Sales Productivity

Improve Outside Sales Lead Generation Success

When you’re trying to generate leads outside of your territory, things can get a little overwhelming. Not only must you locate those quality leads, but you also need to nurture them along so that they become completed sales.

Fortunately, there are tools and techniques available to make it easier to close the sales leads you’ve generated.

Industry Verticals

To generate more leads, try expanding into vertical markets where you’re more likely to encounter customers who need your solution or product. You can expand your business by categorizing the leads you want to target based on territory and product type so that you know what message to cultivate when you contact them.

Route Optimization

Once leads are categorized, it’s time to figure out your route. This involves planning your day and strategizing the order in which you will visit potential outside sales customers.

With Spotio’s route optimization tools you can put together the ideal schedule to maximize your time in the field. Plan routes based off meeting time, meeting length, and distance in between meetings just to name a few.

You can also optimize the best order in which to visit your leads to ensure you always arrive on time when you meet a lead.

Geocentric Campaigns

As you expand your reach and cultivate stronger vertical marketing strategies, you need to collaborate with your marketers so you can generate a geocentric campaign. Develop a strategy to engage outside sales leads in various locations by tailoring your message in a way that resonates more effectively with the respective audiences at each location.

While working on your outside sales engagement strategy, you’ll want to analyze your sales data regularly using a CRM to reach more potential leads and generate increased outside sales business.

This CRM data will help you locate untapped opportunities. It will also allow you to visually review and locate places where you can sell to similar audiences.

Educate

The best way to capture more outside sales leads is to focus on helping your prospects solve their problems.

A simple way to do this is to answer their questions, resolve their concerns, and educate them about how you can help. Doing so will position you as a reliable and authoritative leader in the industry, and not as a pushy salesman.

You need to be a highly-trained rep who knows every aspect of your company and market, especially when tackling territories and areas where prospects are not yet familiar with what your company can offer them.

These prospects will have even more questions than local prospects because they don’t know if they like you or trust you yet.  Answering their questions and becoming the go-to resource for your prospects will help you to develop trust and eventually close the sale.

Establish Relationships

No matter what industry you’re in, it’s important to establish a relationship with your prospects. In a new territory, you’re going to have to work harder to nurture your leads and to prove that you are an authority in your field. You’ll want to show them that they can trust you even though they may not yet know much about you.

Why should they trust you?

Because you’re an industry authority and you are willing to teach everything they need or want to know about who you are and what your product or service you offer. Many buyers need additional information. They might want to compare different options or speak with an attorney or another business partner before they make a decision.

To that end, as a sales rep, you can use Spotio to keep active notes for each of your leads so that you know where they are in the sales pipeline, what questions they have about your company, and what information you can give them each time you reach out to them.

How Can You Improve your Outside Sales Lead Generation?

The way you end calls with your leads is very important. An average rep will only attempt to reach a prospect twice. However, when you break it down in terms of numbers, only 2% of sales are made through the first contact and only 3% more are made through the second contact. Stopping after the second attempt means your chances of making a sale are a measly 5%.

Leads need to be contacted on a regular basis – anywhere between 8 – 12 times over a 10 – 14 days period. Do this, and you will increase your chance of a sale to 90%.

Given that it requires so many attempts to reach and establish connections with your outside sales leads, you need to use an automated sales engagement system to make the most out of your time. Having a good sales cadence means using the correct number of attempts, across different mediums and spaced out appropriately with customized content.

You can use Spotio’s tools to reduce the amount of time you spend creating these contact attempts. You can do things like setting up all reminders and automatic check-ins.

You can also create automated follow-up messages for your email campaigns and to address your lead’s unopened emails.

Referrals are Important

Being in unfamiliar territory with people who don’t necessarily know much about your company or your product doesn’t have to be a waste of time just because one lead doesn’t pan out.

Studies indicate that 91% of people contacted who don’t follow through with a sale would give a referral if prompted. But, only 11% of reps ask for a referral.

Even more striking is the fact that these additional referrals usually result in follow-up appointments 80% of the time. This means that in order to generate more outside sales leads you should ask each of your leads for a referral at some point in the call attempt process, especially if your lead does not pan out.

Conclusion

Generally, outside sales lead generation is now more accessible and manageable than ever. If you utilize careful planning and preparation and you are willing to dedicate your time long-term you can successfully reach more potential leads in less time.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity.

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

Use SPOTIO’s Key Metrics to Analyze Your Business and Improve Productivity

The Importance of Sales Metrics

Have you ever heard the phrase “you can’t fix what you don’t know?” If you want to improve your sales team’s performance continually, you’ll first need to know what issues there are to address. Sales metrics give you a clear cut explanation of sales rep performance. 

The Benefit to Knowing Your Numbers

Sales metrics are critical because they give you an accurate representation of how your team is doing, highlight problem areas in the sales process, and help you prioritize training. Knowing your numbers will show you where your team’s performance has been, where it’s heading, and whether you’re on track to hit goals.

Prove Value

Have you ever wondered whether a new sales strategy or if particular team members are performing as well as you suspect? Using sales metrics removes emotions and assumptions, and shows you precisely what’s adding the most value.

Fix Issues

Having sales metrics on your side also helps you fix issues in less time. Being able to see real-time results of new team members or tactics make it easy to correct the course early. 

Sales Metrics to Improve Productivity

How productive are your sales reps? Time will always be a limited resource, and it’s important that your team uses their time effectively. If you want to check and improve sales productivity, use these sales metrics:

Number of Visits to get from Prospecting to Contacted 

The prospecting stage of a sales process is critical for laying the groundwork for the customer relationship. Do you know how many visits a rep should take to turn a cold prospect into a qualified lead? By tracking the number of visits to get from Prospecting to Contacted, you can streamline a sales rep’s day by showing them exactly how much attention each prospect needs. 

Number of Visits (amount of time) it takes to get from Contacted to Closed/Won

On top of the number of visits, the overall time it takes to get from Contacted to Won says a lot about sales productivity and effectiveness. Tracking the sales cycle for each rep lets you see your top and bottom performers, and tracking the average days to Won over time acts as a warning signal to declining productivity. 

Number of Activities per stage to get from Contacted to Closed/Won

When you track the number of activities per stage to get from Contacted to Won, you get a high-level view of all the time and resources invested into each lead. With this sales metric, you can find which sales reps need more training and identify bottlenecks in the sales process for your team. 

What Makes SPOTIO’s Metrics Effective

Strategic. Our goal is to give you the insight you need to strategize your business, helping you know whether your team is on track. 

Straightforward. Our dashboards have performance metrics that are simple to understand. It’s easy to know what’s being measured, how it’s calculated, what the targets are, importantly, what they can do to affect the outcome in a positive direction. 

Actionable. Metrics don’t mean much if you don’t know what actions to take in order to change and improve. For example, knowing that a deal closed is great, but is not very actionable. However, being able to see how many interactions were had and how long it took to close is the actionable insight you need to improve business. 

Real-time. SPOTIO’s pulls real-time data so field sales managers can establish pipeline benchmarks and properly forecast business.

SPOTIO’s sales dashboards and tools give you the most relevant metrics reports to examine and improve each step of the sales process. By automatically tracking sales metrics, you can keep every sales rep accountable and gain insights to improve productivity and effectiveness over time.

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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.

Your Guide to Salesforce Territory Management

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If you are tracking field sales reps, then you need effective territory management software. By pairing the powerful planning and mapping software of SPOTIO with the flexible Salesforce platform, teams will strategize, scale, and grow business better than ever. 

Boost your productivity by customizing your Salesforce instance by territory, and your users will never see irrelevant data again.

Territory Management in the Sales Cloud uses an intuitive user interface that guides your users through company procedures and best practices. Not only that, but managers have a view from above that allows them access to data at a glance. 

With Territory Management, geography and hierarchy come together to help your company function as a cohesive unit.

Here we’ll take you through a quick look at how territory management can help your business, and show you solutions to empower your teams with even more practical field sales tools.

What is Salesforce Territory Management?

Available in both Classic and Lightning experience, Territory Management enables your company to use your management hierarchies already in place to guide an automated organize data and user roles in the same way that you manage sales territories. This new system of organization can revolutionize the way your teams bring in sales, which allows for even more accurate forecasts.

For a guided tour of how this works, click here. 

Salesforce gives you territory modeling, letting you compare performance projections for new assignments and management hierarchies. It also provides management and team leaders a range of other tools to effectively collaborate and close more deals. 

Let’s take a closer look… 

Enterprise Territory Management Features

You may be familiar with the Territory Management Component that was only available in Classic. Salesforce will phase this feature out in the Summer ‘20 update, so get ahead of the curve and learn about Enterprise Territory Management! 

Organize Your Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, and Cases By Territory

Role hierarchies are one of the touchstones of Salesforce, but what about when you can take them a step further? Use territories to guide your profile assignments, and you will make sure that your field reps only have access to what they need when they need it.

Worried about complex accounts? This robust tool allows access to users based on account characteristics, not just geography. This means you can sort accounts under multiple territories. Set up your company structure, and user permissions will fall into place!

Enabling Enterprise Territory Management

Once you’re ready to build out your territory management, simply follow the instructions in Setup under Territory Settings.

If your Salesforce instance already has a role hierarchy in place, great! All you have to do is assign users to territories based on the predetermined structure. If not, no worries! Simply create your hierarchy based on the territories they cover.

What if everyone in your company needs access to a certain set of records? Maybe there are some big projects that reps from multiple territories need access to. This is where org-wide permission sets can come in handy. 

Set your rules, and everyone can have access to the same version of information!

Reporting and Forecasting By Territory

Generating leads and closing opportunities is great, but when it comes time to evaluate sales strategies, you’re going to want historical data and powerful forecasting tools. 

Enterprise Territory Management comes with plenty of custom report types to accommodate your needs, such as: 

– Accounts by Territory
– Territories without Accounts
– Users Not Assigned to Territories
– Territories Per User

With these reporting capabilities, your collaborative forecasting is going to be more accurate than ever. However, with such a dynamic feature, you’ll need to consider how your data will be impacted once you introduce territories. Make sure you test all new functions in the sandbox, and your company will thank you. 

How SPOTIO Helps Field Sales Succeed

So you know how to use and enable territory management within Salesforce, but what if you need even more specificity when it comes to sales records on the go?

SPOTIO is specifically designed to keep your field data and CRM working as a synchronized unit.  

2-Way integration with Salesforce syncs your information in real-time, allowing reps to leverage the power of historical reporting and enriched lead information no matter where they are. 

Assign territories as specifically as you want with SPOTIO, even down to individual territories per sales rep. Enhance your Salesforce Mobile experience by automatically recording every step of your sales rep’s journey to Closed Won. 

SPOTIO’s flexible integration boasts complex field-mapping as well as guided next-steps. When you complete an activity or update a pin within SPOTIO, a new task is created in Salesforce, ready for when you get back to the office.

Here are just a few of the powerful features and benefits that you can look forward to when turning to our proven field sales and territory management platform:

– Visual customer mapping for logical routes
– Real-time outside sales tracking
– Real-time performance metrics
– Custom maps of territories and assignments
– Enriched out-of-office notes

Investing in field sales is an investment in the future of your company. The better opportunities and leads are managed, the higher the chances of reaching a good rate and quantity of turnover. 

After all, statistics show that sales reps spend just a third of their time selling, and only 65% hit their sales quotas. 

No matter how good your reps may be, there is always a need to find better ways to improve sales accountability. Better performance means happier, more productive staff. Re-evaluating and optimizing sales territory management strategy is essential to meeting your core goals and quotas. 

With the intuitive integration of SPOTIO’s sales support and Salesforce’s Enterprise Territory Management, your reps and teams will reach an all-new pinnacle of performance. 

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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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Your Field Sales Team Needs a Mobile Solution – Here’s Why

The value of customer relationship management systems (CRM’s) to senior management is widely accepted and critical to strategic decision making. By having a system of record for customers, you’re able to clearly identify success, failure, and opportunities for growth across your customer base. However, in speaking to sales teams and the mobile workforce, you find reluctance, misunderstanding and an unfavorable perception of CRM technology.

The general feeling from sales reps towards CRMs is that of micromanagement, a barrier to productivity, and outdated functionality.

Without end-user adoption, CRM’s are useless. The ol’ saying of “garbage in, garbage out” comes to mind. Often times organizations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into customizing their CRM of choice to create a seamless end-user experience anchored in the belief that data will give them the edge they need to compete. However, companies find they still aren’t getting the accurate data they desire and CRM adoption remains at less than 40% industry wide.

At the end of the day field sales driven businesses are left with a large software invoice and unhappy sales reps — still with little visibility to what’s actually occurring in the sales process. What gives?

Companies are missing a key component in the sales stack – a mobile solution. One that fits the sales motions and needs of their field sales team.

Mobile Growth Explosion

Before we get too deep on where a mobile solution fits in the sales stack we must first recognize the growth of mobile as the primary means of communicating. During 2018, mobile internet access accounted for 48.2% of all internet usage. This is massive growth considering that mobile traffic made up just 0.7% in 2009. The number of mobile users vastly outnumber desktop users.

As of January 2018, the world held 3.7 billion mobile internet users in total. Add to this the fact that projections for mobile e-commerce are estimated to reach 67.2% of all e-commerce sales by 2021, and it should be crystal clear that mobile is the future for all business applications.

Even Google Analytics shows that 50% of B2B queries are made on a smartphone. Whether you’re buying products online or accessing your internal database via a company app, mobile is the only viable option.

Phones & Mobile Devices Are a Part of Life

Statistics show that roughly 53% of all emails are opened on a mobile device while 90% of all internet users own a mobile phone. At the current rate of smart device adoption, 90% of everyone on the planet will own a smartphone by 2020.

Using a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet has become second nature. In fact, the number of mobile phone owners outnumbered the number of people who own toothbrushes way back in 2011. The average US citizen spends more time using the apps on their phone than they do watching TV.

No one can argue the value nor convenience of real-time access to information. In a business environment, timing is everything. A rep disconnected from their resources may as well be cold calling blind at a random location.

