Sales representatives serve at the front line of your business, so you have to do everything you can to make sure they perform effectively. While hiring the perfect lineup of sales reps from the start is ideal, it’s not always—if ever—an option. However, working with your current team of sales reps and finding a way to improve their productivity is always possible.
There’s a common misconception that a sales rep’s productivity is all dependent on the individual’s abilities. However, there are many factors that affect a sales rep’s effectiveness, some of which are beyond their control. You also have to make changes on your part if you want your sales rep to be more productive, and knowing where to make those changes is key to big improvements.
If you don’t know where to begin, these helpful tips for improving sales rep productivity should give you a good start.
Growth-Hacking Techniques for Your Improving Sales Rep Productivity
1. Use the Right Sales Compensation Management Tools
One of the best ways to improve your sales reps’ productivity is by keeping them motivated, and one way to do this is by giving them the means to track their progress. This way, you’ll be able to reward them with appropriate incentives. By using sales performance management tools, you can let your sales reps know where they stand in terms of how well they are performing.
How does using the right technology help motivate sales representatives? By using the right sales compensation management platform, you enable transparency and real-time visibility for your sales team members and executives. Your sales representatives will know how well they have to perform to qualify for incentives, and you ensure accuracy of payouts. Performance-based rewards can either be rewarded on a per-individual basis or as a general reward for team-based efforts.
2. Know Your Target Market
Even the best sales reps will have a difficult time hitting ideal productivity goals if they’re trying to sell to the wrong people. It’s not just about reaching out to as many people as possible. Remember that time spent on trying to make a sale to an unlikely customer is time not spent making sales to your target market.
Identifying your real target market allows your sales reps to focus their efforts on people that are more likely to buy what they’re selling. Better chances of conversion improve your sales reps’ individual sales figures, which means an overall boost to your sales team’s effectiveness. Furthermore, knowing your target market also ties into the other tips on this list.
3. Improve Your Marketing
Sales reps will have a more difficult time making a successful conversion if a potential buyer is not familiar with the product or services they are selling. If knowledge about your brand, product, or service is low, sales reps will have to be able to introduce what you’re selling before they can actually attempt a sale. This is where effective marketing comes into play.
By being able to come up with a marketing strategy to increase awareness, you’re taking the burden of introducing your product from your sales reps. This way, your target market will be more likely to want to buy your products or services, and your sales reps can concentrate on making sales. Employing social media, for instance, is an effective and affordable technique when it comes to reaching out to your target demographic. Use this to your advantage.
4. Choose the Right Leaders
For your sales rep team to be truly effective, everybody has to be on the same page. This is why you need to have the right leaders to point the team towards the right direction. It’s up to the team leaders to make sure areas that need improvement are identified and properly addressed and that each sales rep sticks to the company’s sales strategy.
Picking the right leaders requires more than just assigning the top performers to leadership roles. Instead, look for individuals that are good at mentoring team members and those that have a keen eye for improvement. They also have to be familiar with keeping track of metrics for analyzing individual performances so they can coach employees that need to improve even before their stats take a major hit.
Improving sales rep productivity requires a concerted effort among your sales reps, their leaders, and upper management. A sound sales strategy combined with the right tools and people can mean the difference between an average sales rep team and an outstanding one.
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