Simple Steps to Increase Annual Sales Revenue by 25%

A 10% increase in selling time translates to a 25% increase in annual sales revenue (Marketo). The responsibilities cutting into a salesperson’s selling time is far and wide. The common non-selling activities passed onto the sales team include prospecting, data entry, qualifying, and nurturing leads.

Sales Prospecting

Prospecting is a time-consuming task that requires data entry, research, and other tasks unrelated to selling. Many companies put this on the shoulders of salespeople without realizing that it doesn’t help them sell. Instead of reaching sales quotas, the sales team spends countless hours at the office on their computer, filing through potential targets, looking up information, and trying to get enough qualified leads into their sales pipeline to hit quota.

Qualifying Sales Leads

After collecting prospects, sales professionals often try to generate leads or qualify them via email, calling or via social media sites like LinkedIn. With different needs, pain points, and buying cycles, the team is stuck digging through a lot busy work in search of sales gold. This leaves less time for selling, and because they are not specialized in lead generation and sales development, it poses the risk of being inefficient, demoralizing and challenging.

Nurturing Sales Leads

Lots of qualified leads require consistent nurturing throughout the sales process before they are ready to buy. Lead nurturing is crucial, but it is very time-consuming. Rather than providing your sales team with leads ready to buy they spend a lot of time qualifying and nurturing these leads.

This takes their time away from selling, making sales quotas harder to reach. It also brings more leads under their supervision than they need, which risks leads falling through the cracks or turning cold before they even get to a point where they are ready to make a buying decision.