Sales Performance

8 Compelling Reasons to Invest in a Sales Activity Tracker

A sales activity tracker will help your team identified which activities are driving results, as well as which ones are not, so you can improve the sales process.

This is critical because if performance is down, you can go straight to the source of the problem and correct it. Likewise, if you notice certain activities are driving a lot of sales, you can dedicate more resources to them in order to scale.

Do you hear the term sales activity tracker and automatically think it means micromanaging your field sales reps?

In a way, using a sales activity tracker is micromanaging. But instead of monitoring every move a rep makes outside the office, you’re tracking (and acting on) their sales data instead.

The result? Your business gets the figures it needs to improve your sales process.

The problem is, most sales teams aren’t measuring the metrics they have control over. A study by Harvard Business Review found 83% of metrics like results and sales objectives are unmanageable because they’re in the past. It’s too late to act on them.

But the remaining 17% of sales activities can be tracked and influenced in real-time to make a change to your business—and its bottom line.

In this post, we’re going to look at:

The Importance of Tracking Sales Activities
Two Types of Sales Activity Data You Need To Track
8 Reasons to Invest in a Sales Activity Tracker
How to Track Sales Activities in 5 Steps

Let’s get tracking.

The Importance of Tracking Sales Activities

Tracking and acting on sales activity data is one of the few ways sales teams can control their outcomes.

Even though a lot of sales teams know this, it’s surprising how many aren’t taking control of their sales data. A recent HubSpot survey found some sales teams are failing to track crucial KPIs like conversion rates and customer retention that influence sales activities.

Without tracking, teams are left in the dark about why they’re losing leads and customers are churning. Of course, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. It’s impossible to know why all this is happening unless you’re actively tracking your sales efforts.

Tracking sales activities isn’t only crucial for the leads and prospects you have in your sales funnel right now. It’s essential to predict how well your sales team might do in the next quarter or year, and what you need to change to influence the future.

Once you have data that shows where a rep is losing leads or how unproductive your team is, you can start to look at your sales strategy as a whole.

Is it bringing in the revenue you forecasted? If not, which parts of the strategy require damage control?

Two Types of Sales Activity Data You Need To Track

There are two main types of activities you should be tracking: quantitative and qualitative.

It’s a chicken and egg scenario; you need to be tracking qualitative activities to make sense of your quantitative goals. If you’re only tracking one or the other, it’s mostly useless.

Qualitative

Qualitative activities paint a bigger picture of how customers view your company.

It explains the “why” and the “how” of how your company is doing. Qualitative results are determined by sentiment, rather than cold, hard data (that’s where the quantitative analysis comes in). Instead, qualitative activities are measured on satisfaction instead.

Examples of qualitative data you can track are:

– Customer objections
– Brand awareness
– Company promotion
– Overall customer satisfaction
– Credibility
– Trust
– Productivity
– Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

However, just because a number can’t measure these goals doesn’t mean they aren’t important. If you can track them and highlight progression, they can be a massive motivator for your sales reps.

Quantitative

Quantitative data is where your goals are tied figures like new contacts, opportunities, revenues, profits or customer retention.

You can use quantitative data to create clear sales goals like increasing your lead generation by a certain percentage over the next quarter. After the quarter is up, you’ll have some data on what part of your sales funnel is generating the most leads, and what parts need work.

That data might lead you to ask questions like, are your reps performing in the field? Or is there an issue with the company’s credibility that is causing slow lead generation?

See, chicken and egg. Quantitative data doesn’t mean much without qualitative backup.

A few examples of quantitative data are:

– Number of new contacts
– Lead time
– Sales by territory
– Churn rate / retention
– Win rate
– Lead generation source
– Sales cycle length
– Quotas
– Monthly revenue
– Annual revenue

Quantitative data is important because it’s raw, and it’s not subjective. If you’re tracking your lead generation source, quantitative data takes away the “how” and “why” and only serves up the “what”. Here are “what” channels are working for lead generation (and what ones aren’t.)

Similar, managers can understand which reps are selling more, which territories are most profitable, and how long it takes on average to go from lead to sale.

Take a look at this sales activity dashboard inside Salesforce. It’s tracking a company’s lead funnel by campaigns, new leads, unqualified leads, and expected revenue:

Already we can see that leads are coming in from a bunch of different avenues, and some are more qualified than others. What we can also see is that one of the sales reps, Vince West, is struggling to fill his lead pipeline.

The result of this data?

The company could redistribute some of its marketing budget into the campaigns that are bringing in more qualified leads, like Google Ads. A sales manager could also talk to the rep that’s struggling to generate leads and see how they can help.

Sales Activity Tracking Best Practices

Be Consistent

Being diligent about maintaining and inputting a consistent data set is a must. Having everyone follow the same process ensures the team is on the same page. Activity tracking is only valuable when a set of standards and requirements is adhered to.

Be Accurate

Data is useless if it’s not accurate. Take time to train reps on how to enter data into your field sales software. Make sure each rep is recording notes from every conversation at the conclusion of each interaction with a prospect and customer.

Be Unbiased

You’re not perfect, and that’s OK. Entering the good, bad, and ugly provides a clear and accurate portrayal of sales activity. Talk about wins, stucks you have trying to move a prospect down the funnel, etc. Entering a full gamut of data keeps your sales team on an upward trajectory toward success.

Be Organized

Store activity data in software where reps and managers can easily access and analyze the data to improve the processes. A mobile-first solution designed specifically with the outside sales rep in mind is a great way to ensure the consistent collection of accurate, unbiased, and actionable activity data.

How to Track Sales Activities (5 Steps)

Step 1. Identify your overarching sales goals

The first step to tracking sales activities is setting goals.

What does your company want to achieve, and when does it want to achieve it by?

Using the SMART method is the easiest way to spitball ideas and narrow in on what goals you want to achieve (and what goals are realistic):

Image Source

Write out what your goals are going to look like:

Are they specific?
Don’t have a goal to increase your leads. Set a specific goal to bring in 5 more leads a week.

Are they measurable?
If you want to increase your revenue, attach a percentage on it. “We want to increase our revenue by 5% next quarter.”

Are they attainable?
There’s nothing worse for sales reps than setting unrealistic sales goals. Plan out goals that your reps can achieve.

Are they relevant?
If it doesn’t fit with the mission of the company as a whole, don’t set it as a goal.

Are they timely?
There needs to be a deadline for every goal. Don’t say “in the future, we wish to achieve…”. That’s not helpful. Say “by December 31st, we want to increase door knocks by ten a day.”

Step 2. Decide which activities will help you realize that goal

Next, you need to build an action plan so your goals become actionable.

Let’s say you want to increase the number of leads your pipeline by five each week. Sounds achievable right? It is, with an action plan.

If you look at your historical data and find your reps are landing two leads for every ten emails they send. But for every ten cold calls they make, they’re only landing a single lead. Using the data, implement an action item, so your reps prioritize email over calling. Your goal will be to increase the number of leads in their funnel by sending out 25 more emails each week.

Use the same data and strategy to map out all of the steps and people involved for each goal until you have an actionable plan. You’ll end up with something like this:

Step 3. Assign KPIs to these sales activities

What KPIs you assign will depend on what the sales activity is. For outside sales reps, KPIs typically fall into five groups:

– Prospecting
– Contacted
– Qualified
– Leads
– Sales

Being able to log and view sales activity metrics is imperative if you want to run an efficient sales engine. It’s not big brother; it’s about gaining a data driven understanding of the performance (efficiencies and deficiencies) that are driving your sales team.

