How Teradata Transforms Their Sales Enablement Strategy with Mindtickle

Not that long ago, it was rare for an organization to have a dedicated sales enablement team.

But today, a whopping 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement function.

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of organizations invest in sales enablement

That’s not surprising. When it’s down well, sales enablement has a powerful impact on sales productivity, sales performance, and revenue growth.

But establishing a sales enablement function doesn’t guarantee great results. The most successful organizations are those with the right sales enablement strategy and sales enablement tools.

Teradata, a software company providing cloud database and analytics-related solutions, has experienced the powerful impact of adopting the right sales enablement tools. Recently, we sat down with Morgan Clawson, Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata, to learn more about how the company has transformed its B2B sales enablement strategy for the better with Mindtickle.

Establishing a capability framework for go-to-market roles

In any revenue organization, certain capabilities are needed for success. Those capabilities vary by role. For example, those on the commercial sales team at Teradata require different skills than those on the technical sales team. Yet, many revenue organizations don’t define the competencies needed for success.

With Mindtickle, Teradata has established its first-ever go-to-market capability model, which defines the skills and knowledge each team needs to succeed in the field. Mindtickle provides a place for Teradata’s account teams and their managers to reflect on their sales productivity and efficiency in terms of those key capabilities. The teams also pull data from Mindtickle by capability, which sheds light on the areas where additional enablement is needed.

“This gives us a data-driven approach, which is extremely effective in ensuring the enablement we’re putting out is relevant and meaningful. The more relevant and meaningful it is, the more account teams will consume that enablement.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Megan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

With Mindtickle, It’s easy for the Teradata sales enablement team to measure progress – both in terms of completion and in terms of skill development. “We can show the progression of the teams as they’re participating in enablement and how they’re moving through and mastering different capabilities,” Clawson said.

Transforming Teradata’s approach to sales enablement

Oftentimes, organizations take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to sales enablement. Taking a more personalized approach requires these organizations to understand what kind of sales training and support each seller needs. But often, organizations lack those insights.

In fact, per our Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, a mere 40% of C-level executives can identify strengths and weaknesses to develop customized sales training.

Only

0 %
of C-level execs can identify rep strengths + weaknesses

Mindtickle enables Teradata to group sellers by proficiency level on their capability model. Then, they can provide targeted and relevant enablement to the people who actually need it.

“Mindtickle has transformed our ability to deliver enablement to those who actually need it,” explained Clawson. “Mindtickle allows us to maximize the seller’s time so they’re actually in the field participating and engaging with customers in the ways we’d like them to, as opposed to feeling like they’re chained to their computer taking enablement that doesn’t apply to them.

In addition, Mindtickle has empowered Teradata to take a more collaborative approach to learning and sales enablement. For example, the company uses a lot of coaching forms and missions – which are different module types in Mindtickle.

“With those modules, managers are really able to take a front seat in the enablement activities and exercises that directly impact the efficacy of their sellers,” said Clawson. “Also, they’re able to participate in these really robust feedback loops related to specific sales situations. That more structured feedback loop that Mindtickle facilitates for us is really crucial to helping uplevel our teams.”

Increasing mastery of knowledge and skills

Mindtickle has transformed the way Teradata trains sellers, provides practice opportunities, and reinforces learning. Mindtickle’s certification and badging features have been key to this transformation.

“With Mindtickle, we’re able to build learning paths and missions that demonstrate real-world mastery of concepts and selling motions that are critical to Teradata’s sales strategy,” explained Clawson. “This means our sales teams are actually going into the world with proven, advanced knowledge and skills. They’re equipped to have confident, knowledgeable conversations about the value our solution can bring to our customers. They’re able to get all that information, practice it, and prove they can do these things through the badging program that Mindtickle helps us to facilitate.”

Earning these badges and sharing them on LinkedIn boosts the confidence of sellers. It also boosts buyer confidence. “[Buyers] know when they’re interacting with us we have teams out there that are going out there prepared and ready to deliver value to their customers,” said Clawson.

Working with a partner that’s committed to innovation and customer success

The team at Mindtickle is committed to ensuring the platform meets the needs of its customers – both now and in the future. As Clawson put it, “Mindtickle’s product team is an absolutely phenomenal group of people who are actually working on the platform and making it something that’s actually relevant and meaningful to us enablement professionals.”

The product team regularly meets with customers – including Teradata – to understand their unique needs and challenges. This input informs future innovation. 

