Sales productivity is a measure of how much time and effort you put in to generate a certain amount of revenue. In this post, let’s look at three ways in which you can use a CRM to increase sales productivity.
One challenge in measuring sales productivity is that there are no absolutes here. Quantifying sales productivity is a challenge because every organization has different measures of success. The goal is to create a growth trajectory based on your previous numbers and ensure that you are always more productive and ahead of the curve.
How to use CRM to increase sales productivity
For about 95% of salespeople, sales technology is important to closing deals. According to The Pitch, more salespeople are finding sales technology crucial to their day-to-day tasks.
CRM is the most integral part of sales technology today. In fact, 68% of salespeople feel that their CRM was “very important” to closing deals.
How exactly can you use CRM to improve sales productivity and track sales productivity metrics? Let’s find out:
1. Automate manual tasks and increase selling time
Using sales sequences in a CRM can help you automatically:
- Trigger emails when leads perform a certain activity like signing up
- Run a sequence of actions for a chosen set of audiences on specific days or times
- Nurture leads, re-engage cold leads, send welcome emails, and manage follow-ups
These steps help automate manual tasks that eat into a sales rep’s time. Automating these tasks with the help of a CRM will increase sales productivity by maximizing the SDR’s selling time.
2. Visualize sales opportunities, boost sales velocity
Without an easily consumable visual of the sales opportunities in the pipeline, you can’t get an overview of the deals in each stage, and how much they are worth. There’s also a high chance that leads with insufficient engagement could become rotten.
With a visual representation, you can identify the deals you need to focus on each day. Spot deals you can close faster, and work on them immediately. Build and define your pipelines with a CRM. You can use the pipeline to
- Forecast quarterly revenue
- Quickly move deals across stages
- Set up calls, send emails, and create tasks from the CRM
With a CRM, you can ensure that actions are performed quickly and your sales velocity (The speed at which a deal is closed after entering the pipeline) is high.
3. Target the best leads to attain quotas
If you have a large volume of leads flowing in, you can maximize productivity by filtering out the leads that are a good fit for your business using your CRM.
By assigning a score to each lead based on certain criteria, you can target the best leads to go after. You can customize the lead scoring mechanism based on criteria like the following:
- If the lead is in your operational industry, add ten points to the lead score
- If the lead is not in your geographical area of operation, subtract ten points
This will help you surface the best leads to go after and help reps with quota attainment.
Would you like to read more about how to improve sales productivity? A CRM like Freshsales can empower your sales team to do more, and achieve your revenue goals.
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