Modern sales reps are increasingly tasked with non-selling duties such as CRM data entry. This upkeep is a task that kills productivity.
According to Forbes, the average sales rep spends less than 36% of their time actually selling. Why? Because they have too many manual tasks that use up their valuable time.
Smart sales managers understand this and take steps to remedy the situation. In this article we’ll discuss the causes of low sales rep productivity and how sales task automation can help combat them.
4 Causes of Low Sales Productivity
Your sales team’s low productivity levels are almost certainly due to inefficient systems. If your team has to manually input data into your company’s CRM, for instance, they’re wasting valuable time that could be spent sourcing leads and closing deals.
Here are a few of the most common ways that modern sales reps waste time:
CRM Upkeep: It’s important to keep your company’s CRM database up to date. But too many reps spend too much of their time on this administrative task.
Writing Emails: Do your reps hand-type every prospecting email they send? This tedious task can be streamlined using messages templates.
Calendar Scheduling: Many sales reps’ productivity plummet because of poor scheduling techniques and an inability to prioritize tasks.
Document Management: A variety of contracts and documents are needed to close most field sales. Without an effective way to manage paperwork, productivity suffers.
These are just some of the ways that sales rep productivity is hindered. There are many more. Fortunately, most of them can be remedied using sales task automation software.
Sales Task Automation From SPOTIO
SPOTIO is a popular sales task automation app that field sales teams can use to boost productivity. In fact, our customers have achieved up to 46% greater productivity after implementing our solution. This is largely because of the automation tools we provide.
Using SPOTIO, you can reduce (or even eliminate) manual tasks related to:
Data Capture
Did you know that the average sales rep spends four hours a week just entering data into the company system? That means that approximately 10% of your sales resources are automatically gone due to CRM upkeep. And we haven’t even mentioned the possibility of data entry mistakes when manually updating a CRM.
By automating the data capture process with SPOTIO you’ll save your reps hundred of hours every year and ensure that your CRM data is always accurate.
Here are some of the sales tasks you can automate with SPOTIO:
- Log Prospect Interactions
- Easily Take Notes With Talk to Text
- Pass Notes Directly to Your CRM
For accurate CRM records in less time — and with WAY less effort — use the automated data capture features inside SPOTIO.
Auto-Visits
As we’ve mentioned, your reps have A LOT of admin tasks to take care of on a daily basis. Auto-Visits helps reduce them by automatically capturing check-ins and check-outs via an exclusive geofencing feature.
Essentially, this means that SPOTIO will detect when your reps reach a specific area and when they leave; then log the details into your sales software.
This information can then be analyzed by sales leaders like yourself to uncover how time spent with a prospect translates into sales. This feature also helps keep sales reps accountable for their actions since their movements are visible to higher-ups.
Messaging Template
Typing out the same email and/or text message over and over again to new leads is a waste of time. With messaging templates inside SPOTIO, you can supercharge your team’s messaging productivity with the click of a button.
Use our tool to quickly create email and text templates that can be used repeatedly. Then monitor the performance of each template and optimize it for peak performance.
Recent studies have found that email marketing ROI is two times greater than cold calling. With SPOTIO, you can increase your conversion rates in less time because of the messaging template feature that we offer!
Sales Rep Day Planner
An organized schedule is key to sales success — especially for field reps who spend most of their time outside their company’s office. Without a well-crafted schedule, it’s easy to lose track of time and difficult to properly prioritize tasks.
The SPOTIO mobile app features an embedded calendar with automated reminders to call, text, or email prospects at the appropriate times. That way they don’t get sidetracked, forget, and then blow a potential sales opportunity.
Combine this feature with the messaging template capability mentioned above and your sales reps will be able to send highly optimized messages at the perfect time, every time.
e-Contracts & Document Management
One of the biggest hangups in sales is the contract/document signing process. Why? Because it’s easy for field reps to misplace them while traveling. A delay at this stage in the buying process could lead to a lost sale.
With SPOTIO, all important sales paperwork can be digitally stored in-system and quickly found via a search bar. Once the right document is located, prospects can legally sign them with an electronic signature, which helps deals get closed faster than ever before.
All signed paperwork will then be safely stored inside SPOTIO.
According to HubSpot, e-contracts alone can double sales productivity!
Integrate SPOTIO with Your CRM
Sales task automation tools are most effective when paired with CRM software because the connection will reduce much of the manual data entry tasks that plague sales reps.
When field notes are automatically transferred from a tool like SPOTIO to your CRM of choice, your reps will have a lot more time to make sales. Here’s how this process works inside our field sales solution:
- First, connect your CRM solution to SPOTIO. Integration options include SalesForce, HubSpot, PipeDrive, Zoho, and many more via Zapier.
- Second, choose data points that are important to your organization and map them directly to your system of record to create a seamless flow of information.
- Third, ask your reps to download the SPOTIO app to their smartphones and use it to streamline sales tasks like prospecting and communicating with customers.
Once the SPOTIO integration is set, the information you and your team put into the SPOTIO mobile app, it will automatically pass to your CRM in real time, ensuring it’s always up to date. This will enable you to reach insane productivity levels, shorten sales cycles, and increase revenue.
Additional Sales Task Automation Benefits
While sales rep productivity is clearly one of the biggest benefits of sales task automation, it’s not the only one. By investing in a solution like SPOTIO, you can also better evaluate individual rep performance via the cold, hard data it produces.
This will allow you to make more informed decisions about territory assignments, resource allocation, and which field sales strategies to deploy.
Boost Sales Rep Productivity
The sales task automation features available in SPOTIO will help your field reps get more done in less time. It’s that simple.
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