The Scientific Advantage of Improving Sales Productivity

Improving the productivity of an existing sales team holds enormous promise for new competitive advantages. A recent HBR article on the New Science of Sales Productivity hints at the scope of the achievable.

The authors provide a useful comparison of two approaches to achieving an 80% growth in sales over 5 years - a 'capacity' focus relying on additional sales hires to hit the sales target vs. a 'productivity' focus relying on teasing higher sales productivity from the existing team.

They conclude that an existing sales team that achieves an 8% annual improvement in their productivity will generate the same sales growth as a team that adds 27% more reps. This ignores, of course, the added costs of recruiting and training new reps.

In their view, such productivity improvements are now enabled when sales leaders implement systems around the art of selling that provide data, analyses, processes, and tools that shrink the performance gap between top performers and the rest of the sales team.

Perhaps there are, now, better ways to drive sales productivity than merely admonishing reps to work harder. They found that firms using sales productivity improving systems are typically seeing gains of 30% in sales revenues per rep within two - three years.

A summary of their comparative estimates of impact:

Are Your Prospect Experiences Productive Ones?

It amazes me how much one can learn about the tricks to B2B sales productivity by being prospected by someone else. I recently attended a trade show, had a pleasant chat with a vendor rep in one of the booths, then 'got scanned'.

A couple of weeks later, our sales desk received a call (in the middle of a sales meeting). One of our colleagues dipped out to take the call. When she lifted the receiver, there was no one at the other end of the line so she hung up. Thirty seconds later, my phone rang and (given the sales meeting had already been disrupted), I took the call. It was an Account Exec from the vendor and (apparently) not anyone I'd spoken to in the booth. While I wasn't rude (or at least worked at not being so), I did make it clear that this wasn't the most convenient time to chat. The call ended with no attempt by the Rep to be helpful by scheduling a callback or offering to help in any other way.

A few days later, I got another call. From the same vendor, but a different Account Executive who, also, I'd never met. This time, I explained I knew someone at the firm and would probably follow-up with them. At that point, I was effectively dropped (politely) like a hot potatoe.

In both cases, I walked away feeling like here were two well meaning sales professionals who connected with me (audibly) yet missed an opportunity to really connect with me substantively.

Add it all up, and you have a prospect experience that wasn't very helpful. Neil Rackham's take on how to sell in tough economic times is the antithesis of this kind of activity-completing experience. Rackham advocates being exceptionally helpful, often unexpectedly; it will trigger prospects to engage in 'the conversation'.

Are your prospect experiences activity-completing ones for your sales people, or helpful ones for your sales prospects? If you were the prospect, which type would you rather participate in?