Long story short — the mobile device is here to stay and will soon become more prominent than our stationary computers as our means to connecting to the rest of the world (socially or professionally).

Today’s Workforce Trends

As the millennial generation continues its march towards the largest generation in today’s workforce, the need for practical, functional business technology also increases. There is no room for antiquated infrastructure involving constant micromanagement and software which delivers limited mobile functionality..

The millennial generation, or people born between 1981 and 1997, are indeed taking over the workforce. Through the course of 2017, a total of 56 million millennials were either employed or looking for work. Today millennials make up the majority of the workforce in the USA. Not only have all these people grown up with connectivity and technology, but studies show that the average millennial owns seven or more connected devices, with at least 18 hours a week spent on a smartphone.

Asking millennials to capture customer information and sales data manually into the CRM at the end of the day is not only time-consuming but a waste of productivity. Millennials already use higher-end technology in their day to day lives making it senseless to leave their proficiency untapped.

Enter the outside sales team’s secret weapon… the mobile CRM. A mobile CRM lets the workforce work smarter and faster, capturing data in a manner which is as natural as selling for your reps.

Millennials, Mobile Technology & Field Sales = Winning

Most mobile employees spend a lot of their time using out-of-office hours to extend and enhance their work. Studies show that 91% of all mobile employees use their personal time and smartphones to conduct work business.  

61% of the mobile workforce sleep with their phone by their side in case of a business related call or notification. About 10% of all employees are so devoted to their technology that it causes issues in personal relationships.

We are hooked on our technology, and the present and upcoming workforce is even more attached to their smart devices.

In the business world, mobile technology leads to employees working an average of 240 hours more per year. When one considers that these extra hours are filled with improved consulting, and better selling and service, it becomes nearly impossible to estimate the potential peaks of productivity that will be reached.

Asking your outside sales team to use inside sales technology is not only inefficient but silly.

In the 2018 State of Field Sales Report, we ask reps how much many more prospects they could speak to if they didn’t have to spend administrative efforts fighting their CRM.

Over 35% said they would increase revenue by as much as 25%!

When you have a generation that is proficient and expects modern business applications, stuck to their mobile device, and by the nature of the job “on-the-go” it only makes good business sense to equip them with the proper solution – mobile solution.

My CRM has a Mobile App

The largest and best CRMs on the market indeed have a mobile app. However, when the enterprise software architecture was designed, it was intended to be a desktop solution for the inside sales team. Let’s take a look at the largest CRM on the planet – Salesforce.com

Love it or hate it, what Salesforce has done in the CRM space is nothing short of impressive. Anyone familiar with Salesforce knows the limitless capabilities and available customizations. But, one of the largest complaints about Salesforce is just how heavy the software can be. Now take that complex software and put it on a 6 inch mobile device and require your field sales team to use it.

The issue is larger than simply taking your inside sales CRM and creating a mobile version. In order to maximize your field sales efforts, you must create a software ecosystem built for an outside sales team. Asking an outside sales rep to use inside sales rep is the epitome of “square peg, round hole.”

Path Forward

As you consider mobile solutions for your outside sales team, there are 2 paths to consider:

1. A Mobile CRM. A fully dedicated mobile CRM built for the outside sales team. If your business is dedicated to sales reps in the field as the primary business model, then it only makes sense to equip your field sales.

2. Bolt On. Layer a mobile solution on top of you existing CRM.

What Makes a Mobile CRM Essential

Good mobile CRM software will give sales reps access to all the platform’s functionality while facilitating real-time communication and access to company data in a mobile friendly way. Collaboration across service desks, sales and marketing will be working together seamlessly when the right system is employed.

Hardware and software costs are kept to a minimum while instant access to customer records, geographic and demographic data, territory info, and critical lead insights all help staff sell better. Client accounts and sales pipelines need to be managed from the office workspace and on the road.

Scheduling, queue control, and rep/performance tracking are all facilitated no matter what device you’re using and regardless of whether you’re online or not. Sales staff can indeed sell anywhere.

Finding Functional, Practical Mobile Value

Workforce mobility is no longer about relaying updates between field agents at the office, or even dispatching jobs and managing territories effectively. Mobility has become the ultimate channel for efficient field service. But, the full potential of your CRM platform will only be reached if both staff and upper management understand its practical value.

All too often a disconnect forms between sales reps and the goals of owners and management. Sales reps and CRM platforms have a strained relationship to say the least. However, if both parties have their needs met by an excellent mobile CRM, then all that is left is understanding the benefits and functional value before productivity and sales skyrocket.

How a Mobile CRM Helps Sales Reps

A mobile-focused CRM solves many of the problems which usually make sales reps dislike popular platforms. Instead of having an assortment of paperwork or having to manually enter the days information into your CRM, reps have streamlined workflows and easy data management.

There is no writing things down, no waiting for information, and no extra work at the end of a long day.

Routes are more automatically more efficient, and sales reps have more time on their hands. Here are just some of the key features of interest to outside sales:

Unified dashboards on desktop and mobile.
Full access and updating of leads, opportunities & contacts.
Enhanced file opening, sharing & collaboration tools.
Customer service tracking, management & responses on-the-go.
Unified communication control panels with dial-into meeting functionality.
Offline access to internal database and sales processes.
Performance tracking and route optimization.
Overheads are reduced for both the business and sales rep.

Mobile CRM technology does the opposite of what reps have come to expect, simplifying and enhancing existing aspects of their successful sales strategies instead of giving them more work. Existing and future employees are empowered with solutions which address actual issues within their day.

Say goodbye to back and forth phone calls and software designed for desktop users. Sales representatives can look forward to an app which puts all sales processes within reach no matter where they are.

Better Customer Interactions

Sales reps are given more time to focus on their consulting services which in turn raises the favorable opinion of your enterprise across-the-board. Personal service is memorable service.

Customer and product information can be accessed using a mobile phone or tablet giving immediate insights and answers to questions. Software like SPOTIO even gives you full access to the entire CRM without an active internet connection. Past customer purchases can be reviewed, customers can be better advised, order statuses updated, purchasing trends can be monitored, and in-demand items can be kept in stock while out of the office.

Customers and sales reps are fully supported.

Higher Average Order Volumes

Sales transparency combined with elevated customer service translates to higher average order volumes for outside sales reps who are supplied with a practical mobile CRM. The immediate access to account history, product information and any promotions upcoming or ongoing give reps more options to inspire sales from their leads.

Sales pipelines operating more efficiently means less lag in communication and in turn less time for purchase interest to waver. Customers given instant access to the pricing and information that they ask for or (at the foresight of a good up-sell) need, are more likely to carry through. Average order volume increases by as much as 20% as a matter of consequence.

Keep in mind that reps won’t only be visiting more clients and selling a higher volume, but they’ll also be closing deals faster.

Mobile Productivity & Efficiency

Sales and admin staff benefit from the lack of paperwork, data capturing, and general admin duties. Mobile real-time data capturing minimizes staff errors which improve the overall efficiency of all teams involved.

Good mobile sales software will also include features like real-time messaging, document management, and the ability to take notes and add lead information digitally.

A CRM which is designed for mobile use will also operate faster and more intuitively that a more robust server-desktop solution. Navigating an app which offers mobile connectivity as a side-line benefit can be so tricky that reps refuse to use it at all. Yet, with a responsive tool in their hands at all times, it will become an extension of the way that they work.

Total Sales Transparency

Sales processes and marketing information was an area of business shrouded in secrecy, with far too many initiatives doing their best to hide their real intentions and the full scale of their efforts and marketing. Fortunately, in today’s hyperconnected world of business, there is no room for these veils of ambiguity in background planning and sales pipelining.

Business communication needs to be open and shared with customers and internal staff so that everyone knows that they’re getting their worth. Sales transparency sets the foundation for better interdepartmental communication, steadfast relationships with clients, and management which works so closely with staff that there is never a misunderstanding nor a lack of motivation.

A mobile CRM puts everyone on the same footing, supplying a platform enabling access to the whole of a business’s internal processes. Staff understand their responsibilities better, and customers love the way that on-demand data drives decisions.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Enterprise

Every business needs to invest in both its internal and field sales teams. CRM solutions are integral, but outside sales have to have the right tools made available to them.

The right mobile CRM like SPOTIO runs in conjunction with existing desktop/server based platforms and vastly streamlines the way that sales reps capture and access data. Mainstream CRM software is designed for desktop use first with mobile functionality arriving as an afterthought.

After all, multi-million dollar companies like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics give a range of tools too broad and powerful that most field sales reps would never be able to navigate through the complexity on the limited screen size of a phone or tablet. Platforms like these are not designed with the mobile workforce in mind.

Implement a leading mobile CRM, and it’ll handle the data transfer to your resource-heavy desktop CRM automatically without transferring any burden to your reps.

Magnify the Impact of Outside Sales

SPOTIO B2B Sales technology supplies stellar mobile access to internal resources which results in no less than a 47% increase in efficiency. When you combine this with the way that the emerging millennial workforce views an enriched workplace, you’ve got a recipe for success.

Today’s workforce values IT strategies which improve productivity and communication. Companies investing in the needs of their staff exhibit a high trust culture and millennials are twenty-two times more likely to want to continue working there and show an eight times increase in agility and a seven times increase in innovation.

Empower your staff by picking software and solutions which resonate with the way that they already do business and prefer to interact, and you’ll not only have higher productivity but greater dedication as well.

SPOTIO puts everything at your fingertips; everything is logged automatically and managing sales processes couldn’t be easier. Whether you’re a sales manager or sales rep, the functional value and practical benefits are outstanding. A sales rep lives life on the road and needs a solution to match.

A comprehensive mobile solution gives you a customer relationship management program which will maximize output and efficiency in the field.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s 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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References:

1 – https://www.websitehostingrating.com/internet-statistics-facts/

2 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/

3 – https://hostingfacts.com/internet-facts-stats/

4 – https://ecommercebooth.com/47-ecommerce-stats-to-know-for-2019-and-beyond/

5 – https://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-mobile-buyer-behaviour-research/

6 – https://litmus.com/blog/53-of-emails-opened-on-mobile-outlook-opens-decrease-33

7 – https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/us-global-mobile-consumer-survey-second-edition.pdf

8 – https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2014/11/ericsson-mobility-report-90-percent-will-have-a-mobile-phone-by-2020

9 – https://rebeccamurtagh.com/more-mobile-devices-than-toothbrushes-or-people/

10 – https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millennials-are-taking-over-the-workforce-2018-04-16-11884422

11 – http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force/

12 – https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/07/19/14-millennial-statistics-that-will-blow-you-away.aspx

13 – https://www.ipass.com/press-releases/mobile-workforce-report-05242011/

14 – https://spotio.com/blog/why-your-sales-team-hates-your-crm/

15 – https://www.quantacrm.com/2016/02/18/mobile-crm-increase-sales/

16 – https://salespop.net/sales-management/transparency-in-your-sales-process/

17 – https://dynamicsignal.com/2018/10/09/key-statistics-millennials-in-the-workplace/

11 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency for Optimal Sales Performance

Every business owner wants to keep their pipeline full.

To keep sales flowing in, there’s a near constant push for better marketing, better salespeople, and better business processes. This is the momentum that all businesses need for consistent growth.

But generating more sales is only part of the equation.

While sales effectiveness does well to improve conversions, there’s another component that business owners often leave by the wayside: sales efficiency.

Sales efficiency is the key to not only generating more sales for your business but also streamlining your sales process so that you get more sales, faster.

In this guide, we’re covering what sales efficiency is, why it’s essential to your business, and 11 ways to make your sales process more efficient than ever.

What is Sales Efficiency?

So, what is “sales efficiency”? How is it different from “sales effectiveness”?

Let’s dive into the definitions.

Sales Efficiency vs. Sales Effectiveness

Sales Effectiveness refers to your sales team’s ability to convert prospects into leads, and eventually paying customers or clients, at each stage of your sales funnel. If your sales process is effective, you will experience more “wins” than losses every step of the way.

Sales Efficiency, on the other hand, refers to the speed of your sales operations. That is, how quickly you are able to convert users into leads/sales and while still generating the highest return on your investment. It is the revenue generated by your sales team relative to the cost.

A sales process that is both efficient and effective will be able to close sales in a reasonable time frame, at a sustainable cost, and on the right terms.

The Sales Efficiency Ratio

Sales efficiency is the “Magic Number” that’s calculated by “taking current quarter new revenue annualized, divided by prior quarter sales & marketing expenses” (Source):

Sales efficiency = (revenue / sales cost) x 100

For instance, if you spend $4 on sales in Q2 and generate $4 in revenue in Q3, your ratio would be 1. But if you spent $4 on sales in Q2 and instead only generated $2 in revenue in Q3, your sales efficiency ratio would be .5.

Your sales process is considered sufficient if you have a ratio of .5-1, indicating that your company is essentially breaking even. However, this is not sustainable for the long term.

With a sales efficiency ratio of 1 or greater, you can be confident that your business has strong sales efficiency. Just note that if your ratio is significantly higher than 1, it could mean that you are under-investing in marketing or sales.

Why Sales Efficiency & Effectiveness Should Be Your #1 Priority

Sales inefficiency is a huge issue that many businesses are facing, but few take the time to run the numbers on before it is too late. Your sales team closing the majority of new prospects isn’t always an indication of success.

The reality is that sales quotas have risen by over 33% since 2007, but the percentage of sales reps actually hitting their quota has fallen by 25%. Sales inefficiency is such a pervasive issue that 65% of B2B businesses listed it as their #1 business challenge.

Calculating your sales efficiency ratio is the best way to determine whether your business is on track.

If there’s room for improvement – a major comeback – you will need both sales efficiency and sales effectiveness in order to move the needle.

11 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency

If your business is struggling with sales efficiency, just know that you are not alone. Many business owners are making sales efficiency their #1 priority, and you can too.

Here are 11 ways to improve sales efficiency in your business.

1. Specify Business Goals and KPIs

The first step in laying out your sales efficiency game plan is to get super clear about what your goals are and how you will measure success.

