How to Improve Sales Efficiency

Do you feel like most of your time goes into repetitive and tedious administrative tasks instead of actually selling? 

What about the more important tasks like optimizing your technology and processes of sales cycle efficiency?  

You know those tasks are important too, but it’s hard to spend time in those areas when you have revenue targets, weekly activities to hit, and what you’re currently doing is getting you there most of the time.

You’re not alone my friend.

The key to resolving these frustrations and time limiters is very simple.

It’s a unit of your sales department that removes technical and operational tasks from your SDR and Sales team’s shoulders and love finding ways to make them more efficient and effective.

That’s right, it’s Sales Operations. 

Now, before we dive into the five ways Sales Operations can streamline your processes and improve sales efficiency, we also want to point out that companies fall into one of three buckets.

1. You don’t have a budget for Sales Operations
2. Your Sale Operations team is understaffed because you don’t know their true value
3. You thought Sales Operations just ran reports?

Addressing the first issue, there is part-time support available that can help close some of the gaps you’re facing and that we cover below. However, we highly recommend weighing the ROI of Sales Operations in order to meet your targets.

If you’re in the last two buckets, this post is exactly what you should be reading at this moment. Sales Operations is good at reports, but it’s what they do with these insights that are important and the number of other ways they drive revenue.

Related Content: 10 Ways Sales Operations Drives Revenue [Infographic]

1. Sales process automation 

One of the main functions behind Sales Operations relates to automating the non-selling tasks of sales. When we look at a typical sales rep’s daily tasks, we’ll see that they only spend 32.5% of their time actually selling (i.e., revenue-generating tasks). 

Through automation, the sales team spends more time focused on generating sales rather than administrative and technical tasks. The benefit from this process is a direct increase in the time being used for sales acquisition and various other conversion tasks. 

To assess the current efficacy of the sales process, we created a survey asking 600 professionals, questions related to sales operations.

In our first survey, we found that 52% of respondents spend anywhere from 10-30% of their time on operational and technical tasks.

In the second, we found that 49% of teams struggle to adopt technology because of poor training or setup.

Related Content: Sales Time Lost Due to Operational & Technical Task Overload

Imagine how much faster your salespeople could close deals and how this would shorten your sales cycle if they spent less time on tasks they shouldn’t be doing  (but we get it, they’re essential and where Sales Operations takes center stage) and have the added benefit of a tech stack that actually made their lives easier?

Looking at it from a metric point of view, it becomes very simple. Optimizing the basics of how your sales team is functioning by automating routine processes and allocating more time to converting leads – as a result, they move faster, they hit quotas faster.

2. Sales forecasting 

Accurate forecasting leads to 19% greater success in meeting annual quotas and 27% greater win rates. 

It is impossible to hit quotes and identify areas of growth without proper forecasting. Sales leaders often struggle to manage these numbers due to bandwidth limitations or it’s not their strength.

Forecasting is also not a one and done deal in December. Without assessing the possible adverse factors affecting your business or sales team throughout the year, you are left unprepared to identify challenges beforehand.

This is another sales efficiency metric that should be handled by your Sales Operations team to ensure proper planning and the ability to see possible fluctuations and risks while also providing solutions.

An example of this would be your Sales Operations team identifying the economic conditions caused by COVID19 and the effects on the sales team. Since recessions and other negative economic conditions cause slower sales cycles, your Sales Ops team can work with the sales team to change offerings. In a period where most cycles are slowing you could have the average sales cycle metric unchanged or even improved by compensating and forecasting for certain conditions.  

3. Adoption and customization of a CRM

CRM applications can increase revenue by up to 41% per sales representative. 

The keyword in this stat is “can.” Although 91% of companies with over 11 employees use a CRM, that doesn’t mean 100% of them have 100% adoption or that they’ve customized their dashboards for their specific business.

There are three ways in which Sales Operations improves sales efficiency by implementing and managing your CRM. 

• CRMs are complicated. The #1 CRM, Salesforce, created comprehensive courses and has certified admins. You need an expert to know how to implement and customize your system for your team. This ensures you can actually see and report on sales efficiency and identify areas of improvement.
• Data cleanliness costs companies millions. Sales Ops will ensure your lead, contact, and account data stays up to date and put in measures to stop bad data from ever entering the CRM. This information is also crucial for frontline reps to accurately follow-up and with the right information.
• Sales training. Your sellers don’t have the time to pick up tips and tricks as they go or create messy workarounds to get what they need done. 

4. Sales tech training 

The third bullet in the last section was a great segue into the importance of sales technology training on sales efficiency, and not just training on the CRM.

SDRs use an average of six tools daily to do their job efficiently. For you, this could be a CRM, sales engagement platform, call dialer, chatbot, scheduling tool, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, etc.

As we mentioned earlier, 49% of sales professionals believe that they were not trained properly, which means they (1) aren’t using the tool and therefore aren’t as efficient as their competitors, or (2) the tool is slowing them down, which is even worse.

Related Content: Common Sales Tech Stack Mistakes [Webinar Recap & Recording]

This is a huge opportunity for your team. Sales Operations was created to make sales teams more effective and efficient, and a critical component of that is your tech stack and how your sellers use it.

5. Lead and opportunity management 

One of the top areas in which a Sales Operations team can improve sales efficiency is lead and opportunity management. 

Understanding where a prospect is coming from, how many actions it takes to convert it, and how many are converting at any given stage allows the sales team to approach a lead or opportunity with more understanding. 

When you have a more streamlined process, you can start to see metrics and patterns in your multi-touch attribution, which is especially important for more complicated sales cycles.

This information is gold to managers and frontline sellers.

Start your path towards sales efficiency.

It has never been as important as it is today to invest in sales operations. 10-30% of your sales team’s time being spent on operational and technical tasks is outrageous, and yet so many companies are still doing it. This same survey even showed that some directors and executives are spending this much time in these areas.

There is no time like the present to take a look internally and identify the gaps your team is facing due to a lack of sales operations support.

If there is any information that you take from this article it should be this- implementation of any sales operations support ultimately provides one thing –  increased efficiency, aka more revenue, aka more profit.

For a detailed assessment of your current organization as well as support in key areas to streamline your own processes, contact our team today.