Are you busy on the productive?
What does productivity look like to you?
When it comes to sales productivity as with most things, we must start with our mindset. Starting with our own preconceived ideas, our own reference points, our own biases allows us to get a better understanding of what is needed to be truly productive.
For you, is productivity linked to how early you get up, how much work you’re doing, how busy you are, how much somebody else in your position has achieved, or is it linked to the results that you aimed to get? It is important to differentiate between busyness and business, between activity and productivity, between actions and results.
In aiming to be productive we have to be clear on what that word means to us before we start striving to achieve it. What gets measured, gets actioned. What you focus on will dictate where your energy goes. Ensure you measure and focus on what matters.
One of the most common errors that sales managers and sales reps make is that when sales are down they tend to focus on doing more activity - particularly top of funnel activity . This involves things like more prospecting more, calling more clients, having more meetings - doing stuff that is easy to measure and generates quick results. It looks good on a whiteboard, on a dashboard on whatever platform you use to measure productivity.
The challenge, of course, is that when sales are low ,the end result that we really want is an increase in profitable sales. To increase sales one of the most effective things to do is NOT to get crazy busy doing more activity. Not initially anyway. Generating more of the same tends to create a similar end outcome.
The first step is to slow down, analyze where you're losing jobs in your sales process and to fix that particular point. Classic examples include generating lots of leads that have not been well qualified, not asking core questions early enough (Time, budget, decision maker), Inadequate preparation for meetings resulting in multiple meetings being required, slow follow up, failing to ask for the order. This need for speed without care and thought can be seen in so many aspects of a sales pipeline and process – involving multiple people when clarity on role and authority could empower reps to make key decisions quickly; having multiple client meetings when one well thought out, planned and structured meeting would actually do; having a process that hampers the client saying yes - the classic of course being overly complicated account application forms.
When we slow down, analyze where we are being ineffective and rectify this, then suddenly any activity that we apply will get a greater amount of the desired result. This is true productivity: when the input of time, effort, energy and resources gives a greater output in a shorter time at a higher quality level. Which steps of your sales process need reviewing?
