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Improving sales efficiency means getting the sales force to spend more time on sales-related tasks! Is this the case? Is sales really at the heart of your commercial activity? Unfortunately, the answer is no! At least, that's what LinkedIn points out in its latest State of Sales report, highlighting the fact that salespeople spend almost 67% of their time on non-sales-related activities.
At the heart of the problem: misalignment between sales and marketing, and inadequate tools that waste time! Executives, marketers and sales reps share this observation, and seem widely aware of the opportunity cost of misalignment and the lost revenue generated by siloed organization. Forrester attests to this: 85% of B2B decision-makers agree that sales and marketing alignment remains "the greatest opportunity for improving performance". The performance of a sales team depends on its day-to-day efficiency, and this efficiency depends on the ability of organizations to align. In concrete terms, if marketing doesn't support salespeople by modernizing their sales techniques, they will always spend too much time on non-sales-related tasks... Forbes estimates this cost at $68,352 per year per salesperson in US companies. How can sales & marketing teams be aligned ? What solutions are available to sales management? How can salespeople spend more time on their core business? How can sales efficiency be measured and improved?
What is sales effectiveness?
Sales efficiency evaluates the performance of sales reps at each stage of the sales cycle. It is closely linked to the notion of time. Before the appointment, sales efficiency can be assessed by how much time a sales reps spends researching content or creating personalized sales presentations ? During the meeting, does he quickly access the information he needs to sell? Does he provide the right answers at the right time? And after the appointment, how much time does he spend on data collection and CRM enrichment? The less time spent on these tasks, the more sales efficiency will be improved, as more time will be allocated to selling.
There are various KPIs for measuring sales effectiveness. Let's take the case of the pre-appointment prospection phase: to assess a sales rep's effectiveness, a manager can track KPIs such as the volume of contacts initiated, the number of contacts argued or qualified, the number of appointments and, of course, the number of proposals sent, over a predefined period (day, week, month, etc.).
Sales efficiency: the No. 1 issue for sales managers!
For the year 2024, all departments are unanimous: they are going to work on the efficiency of sales reps. This is underlined by Uptoo's study, which identifies the three main challenges facing sales managers. In first place is sales efficiency (84%), closely followed by motivation and combating turnover among sales reps (81%), and in third place training and sales coaching (73%).
Sales managers are well aware of the environment in which salespeople evolve, and they are challenged by it! They know full well that if sales efficiency is not improved, sales performance will be negatively impacted. In concrete terms, if salespeople still spend 65% of their time on non-sales tasks, including 40% on administrative tasks (Jeff Ernst), the company will miss out on a significant number of sales opportunities. This trend applies throughout the sales process. By appointment, if the salesperson is not decisive in his or her exchanges with the buyer, capable of disseminating the right information at the right time, or hooking the buyer with the right sales arguments, his or her performance will be impacted. For all these reasons, sales managers are making it a priority this year!
Sales efficiency: what solutions are available to sales managers?
1 - Align sales and marketing teams
To meet the expectations of a hyper-connected, more autonomous and better informed B2B buyer, sales reps need marketing support more than ever. This is underlined by HubSpot's study: 52% of sales reps say that misaligned sales and marketing teams have caused them to lose money (HubSpot). Sales and marketing teams need to break free from traditional codes for greater sales effectiveness. There are no longer two separate departments, but a single team made up of sales reps and marketers, working hand in hand to achieve the company's sales reps objectives. Themarketing team can support the sales reps in their appointment success by providing marketing content, coaching and training, and an environment conducive to sales success, while the sales reps can provide visibility on what's happening in the field. The result? Better-performing organizations, as Aberdeen Group points out: 74% of high-performing organizations have a strong alignment between sales and marketing.
2 - Increase time spent selling
65% of sales managers feel that their sales reps spend "too much time" on non-sales-related activities (Sales Funnel). This trend is confirmed by Gartner, which points out that sales reps spend 50% of their time on these activities. If both parties agree on this reality, why does the salesperson still spend 19% of his or her time on administrative tasks and 17% on updating the CRM (LinkedIn - figure on a weekly basis)? Marketing and sales departments need to automate tasks that add little value to the organization, allowing salespeople to devote most of their time to selling!
3 - Reinforce training for sales reps
sales reps are unable to answer more than 40% of the buyer's questions (Allego), and 87% of knowledge is forgotten by participants after conventional training, one month after learning it (Hermann Ebbinghaus). Sales teams need training! The sales pitch, responses to buyer objections, knowledge of products/services, the competitive environment, the company's CSR approach... all have a crucial impact on a salesperson's effectiveness, especially when face-to-face with the buyer. The better the salesperson's training, the better the offers/services will be mastered, and the better they will be presented at meetings and understood by customers.
4 - Optimize CRM use by teams
CRM gives sales people the means to perform and achieve the objectives set by their company, provided that they make good use of it and that the customer data in the CRM is of good quality. Yet 77% of companies consider CRM data to be of poor or very poor quality (Gartner), and 70% of companies have a CRM that is poorly used (HubSpot). The stakes are high, since sales reps spend almost 11 hours a week entering data into their CRM (Gartner). Not only does the sales rep waste time filling in the CRM, but the data is also of poor quality ... and the whole organization suffers as a result. So it's crucial to automate this task in order to improve sales efficiency!
5 - Dope sales reps with AI
As Gartner explains, 65% of sales departments will have completed their transition to a 100% Data-Driven decision-making model by 2026. To achieve this change, sales departments will need to be more receptive to AI, which presents great opportunities to improve team sales effectiveness. There's been a lot of talk lately about the "AI companion", a rather apt term that reinforces the fact that AI must be at the service of the salesperson, their intelligence and their business. The use cases are numerous! Identification of hot prospects, taking into account buyer behavior and company news, creation of sales approach content (e-mails, etc.), automated contact, RFQ analysis, proposal writing support...
