Your Guide to Increasing Sales Productivity

Not only is it critical for businesses to recruit and retain the most effective salespeople, but they also need to take active steps to help ensure that their sales team members are working together like a well-oiled machine.

Given how important salespeople are to the success of a business — no matter what the industry — it’s in any company’s best interests to look for areas where it can make improvements to enhance and streamline its sales organization.

One of the biggest areas where most companies can improve their sales forces is unfortunately one where most companies don’t focus much attention: training and development. Even if your company believes it has the best and the brightest salespeople in your industry, you may be leaving money on the table if you don’t do everything you can to reiterate and reinforce best practices.

Without continuous development and training efforts, even the most effective salesperson can develop bad habits or begin to cut corners and become sloppy.

Giving your sales team periodic refresher courses helps strengthen the values and practices your company wants your salespeople to embody. This means your salespeople will be constantly re-energized and deliver far more consistent results in terms of sales performance and customer satisfaction.

Technology is another area where most businesses could make significant improvements as far as their sales organizations are concerned. Implementing an automated software platform to handle many of the tedious administrative tasks can take those tasks off the plates of your salespeople — freeing them to concentrate on doing what they do best and serving your customers. This can have a strongly positive impact on even the most effective sales organization.

If you’re concerned about the effectiveness of your sales organization, you’re not alone. Just about every sales force could benefit from some improvements, and the guide below contains some simple ideas about how companies can make them. You can’t afford to have a sales team that doesn’t function at its best, so pay attention to these ideas and make your salespeople the best they can be.