Is your team performing at their peak? If your targets are being consistently missed, reps are slacking off, the CRM isn’t being updated, no-one is communicating: chances are they’re not quite there. 

It’s vital we solve lacking sales performance issues to ensure we consistently make our number and ensure you’re getting the most from your frontline staff.

To solve this problem, let’s look at 7 quick tips you can start using today to improve sales performance.

7 quickfire tips for better sales performance

Incentivize the right behavior 

Flicking through the CRM, you realize that despite increasing the number of proposals they’re sending out, your reps still aren’t getting more customers. Are these proposals actually driving sales success?

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To redirect your reps’ focus, you’ll want to identify the right sales behaviors, and incentivize their achievement. Start by identifying specific activity Key Performance Indicators which align with company strategy, then tie a target to each KPI and set up a leaderboard to track rep progress against each target. 

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Show your reps what’s in it for them by setting up incentives for topping the KPI leaderboard. Explain that achieving the KPI targets will help each rep’s sales performance and ultimately help them earn higher commissions.

Keep reps focused using clear sales targets

Several times a month your reps come to you for help finding their sales targets in the BI tool. Without quick access to their sales target, your reps’ will begin to flounder and sales performance will miss the mark.

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Easy, clear access to the sales target is critical for rep engagement, focus, and sales motivation. Collaborate with your team to set achievable targets which everyone can access no matter where they are. 

Provide positive feedback

You’ve started noticing your reps are becoming gloomy, and are hesitant to reach out to you. When pressed on the issue, they explain they’re unsure if they’re performing well because you aren’t giving feedback.

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To sustain sales performance and improve company culture, we need to acknowledge success to provide a benchmark for others. If your reps are doing a good job, celebrate their achievements: post feedback into your sales team WhatsApp, or put it in your sales performance app posts page.

Teach them to spot sales opportunities

Reports are in: overall revenue for every customer is down by an average of 39% over last year. Your reps have been missing out on deals and if the sales opportunities can’t be identified, company growth will flatline.

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An effective way to improve and sustain sales performance long term is to capitalize on hidden sales opportunities. Teaching your reps to identify sales gaps in customer data within the CRM/BI tool is a great way to accelerate progress towards the sales targets, and grow their commission. 

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However, getting information from the CRM can be a difficult and time consuming task for reps: it’d be far quicker and easier to use a rep-specific sales performance app to drill into customer data.

Use sales forecasts to give reps direction

When the month began your team was performing in top gear, yet they finished well behind target. Worse, no-one can pinpoint when things started going wrong. 

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A high performing sales team needs sales forecasts for the same reason they need sales targets: direction. Without a sales forecast, reps will struggle to gauge sales performance towards target and fail to take action when progress starts slipping. Get started by meeting with the team to create a forecast or let them update their forecasts themselves throughout the month using a smart sales forecasting app. 

Amp up competition with sales leaderboards

Your sales reps are bored: you can see they’re at idle, doing the bare minimum to get by - but only barely. There are no excuses for a poorly performing sales team, and you have to act quick before progress grinds to a halt.

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Reps are determined and naturally competitive: use this to your advantage to reignite sales motivation. Sales leaderboards are a visual tool which pits rep performance against each other, harnessing rep competitiveness, motivating them to sell more. You can use leaderboards in conjunction with unique rewards/achievement to gamify your sales campaign and put the spark back in your reps’ worklife.

Get a sales performance app to take care of it all

If you’re tracking at 65% for the month, you don’t have time to drill into your reporting data to see what your reps were up to. You don’t have time to build a sales forecast or sales leaderboard from scratch. And you definitely don’t have time to manually sort through customer data to find sales opportunities.

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Rep-focused sales performance apps are designed to be a rep’s go-to tracking and insight tool, while allowing you to spot gaps in their performance. A sales performance app can provide forecasts, leaderboards, identify opportunities, and benchmark current performance based on historical data all from your phone. 

‍Clearly there’s a lot of moving parts to give your reps the best shot at a stellar performance. If you want to give your reps that opportunity, we recommend you book a demo here.