“Mindtickle has always been really proactive in seeking to understand what our unique challenges are at Teradata and also finding ways to elevate the platform so it works for us.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Morgan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

Clawson and her team have also found the support team at Mindtickle to be knowledgeable and extremely responsive. “It’s really helped to establish credibility and fidelity with our teams,” said Clawson. We’re seeing a huge uptick in adoption of the platform in our go-to-market teams. I think this is partially due to the quick responsiveness and how helpful Mindtickle is.”

Proving impact and elevating the sales enablement function within the organization

In the best of times, sales enablement teams are under pressure to demonstrate value. This is especially true in today’s economic environment.

Without the right tools, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to demonstrate how B2B sales enablement is impacting the metrics that matter most to businesses. Mindtickle makes it possible.

“If you’re an enablement professional looking for ways to highlight the value and impact of your team to the greater org, Mindtickle allows you to do that,” said Clawson. “We can see very specific correlation metrics to the enablement activities we are producing. I can show very clearly the value my team is bringing to Teradata as a whole, and it’s a great feeling as a supervisor to elevate my team.”

Better Sales Enablement with Mindtickle

Ready to see how Mindtickle can help your sales enablement org can make a bigger business impact? 

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Unlocking Order from Chaos: Tackling Revenue Technology Confusion

We’re excited to launch a new video series focused on reducing chaos in your seller tech stack. In it, our team of experts shares tips on how you can use the tools in your tech stack with one another to improve seller productivity.

This video series covers a wide range of topics, including:

  • Using CRM data and conversation intelligence to inform your 2024 enablement plan
  • How to improve win rates and conversions with revenue intelligence
  • Leveraging your CMS, DSRs, and CRM to inform your 2024 sales content strategy
  • Enhancing coaching with CRM data, enablement analytics, and conversation intelligence
  • How reps accelerate bigger, faster deals with consolidation

Reduce Tech Stack Chaos

Get actionable tips from our team of experts on how to use tools with one another to improve seller productivity. 

Unlock the Videos

Transcription

Hi, everyone. My name is Parth Mukherjee, and I’m the Vice President of Product Marketing at Mindtickle. Today I’m here to talk to you about something that we are hearing a lot from our customers and prospects. And that’s the chaos that we’re seeing in the revenue technology space.

We obviously as a company are deeply passionate about F tech, and believe that every category and vendor out there has something valuable to offer to its users. However, market valuation and investor pressures often drive vendors to create capabilities in many different areas. Not all of these are necessarily aligned with user needs.

Just imagine the tech stack you already have in a go-to-market organization today, especially on the sales side. You have, of course, your CRM. But then you also have sales, onboarding, and training. You have content management systems, you have conversation and revenue intelligence tools, you have sales engagement tools for SDRs, and you have sales forecasting. And then you also have pricing territory compensation management, the list simply goes on.

And now as the boundaries between these categories, blur, users are just confused. Which parts of my stack do I use for which needs and for which use cases at mind tackle we have created a video series that is aimed at helping you cut down this chaos from your sales tech stack. In this video series, we have gathered insights from our customers and the market to help you streamline your sales tech stack, improve your go-to-market strategy, increase venerates, and establish robust enablement practices.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect from each of our experts.

  • Christian guides you on using technology to inform your content strategy. By consolidating content into one platform, layering engagement data, and structuring content for seller use, you can boost engagement with content.
  • Helen provides enablement professionals with three ways to use CRM and conversation intelligence data to improve your 2024 enablement calendar. By reviewing sales stages, evaluating launches, and assessing ramp time for new hires, you can refine your strategy for the coming year.
  • Elisha, another brilliant product marketer on my team addresses the chaos of onboarding in a new company. She emphasizes the power of using CRM enablement analytics and conversation intelligence to identify short-term risks and mitigate long-term ones. By closing skill gaps and aligning coaching with competencies. You end up building a strong coaching culture, which helps ongoing rep performance.
  • Rahul highlights a great customer example in the cybersecurity space by consolidating tools tracking pipeline risk analytics, ensuring repeatable quota contributions, and focusing on the healthy deals in the pipeline. The company improved productivity and accelerated the bigger, faster deals. Listen to this video and learn how they did it.
  • And finally, Lindsey shares a success story where a B2B tech company with Mindtickle’s help, of course, double their win rates. This is an amazing story. They achieved this by driving cross-functional alignment, consolidating technologies, and focusing on buyer engagement. This led to substantial cost reductions and simplified tool usage for the reps which is really, really important.

