Increase Your Sales Force Productivity
What is your best technique for getting your staff to perform at amazing rates? Have you considered this to be important at all?
I've known a couple of individuals who have hired workers, simply to perform at mediocre levels. There are no incentives for productivity at all. Wouldn't you agree there is money lying on the table, and not being claimed in this situation?
I want to let you in on a little secret that I know would use to increase the productivity of your staff. Now if you tell them to create a log of the their progress on work per hour, this will let us know how useful our staff is. Most staff personnel waste time on minimal tasks, clocking out at the end of the day with full pay. Only to find out their time was wasted under performing. If there were a log of their work every 15 minutes to an hour, the staff are forced to actually produce results.
At the end of every day you have a full day log to see how much time was used to actually help produce results. The good thing about this is you can actually check and see if the results are true. This will count towards growing your business.
To make things much better, give an incentive to the higher percentage of workers. This will have their competitive juices pumping. Don't offer the normal boring incentives, give more value. Understand your staff a bit better in order to grasp what they might want. If not give out a vacation of some sort. Remember your staff are the bottom line workers who determine your company profile.
This small bit of improvement can do wonders in the long run for your business. It has been tested to bring significant results.
For the sales staff, you can help them out a bit by picking up their spirits. You see prospecting takes time and testing. When you send your staff to prospect, they may be rejected often which will diminish their moral. This can diminish their productivity and your overall sales.
Sometimes, the only thing a company does well is prospect, yet the closing rates are low. In this case they should target the correct market/audience for a higher conversion rate. These leads are ideal customers that already have raised their hands to buy your product or service. A lot of companies have terrible follow up programs. You might actually be shocked to see the amount. Do you know your conversion rates?
After the sales staff understands the market and could close more deals, productivity rating shoot through the sky and your business will start to flourish. Why not give them a slight edge, it will greatly benefit you and the company with a little leg work. Think about direct mail, telemarketing, and other direct response campaigns to collect the targeted leads.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure they are giving you a report on all their leads. Whether or not they closed, to make sure everything went according to plan. We wont want any lolly gaggers around the work place.
Use these techniques to help bring your staff to peak performance and grow your business beyond it's "perceived" potential.
Until next time,
David R.
