beneficial for tasks such as follow-up emails. The trigger allows salespeople to respond quickly without having to put in a lot of effort.
3. Assign territories for the sales teams
Another way you can increase the productivity of your sales team is by assigning them territories. These territories will determine how the salespersons will go after the leads and work with the existing accounts. By allocating the territories strategically, you will also be able to ensure that there is no overlap and that each salesperson has enough leads to work with. You can also assign the biggest accounts to the top-performing salespersons.
4. Align the goals of different departments
Although the overarching goal of your company would be about selling and generating more revenue, quite often, the goals of different departments end up clashing with each other. It is possible that the different departments are not communicating properly, which leads to missed opportunities. This ultimately leads to a decline in productivity. In such a scenario, it is important to align the goals of different departments and streamline the communication for them. This can be accomplished by organizing a training session for the people in different departments and acquainting them with the sales process and the company goals.
Conclusion
With the aforementioned strategies, you can enhance your sales team’s productivity and help them perform better. Using Mojro’s Shopwyse can streamline sales operations and reduce inefficiencies, allowing the team to focus more on customer engagement. To know more about boosting salesman productivity, get in touch with Mojro today.
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