Imagine an AI that plays the role of trainer within your team, enabling the sales rep to assess his or her mastery of a subject, or simply an AI that adopts the role of buyer so that the sales rep can sharpen his or her sales pitch before going into an appointment. By talking about the appointment and taking into account the exchanges with the buyer, the AI could suggest additional content to present, remind the sales rep of certain information he may have omitted, or simply guide him in his sales pitch. It could even suggest the right moment toupsell or cross-sell! In the case of remote selling and selling through a screen, we could have an AI that detects certain characteristics of the buyer's face, enabling the salesperson to detect his or her intentions (inclined to make a purchase, reluctant following the speech on the commissioning part of the application...) and thus put him or her in the best possible conditions to close a sale.
6 - Modern Selling for more convincing meetings
The salesperson's time of influence has shrunk... but the expected value has never been greater! Gartner's study underlines this: when buyers compare several suppliers, the time spent with a sales representative may represent only 5 or 6% of the purchasing process. Salespeople are therefore expected to attend meetings, and their efficiency needs to be improved. This is where Modern Selling comes in, to make salespeople more convincing and effective in their meetings. Behind this notion of Modern Selling lies the application of Sales Enablement, which enables sales efficiency to be improved at every stage of the sale. As we'll see in the next part of the article, it's also an application that enables sales reps to modernize their approach and sell more and better during appointments.
Sales Enablement for your sales efficiency!
66% of sales reps say that sales enablement tools are very or extremely important to the success of their sales organization (Spotio). The intelligent use of a Sales Enablement application allows you to :
1 - Speed up sales appointment preparation
Between searching for content and creating sales presentations, salespeople waste too much time preparing for meetings. Instead of relying on a specially-designed document database, most of his content is retrieved from a Drive or SharePoint. While these tools may be suitable for marketers' day-to-day activities (document management and classification), they are in no way suitable for appointments. This situation, unfortunately well known to mature organizations, leads to incomplete, less impactful content, and a considerable loss of time for thesales team. By depositing the content created by marketing in the Sales Enablement application, sales reps no longer need to search for information; it comes directly to them and is updated in real time. This information is accessible 100% offline, allowing sales reps to access it whenever and wherever they want. He can therefore devote more time to improving his prospect's knowledge and his company's offers/services.
Patrick Vissac, DNV France - MHD "Salesapps has enabled us to halve our appointment preparation time".
2 - Boosting sales efficiency in appointments
Time spent with a buyer is precious. As Gartner points out, the average buyer spends 17% of his time with the sales rep, and around 5% when the sales rep is drawing up a shortlist. The added value that salespeople must bring to appointments has never been greater, especially when you consider that buyers complete 57% of their buying journey before even meeting the salesperson (Accenture). The sales force is expected during the appointment phase! They need to be efficient and supported by marketing to sell more and better. The Sales Enablement application enables marketing to rapidly distribute sales content to the sales team. This marketing content can be accessed 100% offline, and is integrated into intuitive sales paths, enabling sales reps to contextualize their approach and have greater impact in their sales pitch. With content at their fingertips (accessible in less than 3 clicks), sales reps can set the pace of their sales pitch and bounce back easily from their interviewer's questions. The sales environment in which the application immerses him greatly enhances his commercial effectiveness, and helps him to hit the bull's-eye in appointments.
3 - Automate visit reports directly in CRM
sales reps spend an average of 11 hours a week entering data into the CRM (Gartner). That's more than a day that could be allocated to sales! By freeing sales reps from this time-consuming task, they can devote more time to what matters most to their company. The Sales Enablement application enables the entire appointment with the buyer to be tracked and automatically fed into the CRM. This saves the salesperson time, improves the quality of the data in the CRM and greatly enhances its use by the marketing team. A win-win situation! The marketing team relieves the salesperson's workload and helps him or her to improve competence thanks to the appointment data (best practices of a successful salesperson applied to the rest of the sales force), which they can also use to their advantage to improve their marketing strategy.
4 - Improve onboarding and training of sales reps
Onboarding and training also play an important role in improving sales efficiency. Indeed, successful sales onboarding has a positive impact on sales performance. By enabling new recruits to quickly develop new skills, you ensure that they are up and running faster. By continually training them on the company's offers/services and enabling them to acquire the right pitches for meetings, you enable them to be decisive when dealing with the B2B buyer.
Vianney Leveugle - Marketing & Sales Director - GEODIS Région France "Our offers are better understood by our sales reps, and therefore better understood by our customers. As a result, sales are up!
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FAQ
How do we define sales effectiveness?
Sales effectiveness evaluates the performance of sales reps at each stage of the sales cycle, focusing on maximizing the time spent on high value-added sales activities. This includes reducing time spent on administrative tasks and maximizing time spent on direct selling.
What KPIs should be tracked to measure sales effectiveness?
KPIs for measuring sales effectiveness can include call volume, number of appointments set, rate of conversion of prospects into new customers, time spent on non-sales-related tasks, and quality of customer interactions.
How can you improve sales efficiency?
To improve sales efficiency, it's crucial to reduce time spent on non-sales tasks, align sales and marketing teams, train sales reps on an ongoing basis, optimize CRM use, leverage AI for insights and automation, and adopt modern sales practices.
Why should a Sales Director/Manager use a Sales Enablement application?
A Sales Director should use a Sales Enablement application for several reasons: to speed up the preparation of sales reps appointments, to increase the efficiency of sales reps in appointments, to automate visit reports in the CRM, and to improve onboarding and training of sales reps.