Are your sales reps expected to close a set # of sales per month? A certain amount per sale? Make sure those expectations are set from the beginning.

We highly recommend using the SMART goals method to set goals that are measurable and realistic.

For example, the Measurable acronym could be: increase sales by 17% by the end of the next quarter.

Once you are clear on what your goals are, and what key performance indicators (KPIs) will be used to measure success, make sure you track sales activity closely. Identify any bottlenecks and fix problems in a timely manner to avoid further inefficiency.

2. Identify Your Ideal Customer

50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.

Creating a profile of your ideal customer will improve your close rate significantly. That’s because the best way to move a prospect to buy is by addressing every one of their needs and wants.

You can use sales intelligence tools like Lead Machine to create robust customer profiles using a range of data points, essentially creating a persona of someone who is ready and excited to buy your product.

Building your ideal customer avatar consists of three main components:

1. WHO they are (demographics)
2. WHERE they are (location)
3. WHAT they want (pain points and needs)

Lockdown this information and you can pinpoint exactly what features and benefits of your product would appeal to them most.

Then your sales team can focus on pitching exactly what your potential customers want to hear without wasting breath on specs that won’t be of interest to them.


3. Create a Repeatable, Consistent Sales Process

If you want your sales team to be efficient, then you must train outline a repeatable, consistent sales process. Having a go-to guide for qualifying leads, selling at the right moment, collaborating with the team, and other important sales tasks will only help them work better and faster.

The key steps in a sales process are:

1. Preparation & Research. Know the scope of your product, what your ideal customer wants and needs, and what your company’s unique selling point is.

2. Prospecting. This includes the search for potential customers with the goal of moving them down your sales funnel. This is where the ideal customer data comes into play to help you identify promising prospects.

3. Needs Assessment. This is a way for your sales team to dig deeper into what the prospect needs and what issue(s) they are trying to solve. That way, they can custom-tailor a solution for them.

4. Pitch & Presentation. This is where your sales rep communicates the unique value of your product to the customer. It’s best that your rep establishes trust and hones in on what benefits your potential customer is looking for. Then they present your product as the ideal solution.

5. Objection Handling. The customer may have questions or concerns that need to be addressed. This is another opportunity to establish trust and communicate how you are different from your competitors.

6. Closing. This is when the sale is made or the proposal is sent. Reps should pay attention to the details here so that all the proper paperwork is taken care of.

7. Follow-Up. Referrals are the highest converting lead source. It’s worth it to follow-up with customers to encourage referrals and repeat business.

Not only will creating a clear sales process ensure that the same procedure is followed at every stage, but it will help you identify holes in the process. If leads are dropping off right before the close, you will be able to see this issue and address it quickly.


4. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

65% of sales reps say they can’t find content to send to prospects.

(Source)

Often there can be miscommunication between your marketing and sales teams that can cause inefficiency.

That’s because most businesses see the traditional sales process like this:

Marketing hands leads over to the sales team and the sales team closes the leads.

Unfortunately, this method can lead to some major issues.

For example, a sales rep may pitch a product that was never marketed to the prospect. Or they may try to sell to someone who isn’t primed to buy.

In fact, only 35% of salespeople think that the marketing team knows what content they need, and only ⅓ of sales and marketing teams talk on a regular basis.

By aligning both teams, you improve communication and collaboration between teams, increasing your rate of conversions and reducing drop-offs in your sales funnel.


5. Train Your Sales People Effectively

82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.

If your sales team isn’t trained properly, they will likely be inefficient. Some issues that can arise are sales reps wasting time and resources on approaches that don’t work, pitching to a customer before they are ready, or drawing out the sales process.

New hires should all go through in-depth training that instructs them on effective prospecting and selling. It should address any common questions that sales reps may have during the process, as well as tips on how to handle objections from customers.

Providing ongoing training will also help your team stay sharp and up-to-date on the latest selling techniques.

6. Strategic Sales Rep Assignment

Image: screenshot of the SPOTIO territory management interface.

Strategic rep assignment is a method for avoiding redundancies in your sales process. That is, it ensures that no sales reps are selling to the same areas/leads at the same time.

We recommend assigning your top reps to the most lucrative territories to ensure a better close rate on those high-ticket offers. Check out our guide on Sales Territory Management for tips on how to create your own efficient rep assignment strategy.

7. Sell to Customer Needs

The research you conducted around your ideal client persona will tell you what issues your potential customers are struggling with, what they need, and what they want.

Understanding their needs and articulating how your product is the best solution to their needs is the surest way to win them over.

While your competitors are hitting on all the features of their products, you will be speaking directly to your target customer’s strongest pain points. If you are able to drive home the benefits, it will be a no-brainer buy for them and a straightforward sale for you.

8. Manage and Nurture Leads Effectively

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report)

It’s always easier to sell to a “warm” lead – someone who is familiar with your brand and has been primed for the sale – than a “cold” one. That’s why it’s essential to have a lead nurturing process to warm up your prospects.

The best system for doing this is to use a centralized CRM or lead management system. This is software that allows your sales team to see where prospects are at in the sales cycle so that they can follow up with them in the right way at the right time.

A CRM tool will increase sales efficiency by:

– Letting your team know the best time to follow up
– Helping your team tailor communications to where prospects are at in the sales cycles
– Assigning priority to prospects that are further down the sales funnel


9. Work on the Basics

Sometimes the easiest and fastest way to improve sales efficiency is to simply brush up on the basics. No matter how long you have been in business or how precise your processes are, there is always room for improvement.

Consider new ways to find prospects, presents sales pitches, and extend follow-ups to fine-tune your sales process at every step. Don’t be afraid to look at your existing system from a different perspective.


10. Maximize Your Time

A recent study found that sales reps spend less than 36% of their time on selling. That means that the rest of the time is spent on non-selling tasks like traveling, attending meetings, or checking email.

There are many handy tools that you and your team can use to maximize your time and efficiency. For example, this route planning software helps your team determine the most direct route to their destination.

Look at your task or project management system to identify areas where your team can be more efficient, allowing them more time to focus on selling.

11. Measure Results

Knowledge is power and in business, that knowledge is in the numbers. To maximize your sales efficiency, you need to routinely look at your numbers to know where you are at and where you are going.


Top-Level Sales Numbers

Track your most important KPIs and schedule out how often your team should be reporting on these metrics.

Pipeline Velocity

Image: Pipeline dashboard inside the SPOTIO field sales CRM.

Set aside time to look for weaknesses at each stage of the pipeline. What is the ratio of new leads vs. qualified vs. opportunity vs. closed? In which areas are you lacking? Find areas for improvement.

Individual Sales Rep Performance

Image: Viewing individual sales rep performance inside the Sales Rep Tracker dashboard.

Check in on where reps are at in their quotas (if they have them) and if they are meeting expectations. Track which reps are performing at their best and which are underperforming. Then apply incentives and training accordingly.


5 Tools to Boost Sales Efficiency

Looking for fast and simple ways to increase sales efficiency in your business?

Try out these highly-recommended tools.


1. Prospecting: Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder helps you generate new leads by identifying who has visited your website.

You are provided with contact information for companies that have viewed pages on your site so that your sales team can reach out with content that is of interest to them.

Prospecting tools help you save time by generating warm leads for you fast.

Editor’s Note: if you’re an outside sales rep, use SPOTIO’s Lead Machine software to find ideal prospects in your territory. It uses over 50 different demographic data points to uncover the strongest leads.

2. Territory Management: SPOTIO

Save up to three hours per day with Territory Management tools. SPOTIO helps your team spend more time selling all while avoiding overlap with other sales reps. Assign your top reps to high-ticket prospects in order to get the best ROI from your team.


3. Lead Management/CRM: HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and customer service hubs make it easy to handle all your customer management in one place. Increase collaboration between your marketing and sales teams, track where prospects are at in the sales cycle, and ensure that no prospect falls through the cracks.


4. Document Hub: SPOTIO

Get access to important files when you need them with a reliable document hub tool. SPOTIO also offers e-contract and document software to streamline the closing process – ensuring that no minute is wasted creating documents from scratch. Your team can pull in exactly what they need in seconds.


5. Reporting/ Tracking: Pipedrive

Stay on top of the numbers and know that you’re always “in the black” with accurate reporting and tracking tools. Pipedrive works to help businesses measure the success of their sales efforts and make important adjustments along the way. With the right tool, you’ll always know whether your sales efficiency ratio is on point.

Editor’s note: Use the SPOTIO rep and sales tracking dashboards to measure performance at the company and rep levels.

Conclusion

Sales efficiency is the #1 priority for businesses that want to close more sales and get the best ROI for their sales investment.

Close rate alone is not an accurate measure of sales success; there are many metrics to track and steps to take along the way to ensure that your sales process is running as smoothly as possible (and keeping you profitable).

Is your sales team efficient?

See how SPOTIO can work with your sales team to increase efficiency, productivity, and more by requesting a demo today.

______

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.

69 High-Impact Sales Enablement Tools for 2019 (By Category)

On average, 50% of a sales rep’s time daily is wasted on poor prospects.

Even if you only have five full-time reps, that’s 100 paid hours every week that have zero ROI. You can almost hear the cash going down the toilet.

However, this stat might be less surprising when you learn that companies spend 5x more on hiring a sales rep than they do training them.

Wait, what?!

That’s right. Talk about failing to set your reps and managers up to succeed.

Poor sales training and unequipped reps is a problem that persists in any industry — despite the fact studies have shown trained reps sell 50% more effectively.

The solution to this mess?

Sales enablement.

Let’s Get Clear on Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is a support function. Its goal is to provide sales reps with information, customer-facing content, and tools, so they can guide a buyer through the purchase process successfully.

This could involve creating fact sheets, industry-specific case studies, and comparison tables that help a rep persuade a lead to buy.

It also means coaching reps on best practices and equipping them with the tools they need to be efficient.

Being able to do this in your organization requires an understanding of the ideal buyer, so you can provide resources they actually need and want throughout the journey.

There are two key stages involved in building a good sales enablement strategy:

1) Understanding who the ideal customer is, and mapping the buyer’s journey.
2) Creating sales plays, content, and training for reps to leverage at each stage of the journey.

Sales organizations in 2019 have a plethora of tools available to make every part of this process easier, and in this post we’ll dive into the best for your arsenal.

But first, a look at the power of sales enablement technology…

The Importance of Sales Enablement Technology

According to SalesHub, only 13% of customers believe sales reps understand their needs.

Crazy, right?

When the majority of your reps aren’t connecting with customers, there is costly disconnect.

The solution? Better support for reps, and better content for customers to support them throughout the buyer’s journey.

Propellor research shows that this is a big differentiator for customers:

Being able to do this at scale (or at all), you need a sales enablement strategy. Tools are essential to this, research from Brainshark shows:

“More than 2/3 of companies that invested in sales learning and development technology realized a positive ROI.”

On the flip side, companies that failed to invest in sales enablement technology in the last year have seen a 12% drop in sales goal achievement.

Almost two thirds of companies that have piloted sales enablement programs and seen positive ROI attribute the success to software; according to a study by CSO Insights, 62% of organizations view tools as the top priority investment in sales enablement.

(Source)

Tools can be used for the majority of the top priorities in the study above, too, like content and process improvement.

So, what are the effects of investing in sales enablement tools?

This research from Salesforce found that 84% of companies hit quota with the support of sales enablement tools and coaching.

Let’s look at the tools across each category that can help you research, deploy, and optimize your sales enablement strategy.

The Best Sales Enablement Tools for 2019 (By Category)

Sales enablement is built around the idea that reps can optimize the way they sell, and provide customers with informative content that helps them make complex purchase decisions.

That makes it part market research, part content management — and heavily reliant on analytics to understand and support your ideal buyer segments.

We’ll look at tools across each of these core functionalities:

Market Intelligence
Sales Intelligence & Prospecting
Content Analytics
Content Sharing & Management
Market Automation
Sales & Team Communications
Sales Emails
Sales Presentations
Contract Management
Sales CRMs
Sales Training
Sales Management
Customer Feedback

Market Intelligence

To accelerate sales and ramp up rep productivity, you’ll need to make data-backed decisions. For sales, some of the most important data is around the companies in your target market. How many employees do your prospects typically have? What about funding, or annual revenue?

With that intel, you can make the way your reps sell and prospect more effective, and waste less time. Let’s look at the best sales enablement tools for market intelligence.

Artesian

With Artesian, you get access to a vast bank of proprietary company data through a convenient interface that lets you discover new prospects, track engagement metrics, and deliver content to targeted segments.

Artesian can help your team deploy custom sales enablement strategies by letting reps create lists of leads based on rich data from millions of companies. To make sure you get the right content to the right prospects, Artesian uses AI to analyze prospects and cuts the amount of time reps spend on manual research.

For £89/user/month, a team of up to 10 users can use Artesian for company profiling, content research, and team performance optimization. Teams with over 10 users should get in touch for the enterprise plan.

D&B Hoovers

D&B Hoovers integrates with the tools your team already uses — Marketo, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and more — to enrich lead data and help sales enablement teams analyze the pipeline and develop relevant content.

As well as enriching current data, it can be used to research leads in new markets and support strategies that expand your reach.

Pricing for Hoovers isn’t public, but a free trial is available before you connect with a rep.

Emissary

Ever wanted an expert insider when you’re chasing a big lead? Emissary gives you exactly that, by matching you with a recent former employee from any given company that can guide you on how to close the deal.

It’s aimed at enterprise sales — with 75% of its connections coming from firms in the Fortune 1000 — and over two-thirds of its contacts were VP or higher at the company. Emissary is an effective high-touch way to develop enterprise enablement material, but also serves as a way for reps to get coaching from successful insiders.

Get in touch with the providers for pricing info.

Mattermark

Mattermark combines company profiles with social listening to provide lead and contact profiles, with over 80 fields of data per entry.

It provides data on 4,000,000 companies and 20,000,000 contacts imported via API into your CRM, or in exports to spreadsheets. With Mattermark automatically gathering data on prospects, the sales enablement process is made simpler; far less manual research is needed when a tool can fill in the blanks.