Reps: With a prospecting tool integrated into your CRM, log sales activities as soon as you leave your appointment. Enter data, pull account history, and filter leads from the field.

Managers: Know exactly what’s going on in the field. As reps enter sales activity throughout the day, be able to view insights of all their activities in one easy to view dashboard. Actionable metrics giving you real-time visibility to identify which parts of the sales process each rep is thriving and which parts you may need to jump in and help the rep improve upon.

Let’s go back to our earlier goal of getting five more leads a week into a rep’s pipeline. To achieve this, they will have to make 25 extra email attempts a week. If they were previously getting five leads into their funnel by sending out 25 emails, and they need five more leads, then they need to double their email output. So, the KPI for this goal should be set at 50 email attempts.

Easy!

Step 4. Decide how you will track KPIs at the team and rep level

Aligning the right KPIs to a project or goal is a crucial part of making the whole effort successful.

And it’s impossible to get it right if sales reps aren’t involved in the process. Remember how we talked about setting unrealistic goals? This step will give your reps the chance to speak up if they don’t think a goal is achievable.

Deciding how to track your KPIs at a team level will depend on:

– How your team inputs and analyses the data around each KPI
– How your team uses data to evaluate developed KPIs
– What results your KPIs have achieved and if you need to revisit them

Pro-tip: Using SPOTIO, a sales manager can assign KPIs to each activity. Once a rep has completed the task, they tick it off as completed. Simple.

Step 5. Share your sales tracker with the entire sales team

Lastly, keep everyone in the loop.

Once you’ve set up your goals, share them with the entire team so they can agree that they’re accurate and achievable. Making sure your entire team is on the same page from day one will ensure everyone is working towards the same goals.

8 Reasons to Invest in a Sales Activity Tracker

As you can see, adding a Sales Activity Tracker to your sales stack is extremely beneficial. Still not convinced? Think about what you could accomplish with aggregated sales activity data such as: pipeline activities, historical data, real-time rep visibility, performance tracking, and executive insights.

Now we’re going to look at how a dedicated sales activity tracker can make this process so much easier, and help surface insights that will help grow the bottom line.

1. A sales activity tracker will provide a real-time view of the pipeline

When it comes to finding (and fixing) problems in your pipeline, it’s better to do it sooner rather than later.

A sales activity tracker gives sales reps a complete view of their company’s pipeline, and it’s updated in real-time:

Image: An example of a sales pipeline in SPOTIO. Prospects, qualified leads, and closed deals are all easily tracked in the same screen.

How does this help your sales figures?

Well, if all of your reps are getting a ton of leads to the quoting stage, and then the leads are turning cold, it could signal a problem with your company’s pricing structure. Or if the pipeline shows an individual sales rep is failing to qualify leads, you can look into their sales process and find out where they’re going wrong:

Image: SPOTIO dashboard – using a sales activity tracker, reps can log their lost leads and the reason why, so it’s easier to spot patterns (and fix them).

2. A sales activity tracker will highlight the best performing territories

Outside sales reps spend a lot of their time planning out what areas to target next.

With a sales activity tracker, reps can map territories by zip code, specified streets, certain addresses, or a general neighborhood and then develop an action plan. Having a plan in place gives reps a clear direction of where to focus on selling, and more importantly, which territories they’ve already hit.

Image: SPOTIO Territory Manager being used to map sales territories and assign to different reps.

A sales tracker can break down territories into prospecting, contacting, qualified leads and quotes. Plus, sales reps can save information about a prospect inside a sales activity tracker. Next time the rep follows up with a lead, they’ll be able to look back on their notes and see what stage the deal is at from their last visit.

3. A sales activity tracker will highlight top-performing reps

Are all your sales reps bringing in the same amount of leads and revenue?

Without tracking their activities, it’s nearly impossible to know.

By tracking the performance of individual reps, you create accountability and uncover your top performing reps. On the flip side, you can also figure out which reps are failing to bring in enough revenue.

Tracking performances can also encourage reps to up their selling game. Using a sales activity tracker, you can set up a sales leaderboard for your team. There’s nothing that will encourage your reps to sell more like a bit of healthy competition:
Image: SPOTIO’s sales leaderboard shows real-time insights into pipeline activity, as well as rep and territory sales performance.

4. A sales activity tracker will show where the team is spending time

Did you know that lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budgets cost companies at least $1 trillion a year?

And a big part of lost productivity for outside sales reps is how they manage their time. If your sales reps are spending most of their time planning their day and mapping out their routes, it’s easy to see how their time is being swallowed up by admin work. A study by Salesforce found most reps spend 64% of their time on admin and service tasks, and only a third of it actually selling:

According to Forbes, the average field sales rep pockets $105,482 a year. So each year, companies are paying their outside sales reps about $68k to do… admin tasks.

So, how can sales teams cut out the admin and get their reps selling more? The reality is, it takes a lot of time and effort to plan a route effectively. But using a system that’s built for sales reps can do this automatically.

Salient Medical had this exact problem; their reps weren’t as productive as they should’ve been, and it cost the company money. VP of Sales Darrell Simpson said that the company started using a sales activity tracker to try and solve the problem.

“For managerial observation of staff, it has completely changed the way we are able to see what each field rep is doing on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

“We now have knowledge of how many clients our reps are seeing per day.”

5. A sales activity tracker will surface top priorities for reps

When your reps are on the road, they’re juggling their time between scheduling what territories to target and the best routes to get there.

A sales activity tracker houses all your leads under one roof. That means their address and pipeline stage are synced up in a field reps sales planner. A sales tracker can automatically map out the best route based on this information, and sales reps can book more appointments as a result.

Image: An example of an automatically planned sales route on SPOTIO

While they wrap up an appointment and jump back in their car, they can easily see their next meeting, sort through new leads in their territory, and track mileage along the way.

Pro-tip: If your sales reps are on the road and you want to stay in the loop, a sales activity tracker like SPOTIO automatically updates a pipeline whenever your rep enters new information.

So, if they’re on the road and they progress a deal from qualified to quote, it will show up in real-time on your screen as well.

6. A sales activity tracker will pinpoint bottlenecks

What part of your sales process is the weakest? Is there a point where your sales reps are underperforming?

If you can’t pinpoint your sales bottlenecks using quantitative and qualitative data, you’re essentially flying blind. A bottleneck in your sales process could be:

– X amount of cold calls but none of them get returned
– X amount of introductions but no follow-up appointments
– X amount of sales appointments, but a lack of quotes
– X amount of quotes but only a few sales
– X amount of closed sales, but high customer churn

If you can’t look at your sales pipeline, pinpoint a spot and say “that’s where we are losing our leads”, you have no chance of fixing your problem.

Let’s say your data shows that your team is closing a ton of sales, only for the customers to churn the next quarter. Your bottleneck might be the way your reps are nurturing their customer’s in the post-sale phase.

Using a sales activity tracker stops customers falling through the cracks. Reps can set reminders to follow up with new customers, so they’re able to iron out any problems before a customer jumps ship:

Image: An example of a 3-month check in on a sales rep’s pipeline using SPOTIO

7. A sales activity tracker will help streamline processes

Are you organizing deals and tracking meetings in a spreadsheet, or worse, using pen and paper?

If the answer is yes, it’s no wonder your time is being chewed up with admin work and old-school organization.

