4 ways to turbo-charge your sales!

According to a CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report, some 41 percent of sales people are failing to hit their sales quotas while overall revenue attainment dropped from 88.2 percent to 85.9 percent. If your company is experiencing difficulties in winning new business, here are a few ideas to transform your sales performance.

1. Reduce new hire ramp-up time

   The CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report also reveals that for most companies, the average ramp-up time for new sales people is at least seven months. This is a hidden cost of recruiting and training sales staff, not to mention an economic drain on most organizations.

   Quick tip: Providing your new sales hires with specific knowledge and information about your company’s competition, products and best practices will help them hit the street faster, with greater effectiveness and with less supervision. This will increase revenues and reduce overhead by up to 30 percent.

2. Align sales and marketing to improve performance

   Although they are supposed to enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship, very few sales and marketing departments collaborate and share information in a way that maximizes the company’s opportunity for success. A new Aberdeen Group report has found that integrating sales and marketing technologies helps organizations achieve, on average, a 36 percent increase in marketing effectiveness, a 23 percent increase in lead conversions and a 15 percent increase in average revenue per account.

3. Provide just-in-time sales knowledge

   It is estimated that some 40 percent of product knowledge acquired by new sales people during their corporate induction is lost after the first month, while approximately 90 percent is lost within six months. According to The Yankee Group report, most sales people are “just-in-time learners”. This means they tend to learn what they need only when they need it.

   Quick tip: Deliver the crucial nuggets of knowledge to your sales staff when they need them. Giving your sales team the opportunity to access that information time and time again recaptures your investment in training and maximizes the knowledge your company has acquired.

4. Accelerate employee productivity

   Sales people on average spend between three and nine hours per week searching for information within their own organization. This “dead” time negatively affects an employee’s productivity and morale. To make matters worse, a recent survey of sales and marketing managers by KM World revealed that almost 76 percent of employees or users were dissatisfied with their ability to easily find relevant information inside their own company.

   Quick tip: To measurably accelerate employee productivity, give all sales staff immediate access to key information that optimizes the alignment process and information flow between sales and marketing.

These four stepsare just an example of ways that you can help increase sales performance. Providing your people with the right sales enablement tools, that will allow users to quickly and easily access the tribal knowledge and content that they need to be more effective, will have an immediate impact on revenue.

What are some other ideas that you have to turbo-charge your sales?