So I would want you to enjoy these five videos. And I would love to keep this conversation going. Please write to us at [email protected] and share how you have reduced tech stack chaos for your business. We will also follow this series up with a long blog on our perspective on the future of revenue technology. till then happy viewing and a very happy holiday from all of us here at Mindtickle. Thank you.

What are Sales Goals and How to Set Smart Sales Goals for Your Sales Reps?

Setting goals is important in all areas of life – both personally and professionally. The world of sales is no exception.

Sales goals help ensure your entire sales team is aligned. Each sales rep must understand the overall goals of the company – and the part they play in achieving those goals.

As a sales leader, it’s important to set goals that will motivate your sellers and ensure they know what’s expected of them. In theory, this seems easy enough. But in reality, setting effective goals (and then achieving them) can be challenging.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at why sales goals are important to sales teams, how to set effective ones, examples of common sales goals, and steps you can take to track and achieve them.

What are sales goals and why are they important for your sales teams?

According to the dictionary, a goal is “an aim or desired result.”

But what are sales goals?

They are clearly defined objectives set for individual sales reps and sales teams. Sales goals articulate what the sales rep or sales team is expected to achieve within a specific amount of time.

Individual rep vs. group sales goals

Some sales goals are created for a specific sales rep. Others are developed for a subgroup of the sales team. For example, an organization might have goals for reps in specific regions – or with specific titles. Finally, some goals are developed for the sales organization as a whole.

Long-term vs. short term sales goals

Sometimes, sales goals are long-term goals. For example, a sales team might have a goal to increase revenue in their region by 20% during the fiscal year. Other goals are short-term. For example, a sales development team might have a goal to increase cold calls by 50% this month.

What are SMART sales goals?

Setting a goal like “sell as much as possible” isn’t the best approach. Instead, the most successful sales organizations use the SMART methodology to develop goals.

The idea of SMART goals was first introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review. SMART is an acronym that guides individuals and teams in setting more effective goals. SMART goals are:

Generic goals like “close more deals” or “increase revenue” aren’t effective. Instead, goals must be specific, with details about how that goal will be achieved.

If you can’t measure something, there’s no way of knowing whether you were successful. Goals must have specific numbers attached to them.

Stretch goals are a great way to challenge reps. But goals must also be achievable.

Goals must be related to your company’s overall goals and strategy.

Goals must have a specific time attached to them. For example, close 50% more details by the end of Q2 2024.

Why are sales goals important?

Imagine you were going for a hike in the woods but had no idea where you were going and no map to guide you. Chances are, you’d lose your way at some point.

This is similar to what it’s like when sales reps don’t have sales goals.

Without goals, your sales teams don’t know what’s expected of them. They don’t know what they’re working towards – much less how to get there. In such a scenario, sellers are left to their own devices, and your chances of growing revenue are slim to none.

Creating goals is an important way to align your sales team and ensure they understand expectations. Clearly defined sales goals ensure sellers understand the overall objectives of the sales team – as well as the part they pay in achieving those objectives.

Sales goals examples

There’s no magic set of sales goals that will work for every single sales organization. Instead, it’s important to develop sales goals that make sense for your organization.

However, seeing some common, real-life examples of sales goals can be a great way to get the ideas flowing. Here are a few sales goals examples.

Generate more revenue

Reduce sales cycles

Achieve quota

Reduce churn rate

Reduce customer acquistion cost

Improve prospecting

Sales goal example #1: Generating more sales revenue

Increasing sales revenue is a top priority of any sales organization. As such, it makes sense to have a sales goal related to generating sales revenue. Because revenue is quantitative, it’s relatively easy to set a sales goal related to it.

Sales goal example #2: Reducing the sales cycle

A given deal includes several steps – from prospecting to closing the deal. Ideally, a seller would flow through these steps as quickly as possible. After all, the faster a deal goes through the sales cycle, the faster that revenue will hit the bottom line. In addition, when the deal closes, it’ll free up the rep’s time to focus on other opportunities.

  • An example of a sales goal related to reducing the sales cycle might be: Reduce time to close in Q2 by 10% by focusing on good-fit prospects and delivering personalized pitches to prospects that create urgency to act.
  • An example of a goal related to generating sales revenue might be: “Grow monthly recurring revenue by 25% in 2024 by improving cold calling tactics and increasing win rates.”