A sales activity tracker can act as a personal assistant to sales reps. It helps plan and track meetings, calls, demos, lunches and emails for every deal, contact, and company.

Once a rep plans out their day on a sales activity tracker, it’s automatically pushed to their Google or Outlook Calendar. They don’t have to worry about their schedule when they’re out in the field selling⁠—it’s already organized:

8. A sales activity tracker delivers more revenue

Without a sales activity tracker, even the best reps can miss out on crucial sales opportunities.

By actively managing activities and pipelines, a sales team has a better grasp on what stage a customer is at in their sales funnel, and when they should push to close a deal.

They’ll also have a better idea of when they should ask an existing customer for a referral.

For field reps, landing a referral from a happy customer means less door knocking and better-qualified leads. A survey by HubSpot found 83% of customers are willing to make a referral after a positive experience. But what’s even more important is that the overall LTV of a referred customer is 16% higher than non-referred customers. So, it pays to ask for referrals.

The key to securing more revenue is all down to timing. If you approach an upsell or ask for a referral at the right time, it can make all the difference. Using a sales activity takes away the guesswork so that you can ask at the right time, every time.

Ready to track your sales?

Tracking sales isn’t about micromanaging your outside sales reps. It’s about building a smarter sales funnel and cutting out their admin work in the process.

Without a sales activity tracker, businesses are throwing away thousands of dollars a year for field reps to do admin work and plan out sales territories. They’re getting paid to do something that can be automated.

That’s why having a system where you can pinpoint your most profitable territories (or find out which reps that are struggling to close deals), makes total sense for modern sales teams. Remember, most of the metrics that move the needle for outside sales teams are trackable; you just need the right toolkit.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Why your Door to Door Business Needs a Website

Many small businesses, especially new small businesses in the door to door sales industry, run a lean operation. They focus on necessities and urgent matters, only spending money when needed. So, it’s easy to see why some business owners might think a website is a luxury item they can afford to live without.

They might even believe a Facebook page is enough for an online presence, or that a sign with their phone number will generate calls, or that a traditional mailer will help them sell products. But the truth is, the only way to start promoting a business is by building a professional website.

9 Key Reasons To Have A Business Website

Your website acts as a portal so customers can learn more about your company, as well as research product information and determine if they want to do business with you. If you’re a small business owner selling door to door, you need to realize that a website isn’t an expensive luxury or a frivolous endeavor — it’s an affordable, fundamental tool that every company needs.

#1 | Anchor For Marketing

Before you print a business card or spend a penny on advertising, you need to start marketing by building a website.

A website will act as an anchor for all of your advertising efforts. All business details, product information and promotions should live on your website first. Then, you can create marketing materials that fall in line with your domain name, which will drive customers to your website for additional information.

#2 | Sells Your Products / Service Online

Your website acts as a digital brochure, sharing up-to-date information about your offerings. A benefit of web publishing is that you can change information in real-time — no waiting or paying for new print materials.

Think of your website as a 24-hour sales staff. It provides answers to frequently asked questions and can even process sales. Websites with e-commerce and purchasing options allow users to make direct purchases online, thus simplifying sales for both your staff and your customers.

#3 | Connects You With New Customers

While you might already have an established customer base, a website is a surefire way to connect with new customers who might be unfamiliar with your business.

More often than not, people turn to the internet when they have a problem. Searching for solutions is easy — but is your business a potential problem solver? With a professional website, you position your business as a solution for your customers’ needs. Plus, you can optimize your site with search terms related to your industry. This will expose your business to new customers on the prowl.

#4 | Big Benefits For Local Businesses

One misconception about websites is that they’re only for national companies or worldwide corporations with audiences around the globe. Actually, websites are just as, if not more, beneficial for small businesses. In fact, it’s a great way to connect with locals. 70% of U.S. households now use the Internet when shopping locally for products and services.

Plus, search engines often rank results according to location. In other words, if you’re looking for “shoe stores near me,” Google won’t offer you a name-brand result in New York (unless of course you live in New York).

So it’s pretty clear — an online presence has big benefits even for door to door companies who deal locally. No matter where you are located, you can get started with an efficient website that draws in customers.

#5 | Builds Credibility

Nothing is more important than the ability to be found. If you don’t have an established online identity, then customers can’t find you. Not showing up in the search engines (or on the Internet at all for that matter) is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility as a business. It makes you and your company look dated, out of touch and untrustworthy.

Even if you’re fantastic at word-of-mouth marketing, you could be missing out on a ton of referrals. Happy customers are quick to share what they think about your business, but what about their friends who haven’t experienced your services yet? They’ll take to the Internet. And when they come up empty handed, you’ll have missed your chance for brand new customers.

#6 | Controls Your Online Destiny

If you think having a Facebook page or an online directory listing (like Yellow Pages) is enough to promote your business, you’re wrong.

When you publish through, or rely on, a third-party platform, you’re at their mercy. If the platform decides to close your account, change their policies or revise their programming, you might lose the ability to connect with your audience. Yet, when you run your own website, you’re in control of both the content you produce and the platform you maintain.

#7 | Simple & Affordable

Many small business owners rely on using third-party platforms or avoid setting up their own website because they think it’s complicated or expensive.

But building and maintaining a website is easier and cheaper than ever before. Even if you aren’t tech-savvy or creative, you can now use simple web publishing tools to build a website in a couple of hours. And the fees for hosting a website start at less than $10 per month — probably one of the cheapest marketing costs out there.

#8 | Your Voice

Have you ever been in an argument with someone and said “Well, I have written an article about that on my website, and actually, that isn’t the case.” It feels great! For some reason people don’t want to argue with you if you’ve written about something on your website.

It also gives you a place where you can voice your opinion without judgment. If someone leaves you a comment you don’t like you can just drag it over to the spam folder.

Take my advice small business owners — there are no more excuses. If you’re putting off building a website, you’re hurting your business. It’s time to get started!

#9 | Recruiting Top Talent

Last but certainly not least, don’t overlook the dramatic impact that a good website will have in your recruiting efforts. Your website is going to be the first place that any high performing sales rep will look whenever

they research your company.

When exploring the possibility of working for your company and deciding where to “take their talents,” they’re going to look for anything that can be perceived as an advantage. The better your website, the more detail they’ll be able to learn about your organization. Quality salespeople know that online traffic means more inbound leads for them to work. They understand the benefits of a company with a solid web presence as it relates to sales.

Building Your Website

It’s not the 80’s anymore; getting your company website up and running can be done fairly easily today. We’ve outlined three tiered levels of how you can get a company website built.

Option 1 | Basic – Cheap But Functional

If you recognize the need to finally have a website for your small business but this caught you off guard, we’ve got you covered. The number of build-your-own website hosts available is staggering. They all have templates that you can edit and customize to match your company’s branding. What’s even better is the templates are sorted by industry, making it easy to ensure your design matches your offer.

Some build-your-own website options we recommend: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy

Option 2 | Mid-Level – More Money, Less Time

In this second tier, you’re going to spend a bit more money compared to doing it yourself. For a lot of businesses, this is most likely a welcomed expense vs trying to figure out how to do it yourself. The upside is that it will eat up less of your time by hiring a web design / development company.

You’re also almost guaranteed to see a better result. After all, this is what they do for a living right? A great place to start your search for a web designer is Upwork. This is a service that allows you to hire freelancers throughout the U.S.

