8 High-Impact Sales Activities

An astronomical amount of time is wasted at sales organizations every year. Reps often spend time on activities that do not directly contribute to sales or growth. One of the most valuable techniques a sales company can implement in 2021 is prioritizing: salespeople should focus day-to-day on those activities that contribute most directly to their success, and spend as little time as possible on all the rest.

Another great way to save time in your organization is to implement training software like Attention, which uses artificial intelligence to deliver real-time feedback to your reps. Click here to give us a try!

1. Lead Qualifying

Focusing on the best leads is a great way to boost your sales performance. Your company needs a thorough lead qualification process to evaluate if your prospects are likely to buy. The more thorough the better! This means screening for things like budget, past purchases, and the lead’s authority (or lack thereof) within the company.

2. Consistently Follow Up

Following up is a vital aspect of sales, yet most salespeople fail to do it consistently. One of the leading causes of sales falling through is salespeople dropping the ball! Research shows that 90% of salespeople give up after four calls if they fail to get a sale. Yet 60% of prospects say no at least four times before they buy! Following up, therefore, is one of the most crucial skills you can develop in your organization, and should be trained and systematized. The best way to make sure this gets done is to have a schedule in place that ensures your reps follow up periodically. If you don’t have a system and a way to keep your team accountable for following up frequently, they will slack off on this and you are guaranteed to lose sales.

3. Be Personalized

The more personalized your communications are, the more sales you will close. The best way to achieve this is through thorough research. Your reps should always know as much as possible about a prospect before they reach out to them; they should also be asking great discovery questions and listening actively to find out more during a call.

4. Implementing a good CRM

Choosing a great CRM can make a world of difference in all the other areas discussed in this article. A CRM helps you track your team’s daily activities and the time they are spending on them, so you can determine if they are actually spending their days on these high-impact activities. A CRM can show you where in the sales process reps are having difficulty, what areas to focus on, etc. You are missing out if you don’t put this technology in place! 

5. Warm Calling

Lots of sales teams focus disproportionately on refining their cold calling techniques (which is vital too of course) and largely neglect warm calling. Warm calling means reaching out to qualified leads who have shown some interest in your service, or who you have already communicated with. The key here is research, research, research. These prospects already know a bit about your product, so your approach should be focused on them and their specific problems. Things to look out for include recent company moves or decisions, if they have experience with competitors etc... You should also focus on standing out from competitors and differentiating your company at this stage since your prospect is probably also investigating other options. 

As a sales leader, you should dedicate training time and resources to warm calls, as these will be some of the most important activities your reps engage in.

6. Training

Training is often largely neglected in sales companies, to the detriment of progress and results. Some 80% of sales reps feel undertrained, and coaching is often completed on the fly when managers find the time. Unfortunately, many sales leaders feel that learning takes place on the job, and that thorough, formalized training is unnecessary. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and training is in fact one of the highest-ROI activities a sales leader can invest in. Effective training should be process-based and tailored to the different experience levels and capabilities of your team members. 

Coaching is undeniably a huge drain of valuable managerial hours. However, many of the most time-consuming aspects of training can now be eliminated. Tedious practices like ride-alongs and shadowing your reps can be replaced by watching condensed videos of their performance. Also, software like Attention can cut your training times in half by harnessing the latest artificial intelligence technology. Attention gives live feedback to your reps so you don’t have to, and saves time for your whole team.

7. Study your Sales Data

Your data, alongside your team, is the most valuable resource you have as a sales leader. But very few organizations actually put it to good use. Use your data to track your reps’ performance over time, determine what strategies are working and which ones aren’t, find out what types of leads are likely to buy, etc. There is really no limit to the insights your data can provide if you know how to use it.

8. Communication

Effective communication across a sales team is one of the most high-impact strategies you can incorporate. Solid communication makes sure you can share goals and knowledge quickly with your team, and everyone is on the same page. The most productive and efficient teams communicate constantly and implement practices like frequent one-on-ones and quick meetings. As a manager, you want to be aware of problems before they unfold so you can nip them in the bud, and this is impossible without regular communication. There are many different technological tools you can use for this- the important thing is that everything should be on the same platform whenever possible to prevent confusion.

If you want to increase your sales, start by focusing on these high-impact activities. They are the top 8 things that will have a huge impact on how well you can close deals and provide great customer service. With these in place, it’ll be much easier for your team to focus their energies where they matter most so you can see significant improvements in all areas of your business including revenue generation and retention rates. Which of the above do you think is going to make a big difference in your company? What other strategies would help improve this list? Let us know! 

If you want to save training time and be able to prioritize these high-impact activities, give Attention a try! We use the latest technology to cut training times down and accelerate your junior reps.