Right now, companies can’t afford a misaligned or underperforming sales team. No matter your industry, you feel the economic pressure to do more with fewer resources.
This is our reality and, given the premium value private and public markets are placing on profitability and efficient growth, our “new normal” is likely to continue for some time. So, sales productivity is now paramount – success requires maximizing sales outcomes with the least amount of wasted resources, including time and effort. Underperforming sales teams are spinning their wheels on activities that don’t generate revenue – getting lost toggling between different tools, struggling to find the right materials to prepare for meetings, and trying to make sense of disjointed data, rather than closing deals. Put bluntly, these teams are likely doomed in our current economic environment.
Sales productivity is what “doing more with less” looks like in the real world for revenue teams. It can be a rallying cry for companies to reimagine their revenue strategy and ruthlessly prioritize the few, vital initiatives that can drive efficient growth. Adopting this more rigorous approach will make sellers happier, forecasting easier, and, ultimately, revenue growth more predictable. Truly productive sales teams have more sellers attaining quota, greater agility to adapt to internal and external change, and are driving outperformance in any economic conditions.
An enablement leader’s best friend is revenue operations
Unfortunately, many businesses are struggling to improve sales productivity because their sales enablement and revenue operations teams aren’t aligned from the outset, even though both teams want the same thing – predictable, efficient revenue growth. Enablement leaders must build strategic partnerships with their revenue operations teams because it is only together that these teams can drive the operational rigor necessary to improve and sustain high sales productivity.
The task at hand is simple: double down on what is driving revenue, and discard what isn’t. However, enablement teams need revenue operations’ data-backed insight to confidently execute this task, and collaboration between the two functions is vital to identify what can be automated, streamlined, or eliminated within your revenue engine to get more from less.
High sales productivity is founded on unfaltering alignment across all revenue-generating and revenue strategy-focused teams: revenue operations, sales enablement, sales leaders, and sales reps. Organizations with a structured sales enablement approach in place for more than two years are 48% more likely to experience high buyer engagement, and these functions are all central to building that structure. While laggards continue struggling with a discombobulated tech stack, mismatched priorities, and half-baked performance management, leading B2B sales teams achieve transformational gains – but only if revenue operations and enablement join together and deliver a unified perspective to leadership from the beginning.
A tech stack tailored for operational excellence
Along with the right internal relationships, today’s sales team needs to be armed with a tech stack that can win and scale. Three productivity tools enablement and operations need to succeed are:
- A system of record (your Customer Relationship Management) tool;
- A system of Revenue Operations (your forecasting and engagement) tool;
- A system of Strategic Enablement (your sales enablement platform).
There’s no time for fragmented tools that don’t speak to one another. Now is the time to right-size your tech stack and tailor it to your team’s needs – so they can focus on closing more deals.
Empowering teams through actionable data
Data insights are a must to move the needle in sales. Without them, sales leaders can’t identify what’s working and what’s not. Knowing what the highest-performing reps are doing to close deal after deal makes success repeatable and predictable. Taking it one step further, utilizing these insights, it’s much easier for leaders to coach new sellers through faster ramp times and better attainment rates – a true competitive advantage.
There is no room for error – or waste – in today’s sales environment. Productivity is paramount. The key is a deep partnership between revenue operations and enablement. Armed with the few, right tools in your tech stack and using shared data insights that drive consistent improvement, you will achieve your revenue goals this year, and for years to come.