Option 3 | Upper Echelon – High Price, Best Result

For the owners and companies who like to “go big or go home,” here you go. Option number three is more often than not going to be your most expensive choice, but it’s likely to be worth the investment because it will take your new site to a whole ‘notha level.

Using a marketing agency for this project will go well beyond just putting your name and logo on page. We recommend an agency like Contractor Gorilla, who specializes in building sites specifically for construction contractors.

Consideration

If you’re making the decision to go the route of hiring a person or company, the most important thing to do is talk to their references. Go through and review their past work before just jumping on board.

Once you’ve found the company you want to use, establish due dates that include specific deliverables along the way, and provide these to them. Don’t just create one deliverable that’s the final site, especially if hiring a freelancer. Make sure they agree to the completion dates before moving forward.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

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Hunter vs. Farmer: 7 Things You Should Know Before Using Salesforce Maps as a Field Sales Solution

Successfully and strategically mapping out sales territories requires coordinating countless moving parts. Yes, you’ll need to manage the basic sales assignment process of connecting reps with their regions – but savvy business owners and sales managers recognize that a comprehensive field sales methodology requires far more than just outlining boundaries and choosing the right account executive.

Salesforce Maps (formerly MapAnything) has proven to be a popular choice for sales organizations looking to up their infield selling game. However, businesses across virtually every vertical often realize that the current SF Maps functionality doesn’t quite suit all of their needs.

To best optimize a sales territory campaign, executives must implement a full-scale, robust mapping solution that goes beyond program basics to include other factors such as gathering data sets, managing leads, and measuring performance.

Salesforce Maps Often on the Fields Sales Solution Shortlist

Designed specifically for field sales strategies, Salesforce Maps does what all mapping software should do: help organizations add geographic context to the selling process. The system also automates standard selling situations, such as contact details, new account creation, lead gathering, and various customer service components.

Sure, SF Maps uses functional mapping and productivity optics. However, as B2B field sales team begin to experience the pressure of making sales in highly-competitive markets, they quickly realize that selecting the right territory mapping solution boils down to far more than cool visuals. Before you invest heavily in Salesforce Maps, it’s important to explore some key considerations that could shape your final decision

The Hunter (SPOTIO) vs. The Farmer (Salesforce Maps)

As a global leader in the CRM space, Salesforce platforms (including SF Maps) are typically reliable options for business owners. However, it’s important to note that just because Salesforce Maps is a good solution, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution for your outside sales team. While business owners may initially explore SF Maps when sourcing digital mapping strategies, many discerning entrepreneurs choose SPOTIO as their final solution.

Leveraging Field Sales To Grow Your Corporate Operations

Both Salesforce Maps and SPOTIO offer a diverse suite of sales automation and geographic technologies. However, Salesforce Maps’ configuration makes it uniquely designed for sales teams trying to sell (or farm) into already existing customers, establishing it as a potential option for businesses looking to sustain their current operations.

SPOTIO, on the other hand, goes head-to-head with SF Maps farming capabilities – and then takes things up a notch. In addition to providing system support when selling into established customers, SPOTIO’s functionality is positioned specifically to help companies prospect (or hunt) and find new business opportunities to grow their corporate reach and revenues.

7 Ways SPOTIO Will Help You Hunt Down (and Close) More Deals

The SPOTIO field sales solution, much like Salesforce Maps, provides the conventional mapping feature set, including:

Map Visualizations

SPOTIO’s map visualization technology uses a geographic interface to help users aggregate and analyze complex location data sets. The system offers big-picture intelligence that helps pinpoint new prospects, leads, and revenue-generating opportunities within a designated sales territory.

For reps, this means instant insight on where they have their best chance to maximize closed deals and overall ROI when spending time in the field.

For managers, SPOTIO’s map visualizations help pinpoint where reps are converting deals – and which region’s need a little more focused selling attention.

Route Mapping

SPOTIO route mapping offers invaluable insight on how to get to your final destination as quickly and painlessly as possible. Reps and managers can develop and implement customized routes that minimize lost productivity. You’ll use real-time data to help your team lower windshield time and streamline output on every client visit.

Beyond these standard functions, SPOTIO stands out above other solutions like Salesforce Maps as a leading field sales acceleration platform by offering these seven essential hunter features:

1. Create Ideal Customer Profiles

Salesforce Maps captures and visualizes stored company data to help sellers understand their current state of affairs with any specific customer.

However, SPOTIO offers extended capabilities that allow users to develop ideal customer profiles. Your sales team can quickly sort live information by over 50 data points to help you pinpoint common traits amongst your very best customers to reference when developing prospect lists.

2. Assign Territories by Number of Homes

Salesforce Maps allows users to create territory boundaries. Unfortunately, establishing a sales territory based on sheer mileage alone is not enough to ensure success. It’s vital to develop territories that gives your reps access to a sufficient number of prospects within their district, without feeling overwhelmed, or capped.

SPOTIO goes beyond miles and square footage, allowing users to develop balanced territories based on the estimated number of homes in a region. In just a few minutes, managers can create selling regions that offer your team an equal opportunity for success while out hunting for new business.

3. Use Google Places Data to Target Specific Business Types

SPOTIO’s platform integrates with Google Places to boost the benefits of mapping technology. Again, Salesforce Maps provides sufficient information on current sales customers and activities. However, with its native Google Places integration, sellers can use SPOTIO to designate the very best opportunities within their assigned regions.

For example, companies selling into healthcare organizations can use Google Places to identify other medical practices. From there, SPOTIO takes over, mapping out the best route to optimize efficiencies during the time in the field.

4. View Pipeline Activity Inside Your Territory

Like everything else in sales, the pipeline activity within your designated sales regions can be cyclical with upward swings and downturns. Salesforce Maps’ somewhat limited technology profile makes it challenging to accurately view pipeline activity within a district.

SPOTIO’s mobile functionality equips users with “notes as you go” field data entry that promotes accurate, thorough pipeline activity tracking that benefits virtually every level of a sales organization.

Busy sales reps appreciate having the ability to quickly zero in on their most urgent potential sales. Additionally, managers and group leaders value using pipeline activity data sets to pinpoint possible deals as well as marketplace momentum, trends, and dips.

5. Re-Engage Smarter With Historical Data

Let’s face it: effectively selling often relies on an “if at first you don’t succeed” mentality.

Exceptional sales leaders understand that to truly optimize results within a territory, reps must continuously refine their strategies and increase their overall territory penetration. However, tracking the extensive volume of historical data through Salesforce and other (often more manual methods) can prove a major time waster. SPOTIO’s historical data functionality streamlines accessing past communication and transactions. Reps can quickly refresh on the details of the last appointment, while managers can use the stored insight to help the team better direct (and close) on the next engagement.

6. Map Faster Routes (aka Spend More Time Selling)

SPOTIO Routing technology quickly separates it from Salesforce Maps.

SPOTIO expedites route efficiencies, enabling account reps to best plan out their field days. The system utilizes current data sets to develop courses based on essential factors such as distance, appointment time, meeting length. The system even calculates time needed for both driving and walking. SPOTIO’s agile technology profile instantly calculates all relevant details to craft a map route that gives your account executives the best chance to lower time behind the wheel and increase time in front of your clients.

7. Get Real-Time View of Rep Activity and Performance

Unlike Salesforce Maps, SPOTIO prioritizes rep activity and performance. A simple push of a button allows users to determine the exact position of reps in the field, providing a live update every two minutes or whenever an app activity is logged. SPOTIO delivers the information managers need to help reps optimize their time in the field to close deals and grow the business without infringing on staff member’s privacy during off-hours.

