How to Increase Sales Productivity

As a sales manager, or an individual sales professional, there is an ongoing desire to increase sales productivity. Increasing sales productivity has several positive effects such as an increase in company revenue which allows the company to grow, an increase in the sales department's paychecks and the opportunity for the company to move forward with plans for new products and ideas. Enhancing sales productivity requires a significant amount of work, but when you understand the basic strategies needed to increase revenue, then you can expand on those strategies until you are exceeding sales goals.

In order to increase sales productivity, a sales team must always have new opportunities to pursue. Keeping the sales funnel full is an important key to raising revenue potential. It begins with a steady flow of leads that sales associates can turn into opportunities. The company can help by providing the sales staff lists of new prospects to call on, and the sales professionals can help themselves by paying attention to selling opportunities that they come across in the course of the day. A good sales associate is always looking to sell, and that is what keeps a sales funnel full of opportunities to turn into more revenue.

The pursuit of new leads can often leave current customers behind. Some sales groups get customers to buy product, and then assume that the repeat business will simply keep flowing in. Your current customers can be a constant source of new revenue if you take the time to develop working relationships with your clients and find new opportunities to present to them. Spend time trying to increase the repeat revenue and build a strong client base that will help you enhance your productivity.

As a sales manager, it sometimes helps to have a little extra inspiration to offer to sales professionals to increase efficiency. Every sales team has the representatives that are always performing at maximum potential, the representatives that do well but could do better with some effort and the representatives that prefer to live on bare minimum productivity. By using the occasional bonus program or incentive pay programs, you can get more out of the representatives that are not performing up to their potential. Since bonus pay is based on an increase in revenue, the company does not lose out on any profit by paying on incentive programs.

Sales productivity is something that every sales manager is concerned with, and that every sales professional should strive to maximize. There are steps that managers and associates can take to enhance efficiency and drive productivity.

Ryan Bloom writes about all sorts of business topics. He suggests you outsource sales and hire a sales coach.