Aimed more at startups (and companies selling to startups), Mattermark also lets you segment companies by funding recency/amount, and growth signals. It also has a lower price tag than the other intelligence tools on this list, at $49/user/month.

Sales Intelligence & Prospecting

Prospecting tools help your reps find the ideal customers for your product, based on a selected set of specific set of demographic and firmographic data points, like “leads within 50 miles of me, with over 200 employees, in the healthcare tech industry”.

An improved prospecting process is a core part of sales enablement because it helps reps up productivity by spending less time on bad leads and more time selling to those likely to convert.

Here are the prospecting tools we recommend checking out.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has access to one of the biggest troves of business data on the planet, owing to the fact that it has gathered so much insight from user-submitted information on its social network and the connections between different professionals.

When you get access to that data (not fully available through the social network alone), you can unlock every insight the network has gathered, including data on company size, activity, news mentions, posts, engagement, and connections. It also lets you nurture leads and reach out with that data in context through LinkedIn messaging.

Pricing starts at $79.99/month.

SPOTIO Lead Machine

SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool, Lead Machine, allows managers to generate a list of qualified leads for sales teams in seconds.

The tool allows users to define geographic territories and mine data on all the companies within that area. Reps can quickly create an ideal customer profile by mining and sorting over 50 different data points – income, credit capacity, square footage, age of home etc.

After leads have been qualified, extract the data and import into the CRM and start selling.

Lead Machine helps businesses close more deals by having reps focus only on the most qualified leads in a given sales territory.

SPOTIO is priced at $25/user/month for up to two users, with credits charged for lead machine usage.

NerdyData.com

NerdyData.com gives you access to company technology usage data. You could search the database for every Intercom customer because your tool integrates with Intercom. Or, see who’s running your competitor’s software so you can send over a relevant comparison sheet.

It’s easy to see how this enables your sales team to make more personalized and informed decisions, and how it helps sales enablement initiatives research the tech stacks of different market segments to better understand the lead’s internals.

NerdyData.com’s pricing starts at $50/user/month.

Clearbit

Clearbit is an API you can hook into your existing source of customer data, whether that’s Intercom, Close.io, or Salesforce. With a company name or domain, Clearbit pulls in anything else your sales team should know about that lead, such as the number of employees or industry.

As well as enriching existing data, Clearbit can enable sales to do a more efficient job by building prospect lists and revealing the company profiles of anonymous site visitors. This all helps your team get a better look at the kinds of companies they attract so you can create effective enablement content to support future deals.

Access to Clearbit’s Enrichment API costs $99/monthly. Pricing for other products in the suite is available on request.

SellHack

SellHack helps expand your funnel by making prospecting easier. It’s a browser extension, so you can add leads you find on LinkedIn to existing prospect lists and automatically hunt down their email address.

With segmented lists and easy email outreach built in, SellHack empowers teams to get the right content to the right leads, informed by data SellHack stores.

For 150 email lookups, you can get SellHack at $19/user/month.

Albacross

Did you know that a big-name exec and their team were browsing your site yesterday while evaluating solutions? You’ll certainly agree that would be powerful to know. But how will you find out if it’s not something you’re tracking?

Albacross enables all that and more by keeping a log of companies and potential customers that visit your site, and enriching the data with the best way to contact that lead.

Once the visitor data is stored in Albacross, you get a lead list that grows by itself and is able to be filtered by fields like revenue, company size, and location. Push that lead list to your CRM or any other sales tool you use by integrating Albacross with Zapier.

Pricing starts at $79/month for one site and 1,000 leads exported.

LeadFuze

LeadFuze helps sales teams build prospect lists quickly — not one-by-one — by giving reps access to data on a lead’s industry, media updates, company size, and even PPC spend. With that data, reps can search by tightly-focused criteria to expand their outreach lists and pipeline.

To help save time with data entry and manual research, LeadFuze can also take a list of domains or company names and turn them into the best point-of-contact with a double-verified email address.

Pricing starts at $97/user/month, for 500 lead credits.

DataFox

DataFox is an Oracle-owned CRM enrichment tool that allows sales team to harness AI — backed up by over 100 human staff — to expand sales intelligence and enable more targeted prospecting and conversations.

Based on filters, new leads in your CRM can be automatically assigned to reps. This makes it possible to train reps on specific plays with specific enablement content, and always ensure they’re pitching to the right people.

Despite being an Oracle product, DataFox has native integrations with Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and Terminus. Its pricing is available by request only.

Growbots

Growbots allows you to create prospect lists by selecting an ideal customer profile, and then automate target outreach to those lists.

Straight away, it’s easy to see how this empowers a sales enablement strategy. Your Growbots prospect lists are created based on criteria like company size, industry, and email activity. With that insight, you can automate the distribution of relevant sales enablement content and design plays around specific market segments and prospect needs.

Pricing for Growbots is available by request only.

Owler

Owler is a lookup database for company information that can be used to explore profiles via the web or enrich CRM data with their API.

Uniquely, Owler focuses on the trust score of a company’s founders and the funding a company has historically received. This makes it great for selling to startups and early-stage high-growth businesses.

Alongside company profiles, you can see all recent news and social mentions for a given company so you can research competitor progress and prospects in context of current events.

Pricing for Owler is not public.

Content Analytics

Once you get a piece of sales enablement content like a product fact sheet in front of a lead, how do you know what happened next? With old school tools, you can make guesses on what content is converting customers and pushing the sales process along, but you can’t be sure how leads engage with it.

Content analytics platforms solve that problem by measuring user heatmaps, copy effectiveness, and other metrics beyond the scope of a non-specialized tool like Google Analytics. Optimize the way you measure the success of your sales enablement content with these hand-picked tools.

Atomic Reach

Ever wanted to know exactly how leads engage with your sales enablement content? Atomic Reach takes your content analytics past the point of just clicks and views, into the realm of rich engagement data that explains why content is performing, so you can replicate the formula.

To help you create content, Atomic Reach also analyzes pages you create for their ability to persuade and convert. Optimize enablement content easily, and accurately track its performance.

Pricing for Atomic Reach is available on request.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg provides heat maps and analytics that you can use to measure if/how leads and website visitors engage with your content.

With that data, you can run A/B tests on a page-by-page basis to boost conversions, dwell time, and other vital metrics you use to judge the effectiveness of your sales enablement content.

Crazy Egg pricing starts at $29/month.

Content Sharing & Management

You’ll need a centralized location to store and distribute customer-facing content and training material, or you’ll be stuck searching for files on your local computer (and so will all of your frustrated reps).

Content sharing and management tools let you create internal documentation, host files for customers, and control who inside your organization can access which resources. Let’s look at some of the best options for sales enablement.

Box

Your sales enablement training material and customer-facing content needs a home. When multiple reps need to access internal content — regardless of when or where — you need a robust cloud storage tool like Box.

Box is an enterprise file sharing and storage tool that integrates with plenty of top sales tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. The integration allows you to associate Box documents with leads, making it easy to match the right content to the right person.

Box’s pricing starts at $5/user/month for unlimited storage.

SharePoint

If you’re already living in the Microsoft ecosystem at work, then SharePoint is a great choice to manage sales enablement content, either on-premises or in the cloud with Office 365.

Create internal wikis for your sales team’s training material, and neatly categorize centralized enablement material with ease.

SharePoint is available on its own for $5/user/month, but is at its most useful as part of Office 365. For $20/user/month, you can get the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan that has SharePoint included alongside Outlook, Word, Excel, and other Microsoft software.

Allbound

Allbound is a sales intelligence tool designed to help businesses manage relationships with partners and deploy enablement content to those partners that will make selling easier.

It features company data lookup, content collaboration, and analytics reports that give insight into content performance. If you’re running a partner sales program, Allbound is the perfect line of communication between you and your external channels.

Pricing starts at $995/month for access to the full Allbound platform.

Bigtincan

Bigtincan improves sales success by helping sales teams better prepare for meetings, boost engagement, enhance collaboration, and ultimately improve overall win rates.

Bigtincan Hub is only AI-powered sales enablement automation platform. With Bigtincan, transform the way sales and service organizations access, share and collaborate on the sales content.

For pricing, email them at sales@bigtincan.com.

Showpad

Named a leader by Gartner in the field of Sales Enablement Automation, Showpad is one of the first dedicated sales enablement tools. It provides a platform where sales and marketing can collaborate, sharing content and metrics.

With Showpad, it’s easy for sales teams to surface and share relevant engagement content with buyers and match content to lead profiles based on filters. It is also possible to build and deploy sales training inside the app, then track rep engagement with it.

Pricing is available on request only, and the content platform is sold separately from the training platform.

Marketing Automation

Any efficient sales enablement strategy is built around automation. It only makes sense that reps can do a better job if their lead nurturing happens automatically and they get better qualified or ready-to-buy leads as a result.

Plus, many marketing automation tools also act as a way to get insights into your lead’s mindset — find which leads open and engage with your emails most often, or reference a lead’s historical engagement to know which content they have and haven’t seen.

Here are our top picks in the field of marketing automation.

Marketo

For many companies, Marketo is where lead and customer data already lives. Leveraging this data, you can use Marketo to analyze your site’s content and find sales enablement recommendations based on the lead’s company profile and history. After sharing content, Marketo logs the lead’s interactions to gather metrics you can use to make optimizations.

On top of this, Marketo is an industry-leading marketing automation platform you can use to nurture leads with targeted messages and build a stronger pipeline.

Pricing is unavailable online, but you can request a demo to find out more.

Eloqua

Eloqua is Oracle’s marketing automation solution, aimed at the enterprise market. It integrates with your CRM to enrich lead data, trigger automated messaging, and track engagement with your website and content.

Since it stores data on your existing leads, Eloqua can be used as a sales enablement research tool that gives you a pulse on your current pipeline.

Pricing information is unavailable online.

Customer.io

Customer.io is email marketing for companies that collect in-product data — namely SaaS and web tools. Sales enablement teams can use Customer.io to develop relevant content and training based on the different segments of product user.

Customer.io can be integrated with other customer analytics tools like Segment and Heap, so you’re able to deploy content over email based on historical data like signup date, industry, user count, and last bill amount.

Pricing starts at $150/month for products with up to 100,000 users.

Sales & Team Communications

Conversation and collaboration tools bring your sales team closer together and put the resources reps need right at their fingertips — they also give managers a platform to analyze how the team interacts and sells.

Sales communications is a broad category. It covers anything internal content management, rep call analysis, and instant messaging. Here are some of our top recommendations.

Guru

Wherever you are — Slack, or in your browser — Guru allows you to find the enablement content you need without wasting time switching between documents, your CRM, and a dozen other apps.

You can query Guru to surface the right content for the right leads, and then deliver it through Salesforce, Intercom, or other tools with which Guru has native integrations. This gives you a centralized place to store content, so you can control what reps are distributing without making updates in 10 places at once.

Pricing starts at $380/month, or $2,400 if you want API access.

Chorus.ai

Optimize the way your reps talk to leads by storing and analyzing their sales calls automatically. This is great for developing training material or providing an AI coach for your team that fine-tunes their sales technique and helps them close more deals.

Chorus.ai stores call analysis next to lead data inside your CRM, so you can see call history and outcome wherever you already work. Pricing for Chorus.ai is not publicly available.

Slack

Slack has quickly become to go-to chat and notification hub for teams everywhere. Since it’s where your sales team hangs out already, why not power it up with integrations? Slack can be used to automatically notify reps when new signups come in, segmented by potential deal size with integrations to a customer data tool like Clearbit or DataFox.

Outside of strict sales activity, Slack is a simple way to hold team meetings, search conversations, and even deliver presentations.

Pricing starts at $8/user/month.

Skype for Business

Skype for Business is a collaboration tool for teams, offering a way to streamline internal communication and great customer-facing presentation features for sales demos.

As part of Office 365, Skype for Business integrates with PowerPoint and Word Online so you can easily search and present documents and slide decks that exist in your org’s folders, all without leaving the app.

Skype for Business starts at $8.25/user/month when you buy Office 365 annually.

UberConference

Connect your conferences with lead data and your CRM by using UberConference to run sales meetings, both internally and externally.

UberConference automatically pulls in data on participants so your reps can be as informed as possible while they’re on the call. As well as UberConference data, it’s possible to display data from most other likely sources, such as Salesforce and Office 365.

Shared content and call history is logged inside UberConference, forming a basis for sales performance analysis and a way for reps to surface content they shared with other prospects.

Pricing starts free, with $15/user/month for calls with over 100 participants.

Calendar

Calendar was created to streamline your day and improve productivity. With features like recorded meeting transcripts, have a calendar that showcases you and maximizes your most valuable resource: your time.

Basic accounts are free, and paid plans start at $10/user/month.

Sales Emails

Vanilla email doesn’t cut it for sales. You need a tool that lets you create outreach playbooks, manage follow-ups, and track engagement metrics.

Here are our top tools for outreach and sales email management.

Attach

Attach is a centralized content hub for sales enablement material that allows your team to store material and then get insight into how leads consume and engage with it.

Unlike a generic solution like Google Drive, storing your content in Attach lets you see which leads viewed which documents and for how long. You can also easily deploy updates to live enablement content without having to send the lead to a new URL. In line with Forrester research that suggests 90% of reps don’t use content because it’s outdated, this is an invaluable feature.

Attach pricing starts at $27/user/month.

Yesware

Yesware is a Chrome and Outlook extension for sales teams, offering a way to supercharge your everyday inbox with CRM-like capabilities. This includes data on open/reply rate, attachment opens, and even presentation slide engagement.

With its email templates and sequences, you can add proven, relevant sales plays to your team’s repertoire easily.

Yesware is available for free, with premium plans starting at $12/user/month when billed annually.

Mailshake

Mailshake was built for sales teams to deliver personalized outreach at scale. It’s a platform that your sales organization can use to create sequences, lead segments, and automation that help reps reach more leads with more targeted messages.

Pricing starts at just $29/user/month.