Connect Your CRM With SPOTIO

SPOTIO integrates directly into your existing CRM. Bolt on the power of SPOTIO’s mapping and field sales acceleration platform to your Salesforce CRM. The system is designed to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and deliver accelerated value and usability.

SPOTIO’s 2-way CRM integration instantly redefines mapping visualization within your sales organization. Once installed, SPOTIO simplifies data intelligence aggregation, allowing users to store, analyze, and sync field information automatically into your existing Salesforce configuration.

Still not convinced?

Maybe you need more information to determine if SPOTIO is the right field sales solution for your organization. Or, maybe you’re worried that the integration process will hinder efficacy and productivity.

No matter what your questions or concerns, we can help. Contact us today to speak with an onsite SPOTIO specialist to get the information you need. You can also click here for a no-risk product demo to see for yourself what SPOTIO offers to sales organizations pursuing growth, increased revenues, and extended market share.

SPOTIO Polled Outside Sales Professionals to Uncover the Top Challenges Faced

SPOTIO surveyed more than 250 B2B outside sales professionals and leaders to uncover:

1) The top challenges in the field
2) How reps and leaders spend their time
3) The biggest opportunities for increasing efficiency
4) Market trends

Drawing upon detailed responses study participants from SMB and Enterprise organizations to create a picture of outside sales as it is today, the State of Field Sales 2019 report highlights the nuanced elements of an outside sales team and areas where companies should invest for greater success.

Top Challenges Facing Reps and Leaders

According to the study, more than a quarter of outside sales reps reported that their number one challenge in the field is building a pipeline of quality leads. On the other hand, sales leaders are more concerned with getting the most from their investment in training and onboarding.

While the hard and soft costs of turnover is well documented, the fight to retain talent continues for today’s outside sales leaders.

The study reveals one struggle they have in common: the need to acquire and adopt better tools and technology to support the business. Although this issue presents itself in various ways, poor technology implementations are failing to promote communication, collaboration, and transparency.

Key Issues

Potentially related to the poor adoption of technology, data accuracy is also identified as a pervasive issue for sales organizations, with incomplete and inaccurate data muddying the water. In fact, sales reps report that they spend as much time manually entering data (13 percent of their time) as they do connecting with customers.

This is only one ineffective administrative burden taking reps away from selling. The findings imply that ineffective technology is not only providing inadequate value; it is taking up too much valuable time for sales reps.

For the second year in a row, the study reveals that reps are spending way too much time on non-selling activities. The inside sales industry has seen an explosion in technology to minimize administrative burden while improving insights and efficiency. But the outside sales industry has not seen the same kind of investment. Paving the way for outside sales team that are serious about improving the efficiency of the sales efforts.

How Outside Sales Rep’s Spend Their Time

To Conclude

The State of Field Sales report drew on insight from the sales reps, sales managers, and executives alike. The one thing they all agree on: Poor quality leads, lack of tools, and ineffective technology implementations are inhibiting growth and success for sales organizations.

Even though outside sales teams make up 71% of the sales force, outside sales’ CRM adoption is lacking. Without mapping tools, comprehensive lead nurturing, pre-qualified leads, and enhanced communication capabilities, outside sales teams are missing major opportunities.

Access the full report here.

About SPOTIO

SPOTIO is the leading field sales enablement solution for sales managers and reps to facilitate unprecedented productivity, increased revenue, and shorter sales cycles. The platform provides managers with real-time visibility into their team’s activities for improved sales development. Sales reps receive access to the mobile application with targeted prospect data, historical knowledge of each account, and document management functionality.

Thousands of customers rely on SPOTIO to accelerate growth with their sales teams such as Vodafone, Renewal by Andersen, and Oak Street Health.

10 Ways to Become a Successful Telecommunications Sales Rep

The telecommunications market is poised for huge growth. In fact, it’s forecasted to grow to $1.46 trillion by 2020.

How big is your slice of that pie?

Ultimately, that will depend on how successful you are as a sales rep.

In telecom sales, the most valuable reps are the ones that get their feet out the door and talk face-to-face with their customers. Taking the hard work they’ve put into researching and understanding their product, they can put that to use in-person by answering questions and helping customers find the best solution for their needs.

While there are many moving pieces in the sales process, there are a handful that typically prevent telecommunications sales reps from reaching their true earning potential. We’ll look at each one in this article, and then cover 10 ways you can level-up and succeed.

Key Responsibilities of Telecommunications Sales Positions

So, what exactly do people in telecom sales positions do?

First, telecom sales managers are the ones that organize the team and get it ready for action. They take on the responsibility of hiring and training new sales reps, preparing them to form the best possible team.

These sales managers also equip teams with the best tools, and keep track of the team’s performance as a group and as individuals, providing help when necessary and pushing them to achieve more.

For telecom sales reps, the job is very similar to other sales roles.

To start, they’ll need to prospect for new potential customers and qualify those leads to find the ones that really fit their business. Next, they’ll develop a personalized pitch that takes into account the needs and circumstances of each prospect.

For many reps, a lot of time is also spent following up with those leads, answering questions, combatting objections, and helping them find the perfect solution for their problems. Lastly, a telecom sales rep must know how to successfully close the deal.

Why Telecom Sales Reps May Not be Earning to Their Full Potential

While the telecommunications sales market is full of potential earnings, some sales reps are still not raking in the cash.

Why?

There are some common reasons why a telecom sales rep might not be earning the amount they dreamed of.

If you’re not earning to your full potential, check yourself against this list of common sales mistakes:

– Reps don’t follow a defined sales process.
– Reps aren’t conducting effective qualification.
– There’s no established strategy for assigning sales territories.
– Sales reps are unprepared for the objections their leads raise.
– Reps don’t follow up with their qualified leads.
– The team lacks a system for tracking rep performance.
– Sales reps are undereducated in their product, how it works, and how it solves problems for their customers.

Do you see yourself reflected in this list? If so, don’t worry: each of these common sales issues can be solved.

In fact, if you’re looking to level-up your sales game, we’re going to discuss 10 ways that you can improve your skills and reach your earning potential.

10 Ways to Boost Your Telecom Sales Pipeline

1. Set a 30/60/90 Day Plan

One of the biggest reasons that sales reps fail to reach their potential (or their quota) is because they lack a viable plan to do so.

That’s where the 30/60/90 plan comes in. This tool is normally used in an onboarding scenario, but it can also help an established sales rep to align themselves with the team, and work forward toward the goal of closing more sales.

It normally looks something like this:

(Source)

Basically, this involves separating out goals for the short term and the long term. What can you accomplish in 30 days? In 60? In 90?

Write down these goals, and measure your success as you move forward. That way, you’ll keep progressing.

2. Know the Customer Better Than They Know Themselves

Who are your customers?

If you can’t answer that question clearly, it’s time to get back to your customer personas.

These personas are built like profiles of real people. The information should include demographics, company information, pain points, goals, challenges, shopping preferences, data on where they go to gather information, and so forth.

Check out this example from L&T:

Ultimately, you need to know your customers and the challenges they face every day; then you’ll be able to appeal to them better on a personal level. Using customer personas allows you to view your leads, not as just numbers on your sales charts, but as real people that you can provide solutions for.

3. Build Transferable Product Knowledge

Other than people who work in telecommunications, who really understands how this stuff works?

The majority of your customers probably don’t understand the inner workings of the telecom services and products they use. More than that: they don’t really want or need to understand.