Sales goal example #3: Achieving quota

The more sales reps meet their sales quota, the more likely you are to reach your revenue growth goals. So it’s not surprising that sales quota achievement is a common sales goal.

  • An example of a sales quota achievement goal is: “80% of sellers in the Northeast region will achieve 80% of their sales quota in Q3.”

Sales goal example #4: Reducing churn rate

It’s more expensive to win a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. As such, sales organizations must aim for a high customer retention rate.

  • A sales goal example related to churn might be: “Reduce customer churn by 25% in the last two quarters of 2024 by improving client success hand-off and adopting a more proactive approach to customer success.”

Sales goal example #5: Reducing customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost – often referred to as CAC – is the amount of money spent to convert a lead to a customer. This cost includes several factors, including:

  • Marketing campaigns
  • Your employees’ time

The longer it takes to convert a lead to a customer, the higher the CAC. As such, it makes sense to create a sales goal related to reducing CAC. An example could be: “Decrease CAC by 10% this quarter.”

Sales goal example #6: Increase cold calls and improve prospecting

Cold calls aren’t anyone’s favorite part of sales. But they’re necessary to meet sales targets.

Many sales organizations set sales goals directly related to cold call quantity. For example, “make 100 cold calls this week.”

When it comes to cold calls, it’s about both quantity and quality. Of course, you want your sellers to be making a lot of calls. But you also want them to be connecting with qualified prospects.

Tips for setting sales goals

Now that you know some common sales goals, it’s time to set your own. But how? There are some tried-and-true steps to take to get started with setting sales goals.

Step 1: Determine the type of sales goal
Step 2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology
Step 3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable
Step 4: Consider incentives
Step 5: Clearly communicate your sales goals
Step 6: Measure success of your sales goals

Step #1: Determine the type of goal

Before developing a goal, you must first determine what type of goal it is. For example, is it a goal for the entire sales team? Or is it a goal for a specific portion of your sales team or even a specific seller?

Next, determine what category of goal it is. For example, is it a sales goal related to revenue? Or perhaps you are aiming to develop a sales goal related to deal size.

Some organizations opt to start with sales goal templates. Sales goal templates can be a great starting point that can be customized to fit the needs of your business.

Remember: any sales goal you create should be aligned with your overall business strategy and objectives.

Step #2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology

Vague goals aren’t effective. As an example, consider a sales goal of “increase sales revenue.” Sure, this goal provides a high-level overview of the objective. However, we don’t know how much the team is aiming to increase revenue – or what the deadline is for doing so.

A better approach is to write SMART goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

Make sure the SMART goals you set check every box on this list.

Step #3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable

You don’t want to set a goal so high that it’s impossible to achieve. That will only frustrate your sellers. What’s more, when these unrealistic sales goals aren’t achieved, it’ll damage morale.

But you also don’t want to set your sales KPIs too low. If your sales targets are too low, your team isn’t achieving its full potential.

Instead, it’s important to ensure your goals are challenging, yet achievable. Stretch goals are great, but they must be realistic, based on past sales data and sales enablement analytics.

Step #4: Consider incentives

Each member of your sales team should have a clear understanding of how they’re compensated based on individual and team performance. But for some sales goals, you may want to incorporate an additional incentive or reward.

Step #5: Clearly communicate your goals

Let’s say you spend time and effort developing individual and team goals. But then you don’t communicate those goals with the teams. If your sales reps don’t know their goals, how can they be expected to achieve them?

Be sure all sales reps know their individual and team goals. It’s also important to provide context for the goals. For example, a sales rep may scoff at a goal related to cold calling. However, if they understand the reason behind this goal (for example, increasing pipeline and closing more deals), they’ll be more motivated to achieve it.

Step #6: Measure progress toward your sales goals

When it comes to goals, ongoing measurement is key. Otherwise, you have no insight into whether you’re on track to achieve those sales goals.

Be sure you can easily track progress on individual and team levels. Of course, sales managers and leaders should have easy access to this information. However, it’s also important that each sales rep has insight into their progress.

Tracking and achieving your sales goals

Now that you’ve set your sales goals, it’s time to work toward achieving them. But how can you improve your chances of achieving your sales targets? Here are a few tips that can help.

Continuously measure progress toward sales goals

Let’s say you set a sales goal to increase each rep’s percentage of closed deals by the end of the quarter. But you don’t measure their progress until the last day of the quarter. If your reps fall short, there’s not much you can do at that point.

