Improving Sales Force Productivity

Are your salespeople pulling their weight? Are they making their numbers? Or are they spending too much time with customers, and not enough time prospecting?

Most companies think that implementing a CRM will improve their sales force productivity. Assuming that your CRM could even measure sales force productivity, (which most can't do,) improving sales force productivity can almost NEVER be done with a CRM. (We don't want to say that CRMs are a waste of money, but consider that most were developed by computer programmers, not Sales Managers.) At best, your CRM might provide you with tools that can help track behaviors and results that you could then use to measure things, that you could then modify to improve productivity. But we have yet to meet anyone who actually populates the data, no less ever uses these tools.

Sales force productivity is simple. It's sales per man-hour, or dollar spent. The more sales you can generate, and the less money you can spend doing it, the better. If you were inclined to maximize your sales force productivity, you would fire your low performers, and just keep your superstars.

But if you're like most companies, there just aren't that many superstars available - and those who are might be too expensive. So what can you do?

Improving sales force productivity involves management and development processes that we can help you with, but having qualified leads is as important as a good breakfast is to starting the day. If you want to improve sales force productivity, start by fixing your lead generation program.