Here’s where you, the telecom sales rep, come in: your must become the friendly guide who leads customers to the products that will solve their problems most efficiently.

This requires you to have two important skills:

– An encyclopedic knowledge of the products you sell and how they work.
– The ability to transfer that knowledge successfully.

Don’t bombard leads with unimportant details about the inner workings of the telecom world. Leave the technical jargon at the office, and focus on clearly explaining how your solution solves a problem.

By doing this, you can become the helpful consultant and confidant that customers call when they have an issue they can’t solve.

4. Prospect Smarter

Did you know that 42% of sales reps say that prospecting is the part of the sales process they struggle with the most?

If you want to level-up your sales, you need to take prospecting by the horns.

First, you need to find the right tools to research effectively. For example, SPOTIO’s Lead Machine helps field reps perform quick research by taking a target area and detailing the places where you’ll find better leads.

To find your perfect prospects, simply input your ideal customer data and SPOTIO will filter results for you. You can sort by over 50 data points such as age of home, credit capacity, square footage, income, etc.

Let an expert tool like SPOTIO do the heavy lifting for you, and you’ll find that prospecting is a breeze!

Another way to improve your prospecting skills is by warming up leads in social media. Connecting on LinkedIn is a great way to ‘meet’ new prospects. You’ll also learn important details about them, such as where they live, where they went to school, etc. These details can help you establish common ground when you finally talk to them.

5. Map & Assign Territories

Without clear territories, the sales reps on a team will be stepping on each other’s toes, working the same areas, or missing out on valuable leads.

It’s the job of the sales manager to assign territories. By doing so, they can help their whole team to stay focused and work more efficiently.

Using a tool like SPOTIO, telecom sales managers can map out specific areas for their reps to work in based on data points such as:

– Cities
– Counties
– Zip codes
– Specific streets or addresses
– General neighborhoods

This quickly enables managers to complete balanced territories for their reps to work, increasing their productivity and helping them reach their goals.

6. Use Pain-Based Qualification

Purchase decisions are usually motivated either by pleasure or pain. In telecom sales, it’s safe to say that most purchases are made because of some sort of pain, whether their wireless internet doesn’t reach the back corner of the office, their conference calls keep cutting out, or their current telecom equipment is out of date.

It’s your job as the telecommunications sales rep to uncover that pain, and qualify this lead for your product.

Start by trying to understand the problem and the steps that have been taken to solve it. Ask questions like:

How did you try to fix the problem?
Why did you choose that approach?
What caused other alternatives to be ruled out in this case?
Why do you think this solution didn’t work?
What would you like to do differently this time?

Then, you can dig a little deeper into the actual pain that this problem has caused:

– How much did this cost your company?
– How did it affect you (or your team) personally?
– How committed are you to solving this problem?

This line of questions is known as the Sandler Pain Funnel, and will help you understand the problem better, as well as how your product can solve the issue.

But it gets better: by using these questions, you’ll help the lead to see they have a pain point, and you’ll have agitated it to the point where they’re ready to take action.

7. Prepare for Objections

Sales reps who aren’t prepared for objections will quickly get shot down.

That’s why you need to know exactly what to say when common objections come up.

First, write out a list of the most common objections that you face.

Next, write down questions you can use to better understand the objection, and an appropriate response. Each prospect has their own motivation or thinking, and its important that you understand the root cause of this objection before you respond.

For example, let’s say the objection is over the price. Are they concerned because the price seems too high for what they’re getting? In that case, you can help them understand the value of the product and what it can do for them. But if they’re concerned about price because they have a tight budget, you might focus on the ROI that other customers have received.

8. Pitch (Perfect)

To build the perfect pitch, know your prospect and your product, and match their problems to the best possible solution. In other words: explain clearly what you do, but focus on how it benefits the customer.

Check out this example of a fantastic elevator pitch from G2Crowd:

“G2Crowd is the user-voice platform for people to be able to say how they actually think about software, and not be told by the analysts, or people who don’t use it, or the reference from your best customers. You’re actually hearing directly from the user and engaging with people who actually use the product.”

This pitch is short, informative, and motivational. You can follow this example by making your pitch clear, and focusing on how your product benefits the customer.

Always remember to be enthusiastic. That enthusiasm for your product can easily transfer to your prospects.

9. Up Your Follow-Up Game

The best way to improve your follow-up is the vary the channels you use. Field reps obviously focus on the in-person contact, but when don’t limit your follow ups to meetings.

Try sending a follow up email, getting on the phone, or even getting in contact over social media. This varied approach may help you reach a prospect better.

Also, when following up, be persistent. It’s been found that 80% of sales require 5 follow-up touches after a meeting, but a whopping 44% of sales reps give up after the first follow-up.

Don’t leave valuable prospects on the table.

Of course, there is a balance here: while you should be persistent, don’t let the follow-up process drag on forever. Set a limit of a couple of months, and if you get no response, know when to stop.

10. Track Rep Performance

To improve rep performance, all data must be stored and tracked. For telecom sales managers, using a tool like SPOTIO can help them keep an eye on how each of their reps is performing, and who may need a little help.

SPOTIO’s rep tracking feature allows managers to stay informed in real-time as their outside sales team is in the field.

Sales reps can drop pins as they work, updating the status of new leads and letting their managers know where they are. Managers can also see data on how sales reps are performing, who’s hitting or missing their quota, and so forth.

Final Thoughts

Working as a telecommunications sales rep may not be the easiest job, but it is well worth the effort.

This industry is only growing as we move forward, and the telecom sales reps who are working to improve their game now will reap better rewards in the future.

Are you ready to be one of them?

If so, using the right tools will help you up your game and make a difference. SPOTIO has helped sales teams increase productivity by 46%.

What could it do for you?

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

The State of Field Sales Report 2019

State of Field Sales Report 2019 Cover Image

The State of Field Sales Report 2019

For the second edition of the State of Field Sales Report, SPOTIO surveyed over 250 B2B outside sales professionals and leaders to discover the top challenges in the field, how reps and leaders spend their time, the biggest opportunities for increasing efficiency, and market trends and analysis.

Data in this report is from a blind survey conducted in June 2019 that generated 273 responses across the United States.

Fill out the form below to access this report:

Double The Size Of Your D2D Team In The Next 3 Months

There’s not a more nerve-racking feeling than the rush of needing to find quality sales talent, and needing that talent now. There’s a variety of reasons for this, but it seems like the door to door sales industry, more so than any other, is in constant need of new salespeople.

The 3 Most Common Reasons For Rapid Expansion

#1 The seasonality of door to door sales
#2 Fast growing companies
#3 The incredibly large amount of turnover

With the seasonality of door to door sales organizations comes the expansion and contraction of teams every six months or so. Some people are retained, others aren’t, but regardless of who is and who isn’t, you’re bound to hire by the masses soon enough.

If you’re a company that’s on the “up & up,” you already have your own set of challenges outside of recruiting. This is definitely the best reason you would need to double the size of your team in a hurry, but it comes with the same challenges nonetheless.

For whatever reason, it almost seems as if companies like to have that revolving door of salespeople on at full speed. Whether it’s not having the systems in place to hire, train and make a new rep successful, or not properly incentivizing and rewarding your current sales team, there’s an awful lot of talent walking out of companies these days.