Don’t wait until the end of the goal’s specified time period to measure results. Instead, measure progress toward your sales goals on an ongoing basis. That way, you can identify challenges early on and work to correct them. Once you’ve overcome those challenges, you’ll be better equipped to achieve your sales goals.

Provide visibility into progress

Sales leadership should easily be able to access data, sales dashboards, and reports to see how their teams are progressing toward their goals. However, it’s also important to provide sales reps with visibility into progress. Seeing where they’re at in terms of achieving their sales goals can motivate them to work harder to achieve them.

Define what it takes for a sales rep to be successful

At every sales organization, there is a set of skills and competencies necessary for success. It’s important to document those competencies in an ideal rep profile (IRP). Then, measure each rep against that IRP to determine where there are gaps that need to be addressed.

Deliver training and enablement to improve key sales skills

Imagine it’s halfway through the quarter. You have a sales rep that looks like they’re going to miss their sales quota – yet again. But they’re not able to articulate what’s going wrong.

By leveraging conversation intelligence, you notice the rep is faced with a lot of objections on sales calls – and they’re having trouble overcoming those objections. There’s no doubt this is standing in the way of them achieving their sales KPIs.

Sales managers can use these insights to provide additional sales enablement and practice opportunities for this rep. For example, they assign the rep some bite-sized learning content or ask that they complete and submit some role-plays for review. In addition, the sales manager can deliver individualized coaching to help the seller boost their objection-handling skills, which will increase their likelihood of meeting their sales goals.

Recognize success toward sales goals

When your sales reps achieve their sales goals, be sure to recognize their achievement. Of course, bonuses and incentives are a great way to motivate your team. But verbal recognition can be effective, too. Remember: a little recognition can go a long way in motivating your team to continue to aim for success.

Crush your goals with Mindtickle

Setting sales goals is a foundational way to align your sales team and improve sales performance. It’s important to take the time to establish thoughtful, data-driven sales goals – and then ensure every seller has what it takes to achieve those goals.

Today, some of the best sales organizations depend on Mindtickle to crush their sales KPIs.

Salesforce - Revenue Intelligence

Mindtickle equips sales leaders with the data they need to develop and track challenging, yet realistic sales goals. In addition, sales reps can access the training, enablement, and content they need for sales success – all in one revenue intelligence platform. What’s more, Mindtickle incorporates conversational intelligence which enables sales managers to understand what’s happening in the field so they can provide coaching to improve outcomes.

Meet and Beat Your Sales Goals

Ready to see firsthand how Mindtickle can empower your entire sales team to crush its sales goals?

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4 Practical Ways to Increase Sales Productivity

Today, sales reps spend only 23% of their time on core sales activities and direct engagement with buyers. They spend an increasing amount of time on administrative chores like entering data into a growing number of disconnected sales tools. As a result, sellers are frustrated by the growing number of tasks that get in the way of their main job: selling.

To improve sales productivity, you need to focus on removing the roadblocks eating up your team’s time so reps can prioritize revenue-generating activities. Even a small uplift in the amount of time each rep spends on core selling activities will add up to a big productivity boost across your entire sales team. Here are four practical ways you can help your sales team dedicate more time to closing deals and driving revenue for your business.

1. Automate data entry

McKinsey estimates that “31% of all sales-related activities can be automated” to improve your team’s productivity levels. Data entry is a perfect candidate for automation because putting data into your customer relationship management program (CRM) is time-consuming and one of the biggest frustrations for sales professionals.

As reps work on more complex deals with multiple stakeholders and more touchpoints, each interaction creates more information and data for them to keep track of. It takes a long time to add detailed notes and provide meaningful updates for each sales activity in your CRM. Salesforce Research found that 63% of sales reps are logging more customer interactions in their CRM than they did in 2019.

To get data into your CRM faster, you need to automate data entry. Automation also improves data quality by reducing the number of incomplete CRM records — normally a clear sign that a rep started to update their records and then jumped on another call.

Use AI to analyze call recordings, outreach emails, and social media messages, looking for topics discussed, key messaging, or competitors mentioned. Then, connect that AI with your CRM to automatically link to call recordings and other sales activity, along with appropriate tags based on the insights it gathers. Using AI to automate data entry enables sellers to spend less time inputting info without compromising data quality.

