How to boost sales productivity

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In today’s B2B sales environment, targets are high, competition is steep, and resources are limited. Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic, notes, “There’s a lot of hesitancy around buying right now, and [the perception] that CFOs are giving off of ‘it’s hard to get things approved’ is also making people a little more hesitant to even ask for buy-in.”

So when 72% percent of a seller’s time every week is still being spent on non-selling tasks, it’s no surprise that sales productivity continues to be a priority for organizations.

In this article, we break down the intricacies of sales productivity and provide you with practical strategies to build a productive sales team, allowing your team to spend less time planning to sell, and more time closing deals.

What is sales productivity?

Sales productivity is the output an organization can achieve with a specific number of resources. In essence, it measures the relationship between a sales team’s effectiveness—their output—and their efficiency—the input.

*Sales productivity = Output / Input x 100*

B2B deals are often highly complex and there are many stages in a sales cycle before a deal is signed. For example, Jonathan Gross, Managing Director at Pemeco Consulting, describes the intricacies of his firm’s sales cycles: “We run a very complex sales cycle. It's a long sales cycle, and so we have to be able to keep our finger on the pulse of the sentiment because ultimately, that's going to push us to drive marketing activities and certain lines of service over other lines of service.”

This leaves a considerable number of inputs and outputs that can be assessed for productivity at any point in the sales process. For instance, you can measure productivity as a function of the number of sales calls booked or even the rate of outbound communication.

That being said, companies tend to evaluate overall sales productivity benchmarks on the number of deals closed or the total revenue generated in relation to the amount of time that’s invested by the organization. For example, a sales team that closes ten deals in a month is considered to be more productive than another team that closes five deals in the same amount of time.

You may also see sales productivity expressed as a function of effectiveness and sales efficiency. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they play a slightly different role in sales success.

*Sales productivity = Sales efficiency x sales effectiveness*

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The power of a productive sales team

Great sellers are the backbone of every sales-based organization. But what happens when overall productivity is increased?

Organizations that have productive sales teams benefit from:

Increased gross revenue: Productive sales teams not only close more deals, but they’re able to secure larger and more lucrative opportunities.
Shorter sales cycles: Productive sellers make the most of their time, resources, and customer relationships to accelerate deal velocity.
Lower operational costs: Productive teams can often do more with less, reducing overhead and minimizing wasted resources.
Better sales efficiency: A 2023 McKinsey analysis of 500 B2B companies found that the top quartile of businesses generated approximately 2.5x higher gross margin per dollar than those in the bottom quartile.
Improved customer experience: A productive sales team often has more time to spend on customer relationships, resulting in better customer retention and more closed deals.
Higher employee morale: Sales reps who feel productive and are meeting their sales targets are more likely to be satisfied with their work, which improves morale and job satisfaction.

How to effectively measure sales productivity

It often feels like sales teams—and organizations in general—are in perpetual pursuit of productivity. Despite the common objective, the measurement of sales productivity lacks standardization. So how does one determine if a sales team is actually productive?

When it comes to understanding sales productivity, there are several metrics and KPIs you can look at—both at the individual and team level. They generally fall into one of three categories: sales efficiency, sales effectiveness, or sales performance.

When you improve all three, you inevitably see a rise in sales productivity.

Sales efficiency

Sales efficiency measures the amount of revenue generated by a sales team against their sales and marketing expenditure. The more revenue a company can drive per dollar, the more efficient and productive their sales process.

Sales efficiency is most commonly calculated using the sales efficiency ratio (or SER).

*Sales efficiency ratio = New revenue / Sales and marketing cost*

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Other measures of sales efficiency might include the SaaS magic number, gross sales efficiency, and net sales efficiency.

Sales efficiency can also refer to the volume of tasks performed within a specific period of time. For example, a sales rep who books more sales calls in a month is considered to be more efficient.

Sales effectiveness

On the other hand, sales effectiveness measures how successfully sellers can move prospects and leads through the sales cycle.

There’s no one metric that determines sales effectiveness, rather it’s common for sales managers to look at several metrics to gauge sales effectiveness, including:

Time-to-close: The length of time it takes to turn a prospect or lead into a customer.
Win rates: The percentage of closed deals compared to the total number of deals pursued.
Prospect engagement rates: How well prospects in the pipeline engage with sellers.
Lead response time: The time it takes for sellers to follow up with prospects.

It’s important to remember that salespeople can be efficient but ineffective and vice versa. Consider the previous example. A sales rep who books more sales calls may be more efficient. But another rep who secures more qualified opportunities from the same or fewer number of booked calls is more effective.