Close.io

Close.io is a powerhouse CRM, with everything you need to track calls and emails with prospects, leads, and existing customers. It has support for custom fields and lists, so you can create tightly-focused segments that match your sales play and enablement material.

Integrated with a product data or enrichment tool, Close.io acts as a rich data warehouse, storing email history alongside in-app activity and company profiles.

Pricing starts at $59/user/month, but for automation the monthly fee goes up to $99.

Outreach



Outreach lets you create sales email sequences that save reps from the mental burden of remembering to follow up, or remembering to send the right content to the right lead. With its lead prioritization and task feature, reps will always know what the next step is with each contact. This keeps your team productive when they’re doing manual work, and automates the remaining emails.

Pricing for Outreach is available by request.

Sales Presentations

Reps need more than just a basic video chat tool if they’re going to deliver winning presentations. And managers need a way to file presentation content for reps and track its performance. Thankfully, there are powerful video conferencing tools that are built for sales demos, and dedicated meeting apps for measuring the conversion rate of outbound calls.

Here are the sales presentation tools we think are the best to check out.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting makes it easy for your team to give sales presentations to practically any lead, without having to get them to download a bulky desktop app or go through a lengthy verification process. For that reason, it’s low friction — a vital benefit in the low-patience world of sales.

For sales pitches and demos, its screen sharing and annotation features are among the best on the market. You can give presentations that are as detailed and engaging as you need, or offer one-to-many training sessions with reps when you roll out a new piece of software.

Pricing starts from $14/user/month for the starter plan.

CustomShow

CustomShow is a B2B sales presentation platform. Unifying sales and marketing, CustomShow is revolutionizing the art of sales presentations.

B2B companies from various industries around the world are using CustomShow to turn their sales presentations into an effective marketing channel the drives business and delivers results.

For pricing, contact CustomShow at info@customshow.com.

Prezi

Prezi is a different kind of presentation tool. Like PowerPoint 2.0, but with none of the boring WordArt.

Instead of forcing the presenter and audience through a linear narrative, slide by slide, Prezi is laid out like an interactive, free-form map that you can seamlessly zoom and navigate.

It also collects analytics on the audience’s reactions to the presentation, so you know where to improve in the future. In this way, it powers sales enablement to make optimizations to the standard presentation process reps follow.

Pricing starts at $7/month for the standard plan.

ShareDemos

ShareDemos is software specifically built for sales enablement. It’s a way to create and distribute sales enablement content internally and externally — that includes sales onboarding material and product fact sheets for customers.

Since rich content can be designed and edited through the ShareDemos platform, sales managers can make updates to content that appear whenever the lead or customer accesses it. This solves the issue of having old content being sent to leads, or reps worrying if the material they send to leads is up to date.

Pricing for ShareDemos is publicly available.

ExecVision

ExecVision is a sales call analysis tool that can process call recordings to gain insight into how the ways reps make calls is affecting your sales conversion rate.

Load you sales calls into ExecVision, and you’ll get an indexed database of your call logs which is searchable and includes metrics such as keywords and interchange frequency. With calls added inside ExecVision, you can get metrics like average call length, calls per rep, and more. As a bonus, you can feed all of this data into the CRM you already use, like Salesforce or HubSpot.

Pricing for ExecVision is available on request.

Contract Management

The exchange and review of contracts can be a long, drawn-out process. If it falls through, you’re wasting all of the marketing effort that went into winning that lead, and all of the sales work done to convert it.

Instead of relying on a Word doc template and freeform follow-up notes, try a dedicated contract management tool to help you create, distribute, and track metrics around contracts.

Proposify

Are you still making your sales proposals inside Google Docs? How are you going to track if your prospect actually reads and engages with the proposal you send?

With Proposify, you get a simple user interface to create proposals with, pre-loaded with data from your business that makes creating proposals a snap.

Pricing for Proposify starts at $25/month for one user account.

HelloSign

HelloSign is cloud-based document management software that makes paper contracts a thing of the past. For sales enablement purposes, you can use HelloSign to draw up contract templates for deals and make it easier for your reps to distribute them and track progress.

HelloSign features native integrations with Oracle CPQ, Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Zapier, which provides connections to over 1,000 other apps.

Pricing starts from free, for three monthly documents. The cheapest premium package, which offers unlimited documents from a single sender, costs $13/user/month.

DocSend

DocSend is a content management tool for sales enablement material. It helps you surface and organize your comparison sheets, white papers, and other content that your sales team needs to close deals. Since documents are distributed by the app, you can use DocSend’s analytics to track content usage and make optimizations.

Pricing for DocSend starts at $10/month for one user.

PandaDoc

With PandaDoc, you can create and send branded proposal documents that help you reps close deals.

Using pre-made templates and your in-built company data, you can spin up a proposal in minutes and get it distributed. Plus, after it’s sent you can track metrics that tell you whether or not a prospect is engaging with the material.

PandaDoc pricing starts at $49/user/month.

Conga

Conga is a content management system for sales teams that allows reps to create templated, branded documents with ease. Build approval workflows and templates inside Conga, and you’ll have the systems in place already to enable reps to create their own material and submit it for review.

Conga also integrates directly with platforms like Salesforce, so you can track customer metrics inside your CRM to get a better look at your content’s performance.

Pricing for Conga isn’t available online.

Sales CRMs

A salesperson’s CRM is their #1 most-used tool. If it’s a pain to use, won’t automatically enrich lead data, and doesn’t offer time-saving automation, it’s a big problem for sales enablement.

Since reps spend less than 36% of their time selling, the remainder is spent on data entry, menial tasks, and in the CRM. A good CRM could put an end to all of that time-sucking work.

Here are our top picks in the category.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a free CRM with a full feature set — contact management, email history, lead data, and more — all for free. This alone sets it apart from most other CRMs, which can come with a high price tag.

You can automation outreach and build follow-up sequences that are optimized to allow your reps to make the most high-converting plays.

As one of the most popular CRMs out there, HubSpot offers great support for other products and has integrations with over 1,000 apps through Zapier.

Best of all, HubSpot CRM is entirely free! No hidden costs 🙂

Salesforce

As the #1 CRM on the planet, Salesforce needs no introduction. It’s widely supported with integrations, so practically any data you collect from other tools can be added to your lead profiles easily.

It acts as a rolodex for your leads, whether that’s leads you haven’t reached out to yet, or leads partway through the funnel. For opportunities in the funnel, Salesforce tracks deal status so you can filter your sales opportunities and enable reps to save time.

Salesforce’s pricing starts from $25/user/month.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive tracks rep activity across every lead in your database and gives you a birds-eye view of your entire sales funnel.

Through its marketplace, Pipedrive has native integrations with over 100 apps you already use, like Asana, Intercom, Slack, and Help Scout. This allows you to pull in everything you already know about a lead and track sales activity no matter where it happens. More data means your reps are better able to make a pitch that converts.

Pipedrive is priced for the SMB and startup market, with packages starting from just $15/user/month.

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a field sales CRM which houses your organization’s lead data complete with locations, rep and territory assignments. Leads are enriched with unique metrics like home value and eco-friendliness automatically, which gives reps a way to tighten their targeting and waste less time on qualification.



The SPOTIO CRM features a shared meeting appointment calendar and a historical log of rep activity.

Pricing for SPOTIO starts at just $25/user/month.

Sales Training

Sales training is a vital component of enablement. Not just as a one-off deal, but when practiced continuously. That’s because salespeople will forget 80-90% of what they learned in training within a month without revisiting the material.

Because of this startling reality, sales teams often use a dedicated platform to manage, deliver, and monitor training content for reps.

Here are our top picks from the category.

Brainshark

Brainshark is a sales training tool with a focus on video. With it, you can create sales training videos to deploy to your reps and enable them to close more deals.

Industry-wide, turnover for SDRs is high. That means you need good onboarding or you won’t be able to get reps up to speed fast enough. Brainshark optimizes your sales training by giving reps a centralized hub they can use to find and consume material. Then, you get metrics back that tell you how to improve.

Pricing for Brainshark isn’t available on the web, so contact sales for more information.

Playboox

With Playboox, you can build sales playbooks directly into Salesforce and make it easy for reps to know what to do next and cut time-wasting activities (like searching for information) to a minimum.

Taking a playbook-focused approach helps your reps ensure consistency and success because they’re using proven standards versus their own improvised techniques. With Playboox, this is simple to design and add to your CRM.

Pricing for Playboox is available on request.

Sandler

Sandler isn’t your typical sales training tool. Rather than leaving it all up to you, you get connected with a sales training expert to design your processes. Sandler teaches SDR their winning methodology to ensure you get the best results, and offers metrics that help you make optimizations.

As a service rather than a piece of software, all solutions are custom. Find a center near you for more info.

Lessonly

Lessonly is a sales training platform that helps you build, store, and distribute training content while tracking the most vital success metrics, like whether or not reps have undergone training and engaged with it.

Creating a solid knowledge base for new hires and existing reps — with material about selling a new feature, or key personas — is essential for onboarding and retaining reps because it empowers them to be successful and be motivated by more commission.

Pricing for Lessonly is not public, and only available through requesting a demo.

MindTickle

MindTickle helps organizations train and coach sales reps with microlearning, gamification, and quizzes. Admins can easily create and publish training content to the platform, and then analyze how it performs. Reps get a simple mobile-ready interface they can use to participate in bite-sized training courses that help them hit their goals.

MindTickle’s pricing is available on request.

Jiminny

Jiminny is an internal sales collaboration tool, CRM, and training base, all in one.

It’s a central place for you to share leads, notes, and training sessions with other sales managers and reps, ensuring that no vital information goes missing when you need it most.

Jiminny also integrates with Slack to feed your team’s best call into a channel you can use for training purposes and to keep reps on top of the company’s selling activity. For pricing, contact a member of the sales team.

Process Street

Process Street lets you create structured process documents, share them with your team, and then track their progress.

For example, you might want to make your lead qualification process more consistent and build a qualification checklist inside Process Street. This helps reps do the best possible job each time because they’re following an up-to-date, comprehensive process that has been tested and optimized.

Process Street integrates with over 1,000 other apps your sales team uses, like Close.io, Salesforce, and HelloSign, so you can automate your workflows with ease. Pricing starts at $12.50/user/month for unlimited processes.

LevelEleven

Managing sales rewards and training schemes can be difficult, especially if you have a lot of reps to track. That’s where LevelEleven comes in.

LevelEleven is a sales management and motivation tool designed to encourage revenue-creating behavior with competitions and scoring. With it, you can get insights into the top-performing reps’ habits so you can create training material that enables your reps to convert leads.

LevelEleven’s pricing is available on request.

Sales Analytics

Without sales analytics, you can’t hope to transform the way your reps sell. Why? Because you can’t measure what you can’t manage. Sales analytics tools let you collect and analyze data on reps and their deals, so you can make strategic decisions about the sales enablement work that needs to be done — and track your strategies effectiveness. Here are our top picks.

SPOTIO Sales Tracker

SPOTIO’s sales tracking software provides sales operations teams with real-time insights into what is happening in the field.

See detailed location activity of sales reps, deal support, and start making business decisions based on real-time data. Track sales rep activity across territories, and create custom reports using dozens of different data points.

Pricing starts from $25/user/month.

Lattice

Lattice is a platform for performance reviews, employee goals, and sharing feedback. It helps companies grow by giving managers a central hub they can use to track how sales reps are tracking against their performance goals — especially useful in large sales organizations.

Pricing for Lattice starts at $9/user/month, but reporting and analytics are only available on the $12 package.

6sense

With so much of the buying cycle happening in the background these days, sales teams desperately need to get insights into their anonymous traffic so they can be informed of the lead’s past activity and knowledge and be equipped to sell better. With 6sense, you get to look behind the curtain and reveal everything a lead has done before they reached out to sales — and analyze the lead’s behavior using AI.

Pricing for 6sense is available on request.

InsightSquared



InsightSquared makes it possible for you to create reports using your entire bank of sales data, from day one. Just connect it to your CRM, and you’ll get a library of pre-built reports that you can use to extract insight and sell more efficiently. InsightSquared has native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and more — anywhere your data lives, InsightSquared will be able to access it.

Pricing is available by talking to the InsightSquared sales team.

Sales Management

Managing a sales process also means managing the people that run that process. That includes performance metrics, employee engagement, and sales contests to improve productivity.

The sales management tools selected below will help you make reliable decisions about your team’s health and drive up motivation.

Hoopla

Hoopla is a sales performance management tool that gives sales managers a platform to run competitions with leaderboards. It’s designed for a TV screen in your office, so can be used as a static leaderboard or a place to display alerts and updates on sales activity.

The metrics you collect from Hoopla can be used for performance reviews and monetary incentivization, so you get the immediate benefit of a competitive leaderboard and the long-term benefit of gathering historical data on your reps.

Pricing starts at $199/month.

SocialChorus

SocialChorus is an internal content management platform that teams can use to share playbooks, standard procedures, and other documentation.

It’s not like just storing your files in Google Drive, though — SocialChorus features analytics that help you (and stakeholders) see the value of having a central hub for internal documents and communication, rather than using multiple disparate tools.

Pricing for SocialChorus is available by request only.

SpearFysh

SpearFysh helps reps be engaged with leads during meetings instead of checking their computer for notes and log timestamps. It does this by recording meetings on a tablet app, and then allowing the person giving the meeting to tap quickly to add notes to the conversation.

Using Spearfysh means you get a detailed history of rep activity and reps will be more effective and less distracted during important meetings.

Contact a Spearfysh rep for pricing information.

Customer Feedback

Typeform

Typeform is a simple, powerful, and beautiful form creation tool you can use to distribute post-sale feedback forms to your customers and improve your sales processes. Or, you can use Typeform to collect missing lead data, pre-sale, and send it to your CRM automatically.

Typeform is so flexible, it’s just about the last form builder you’ll need. You can even just use its API to give your team a central place to store and analyze form data, regardless of the way it’s captured.

Pricing for Typeform starts from free, with premium tiers from 25 euros monthly.

