As a sales manager, it’s essential to know which activities drive your team members’ success. And if you don’t have that knowledge yet, then this article is for you.
If you use sales activity management, you’ll know which activities are most effective at generating revenue for your team.
Sales activity management: What is it?
You want to have more revenue and better quota attainment for your sales team, but you can’t do that if people are not motivated.
You can’t just wish for success in the office. You need to know how to monitor sales activity and manage your actions that come before increased revenue; otherwise, you’ll never know how close you are getting.
However, when you start tracking the activities and behaviors that lead to more sales, it becomes much easier for your team to make money because they can be motivated by making sure their actions produce a positive outcome.
Here are some examples of things you can track and manage if you are a SaaS sales leader:
- Emails sent
- Calls made
- SMS sent
- Connections made
- Social selling actions
- Referral asks
- Demos scheduled/completed
- Meetings booked
- CRM usage
- Opportunities created/won
- Plan upgrades offered/closed
- Plan renewals won
- Free trials activated
- Free trials upgraded
Why is it essential to monitor sales activity?
So, what are the benefits of knowing how to monitor sales activity? Here is a list that should answer your question:
- Determine which activities have the most significant effect on conversions and revenue by comparing sales activity in various sales process stages to conversion rates and other outcomes KPIs (and which ones lose deals).
- Improve your process with accurate data: Once you know which actions convert and which do not, you can adjust and improve your approach to focus solely on the activities that produce results.
- Improve your understanding of your reps’ strengths and weaknesses: The right actions must also be executed correctly. After identifying the necessary steps, you may assist in coaching and training reps to perform better in these areas.
- It’s not just about competition, but also goals. Setting up activity-based goals for your team creates a friendly environment where all reps can compete fairly – from low performers to top performers.
- Make sure your reps know what’s expected of them. It turns out that when employees are clear on their responsibilities, they take more initiative and perform better.
- One of the best ways to get more top-performing reps is by investing in their success. A study from Sales Insights Lab showed that the most successful salespeople spend a lot more time on activities related to selling than those who are not so good at it. Managers and leaders need to invest in their employees’ growth because when they do this, you’ll be able to push your team to new heights.
If you are still not convinced, here is how to set this up for your SaaS sales team.
You can make sure that your sales team is on the right track by following these eight steps.
Software as a service is different from other sales. Click To Tweet
Finding motivated staff for your tea is complex due to the number of products and services offered.
For this reason, SaaS sales leaders need to monitor, review closely, and optimize the activities of their reps daily.
Let’s break this down into eight easy steps.
1. Pipeline analysis can be used to identify critical sales data in your business.
Your sales pipeline is an organized list of all the different actions reps take and how many prospects convert.
So, take your pipeline one stage at a time and find out what activities work best to convert prospects into customers.
When assigned to an inbound lead, they first send them an email, call or schedule a meeting. Click To Tweet
This will help the rep qualify the new lead before moving on.
If you’re looking for more leads, then an email might be the best way to do it. The example above found that emails get about three times more conversions than phone calls.
The key to successful project management is viewing the process as a whole, looking at how each stage affects short-term and long-term goals.
It’s worth considering how to achieve these key metrics:
- Increased conversion to the following stage
- Increased closing rate
- Customer retention and lifetime value have increased (LTV)
2. Discuss with your top-performing reps what actions help them succeed.
The key to a successful sales team is knowing what you’re doing. It would help if you never did anything without the help of your reps, and as their leader, you must get down in the trenches with them and see exactly how they operate.
Determining which actions close deals and how those actions should be performed is not a one-person job. Adding your top performers to the team will help you identify what matters.
Let’s say that a salesperson is sending three follow-up emails after each demo, and they are getting great results. Another rep sends the same number of emails but doesn’t get the same success rates.
So if the content of your emails is making a difference, you might want to work with your reps on developing more effective templates.
Did you know that email templates are the new norm? It’s not just enough to send an email. It would help if you had a series of emails with staggering frequency and relevance designed for different segments in your customer base.
3. Include essential tasks in the sales process that your reps are using.
The next step is to identify which activities are most important for your sales process. This can be done by placing the critical stages in a sale and listing all the tasks at each location.
Managing your sales team is not just about telling them what to do. It’s also about setting up a structured way of selling that adapts to each customer’s needs and buying journey.
By setting expectations for what works and doesn’t inside your sales process, you’ll help everyone on the team get better at closing deals. Setting these guidelines is essential because it enables them to perform actions that count.
4. Set specific activity-based goals.
Setting expectations for your employees is an easy way to make them more motivated and help them perform better. Click To Tweet
The same holds with salespeople.
How do you set salespeople’s goals?
To create a successful sales process, you have to do the opposite of what most people think. You need to start at the end and work your way backward.
- How many deals must your team close to meet the quota?
- How many offers are made, and how many are accepted?
- How many demos result in an offer?
- How many discovery meetings result in a demo?
- How many cold calls or emails are followed up on by discovery meetings?
You can see how many deals need to be converted for a quota goal for each stage in your process. It’s based on the average conversion rate across all locations. It is not enough to just set a quota for your reps. They need more direction on reaching the allotment.
5. Track sales activity metrics for each rep in one place.
To ensure you’re getting the most out of your sales team, it’s essential to know how to monitor sales activity and report on their KPIs in one centralized place. If you don’t do this, managing activities will become a burden rather than an asset for them and yourself.
6. Tracking sales activities can help you enhance your operation.
You have identified your most important tasks for each stage of the sales process, set specific goals to help you accomplish those tasks, and are now able to see how well reps are performing in one place.
Setting up a process is just the first step. You’ll still need to know how to monitor sales activity your progress and adjust accordingly.
Selling is a constantly evolving art that must be updated to customers’ needs. It’s essential in SaaS, where the buying process changes with new technology.
It’s your responsibility to stay on top of the sales activities that your team is performing and adjust accordingly.
After seeing a change in results, get your team to experiment with different methods. Get them to manage up by performing their experiments and tracking the results.
The more people you can get on board with your process, the better. There will be less resistance when it’s time to update and revise.
7. Create a leaderboard to encourage friendly competition.
Sometimes the best way to get results is with a little friendly competition. If you create contests, people will be more likely to go above and beyond for their teams.
It’s tough to motivate people in sales. The best way is through gamification, which gives them a sense of transparency about their work and encourages more engagement.
Please post the results of your study on social media and share them with all those involved. It’s a great way to celebrate success.
A leaderboard + the right culture will make your reps take more responsibility for their metrics.
8. By training and coaching your salespeople, you can help them improve in essential sales activities.
Knowing how to monitor sales activity is excellent. It would help if you also tried to help them improve their skills to make more sales.
A critical component of managing sales is coaching your reps to be the best they can be.
When you take the time to understand how each salesperson performs in different stages of a sale, it will be easier for you to coach them individually and make sure that everyone is successful.
Use the right software to make sure you’re on top of your sales game!
The key to successful sales management is having the right tools and knowing how to monitor sales activity right. Sales activity managers can track, analyze and manage their activities with these types of software.