Sales performance

Finally, sales performance is a measure of pure output. Regardless of whether that output was achieved efficiently or effectively.

B2B sales performance is often measured on metrics, such as:

Total revenue: The total dollar amount generated from new sales.
Deal size: The average value or revenue attributed to each closed deal.
Buyer outreach: Number of emails sent, phone calls made, and meetings scheduled.

Drawing on the earlier example, a salesperson who books more calls may be more efficient. Another who secures more qualified opportunities from the same calls may be more effective. But ultimately, the seller who closes the highest value in deals will outperform both the more efficient and more effective seller.

You can’t simply look at one metric in a silo. When you strike the right balance between efficiency and effectiveness, your sales process becomes more productive—boosting overall sales performance.

9 tips to boost sales productivity

Increasing sales productivity comes down to improving your efficiency and your effectiveness. By optimizing how you allocate your time and resources, you can improve your ability to find, manage, and win more deals.

Here are some tips and best practices to help improve your team’s sales productivity.

1. Adopt effective sales team onboarding

Adding new salespeople and resources to your team can be an effective solution for boosting overall sales performance. But even the most experienced sales professionals have a ramp-up period, during which they might be less productive than their peers.

Sellers need to have a firm grasp of your product, your ideal customer profiles (ICPs), and your sales processes to effectively source and close deals. A well-defined and strategic onboarding process ensures that new team members get access to this information accurately and as quickly as possible.

When salespeople are left to figure out new information on their own—whether it’s how to navigate the tech stack or which deals to prioritize—it’s almost impossible for them to be productive and reach their sales goals.

2. Invest in ongoing sales training

Training and development shouldn’t end with onboarding. Ongoing sales training and coaching can help sellers stay on top of best practices while sharpening their sales acumen.

The sales landscape is constantly changing. Without the resources to learn and evolve, sellers can quickly find themselves prospecting with stale or less-than-effective strategies. Investing in regular sales training empowers sellers to continuously grow and adapt to the current market conditions.

As the bottom line points out, investing in sales coaching and training will increase sales expenses in the short term. However, regular sales training helps sellers maintain productivity and drive more revenue, increasing sales efficiency—and hopefully profits—in the long run.

3. Use templates to streamline sales processes

In B2B sales relationships are everything. A cookie-cutter approach is no longer enough to secure deals. While sellers should prioritize personalization while prospecting, many parts of the sales cycle can easily be replicated to make the overall sales process more efficient.

Sales templates and methodologies like MEDDPICC provide sellers with a skeleton complete with core content that they can use to speed up their sales process. For example, instead of building a sales pitch from scratch, sales reps can take advantage of existing templates and customize it to their target prospect.

Templates also take the guesswork out of the sales process. By using tried-and-true formulas, sellers can engage with confidence and improve the success of their sales efforts.

Examples of templates that you can implement across the sales process might include:

Email templates for prospecting.
Sales scripts for customer calls.
Slide decks for proposals and presentations.
Contract templates for custom quotes and final sign-offs.

It’s important to make sure that sellers have easy access to the relevant templates in a centralized location to maximize the productivity benefits.

4. Ensure sales and marketing teams are on the same page

Sales and marketing should work closely together to move deals forward. Yet, siloed teams with misaligned goals are far too common in B2B organizations. For example, Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic, notes the importance of sales teams providing feedback to marketing, “I’ve seen so often marketing will pitch something to sales or say something, and sales might not give a very emotional reaction either way. Then sales doesn’t end up doing it and marketing gets mad they’re not following up on leads.”

As Marcotullio alludes to, siloed teams with misaligned goals are far too common in B2B organizations. But to align on overall sales strategies and define common goals, marketing and sales leaders need to come together. This ensures transparency and clearly outlines each team’s responsibilities within the sales cycle, in order to reach overall sales and revenue targets.

Marketing and sales leaders should come together to align on overall sales strategies and define common goals. This ensures transparency and clearly outlines each team’s responsibilities within the sales cycle, in order to reach overall sales and revenue targets.

When Jake Reni, Chief Growth Officer at Revenue Reimagined, assesses inefficiencies in his clients’ sales operations, he finds that “99% of the time it’s not a marketing, sales, or revenue operations problem; it’s a go-to-market problem they’re dealing with. The issue here is they're just not working together as a go to market team or machine to solve this.”

When there’s a lack of clarity or teams fail to communicate effectively, it can quickly lead to redundancies in the sales process. This wastes time and resources, and ultimately hinders productivity.

5. Find sales tools that match your productivity goals

Achieving productivity is easier said than done. But the good news is that today’s sellers don’t need to go it alone. Sales teams can—and should—take advantage of the wide range of sales productivity tools and technology that can help them reach their revenue targets.