OpinionLab

OpinionLab integrates with your product to help you deploy customer experience surveys with ease. After installing OpinionLab, you’ll get a Feedback button in your app or on your website that customers can use to leave feedback that OpinionLab stores complete with metadata.

By collecting feedback from your customers, you can transform the way you sell. Feedback can tell you which kinds of customers should be sold on which features, or even what to avoid mentioning around a particular type of lead.

Pricing for OpinionLab is available by request.

Chameleon

Chameleon is a product marketing tool that lives inside your app — like Sumo for in-product messaging, you can deploy banners, modals and tooltips that coach users on the benefits and get them to their aha moment faster. But that’s not all.

As well as in-product messaging, Chameleon offers the option to deploy surveys to different segments of users with data brought in through integration partners like Heap, Segment, and Intercom.

Improve your post-sale survey response rate by triggering surveys contextually in-app, driven by your product’s unique metrics. Pricing for Chameleon starts at $99 monthly for unlimited users.

UserReport

UserReport is both a feedback form tool and a way to communicate with customers that leave feedback. With it, you can gather NPS feedback that tells you how to improve your sales process. For example, poor NPS feedback could be the result of a bad-fit lead buying your product — and with UserReport, you can find that out and get to the root cause.

It’s free to add UserReport’s feedback forms to your app, plus it integrates with Google Analytics to enrich your existing data. Pricing for the premium package is available on request.

Crowdsignal

Crowdsignal is a form-building tool that gives you an easy-to-use platform to collect information from leads and customers. With its simple interface, you can construct mobile-friendly forms that you can distribute through social media, your product, or transactional email.

Pre-configured reports can analyze data as it comes in, or offer exports to Excel where you can crunch the numbers. Pricing for Crowdsignal starts from free, but for premium features like reporting you’ll need the Pro plan for $200 monthly.

Ready. Set. Enable.


There you have it – 68 sales enablement tools to level-up your sales performance in 2019.

Which tools are you going to try? Any good ones we missed?

Let us know in the comment below.

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

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

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

13 Proven Ways to Increase the Productivity of Your Sales Team [With Template]

An annual study conducted by The Bridge Group in 2017 asked respondents to identify their top challenges in managing sales reps. The responses revealed that improving sales productivity and performance has remained the #1 challenge. Not only has it remained the number one challenge for the last six years and counting, the number of respondents reporting it as their greatest obstacle has increased 5%.

In 2012, 44% of organizations claimed that increasing sales productivity was the toughest hurdle they faced. As of 2017, that number now sits at 49%. Proving what an overwhelming challenge getting the most out of your sales team truly is.

When you consider the nature of field sales, this shouldn’t come as much of a shock. The average outside sales rep typically only spends 22% of their time actively selling. The challenge of increasing salesman productivity is a taller task than ever before with the amount of additional tasks and distractions getting in the way of actual selling.

Another study conducted by Pace Productivity brought to light an interesting response they received from managers. When asked, managers said they expected salespeople to spend at least 50% of their time selling. There’s clearly a disconnect between the expectations that are being set and the time commitment required.

Average hours worked per week by sales reps

Sales reps are already working an average of 49.6 hours per week, just slightly less than their managers who work an average of 50.1 hours per week. Improving sales productivity starts with understanding that it’s not for a lack of effort. They’re working, just not only on selling – 23% more of a salesperson’s time is spent on administrative tasks than selling.

There are a million different strategies you could use to increase sales productivity, but reducing administrative tasks should probably be the first place you start.

What Is Sales Productivity, Really?

Sales productivity can be summarized as maximizing sales results while reducing the resources expended. Resources can include anything from cost to effort to time.

Time spent on admin tasks per week

Sales productivity can be measured by the rate at which a salesperson increases revenue for the company. In short, improving efficiency comes down to finding ways to become more efficient with your time. Adding structure and focus to their day allows them keep the end goal in mind.

Biggest Contributing Factors To Sales Inefficiency

Field sales professionals face an overwhelming number of obstacles preventing them from operating at peak efficiency. Before understanding how to coach and structure your sales team to achieve optimal levels of productivity, it’s important to recognize and understand the most significant factors standing in the way of reaching greatness.

– Excessive performance pressure to exceed targets
– Inconsistent sales strategies and processes
– Random, poorly planned sales coaching and training sessions
– Poor route planning and scheduling
– Lack of communication from top to bottom
– Failing to establish sales activity priorities
– Resistance adapting to new and innovative sales tools and technologies
– Large amounts of turnover and constant change
– Lack of alignment and communication between sales, marketing and operations
– Evolving dynamics in the sales funnel
– Poorly established ideal customer profiles (ICP)
– Continuous distractions from outside and irrelevant sources
– Sales cultures that breed negativity

This list could go on forever. The factors that prohibit salespeople from taking advantage of their entire work day can be big or small. Regardless of severity only one thing is for sure, every member on your sales team will encounter several of these challenges. In a landscape that’s more competitive than ever, the margin for error is slim to none.

13 Strategies to Increase Sales Productivity

Table of Contents

1. Embrace Sales Tools
2. Track & Measure Sales Activities
3. Establish A Schedule & Routine
4. Create Daily Goals
5. Create An Effective Onboarding & Training Plan
6. Treat Salespeople Like Prospects
7. Over Communicate With Your Team
8. Stay Motivated with an Accountability Network
9. Establish Lead Qualification / Scoring Framework
10. Batch Admin Work
11. Research the Prospect / Account
12.Celebrate the Wins
13. Keep Coaching and Developing Your Reps

With such a large number of hurdles standing in the way of an efficient sales team, there are a few key pillars that serve as the foundational building blocks to help increase sales productivity. Some may be staring you right in the face while others aren’t necessarily on the surface.

Consistency

A firm organizational sales structure is an essential component of consistency. There may be wrinkles unique to each salesperson, but the same sales process should always be followed. How a sales rep’s day is scheduled and structured goes a long way as well. Use what works and share those strategies with the entire team.

Concentration

The number of distractions pulling us away from our daily goals seem to only ever increase. It doesn’t help that today’s generation has an extremely short attention span on top of that. Eliminate the things that take you away from your present focus or build a specific time for these tasks in your daily schedule.

Constant Innovation

The majority of field sales managers will tell you that things are “really good” and “going well” when asked, purely out of natural instinct. These answers are the epitome of mediocrity. While it may be more than lip-service, are their sales tools and processes as effective and efficient as they could be, or as their competitors?

Holding onto what’s working isn’t necessarily “bad,” but it prevents progress. The field sales industry changes at such a rapid rate, and refusing to innovate significantly hinders salesman productivity.

Need some inspiration? Nobody embraced innovation better than the driving force behind the infamous 1980 Miracle On Ice, head coach Herb Brooks. He was doing “pretty good” prior to the Olympics, leading the University of Minnesota to 3 NCAA D-I Championships in 1974, 1976 and 1979. Brooks is notorious for his approach, forcing 20 hated rival college kids to learn a new, untested style of play. Brooks’ hybrid combined the Soviet Union’s fluid, weaving attack with the physical defensive style seen in the NHL.

Reduce Pressure

The competitive nature of the field sales landscape leads sales reps and their managers to feel the added pressure to perform and attain their quotas. Even the best sales professionals are bound to have an off-month. Low performance exacerbates the rush achieve their targets.

Salespeople taking the initiative to perform at a higher rate is a positive takeaway, but it’s this type of pressure than can actually have a negative effect on productivity levels. Additionally, re-evaluate your sales quotas to ensure they’re challenging, yet attainable. Quotas that salespeople perceive as being impossible to reach are likely to prevent your staff from trying because they believe they’re going to fail regardless.

1 | Embrace Sales Tools

With so much time being spent on the administrative side, there’s a glaring need in the industry for tools that can help automate some of these unproductive, repetitive tasks. Improving sales productivity becomes much easier when you can essentially put things on “auto-pilot.”

A 2017 report by CITE Research surveyed over 400 sales executives with a director-level title or above, and found that the majority of respondents rely on an average of 11 sales tools.

Of those tools, CRM platforms were rated as the #1 “most valuable tool in increasing the effectiveness of a sales team,” scoring a 4.6 out of 5.

This is due to the fact that a CRM significantly reduces the amount of time spent on redundant tasks like data entry, freeing them up to focus generating revenue. One way to utilize automation tools to increase sales productivity is through triggered events; which are exceptionally beneficial when it comes to things like follow-up emails.

The trigger allows reps to respond faster while doing less work. Companies following a defined workflow are 33% more likely to be high performers.

2 | Track & Measure Sales Activities

In order to start improving sales productivity, you have to know where you currently stand. Dashboards are incredible for this purpose. They help you visualize trends to gain valuable insights into each salesperson’s activity-based metrics.

The 5 must know metrics for field sales managers will show you exactly where your team is spending the majority of their time. The key to measuring activity-based metrics is consistency. If you allow your team to slack at logging their sales activities, you won’t be able to establish a benchmark to measure your productivity gains against.

If Joe averages 5 minutes between each logged activity and Sam averages 15 minutes, you have the data to determine the root of the problem. Collecting and analyzing the proper data can quickly uncover opportunities for improvement.

The Most Important Field Sales KPI’s

Determining a sales rep’s productivity level extends well beyond dollars and cents. Measuring productivity can be done in multiple ways, most of which can be combined for a more accurate benchmark. The methods below may be more beneficial for you compared to simply measuring revenue per sale, depending on your sales team’s daily tasks and activities.

CONVERSION RATES

The number of attempts and contacts a sales rep makes is great to measure activity levels, but there are better KPI’s to help increase sales productivity. Your conversion rate is the percentage of prospective customers who complete a specific action, most commonly making a purchase.

The target range will vary for each company depending on the type of sale. Conversion rates provide insight into how well a sales rep is performing. Closing 10 sales per month in some companies is phenomenal. For companies that are transaction-based, 10 deals might not be so hot.

The number of deals pushed through is also dependent on how many sales activities were completed. A sales rep who burns through 50 leads to close 10 accounts is extremely inefficient compared to the rest of your team that is averaging 20 leads for the same number of sales.

However, keep in mind that these rates are not universal. In some businesses, closing a single deal out of a hundred is already considered a success, while in another, a 1% conversion is a proof that something isn’t working.

Conversion Rate calculation

AVERAGE SALES (PER HOUR)

Knowing how efficient your team’s sales performance is on an hourly basis is an important aspect for many businesses. To increase salesman productivity, focus your attention only on the time spent completing sales activities.

Exclude anything that doesn’t actively work toward converting deals, like time spent preparing, company meetings, and administrative tasks. This is a great metric to help determine if your sales reps are making the most of the time they’re on the clock. If this number is below average, consider helping your team structure their day more effectively.

Average Sales Per Hour calculation

ACTUAL vs FORECASTED

Sales forecasting is a topic we’ll have to save for another day, so you’ll need to have a process for this already in place. Actual vs Forecasted is also commonly referred to as Mean Percentage Error (MPE), and is an extremely effective metric used to whether a sales rep is failing or exceeding their sales targets.

MPE provides an exact deviation from the target to help you determine whether you could increase sales productivity by reworking a quota that seems impossible to reach or looking for holes in your sales process.

Actual vs Forecast

3 | Establish A Schedule & Routine

Field sales reps typically have schedules that are slightly busier compared to their counterparts in inside sales. The key is to get things done. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you do it. What works for one person may not necessarily work for another. That’s the beauty of field sales, there’s ample opportunity for flexibility and creativity.

Improving sales productivity will require salespeople to organize their daily schedule. Once they’ve laid out what needs to be done, it’s about prioritizing those items. They should be encouraged to say no to things that don’t help them meet their ultimate objective.

Sales productivity in the field demands a certain level of structure. All of their meetings need to start and end on time. This won’t always be possible due to the amount of travel, which puts them in a tough position trying to decide whether that meeting or event takes priority to start late and push everything else back, or reschedule it for another day to keep everything else on time.

To prioritize, place significant and long-term clients at the top of your list to ensure they are receiving optimal service. New leads should be prioritized after your existing clients, because it is better to nurture your existing relationships for long-term growth.

First: Choose Rhythm

In my experience, productive scheduling manifests as something you develop on your own, then slowly evolve toward perfection. I think it’s easier, for example, to pack all my conference calls into a couple days and leave Fridays open for office work (unless I’m speaking at a sales conference).

Rather than schedule the ideal day, many salespeople prefer to schedule by the week with specific tasks assigned to specific days: cold calling on Mondays, warm prospecting on Tuesdays, demos on Wednesdays, networking on Thursdays, and meeting with or calling clients on Fridays. Keep experimenting with your rhythm until you find something that works.

Second: Calendar All Tasks, Activities & Appointments

All non-negotiables should go on your calendar. Whether you’re using Outlook, Salesforce, a paper planner, or an app on your device, you will need a calendar to keep you apprised of when you’re doing what — or you will eventually forget something important. Put all your commitments on your calendar, breaking your time down by 30-minute blocks.

If your cold calls take two hours daily, be self-disciplined about sticking to the schedule you’ve laid out for yourself. Yes, unexpected things always arise, so continue to adjust as necessary without letting your schedule completely implode. If you need to prepare for a demo tomorrow, schedule it. This applies for exercise and family time as well — always include enough life in your work-life balance to make your work worthwhile.

Third: Implement Time Blocks

Several factors are essential to making sales: prospecting, preparation, and the actual pitch. Block time for all three during your day. For example, you may want to make cold calls early in the day (in-person and/or by phone) while you’re fresh. Then spend midday fulfilling requests from your calls, handling current customer needs, and preparing for tomorrow’s sales calls. Then spend the afternoon prospecting for the following day so you can get a jump on it in the morning.

While it’s exciting to chase new business, always schedule time for nurturing. You must check in with existing clients on a regular basis and maintain your relationships with them. The real profit doesn’t come from the first sale — it’s in all the sales that come afterward — from the clients who already know and respect you. Show them you care about them, and they’ll take care of you.

Fourth: Stay On Top Of Emails

Respond to email and voicemail during your non-prospecting times. Empty your inboxes each time you check your email using my 6-D Information Management System™: discard, delegate, do, date, drawer, or deter.

