Looking to increase sales productivity this year? According to a CSO Insights Sales Compensation and Performance Management study, only 54.6 percent of sales professionals produce enough revenue to meet quota.
That is shocking news. I’m sure your company doesn’t have that problem, but other readers may. They need to increase sales productivity. One key area is making the most of prospecting.
The Opportunity Cost
Let’s do a quick calculation. There are 2,080 working hours in a year. If a salesperson carries a $1 million annual quota, the hourly opportunity cost is $480.77. Or, if the salesperson’s quota is $500,000, the opportunity cost is $240.38 per hour worked. Point being: The opportunity cost is high.
How and where your sales team spends their time daily becomes pretty important. Finding better, faster, or different ways of leveraging high value sales activities will determine future success.
Increase Sales Productivity in Prospecting
Imagine this: A salesperson opens their mobile device on Sunday night to prioritize the week’s prospecting activities. At their fingertips is a list of prospects sourced by sales and marketing activities. The list prioritizes prospects according to scoring on three dimensions (3D Scoring).
- Lifecycle Stage – As an account/contact progresses through their journey, they advance between stages, i.e. from Lead Stage to MQL Stage to SQL Stage to Won/Lost.
- Profile Score – Each account/contact has a profile score according to how closely they fit the agreed upon ideal customer profile based on Firmographic, demographic, and other types of profiling data.
- Engagement Score – Each account/contact also has an engagement score based on the type, number, and recency of interactions with the brand
When the sales-professional arrives bright and early each Monday morning they pull up the list and are ready to explode out of the gate on their prospecting blitz.
What prospecting strategies is your company using to increase sales productivity?
