10 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency

Group of employees gathered around a laptop
01

Build a better sales process

  • Don’t brute force it.
  • Have a data driven approach to your process.
  • Start by understanding your funnel.
  • Always drive to the next stage or step.
  • Avoid adding salespeople until you’re out of big levelers to pull.
  • Make it as “plug and play” as possible.
Employee working from home looking at a page with charts
02

You can’t improve what you don’t measure™

  • It all begins with measurement, if you’re not measuring then you’re
    flying blind.
  • Know what works, what doesn’t, and why.
  • Double down on what works, eliminate what doesn’t.
  • Test everything.
Manager looking at charts and sales metrics
03

Understand your funnel

  • Where are your leads and new accounts coming from?
  • What content and messaging are they engaging with?
  • Tailor your pitch accordingly.
  • Find the bottlenecks and prioritize fixing those.
  • Fixing a bottleneck will usually reveal the next ones
  • Always work towards the next step or stage.
Team of employees reviewing reports
04

Reports are essential

  • Measurement is just the first step.
  • Monitor progress and performance.
  • Reports and dashboards uncover what’s working and what’s not
  • Always ask why.
  • Test, test, and test again
Employees looking through automative processes on work desk
05

Automate repetitive taks

  • Spend time with your team to learn what their pain points are.
  • Templatize and automate anything they’re repeating
  • Remember time spent on repetitive tasks is time not spent selling
Woman working from home smiling on her laptop
06

Tech stack as a force multiplier

  • If it’s a pain point someone’s probably built an app for it.
  • Your CRM has the ability to build workflows for a reason.
  • Marketing automation isn’t just for marketing.

Favorite sales workflow solutions:

  • Email Productivity
  • Scheduling
  • Quote to Cash (QTC)
Team sitting on a round table discussing resposibilities
07

Define and divide responsibility

  • Salespeople naturally focus on what’s closest to close
  • Prospecting and outbound inevitably suffer.
  • Add a distinct SDR role when closing pipeline fills
  • Consider breaking up outbound and inbound roles
Employees working next to each other
08

Coordinate your team

  • Coordination is essential to a divided sales process.
  • Clearly define and map your stages.
  • Have established processes for how and when handoffs occur.
  • Communication will be key.
Employees celebrating together
09

Be careful what you incentivize

  • Quotas and commissions are extremely effective tools.
  • Because they are effective motivators, be careful what you incentivize.
  • Non-closing sales roles will likely need non-revenue based incentives.
  • Aligning incentives across the funnel and sales process can be hard.
Employees sitting on a table together engaging in discussion
10

Break down silos

  • Pick a “North Star Metric.”
  • Align goals across departments.
  • Marketing and sales need to work hand in hand.
  • Closing is only half the equation; don’t ignore retention

Get in touch with us to learn more about the important role of productivity insights in your future workplace.

download ebook button