For example, each time you click on an email, you’ll do one of the following:

Delete it
Forward it or send as a “Task Request”
Reply if you can answer the question or provide the information in less than three minutes

If there’s an action in the email you can’t handle right now or isn’t due yet…

“Move to Task” command to convert the email into a task (or “Move to Calendar”)
Select “Start Date” based on when it needs to be completed by
Click “Save and Close” to automatically move emails from inbox for a future task
Use the “Save As” command to file the email on your hard drive
Unsubscribe from unwanted lists or add the sender to your Junk Senders list

4 | Create Daily Goals

“Accountability produces results – it’s an outside driving force that allows you to reach beyond your current disposition and realize your full potential.”

Setting goals is a simple and easy way to increase sales productivity because they serve as motivation. They give salespeople a sense of direction and a plan of action to hit their target.

There’s only one thing that a sales rep controls no matter what: the number of attempts he or she makes each day. Follow the SMART guidelines to help to create a plan of action. Remember, the focus is on improving sales productivity.

For Example:

John wants to earn $500 per week

John needs 3 sales to earn $500 per week

John closes one sale for every 200 attempts made, then…

John needs to make 600 attempts each week (120/day) to achieve his target

By focusing on these two areas you are going to force yourself or your team to take the necessary steps to reach your sales goals.

5 | Create An Effective Onboarding & Training Plan

The majority of companies have some degree of onboarding or training for new hires, but what they really seem to lack is any ongoing training. Aberdeen found that it takes more than 7 months totaling upwards of nearly $30,000 to fully onboard new hires. They also revealed almost 87% of that training is forgotten in just a few short weeks.

To effectively increase sales rep productivity, information should be tailored in a way that can easily be remembered. The more complex the product and process, the more important it becomes to present the information in a way new sales reps can relate to.

Ongoing training is just as important as onboarding. Yet less than 45% of companies have a formal sales training process in place post-ramp. Equipping your team with the right skills to increase sales productivity should be as great of a focus as providing them with the right tools.

Effective onboarding can reduce ramp-up time by 30 – 40%, and continuous training can lead to a 50% increase in net sales per rep.

6 | Treat Salespeople Like Prospects

Your company sends information to potential customers at every stage of the buying journey. Follow that lead and do the same for your sales reps. On average, salespeople spend about 30% of their day looking for – or creating – content. This eats up a ton of their time and does nothing to help them be more efficient.

Spend the time to learn about what their looking for and how you can help them if you want to make a considerable impact on their level of productivity. 95% of B2B deals are influenced by the Buyer's journey pathcontent a company sends.

Using sales enablement tooling to recommend content and messaging based on the sales situation saves reps time and helps them to accelerate deals.

7 | Over Communicate With Your Team

Communication is an essential skill for outside sales managers to possess. Schedules are much tougher to coordinate than they are for inside sales teams, leading to more interactions taking place over the phone and through text messages. To increase sales productivity, managers should check-in with each salesperson to get a pulse on how they’re feeling and performing.

It’s even more important to have a high number of interactions with new hires going through their ramp up period. Check-ins don’t necessarily always need to be scheduled. In addition to checking in, it’s always a good idea to schedule to conduct in person one on one’s.

The frequency may vary for each team, but the face to face setting should help promote a more in-depth interaction where training can be tailored specifically to that individual. One on one’s are the perfect opportunity to get feedback from your team to determine where there’s room for improvement. Chances are that if one person is struggling in an area, others are too.

Always be sure to ask what you can do to help them become more productive. The more specific they can be, the better.

8 | Motivated with an Accountability Network

An accountability network is one or more people who you hold yourself accountable to each week for getting things done, meeting your deadlines and achieving the goals you set yourself. Knowing you have to report to others is a natural deterrent to not getting things done. It’s easy to make excuses to yourself, but having to make excuses to peers as to why you didn’t accomplish what you were supposed to is much more difficult. So much more so that you will do everything in your power to avoid having to report less than optimal achievements.

9 | Establish Lead Qualification / Scoring Framework

This is important because you don’t want sales working poor quality (unqualified) leads. A scoring framework is a methodology used by sales and marketing departments to determine the worthiness of leads by assigning values based on their behavior relating to their interest in products or services. The “value” of each lead is independent for each organization, but is characterized as the interest shown in the company or their places in the buying cycle.

10 | Batch Admin Work

Batch work is a technique of grouping the same task together and not moving onto the next until everything in the current grouping is completed. For example, make 10 calls at once. Then do all of your data entry and follow-up work for those calls. This batching of activities is proven to be faster and more efficient than doing everything in a one off  linear sequence.

11 | Research the Prospect / Account

Are your sales reps in charge of creating their own process and procedures when it comes to educating themselves on a prospect before they make the initial contact? If yes, you may want to rethink this approach. Try putting a standardized process in place. This will streamline the discovery phase and make sure they’re gathering the right information in a short amount of time. A 3 step information gathering process:

1. Learn about the company (size, products, employees, etc.)
2. Dive deep. Check out their site and learn about their mission. Research them on LinkedIn. Run a google search. Just make sure you have a holistic view of the organization: who they are AND what they do.
3. Find Their Pains. From what was learned in steps 1 and 2, you will be able to make an educated guess on their needs.

12 | Celebrate the Wins

Nothing revolutionary here, but it’s important to celebrate wins and hard work. This builds morale, keeps reps motivated, and makes the days exciting.

13 | Keep Coaching and Developing Your Reps

Be in sales or life, continuous learning offers a myriad of benefits. But in specific regard to sales, continuous coaching and educating reps is a must.

Why? Two big reasons:

1. The world of sales is always evolving. Be it a new selling technique or emergence of a sales influencer, ensuring reps are up to date with the latest trends requires consistent coaching.

2. Staying informed on customer needs. Your product may be the same, but what your prospects are looking for out of it may differ. Studying reps’ notes from lost deals, you can extrapolate and learn new pain points. From there, teach reps new messaging that solves for the change in consumer behavior.

Field sales reps have the opportunity to learn – by way of prospects or current sales trends – everyday, and it’s up to management to make sure reps are always developing. By making it a priority to regularly teach and coach, your sales team will benefit.

Tools to increase productivity across the entire sales process:

Outreach.io logo

Outreach

Outreach helps you track, pace, analyze and automate your email and voice messages to your customers. By integrating Outreach into your CRM, you’ll never have to manually log your messaging activities and outcomes.

MailChimp

MailChimp is the world’s leading marketing platform for small business. They democratize cutting-edge marketing technology for small businesses, creating innovative products that empower customers to grow.

JobNimbus

JobNimbus was developed with the cooperation of leading industry trainers and is the first CRM developed from the ground up to be an ultra simple, usable, yet powerful tool to help contractors take control of their jobs like never before.

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a sales tracking and territory management app used by mobile sales teams to get organized, find more opportunities and dominate their marketplace. SPOTIO is perfect for door to door and field sales teams that want a powerful way to track their sales efforts and territories on a map driven interface.

MarketSharp MarketSharp Logo

MarketSharp provides a way for remodelers to generate low cost leads, convert more leads into sales, and create lifetime customers who willingly give referrals and great online reviews.  You’ll eliminate your daily struggles of running a business with the only remodeling software that is easy to set up, simple to understand, and time-saving.

One Final Thought…

It’s critical to make the most of each day because there’s only so many in a year. When trying to find a way to get the most from your team, consider that happy and engaged employees are 31% more productive and have 37% higher sales numbers.

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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.

25 Ways to Increase Sales Volume & Revenue

Whether you’re a sales rep, a sales manager, member of the ops team, or the business owner, you share one fundamental concern: how to increase sales volume. From top to bottom, everyone is serious about increasing sales numbers.

Sales drive the business. They fuel the growth, fund the new ventures, and fill the coffers from which the salaries are paid.

With so much riding on sales, it’s essential to have sound strategies for increasing sales volume. Following is a list of 25 ways you can increase sales volume and boost revenue.

#1 | Assign Top Reps to High-Value Territories

When you want to increase sales volume, it makes sense to put your most successful salespeople in front of the accounts that have the most potential. A manager’s formula for success is first to understand which reps produce the most sales and then draw a territory that maximizes that potential. Technology can be a tremendous asset here.

Spotio’s Territory Management Software can create strategic territories based on criteria like zip code or neighborhood. With the area already targeted, the sales rep can then plan an efficient day — and get in front of as many potential customers as possible.

#2 | Find Your Client’s Needs

Your job is to identify pain points and offer a solution that will solve their needs.

Once you determine what your client needs, assign a value to what the problem costs in revenue, over time, lost opportunities, customer churn or all of the above. Breaking it down in dollars and cents is an excellent way to emphasize how your product or service can benefit their business.

#3 | Focus on the top accounts

To increase sales volume, your most valuable resource is time; you want to spend it where you can get the most bang for your buck. That will be at the accounts with the most potential.

To identify top accounts, first understand your target customer profile. You want to get as specific as possible so you have characteristics that you can use to sort through a list and find matches. Some examples could be annual revenue, the number of locations, type of industry, and so on from there.

Once you have a target customer profile, you can use technology to do the heavy lifting for you. Spotio’s Lead Machine, which is part of the lead management software on the platform, can identify accounts that match your criteria in the various territories. After you draw an area on the map, you then enter the ideal customer details, and the software does the rest for you.

#4 | Seal cracks in the sales process

Every sales organization and even every salesperson has their sales process, and like the humans that created them, they have areas of opportunity. Streamlining and optimizing the sales process can help you increase sales volume.

A sales process has different stages for each of your leads. If you track the relationship of the lead, or the stage they are in the sales process, you can tailor communication that addresses where the individual lead is at the moment.

However, time is still your most valuable resource, so automating these communications is vital to your sales strategy. For example, the Lead Management services on Spotio includes lead intelligence, like colorization for your leads based on their current stage in the process. It can also yield reports for prospects that warrant a second call or identify the “hot” lead.

Pertinent messaging for the appropriate stage leads to improved potential for engagements and progress to the next step. It stops leads from falling through the cracks.

#5 | Employ a thorough qualifying process for prospects

In addition to focusing on top accounts, meaning those with the most potential that fit your target profile, you also need to qualify your prospects. You need to ensure they are an appropriate fit for your product or service.

Qualifying involves asking questions. You need to ask about their current situation, whether the contact can make purchasing decisions locally, how much budget this available, among others.

If the prospect’s answers fit the parameters of your target customer (and they can sign the purchase agreement), you have found a match. If not, you would likely be better served to move to an account with greater potential.

#6 | Use tools to scale your prospecting

Once you know who you want to sell to, you must find as many of those people—as fast as possible. Prospecting is a crucial part of your sales process. However, it can also be time-consuming and frustrating.

However, many tools exist to help you find as many excellent prospects as possible without you using as much of your precious time. Spotio has a Sales Prospecting Playbook that includes techniques, tools, and examples for you to use.

Download your free Playbook, here.

Spotio’s Sales Prospecting Software can scale the prospecting process and generate more leads to close. With three programs to help you, you can identify the accounts with the most potential (lead targeting), automate the administrative tasks associated with the sales process (lead management), and schedule appointments without difficulty (calendar integration).

#7 | Always remember WIFM

WIFM is an acronym for “What’s in It for Me?” and it is essential to increase sales volume. Your prospect does not buy because of you or because of all the features you shared about your product or service. They buy because of what the product does for them.

Of course, knowing WIFM is imperative for the sales rep. You must have complete clarity on your product knowledge and be able to position yourself in a way that shows how your product benefits the customer.

Features are only what the product has, benefits are what the product does.

An essential part of your strategies to increase sales volume should include a focus on what the product or service does for the lead’s business. Not only will sharing the benefits engage your prospect, but it will begin to build a relationship of trust between you.

#8 | Employ Pain-Based Selling

Pain-based selling is a technique to reinforce that the prospect needs your product or service. It also lays a foundation for a partnership between you and your customer.

Pain-based selling has a process. You first ask the customer what their biggest challenge is in their business. Then you follow it up with what would happen if they should fail to meet that challenge. Next, you ease the prospect’s pain with the benefits of your product or service, which will (lastly) begin a partnership.

Sandler Training uses Sandler’s Pain Funnel with their pain-based selling efforts. The process reveals the reasons for your prospect’s pain, even when they might not have been aware of it themselves. You begin the process after the prospect has shared with you what they are willing to tell you at the beginning.

Most of the questions in Sandler’s Pain Funnel are open-ended, meaning they invite the customer to share more information rather than a yes or no answer. The point of the questions is to get the client thinking about how they feel about the problem and how they might need a better solution than they have now.

#9 | Align Sales with Marketing

Peanut butter and jelly is an example of a combo of things that is better when paired with the other. You can say the same thing about sales and marketing, too.

Sales is a customer-facing team. The sales team have direct contact every day with what customers want, the questions they ask, and the problems they face.

Marketing is an operational team. The marketing team understands how to deliver the information to customers that can lead to a sale.

When you combine the street-knowledge of the sales with the messaging skills of the marketing,, you have a much better tool with which to communicate. Allying the two groups has a direct effect on increasing sales volumes.

One example of how you can use the combined efforts of the two teams is to create an excellent presentation for prospects. It should communicate the benefits (or WIFM) to the customers in a creative way. Whether it’s PowerPoint, an interactive web demonstration or a video, making an effective presentation is paramount to increasing sales volumes.

#10 | Exploit your strengths & work on your weaknesses

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what those are are vital in order to become the best sales rep you can be.

Self-Awareness can help you make the most of what you are good at while addressing your “areas of opportunity.” Make a list of all the activities involved in the sales process, e.g., prospecting, qualifying, engaging, presenting, closing, etc. Then, divide those tasks between two columns labeled “Strengths” and “Weaknesses” (or if you prefer, “Opportunities”).

Next, make a plan for the following week. In the morning, while you are energized and ready, set aside time to engage in an activity that addresses a specific weakness.

For example, you can job shadow a colleague for an hour who is excellent at cold calling to get some tips. Another example is practicing closing techniques with someone who is outstanding at asking for the order.