8 Essentials Recruiting Strategies To Double The Size Of Your Team

#1 | Always Be Sourcing

The biggest bottleneck in hiring volume, speed and scale is sourcing. This is your proactive search for quality sales reps for the positions you have available. The goal of sourcing is to collect relevant data about qualified candidates, such as names, titles and job responsibilities.

Sourcing helps to identify potential candidates regardless of whether they’re actively looking for a new position or not. Sourcing is how you fill up your pipeline with potential candidates that appear to be a good fit for your company.

5 Sourcing Tactics

1. Social Media
2. Referrals
3. Data.com
4. About.me
5. Boolean Searching On Google

#2 | Get “Millennial-ized”

I know… this sounds weird. While there’s no one who loves to rip on their own generation more than me, it’s officially time to make your company ”millennial friendly.” If you’re not aggressively working to attract millennials to your company, your recruiting strategy is going nowhere in a hurry. In just a few short years, millennials we total almost half of the workforce, with the generation accounting for 75% of it by 2030.

There are 4 things that this “participation trophy” generation cares about:

i. They want to grow – even if it’s not with your company
ii. They want a coach – not a boss
iii. They don’t want to waste their time on the little things
iv. They want balance & democracy… and another participation trophy while you’re at it

There’s obviously more than this, but these provide a fairly accurate portrayal. So how can you use it to your advantage to accelerate your recruiting efforts?

Embrace a coaching culture, then brag about it.

This generation has overwhelmingly demonstrated that what they’re really after is opportunity. They’re not looking for an average job where they can spend 20 years and brag to their kids about the “good ‘ole days.” If it doesn’t keep their interest and provide growth potential where they can learn, they’re not sticking around.

78% of sales professionals said they would accept less money to sell something compelling
60% of millennials consider the most attractive perk to be growth opportunities
46% of millennials left their last job due to a lack of career growth [Glassdoor]

Help them learn and grow, and you’ll attract and keep them.

If you have a cool office, brag about that too.
We’ve experienced some massive shifts in cultural norms over the last couple decades, as the once powerful suit and tie no longer represents the people with a “serious job” like it once did. Instead, they’re more of a stodginess in many industries.

Of all the things millennials have denounced, there may not be a more hated work convention than cubicles. Thanks to the help of Office Space, these ratchet things now stand as a symbol of where creativity goes to die.

While I was born in the wrong time period, my fellow “Gen Y’s” will flock to companies with a cool office like yours. Use this as a tool to your advantage in your recruiting efforts while making it known that it’s a place for millennials.

Make your company culture well-known that it’s geared toward millennials.

The best companies are honest about their culture. If you’re not trying to hire millennials, hey – more power to ya. However, there’s been a large shift of companies centering their culture around these individuals.

By broadcasting that you have a winning culture with a no complaining attitude, you’ll naturally attract millennials if that’s your focus. If it’s not, you’ll likely avoid them in many regards because most job seekers don’t want to work for a company where they don’t believe they’ll fit in.

Part of hiring the best has to take into account the best cultural fit, and by simply stating where you stand, you’ll see more applicants submit their information just based on the fact they think they’ll be a good match.

#3 | Supercharge Your Job Ads

Have you ever posted a job ad similar to this one? Not only does that just rock me right to sleep, but it’s highly doubtful you’ll attract the right type of applicants with something that bad. With no mention of the type of sale, volume, price point, etc., how is a job seeker supposed to know if it’s the best door to door sales job for them?

There’s simply nothing being communicated that would be viewed as a benefit. It’s a commission only position with no draw or opportunity to earn money quickly. You’re going to be hard pressed to find talent with an ad like that.

Surely you already understand the importance of tracking your team’s sales activities by now. This will play a critical role in your ability to scale your team quickly because these same metrics and analytics are now your strength in recruiting as well. Use the information from your dashboard to calculate metrics like your team’s dollars per door rate (DPD) rate.

Now you can get laser focused and detailed in your job ads and have data-driven proof with your claims, like in this example.

#4 | Offer More Than Just Commission

If you go look at any of the larger d2d or outside sales companies, you can guarantee they’re offering some type of incentive on top of just paying commission when a deal is closed. This is one of the ways they’re able to entice the professionals looking for a sales career vs a sales job that they’re the right fit.

How companies can afford to pay anything else other than commission is probably what you’re thinking to yourself, I’m sure. For starters, they know that the top talent in the industry wants to work for companies that invest in their success, and that includes financially when they perform.

1… Consider ramping new sales hires with a draw

Paying your new sales reps is not a requirement and you can still get your hires, but by offering a small ramp up stipend you will be able to pick from a larger pool of sales candidates and increase quality of applicants. If you would like to see more traffic with stronger candidates, then consider offering a recoverable or non-recoverable draw.

2… Provide a career path

As long as your sales process is real and the business is growing, then your 100% commission sales reps are proving their ability and closing deals. Have a growth plan in place to promote your top performers. It’s important to have growth opportunities and a career path for top reps. Retain top performers and continue to reward their performance.

Hiring salespeople who have the experience, passion, and drive to succeed is no easy feat. Understand that there will be challenges. Get serious about paying your sales reps based on performance.

#5 | Treat Great Applicants Like Great Customers

It’s not every day that a high quality candidate applies for your position. Treat them like you do high quality leads that come through your marketing and sales funnels. You wouldn’t wait three days to call a high velocity lead, would you? If you wouldn’t do it to a good lead, don’t do it to a good candidate.

You should be moving heaven and earth to accommodate these types of candidates. Focus on impressing them and treat them to the best hiring experience they’ve ever gone through. Recruiting is essential to achieving growth, making hiring top talent as important as acquiring customers.

#6 | Don’t Ignore Passive Candidates

Passive candidates are applicants who aren’t currently looking for a new role, but would be open to the possibility if an opportunity presented itself. These individuals aren’t on Indeed or Monster looking for your company, but they’ll hear you out if you they’re contacted.

Approximately 75% of the candidate pool is described as passive. Social media will become one of your best friends to find these applicants. Just because they’re not looking for you, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be looking for them.

#7 | Oh, Referrals

Your best source to not just find new employees, but find the people with talent is to look within your existing team. Think back to your sales process… customer referrals are your highest converting, cheapest lead source.

The same is true for recruiting referrals. If you’ve built a good team like you were supposed to, this becomes a network effect. When you create a culture of happy employees that are motivated in their work, they’re more inclined to refer their friends and colleagues to join the team.

#8 | Nurture Talent

Timing is everything, especially when it comes to recruiting. Whether it’s candidates who were referred by your current employees or people you’ve found through your own efforts, there’s always going to be applicants who aren’t ready to be a part of your team for one reason or another.

Put anyone you don’t hire into a nurturing campaign that sends a drip email 3 – 4 times per year. The emails can be extremely simple, but the goal is to remind people who you are and your company are. Check in with them to see how things have been going while making it easy for them to check out your career pages and connect with your company on social media for more info.

One Final Thing

Doubling the size of your sales team isn’t easy. It’s going to require a combination of recruiting new talent and keeping the talent that already exists in your organization. The approach you take needs to be exceptionally well-rounded because it’s going to take a considerable number of skills to grow this quickly.

To grow a team of any size requires a fairly large amount of time, effort and energy. If you’re not putting forth the level needed, you’re going to miss on the highest quality candidates. More importantly, your effort needs to be greater than before because what you don’t do, your competitors will.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Your Guide on How to Improve Sales Quota Attainment

Quota attainment is a measurement that tells you whether your sales team have met their target during a given time period. It’s a simple concept; if the sales target is met, they have attained quota. Likewise, quota attainment can be measured as a percentage. If someone has reached 50% of quota, they are half-way to reaching their target.

