If you manage a field sales team, you know how tough it can be to keep your reps selling and not wasting time on non-selling tasks. In fact, Forbes reports that field sales reps only spend about 35% of their time selling – that’s only 14 hours a week! In this blog, we’re sharing five tips to help improve your team’s efficiency and increase those selling hours.

Define clear goals and objectives

It’s important to define targets for sales, customer satisfaction, and other metrics. By setting specific targets, you can provide your team with a clear understanding of what you expect them to achieve. This can help motivate and focus their efforts, and make it easier for them to see how their work contributes to the overall success of the company.

In addition to setting clear goals, it’s also important to involve your field sales team in the goal-setting process. This ensures that they feel ownership over their goals and have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

Use sales analytics and reporting

Sales analytics and reporting tools can provide valuable insights into your team’s performance and help you identify areas for improvement. By analyzing data, you can figure out where your team is struggling and come up with strategies to fix it.

For example, you may discover that certain sales materials are less effective than others, or that certain team members are struggling to meet their goals. Additionally, you can use the same data to identify best practices and replicate them across the team, helping to improve efficiency even further.

While reporting is important, it often turns out to be time-consuming as well. Luckily, Salesboard makes it easier with many features for tracking and measuring your team’s performance in real time. Be sure to check out these features for free in our Playground!

Leverage technology to free up time for selling

Many sales tasks are repetitive and time-consuming, but they don’t have to be. The right technology can streamline sales processes by providing easy access to customer data, sales materials, and other resources. Additionally, technology can help you automate sales follow-up, make it easier to share information with the team, and ensure data accuracy.

Sure, these are all tasks that only take a few minutes, but they can add up over time and take precious hours away from selling. And increasing the time your team spends selling from 14 to 16 hours a week can make a huge impact on the bottom line.

Develop solid processes

Establishing a consistent process for sales activities helps reduce errors and ensures that your team is consistently delivering quality results. Outline the steps your team should follow when interacting with leads, closing deals, and following up with prospects.

By setting up a clear process and making sure everyone follows it, you help ensure consistency and accuracy across all your team’s work. This will not only save time and frustration, but also ensures that each prospect gets the same top-notch experience.

Implementing a training and development program

This one might seem obvious, but the importance of training and development cannot be overstated. Especially in the current job market where employee shortages are common, investing in training and development is essential for retaining top talent and staying competitive.

By investing in your team’s training and development, you can ensure that they have the knowledge and skills they need to work efficiently. And by using a tool like Salesboard, you can easily spot the areas where your team needs more training and provide them with the resources they need to hit their goals.

Conclusion

Field sales management can be a challenge, but with the right strategies and tools in place, you can ensure your team is operating at its full potential. So don’t wait – start implementing these field sales management best practices today. Good luck!