Productivity hacks are awesome! I mean who doesn’t like to get more done with less effort? After all, there are only 24 hours in a day, and the more organized we are, the more tasks we can complete.
How productive your salespeople are will impact their work performance and as a result your bottom line. So here are a few sales productivity hacks that your salespeople can use to boost their productivity.
9 Sales Productivity Hacks You Must Try
1. Automate all processes which can be automated
Spending time on tasks which can be automated is wasteful. Sales prospecting is a perfect example. We all agree it’s a very important process, but it’s also very time consuming and… boring (yup, I said it).
Going through various contact lists, searching on LinkedIn and scraping the entire Internet takes forever. And why would you do it manually if you can automate it?
There are tools like Growbots which can fully automate your prospecting. Just use the targeting criteria to select your ideal target audience and you will instantly get a list of all your decision makers with their emails included. No waiting time required.
It also applies to prospect outreach. There are lots of tools which will automate this process for you, like MixMax or Mailshake and yes you’ve guessed Growbots.
2. Avoid using too many tools
While certain tools can speed up your work, using too many tools is counterproductive. You have to learn how to use each one, plus switching between tools is simply annoying.
For example, why would you use a different tool for prospecting and prospect outreach if you could use just one platform for both?
Searching for prospects in ZoomInfo and importing them to Outreach takes time, time which you could better use elsewhere.
Growbots has got you covered, our platform allows you to do prospecting and prospect outreach in one place. Both processes fully automated.
3. Focus on qualified sales meetings
We all have limited time to do our jobs. Salespeople’s time is really precious as their job is to make money for the business and for themselves. This means that every 30 min spent talking to a lead which hasn’t been properly qualified is a wasted opportunity.
How many times have you been in a situation where you talk to a prospect only to find out that the solution you’re selling is way above their budget. This is something that should have been clarified prior to setting the meeting.
4. Set a time limit for your meetings
Another sales productivity hack is setting a time limit for your meetings. A meetings’ culture can be a massive productivity killer. Deciding on a time frame and setting an agenda will ensure you meet your objectives and will help you stay focused!
Every minute spent in a wasteful meeting will leave you less time to do solo work.
5. Don’t check your email every 5 minutes
We receive hundreds of emails a day, and a lot of us will be tempted to open (and sometimes reply) to them immediately. Bad idea… An average employee spends 23% of their time checking emails, meaning they’re in their mailbox 36 times per hour.
I know email is an effective communication tool, but it’s also a disturbance. And guess how long it takes an average person to regain focus after being disturbed? 23 minutes and 15 seconds.
You can decide how many times per day you’ll check your mailbox. Just include it in your work schedule, instead of having your email mailbox open constantly.
6. Create to-do-lists and prioritize your tasks
Another great sales productivity hack is creating to-do-lists. List all the tasks you have to complete. It will probably include more and less complex tasks. You can break the more complex ones into multiple smaller tasks.
It’s a good idea, to begin with, the most important or more complicated ones – tasks which will have the biggest impact on your work if you complete or fail to complete them. You can put a timer on the tasks to ensure you stay focused.
Crossing off finished things is a very satisfying experience, and probably the best part of creating to-do-lists.
7. Avoid multitasking
Multitasking is a great way to speed up your work. Nope, it’s not. Task switching is not a good sales productivity hack, quite the opposite actually. So if this used to be your “getting more done” strategy, you might want to revise it.
According to neuroscience, we are all mono-taskers. OK, almost all of us; one study has discovered that solely 2.5% of people are able to effectively multi-task. Task shifting creates mental blocks, which can cost us 40% of our productive time.
Focus on one task at a time, you’ll be better off.
8. Kill the notifications
Being in an office can be disruptive. Too many people, too much noise. And while this is something you often have no control over, you definitely can control your app notifications.
If you use a lot of tools, then you probably receive a lot of notifications. It can have a serious impact on your ability to focus.
Most of the notifications you receive won’t require an immediate action anyways… so you might as well snooze them or switch them off completely. Just retain the ones which you think are crucial to your work.
9. Don’t use email as a team communication tool
Another sales productivity hack is NOT using email to communicate with your team.
Salespeople use email frequently. They receive emails from prospects and customers. Using it as a team communication tool is a bad idea.
Not only because the email can get lost in their mailbox, due to an email overload but also because replying to an email seems like a lot of effort and it takes time.
There are so many tools which are more effective as a team communication tool, like Slack or Skype so try using them instead.
Do you have any sales productivity hacks that you would like to share? Please let us know in the comments, don’t be shy 🙂