2. Consolidate tools to reduce context switching

Context switching is where you jump between projects, tools, and tasks — and it affects your productivity levels and focus. For example, Asana found that “workers switch among 10 apps 25 times per day,” greatly reducing their efficiency.

For sales organizations, tool overload seems even worse. In 2019, the median number of sales-specific tools used was nine, but that has almost certainly increased as companies shifted to remote working during the pandemic. Additionally, a study by Oracle revealed that “updating multiple systems that ought to be connected” is one of the biggest frustrations for sellers. It takes a lot of time and feels like an unnecessary duplication of their work.

Consolidating your sales tech stack can increase productivity by reducing duplicated effort and context switching. According to Forrester, there is a “significant overlap in features and functionality that exists between different sales tech categories.” Consolidation will bring “greater value for buyers of sales tech, reducing dependency on point solutions.” A closer analysis of your existing tech stack may reveal duplicate functionality across multiple tools — so consolidation will save the business money, as well as help your sales reps increase productivity.

Before you start consolidating tools, sales managers should ask their teams which ones they use most and where they spend the most time duplicating work. This will help you understand the biggest inefficiencies for your sales teams and how your existing tech stack is affecting their workflow.

Then, you can review your existing tools and the functionality you get across each. Look for:

  • Overlapping features
  • Duplicate functionality
  • Opportunities to set up new integrations between tools
  • Options to switch to an all-in-one platform instead of multiple disparate applications

For example, Mindtickle’s Sales Readiness Platform brings sales enablement, content management, conversation intelligence, and sales coaching together into one platform. Ken Blank, senior sales enablement program lead at Infoblox, explained, “We’ve been able to bring multiple disjointed systems into one single platform for our internal customers as well as the enablement team.”

Learn more: How Mindtickle helped Infoblox adopt a single-platform approach for enablement, content, and conversation intelligence

3. Improve access to content and resources

Finding the best content and resources is another inefficiency for many sales teams. Forrester states that “not having the right content” is one of the biggest productivity challenges facing sales teams and that “finding content and information is a significant productivity obstacle.”

Sales teams often struggle because they don’t know what content is available to them or where to find it in shared drives. Finding sales content can be especially difficult if another team (such as marketing) creates the content, and each team has different ways of organizing assets. You can help sales reps improve their productivity by making it easier for them to find and use sales content to move their deals forward.

Adopting a dedicated sales content management system makes it easy for reps to access your sales content. It provides a single, searchable home for all your content assets. In addition, you can organize your content into hubs based on topic or content type so that it’s categorized based on how your sales team will use or search for it.

When it’s easier for sellers to find relevant content to use in their sales interactions, reps aren’t spending time scrolling through shared drives hunting for relevant case studies. Instead, they can focus on their next sales conversation, equipped with the information they need for the call or follow-up message.

4. Make training and coaching an ongoing priority

At first glance, it may seem like sales training and coaching will negatively impact your sales team’s productivity. You may think it’s yet another activity that takes up reps’ time. That’s likely to be true if your company sees sales training as an ad-hoc checkbox activity rather than a long-term value-add. But personalized, continuous training helps reps improve their skills, enabling them to follow best practices and learn from other team members how to be more efficient and productive in their work.

Adopting a structured sales readiness program enables sellers to increase knowledge, enhance performance, and adapt to change. It makes training and coaching an ongoing priority and helps to foster a team culture of continuous improvement.

Training that’s personalized to each rep helps individuals make targeted improvements in key areas. For example, some reps struggle to handle objections, while others struggle to have conversations about your pricing. Sales leaders can help agents improve on areas of weakness that have been identified using AI to analyze sales call recordings and other customer interactions. This helps reps improve their productivity by handling these regular, recurring situations more easily.

Increase sales productivity by helping reps spend more time doing what they love

The people in your sales team became sellers for many reasons, but not one of them did so because of their love of admin and time-consuming data entry. But as sales processes become more complex and companies adopt more tools and technology, the art of sales seems to take a back seat.

Sales leaders need to enable their reps to focus on what they love doing — building relationships with prospects and helping them solve their problems and challenges. Reps who can spend more time on core sales activities will be happier and stay with your organization for longer because they’ll be doing what they signed up for. You can help them spend more time selling by automating tasks and streamlining processes.

The math is simple: to close more deals, your sales executives need to speak with more prospects. Increasing sales productivity isn’t just good for your sales team — it’s good for the entire business.