These tools can help automate tasks, streamline workflows, and surface the data sellers need to push deals through the pipeline.

Common sales productivity tools for B2B teams include:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software
Data enrichment
Scheduling and calendar management
Project management
Time tracking
Collaboration and communication

Read more: Make productivity your competitive advantage and close more deals. Learn how to evaluate and select the right sales productivity tools for your team.

6. Improve CRM adoption

While our data shows that 41% of sales managers have seen increased CRM usage over the past 12 months, end-user adoption continues to be a challenge for many sales teams.*

When a CRM isn’t actively updated, or even looked at, sellers miss out on valuable deal data and insights that can improve their ability to close deals. Moreover, organizations waste limited sales and marketing spend on a tool that isn’t being used.

Here’s the thing: a CRM is one of the most valuable tools for a sales team. When it’s used properly, the productivity benefits are clear—which means axing the tool altogether simply isn’t an option.

Sales leadership is better off tackling the challenges that sellers face when it comes to CRM adoption. For example, 35% of sales managers cite lack of time as the top reason their sales team doesn’t use their CRM. Sellers need their CRM to be easy to use and they need to see tangible benefits on their sales performance.

7. Build efficiencies with AI and automation

One of the best ways to improve productivity is to offload repetitive and time-consuming tasks that pull sellers away from revenue-generating activities. But many of these tedious tasks are still critical to securing deals.

Consider CRM record creation. According to sales managers, sellers spent upwards of four hours a week updating their CRM.* Having accurate and up-to-date data is critical to the B2B sales process. But that’s a significant percentage of time that could be better used engaging in selling activities.

CRM automation reduces the time sellers spend on these administrative tasks—without sacrificing the benefits that they bring to the sales process. Studies have found that automation and AI can free up about 20% of a sales team’s capacity.

At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology can enable sellers to make better and more effective decisions during the sales cycle. So much so that a Salesforce report found that high-performing sellers are 1.9x more likely to use AI in their workflows. For example, AI can summarize key insights from sales calls or surface relationship insights from sales activity, so sellers can prioritize the right opportunities.

Jonathan Gross, Managing Director at Pemeco Consulting, says, “Being able to use the power of analytics, not just to produce reports that we program, but to uncover relationships within the datasets that we haven't thought of is proving to be valuable.”

8. Make the most of data

We know that data is critical to maximizing deal flow. However, its usefulness is limited to the access and availability of that data.

Jeff Poczatek, VP of Sales at Affinity, highlights that uncovering the right data can help you build pipeline coverage: “How do you surface stronger signals to your team to drive stronger relationships, to do easier outbound–not cold outbound but warm outbound–and there are so many [data] providers, but how do you systematize that [data] to create a cohesive, consistent motion that you can drive over a period of time that way it doesn’t ebb and flow but is all pipeline?”

Complete and accurate datasets enable sellers to make confident deal decisions. It prevents them from wasting resources pursuing leads with a low probability to close or missing out on lucrative opportunities.

Data also provides the necessary context for sellers to effectively engage prospects. When information is missed or wires get crossed, it impacts the customer relationship and can even put an entire deal at risk.

To make the most of the data available to them, sellers need to be able to access it when and where they need it. Dealmakers can’t spend hours sifting through information siloes or trying to surface data hidden in inboxes or calendars. At best, it slows down the deal process. At worst, it leads to lost and missed opportunities.

9. Use sales reports and KPIs to track progress

The right sales reports and KPIs help sales managers and sellers track productivity progress and effortlessly identify areas of opportunity.

Before implementing any productivity improvements, sellers and leaders should define KPIs and align on success metrics. This ensures that you have benchmarks on which to measure your progress.

Where possible, sales teams should also take advantage of sales reporting within their CRM and other existing tools. This guarantees that you’re using the most accurate data to identify top performers, sales trends, and areas for development.

Remember: measuring and tracking productivity should not be labor intensive, otherwise you can quickly stifle any productivity gains.

7 sales productivity tools to help improve selling

From automations to AI-driven insights, sales teams have access to more productivity tools than ever before. When considering new tools, Jeff Poczatek, VP of Sales at Affinity, notes that it’s important to consider how they fit in with the rest of your tech stack: “Ultimately, the success of new tools is going to come down to scoping out where this lives within [your tech] stack and how to bring it to life.”

We’ve rounded up some popular B2B sales productivity tools to elevate your tech stack and improve your team’s productivity.

1. Salesforce

Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM software helps B2B sales teams source and close more deals. Salesforce improves your sales productivity by enabling sellers to manage customer insights and engage buyers all in one place.