Once you have your time for addressing a specific skill set scheduled, you can now turn your attention to your strengths later in the day. If you are excellent at qualifying leads, build in time to make some calls to new leads. If you love canvassing in person, set aside time to get out and about.

#11 | Improve your time management skills

As we mentioned before, time is your most valuable asset when trying to increase sales volumes. You need to maximize your time to yield the best possible results.

It’s an excellent idea to have some idea of your closing average when you are addressing your time management. You should know how many cold calls it takes for you to find a good lead. You also need to be aware of how many leads you need to find a qualified prospect. Finally, you need to know how many qualified prospects it takes to close a sale and how much your average purchase agreement is.

With the numbers you now have, you know what activity you need to accomplish in a week. For example, if it takes five cold calls to get one lead, and you need seven leads to find a qualified prospect, you now know you need to make 35 calls to find a proper opportunity. Depending on how many qualified leads you need each month, you now can ensure you make enough cold calls to get there.

Time management means that you use your time as wisely as possible. Knowing how many cold calls are going to get you to your sales numbers, you can start by scheduling time each day to cold call. Cold calling before you even open your email is a great way to get the day started—and your time management efforts kicked off, too.

Technology can also help you streamline your planning and maximize your time. Spotio’s Sales Route Planner can optimize your course, allowing you to visit as many targets as possible in the most efficient path. Also, you can employ the e-contracts feature to close on site rather than lose momentum while the buyer is waiting on “the paperwork.”

#12 | Encourage word-of-mouth advocacy

When customers are delighted and surprised by a great experience, they tell their friends about it. As part of your multiple strategies to increase sales volume, you should encourage your most loyal customers to share their experiences with their friends and colleagues.

To incent more advocacy, you can reward them with little perks or gifts. Some organizations award points for customer referrals to put toward technology or gift card rewards. However, you might discover that your best customers will refer you based on your relationship alone, with or without the extra bonuses.

Your best customers are easy to identify. However, some of the other accounts you work with might be willing to provide referrals as well. To determine if an account would advocate on your behalf, PowerHomeBiz.com, a small business publication, encourages you to ask three questions:

1. What feature do you like best about my product or service?

2. How can we make our product or service even better or more valuable for you?

3. Who do you know that could also benefit from my product or service?

Not only will you receive valuable feedback from your customers and show that their opinion matters to you, but you also can get some great tips for leads to follow up on afterward.

#13 | Share case studies

It’s one thing when you talk about how a product or service will benefit a prospect’s business; it’s another to have someone who uses your product or service talk about it. Case studies are success stories from past or current customers that give prospects another perspective on whether your product or service will benefit their business.

An excellent way to get customers to endorse your product or service through a case study is to write a rough draft for them to edit. Few customers have the time or energy to start from a blank page. As their sales rep, you usually have a decent idea of how your product or service has improved their bottom line or solved a problem they faced in their business and can write a version for them to tidy up and add pertinent details (i.e., dollar amounts or percentages of growth, etc.).

A rough draft serves as a way to streamline the process for your account to share their story with minimum effort on their part. Then, you have a useful (and authentic) sales tool to help prospects feel more comfortable moving forward with your proposal—from an unbiased third-party.

#14 | Calculate incentive compensation automatically

Commission structure is the most motivating aspect of a salesperson’s job. It’s human nature (especially salespeople’s nature) for you to want to know what your incentive amount will be on any given sale/week/month.

However, figuring amounts can be time-consuming. Perhaps more importantly, it distracts you from the task at hand: earning that commission through increasing your sale volume.

Sales incentive programs usually motivate salespeople. When you automate the calculation, you create a win-win situation. You know what you are going to earn, and you can get back to work earning more in as little time as possible.

A commission should be paid within a month to be an effective motivator. Also, shortening the time between the closed sale and the commission associates the reward with the activity, which is beneficial to inspire behavior.

#15 | Strive to win sales contests

Another excellent motivator is the sales contest. Sometimes the reward is significant, like a luxury vacation or a large cash amount. Sometimes the prize is silly, like possession of the team’s Tiki-God or bragging rights.

Sales contests bring out your competitive spirit, which is a lot like the spirit that drives you to hit your sales goals. When your sales manager invests time and resources in a sales contest, you should take full advantage of it.

Technology can help you keep track of where you are in the contest as well. Spotio’s Sales Performance Management Software has a Sales Leaderboard and Team Management software that can track the team’s performance.

Whatever the trophy or honor, striving to win a sales contest will increase your sales volume. Moreover, one of the best prizes will be making your sales plan.

#16 | Visit prospects in person

The human connection between the salesperson and potential customer is a powerful tool for increasing your sales volume. Face-to-face interaction trumps online interaction for emotional engagement.

It is not always the best choice. For the sake of your time management and your potential customer’s, online and phone interaction can handle much of the business involved in the sales process. However, it should not replace your human contact.

When you invest the time and effort to visit a prospect in person, you invoke a natural relationship-building element. One of the ways it enhances the likelihood of making a sale is that it demonstrates that you are interested in your client and care about their business. It also begins to build a foundation of trust.

#17 | Increase your outreach to your potential customers

Making as many contacts as possible is a practical strategy for how to increase sales volume. Ensuring potential customers know what you have to offer is essential to the sales process.

Today’s selling environment has a plethora of ways to make contact. The tried-and-true methods of in-person meetings and phone calls are excellent.

Automated email strategies can also aid in your outreach efforts. When used in concert with Spotio’s Lead Management software, you can craft email blasts for your potential customers.

Social selling is another channel that can help you get the message out to your future customers. Using the different social media platforms, you can post content put together by your marketing team or mock up your own to access more qualified leads. Canva.com has a significant library of templates that can help you create a catchy and professional looking marketing status update.

#18 | Promote offers

If WIFM is the essential message of your pitch, your proposal is a close second. People need to know what you are selling, the bargain they get in exchange for the WIFM you shared.

The best offers are clear, simple, and provide significant value to your customers. However, your offer should also create urgency, meaning the customer has to decide within a specific time frame.

Urgency not only helps customers decide to move forward, but it also shortens the sales cycle. And a shortened sales cycle decreases the amount of time you wait to get your commission check.

Your offer can feature many different motivating factors. What you include in the proposal is up to you. It could be a sale price. It could be a cash-back offer or access to a premium level of your product or service at the regular level’s price point.

The only essential is that it adds something of value if the prospect acts by the deadline. One caveat is that specific industries have restrictions for what they can include in the offer. Ensure that what you promise is within the bounds of the laws that govern your industry (We’re looking at you, medical and pharmaceutical sales).

How you communicate the offer is also an essential part of your strategy. If you send out information on a future sale, you can position the proposal as an “inside scoop,” meaning they have first dibs on the goods. If you contact prospects after the deal, you can capitalize on the positive feelings from their first sale with a follow-up purchase.

#19 | Eliminating your prospect’s feeling of risk

People have a natural risk aversion. Psychologists call it Loss Aversion, and it is one of the parts of Prospect Theory.

Loss Aversion can make it difficult for your prospect to try something new because they might perceive it as a risk, that they might lose something if they buy your product or service. It can be an obstacle to them moving forward in the sales process.

If you can eliminate your prospect’s feeling of risk, you might be able to move them forward to a sale. Money-back guarantees are one assurance you can give your future client. Risk-free trials are another way you can remove this obstacle.

Many times, once the customer feels they are not going to lose anything, they feel more comfortable moving forward with the sale.

#20 | Create affiliate programs

An excellent way to increase sales volume quickly is to deepen the relationship you already have with customers. It is easier and faster to work with customers you already know than it is to attract, find, qualify and close new customers.

This strategy to deepen your relationship with existing accounts is well-served by affiliate programs or strategic partnerships with an organization that complements your own. Finding additional products and services that work with both of your client bases can increase sales volumes for both organizations.

A successful partnership will have services that do not duplicate but work together to provide a full complement of solutions for your customer.

For example, a window installation organization could have a partnership with a window cleaning company, or a SaaS (software as a service) organization could have an IT support company they work with for their customers.

In some cases, you can use the existing client lists of both companies to market each organization’s benefits. This effort could save both companies time and money in customer acquisition costs while providing a valuable resource to existing customers.

#21 | Keep the customers you have

Per HubSpot, customer retention is an excellent strategy for increasing sales volumes. Customers that have bought from you before spend 67% more than new customers.

HubSpot recommends a few different ways to leverage the customers you have to increase your sales volume. You can do something as simple as raise prices, starting with a lower percentage test to ensure it doesn’t have the opposite effect. You can also build a loyalty program that rewards customers for repeat business with increased value propositions, like premium service add-ons or other additional perks.

Implementing a subscription service is another tactic to increase sales volume with existing customers can also be how you can increase sales volume. HubSpot also recommends personalizing the buyer’s journey to increase emotional engagement that leads to customer loyalty.

However, there are other benefits of customer retention for you. When you hold on to your customers and build customer loyalty, your current customers will recommend you to friends and family. And let’s not forget all the money that you save in marketing costs and lead acquisition; you already have your customers’ information.

#22 | Never stop cold calling

Keeping your sales pipeline full is a foundational skill for any salesperson. Today’s cold call is tomorrow’s qualified lead—and next month’s new business. Prospecting is an essential activity for increasing sales volume.

The point of a cold call is to introduce yourself and determine if you can move the contact to the next position in your sales funnel. As Brian Tracy says, you are warming up a potential customer.

Cold calling can be frustrating. Remember it is a numbers game, meaning the more calls you make, the more potential you have to make a connection. The diligence will pay off and make the effort worthwhile.

#23 | Become a master of persuasion

When it comes to how to increase sales volume techniques, persuasion is an essential one. Convincing people to get to a yes that will enhance their business and solve their problems is a foundational skill for increasing your sales success.

Brian Tracy champions the “Four Ps” of Persuasion:
– Power
– Positioning
– Performance
– Politeness

Power means the way you present yourself to your prospect. If you think of yourself as an expert in your product or service, the prospect is far more likely to be influenced by your opinion for their business.

Positioning is a complement to power in that it addresses the way you talk and act. When you assert yourself in specific ways, people think of you a certain way, which can be helpful when you are trying to convince them to act in their best interest.

Performance means that you strive to do your very best at everything you do. People respect competence, hard work, and excellent follow through. Ensure that you perfect these areas in your career, and customers will want to work with you.

Politeness is another vital quality. Respecting others and what they do is crucial, in work (and in life).

Part of becoming a master of persuasion requires you to be an excellent negotiator. Proficiency in negotiation techniques that find win-win opportunities for both parties is essential to increasing sales volume.

Brian Tracy says master negotiators have three qualities. First, they ask good questions that uncover the needs of the prospect and move them to the next phase of the sales cycle. Second, they are patient and listen for ways to give the prospect something they want.

Finally, they are prepared for their interactions and can move the sale forward if the opportunity presents itself. Part of this skill is learning how to overcome objections.

Objections are the reasons prospects give not to move forward with the sale. They are offering resistance, but only because they are interested. Having a handle on the common objections you might encounter with your product or service is an excellent way to increase your sales volumes.

#24 | Nurture Relationships

Having successful customer relationships is a foundation of a salesperson’s career. The ability to build rapport and trust with your accounts is a significant factor in sales success.

Nurturing relationships is a traditional method for increasing sales. However, it has stood the test of time because it works. People like to work with people they like and trust, two significant factors of successful relationships.

However, strong customer relationships do not come without a price. As Forbes points out, strengthening relationships requires time and energy.

Nurturing relationships involves listening to what your clients need and giving it to them, even if it means customizing the package or adding in personalized services. The extra effort is worth it; Saleshacker reports that 53% of C-level executives buy because of their relationship with the salesperson.

#25 | Create packages

Creating a package that solves your prospect’s challenges is an excellent way to position yourself as a partner. If you are a single-product supplier, it might necessitate contacting some complementary products and services providers to present a comprehensive solution.

However, it is crucial to limit the choices. When a prospect has too many options, it can be as frustrating as not having enough and can lead to indecision.

You can limit choices a couple of ways. You can arrange the proposal in a way that controls how many options a prospect sees. You can filter the choices by using qualifying questions to eliminate certain products or services for the initial proposal (although keep them on the back burner; as you develop the relationship you might revisit the option).

Another way to create packages is to arrange a system of pricing tiers. Pricing tiers are based on the psychological principle of Choice Architecture. One of the principles of choice architecture dictates that how you present the options is as important as the content of the options themselves.

A decoy option is an option that is added to the mix because it is less attractive than the other options. For example, if you think of drinks in a restaurant, the small is often the most expensive per ounce for the least amount of drink. Not surprisingly, most people choose either the medium or large drink instead.

Tiered pricing can simplify the decision for a prospect, especially when presented in small, medium, and large options. Most people will choose the option in the middle because it’s not too small, not too big, it’s just right.

So how do you increase sales volume? These 25 ways are a start.

Let’s face it; everyone wants to increase sales volume from up in the C-suite on down. Sales are the engine that drives the organization, providing the funding for all the goals of the company.

These 25 suggestions can help you fuel that engine with more revenue and improved strategies to increase sales volume. Try them out and put the pedal to the metal toward smashing your sales goals.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation 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.

Sources:

Wallace, Tracey. “6 Ways to Boost Customer Retention Rates.” www.hubspot.com. Web. 23 February 2019. https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-retention-rate.

“14 Proven Strategies to Increase Sales of Your Product.”  www.briantracy.com. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.briantracy.com/blog/sales-success/proven-strategies-to-increase-sales-of-your-product/>.

“The Four Ps of Persuasion.” www.briantracy.com. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.briantracy.com/blog/sales-success/the-four-ps-of-persuasion/>.

Kappel, Mike. “Small Business Strategies to Increase Sales.“ www.forbes.com. 25 January 2017. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2017/01/25/small-business-strategies-to-increase-sales/#53f9ac215b1b>

Skala, Emmanuelle. “What Happened to Relationship Selling?” www.saleshacker.com. 30 August 2017. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.saleshacker.com/relationship-selling/>.

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