How To Increase Productivity Of Sales And Marketing Teams

Your sales and marketing teams are the backbone of your lead management strategies. They remain solely responsible for attracting customers and converting them, through which your business generates revenue. As such, they ought to be your most productive departments.

However, according to statistics, sales and marketing are some of the careers with the highest burnout rate. Usually, this is caused by low motivation, which is an aftermath of poor results or sales. Naturally, burnout also contributes to a further reduction in productivity, and it becomes a self-feeding chain.

This article will discuss how you can improve the productivity of your sales and marketing team to maximize ROI.

1. Set clear priorities

Your sales teams may focus their attention on less productive tasks without clear priorities. If your team has been working round the clock to boost sales, but you cannot see the results, then it could be that they’ve fallen into the trap of mere urgency bias.

Mere urgency bias means focusing your attention on time-sensitive tasks over essential tasks, even though they aren't important. The result is that your sales team fails to produce the core results you need.

Using the Eisenhower Matrix, you can motivate your team to separate tasks based on their importance.

According to this model, the order of tasks should be:

  • Urgent and important tasks get high priority
  • Non-urgent and essential tasks can be scheduled on the team calendar
  • Urgent but unimportant tasks can be delegated
  • Non-urgent and trivial tasks should be discarded

2. Leverage lead scoring and lead qualification

With lead generation, quality is better than quantity. Many sales teams are not productive mainly because they waste time on “bad” leads that don’t convert. Lead scoring ranks your leads based on quality and thus helps your sales team prioritize them based on importance.

Lead scoring software like SharpSpring, for example, allows you to set parameters to identify promising leads. It then gives scores, which your teams can use to conduct their nurturing activities.


These strategies yield better returns on their time and resources.


3. Track and measure activities

Tracking your sales and marketing activities allows you to fill in the gaps that cause a lapse in productivity. You can tell which activities take up the most time and resources yet do not produce corresponding results.

Such information will then show you where to focus your attention and resources to achieve maximum results and which activities to discard.

Additionally, tracking enables you to streamline your sales and marketing apps. It will show which apps your salespersons work more efficiently with. Then, you’ll be able to improve workflows as needed or even offer additional training.

4. Adopt the use of automation tools

Data shows that the average sales team spends only one-third of each workday doing actual sales work. The rest goes to non-income generating activities like writing emails, prospecting and managing leads, calls, administrative meetings, etc.

Using an automation tool takes the load off your employees by helping with these non-revenue generating tasks to focus more on their core duties.

Automation tools also help streamline sales and marketing processes, which boosts productivity. Automation tools facilitate lead management and nurturing, sales, and marketing campaigns. CRM, reports, and analyses so your sales and marketing teams can prioritize customer interactions and be more productive.

5. Align activities of sales and marketing teams

The sales and marketing departments complement each other. While the marketing department focuses on lead generation, the sales department builds a relationship with them and converts those leads into paying customers (with CRM).

Integrating your marketing automation and CRM strategies aligns the activities of the two departments, promotes better communication, and eases the transition from lead to customers.

That way, it is easier for your teams to identify and transfer marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs). With such a speedy process, they can produce the desired results in less time and with fewer resources.

6. Adopt the use of collaboration tools

Collaboration tools like Asana, Trello, Airtable are critical to the overall productivity of your sales and marketing teams. Create or install uniform communication structures across the entire process.

These tools permit transparency and visibility. They also improve engagement and allow you to track the lapses and progress of each team. Productive teams can also share their best practices for other teams to follow.

With your teams working in sync, they will get work done faster and better.

7. Improve team training and onboarding process

The training and onboarding process you give your sales department will go a long way in determining their productivity in the long run. Training must be thoughtful and purposeful at every level.

Always invest in your team and help them grow. Sales and marketing reps are more likely to become top performers if continuously trained and updated with industry-based skills and best practices. For instance, you can create a system that permits refresher trainings for old sales reps, which helps them to stay updated.

Furthermore, creating a seamless onboarding process for new sales and marketing staff also increases efficiency and productivity. Allow them time to settle in while providing all the essential information needed. This reduces breaks in sales work as they can adapt faster.

8. Check-in with your team

Lack of motivation is a major hindrance to sales and marketing productivity. You must maintain communication with and among the team to leverage each other's unique personalities and expertise.

Conduct check-ins with your sales representatives, inquire about their performance, find out their challenges, and propose solutions. This would be particularly useful for new sales representatives. Personalizing these check-ins creates an inclusive environment that could influence productivity.

Also, remember to celebrate your small wins. Motivate your sales and marketing reps with an appraisal or incentive system. This can keep the team positively competitive, thereby boosting productivity.

9. Set measurable goals and objectives for your team

Setting clear sales and marketing goals for your teams gives them direction and KPIs to work towards, puts everybody on the same page, and allows them to prioritize tasks.

It becomes easier to measure progress and identify loopholes with clear goals, allowing room for improvement while fostering productivity and accountability.

Conclusion

The pressure of meeting multiple targets, relating with customers, etc., can all put a strain on your sales and marketing teams. Especially now that many companies have switched to remote and work-from-home (WFH) options, it can be hard to maintain productivity.

However, there are several solutions you can adopt, such as those mentioned above. Digital solutions like marketing and sales automation are your best bet to boost productivity, especially with remote teams. Nonetheless, a personal touch can also go a long way in keeping your teams motivated and productive.

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About the Author

Priscilla Achieng

Priscilla Achieng is a lead Technical Content Writer at Funnelbud. A Content marketing professional by day, a passionate soccer fan by night, she also provides copywriting and SEO services for businesses of all sizes.

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