But why are sales quotas important? Besides ensuring a plan is in place for achieving success for your organization, research shows that delayed gratification – the ability to sacrifice immediate benefits and work toward achieving larger goals down the road – is an important skill that leads toward greater, more impactful results.

The process of quota setting and quota attainment not only drives success for the company and a salesperson’s paycheck, it also is a high energy, motivational journal that can help reps and organizations maximize their potential and their results.

In this guide, we’ll explore sales quota attainment as well as actionable strategies sales organizations can use to drive toward quota attainment success.

5 Types of Sales Quotas

Let’s talk about some different types of sales quotas and the methods in which they operate. Setting an unfair quota can create confusion and angst amongst the sales people and management. It also may dissuade the mentality and confidence needed to be successful in making sales.

1 | Volume Based Sales Quotas

This is the most common quota and is suited best for small business. It’s based on the number of units sold or money made during a specific time period. This type of quota is meant to motivate the sales reps to make as many sales as possible.

2 | Profit Based Sales Quotas

This type of quota is based on a companies profits where by both the number of units sold is as important as controlling costs. Managers incentivize the sales reps so that they can focus on closing the deals that are the most profitable. Profit-Based Sales Quotas are best suited for reps selling in multiple markets or unique territories. It makes it easier to calculate and measure performance where variation is concerned.

3 | Activity Based Sales Quotas

This particular type of sales quota is best suited for a salesperson or a sales team who are making sales that are quantifiable such as making a certain number of phone calls or setting a specific number of appointments.

This type of quota has many different sales people or sales teams who are contributing to the end result and is best for industries that have long lead development cycles and little to no inventory. For example, you hire telemarketers, inside sales reps or appointment setters.

4 | Cost Based Sales Quotas

Cost Based quotas are best used in industries that reduce costs per deal like time invested rather than focusing on revenue.

5 | Combination Strategy

This is where the manager sets say, a volume-based quota and another one for activity. This helps the sales rep focus on both ‘quality’ and focus on ‘how’ they approach the sale.

10 Tips to Attain Your Sales Quota

#1: Start with A Winning Sales Process

A winning sales process is the backbone to any sales organization. Before you can even think about quote attainment, you must start with a consistent, repeatable and well-enforced sales process that guides your sales team through the right sales cycle milestones.

This ensures you have a balanced focus on filling your pipeline, nurturing leads and moving qualified leads to closure.

An efficient and effective sales process is customer-centric, clearly defined, replicable, predictable, goal-oriented, measurable, and adaptable. A sales process falling short of possessing any one of these characteristics is highly likely to perform at a disadvantage in a densely competitive industry. Focus on incorporating each component into every stage of your process as it’s built. Learn more about building a sales process in this resource from SPOTIO.

#2: Assign Sales Territories to the Right Reps

Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to ensure the best use of company resources. In addition to cutting out the noise of low-return accounts, thoughtful sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base – whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship.

With a tool like SPOTIO’s Precise Location Tool, you can drop pins on a map, creating a visual way to design the most logical sales routes. This saves valuable time and money so that you can introduce more customers to your product or service. Get more sales territory planning tips in this resource from SPOTIO.

#3: Set Realistic Quotas

Since a sales quota is usually tied to a sales person or sales team’s comp plan, commission, and bonuses, it’s critical to have realistic quotas in place to ensure sales reps can envision success and stay motivated to work toward this target. Whether you’re setting an activity-based quota, a volume-based quota, or a profit-based quota it is critical to establish a baseline baser on trends and forecasted growth, secure a bottom-up approach, and leverage data that shows what the team is capable of achieving.

#4: Keep All Information Stored In Your CRM

High-performing sales organizations use a system for tracking each action needed to get to a sale. This includes customer and prospect conversations, important information, and administrative things like calendar appointments

More often than not, CRMs now offer mobile applications so sales reps have what they need while on the go. The Field Sales CRM empowers sales teams with an intuitive mobile interface. It gives sales reps easy access to the data needed to make sales decisions while giving leadership complete visibility to what’s happening in the field.

#5: Shoot for Quality Over Quantity

Nothing kills productivity more than sales reps wasting time working poorly qualified leads. To ensure your sales force maximizes time and resources, reps should spend more time on quality vs. quantity. Whether you qualify leads in person, by email, by phone or by chat, personal and targeted conversations help you better get to know your customers so you’re best position to serve them. It also helps them build confidence in your understanding of their opportunity so they are confident about moving forward with you and your solution.

#6: Warm Up Leads on Social Media

In 2017, two-thirds of buyers said they use social media to make purchase decisions.

Social media is one of the most powerful tools available today for sales reps. Before you knock on a door or pick up a tool, social media gives you great insight to what’s important to your prospect or customer. It allows you to understand them professionally and personally. It gives you the tools to relate and be personable. Sites such as LinkedIn help you understand your prospect’s top priorities and how they define success.

In addition to using social media for understanding your prospects, staying active on social media allows you to stay top of mind for your prospects and customers.

#7: Re-Engage Old Prospects

It’s nearly devastating when a warm lead goes cold. When you’re looking for a pre-qualified opportunity to help you meet your sales quota, re-engaging old prospects is a great strategy.

When following up with old prospects, try to focus on what is new and different since the last time you spoke. Was a new product offering released? Was there a merger? Do you have a new angle that will help your prospect be successful? Has something changed for your prospect, like a job change or promotion? Lead with what’s different so you can reconnect in a personal and meaningful way.

#8: Invest in Sales Training

While it’s hard to objectively measure the success of a sales training program, anecdotally, sales training is widely credited for top performers’ success. According to a research report from CSO Insights, a well-executed sales training program helps more reps attain quota. In fact, a study of organizations who recently completed a sales training program that “exceeded expectations” showed an 8% increase in sales reps who achieved their quota compared to those organizations with sales trainings programs that “need improvement.”

#9: Motivate with Sales Incentives

Motivation is often the key to success and there’s no better way to motivate than with sales incentives. While some salespeople are naturally motivated, sales incentives give the broader population a reward at the end of the tunnel.

Not all sales people wish to be incented in the same way so it’s important to build an incentives program that caters to different abilities, talents, levels of experience, and motivations.

Top performers respond well to traditional sales incentive programs (e.g., trips, cash, recognition at the annual meeting). If you only want to get more sales from the people who bring you the most deals, then using a tried and true incentive program will likely do the trick. Middle performers tend to perform well to a 3-tiered program that recognizes milestone they achieve throughout a given period.

Finally, poor performers may respond best to a combined carrot and stick approach that includes rewards but also includes things like Performance Improvement Plan when they are not meeting expectations.

Check out this resource from SPOTIO to learn more.

#10: Cross-Train with Top Performers

Not only are your top performers an asset to your bottom line; they are also an asset to the overall team. To drive sales quota attainment, leverage your top performers to help motivate, training and aid middle-of-the-pack sales reps in progress toward meeting their sales quotas.

Using a tool like SPOTIO rep tracker, you can uncover the top performers, then have these reps work closer with new and mid-tier reps to bring them closer to their performance level.

Conclusion

If you aren’t already it’s time to focus on how to optimize sales quota attainment. By investing in this area, you will not just help the company and your salesforce maximize profits, you will also create high energy, motivational journal that makes working in sales fulfilling and exciting.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.