With the ever-changing business landscape, sales productivity is the constant goal that eludes organization. Most organizations fail to keep up with dynamic customer and market needs and lose out on opportunities. The advent of technology and advanced analytics can enable the sales team to boost productivity multifold.

The sales teams deploying new-age methods to boost sales are not able to hit the targets, affecting their sales managers and their companies. There are several tools and tactics that can help organizations drive sales productivity. Below are a few methods that are proven to increase productivity:

• Deploying the best sales engagement tools – A sales engagement platform will dramatically increase any sales team’s efficiency and productivity, further allowing the sales representatives to automate tracking of every call they make, every email they send and receive, and any other activity they conduct with their prospects and customers. Using a sales engagement platform can save time and allow the team to analyze the results. Sales engagement tools provide analytics about open rates, click-through rates, and more, to improve process effectiveness.

• Automation of routine tasks – One-third of all sales tasks have the potential to be automated. The productivity of the team will shoot up if most of the manual tasks were automated, saving them from the mundane routines. Sales automation can implement artificial intelligence (AI) tools to carry out sales tasks that would normally be carried out manually. A software-based solution will help a salesperson perform their tasks faster, easier, and more efficiently.

• Identifying qualified leads – It is ideal not to chase every lead that the marketing team generates, but only the right leads. This can ensure the closing of more deals with fewer, higher-quality leads. A high-quality lead is defined as someone who has already shown interest in the solutions the organization offers or perfectly matches the ideal customer profile. Additionally, the lead has a defined budget that falls within your price range.

• Analysis of product and buyer persona – It is imperative for sellers to understand the product and the buyer persona intimately before starting to reach out for sales. Their strategy needs to be aligned with the latest selling tactics (neuro-linguistic selling, for example); and they must hone and practice their sales pitch to make it perfect. The core competencies for any sales professional are agility, adaptability, and situational awareness.

• Intelligent sales planning – Effective sales planning is closely tied to sales productivity. It is proven that spending extra effort on goal setting, sales force design, allocation of resources, budgets, and efforts against opportunity have the biggest impact on seller performance.

Sales is a very fast-paced business area, it’s important to stay inspired and motivated most of the time. In the end, productivity in sales is quantified in terms of opportunities created and won.

(The author is Mr. Tim Zheng, CEO and Founder of Apollo.io and the views expressed in this article are his own)