Want to see something you have control over improve? Measure it and meticulously log it every day.
In sales, the little things add up. When a good salesperson follows up on leads, keeps accounts active and properly maps them out with up-to-date contact information, deals tend to close. But tracking these little things can be a huge time suck, especially for a sales rep whose compensation is determined by the results on bigger-picture events such as demos booked or deals closed.
As a result, many sales organization have turned to leaderboards and even “scorn boards” to encourage reps to keep closer tabs in the CRM on the status of each lead. The thinking behind a scorn board goes like this: No one wants to see his or her name on top of a list called “Most untouched leads in Salesforce.” So reps who are contacting leads but can’t be bothered to update the CRM will start keeping better tabs on their activity to get off that wall of shame. Reps who just haven’t been making calls or sending emails will start.
Using Leaderboards and Gamification in Sales
There are some great psychological tactics and strategies sales leaders and managers can use to increase rep productivity. There’s a great post on the Ambition blog about the history of gamification tools for sales.
The benefits to management are clear. Sales managers get an accurate and valid picture of how reps are performing, who needs help and what’s really in the pipeline. Marketing gets a reliable way to track the return on any marketing spend.
Think about it this scenario: Marketing has just successfully made the case to invest in a new campaign. It could be an ad buy, a trade show booth, a webinar or a whitepaper. Whatever form it takes, the marketing team is expecting to generate some number of leads for the sales team to go after.
But when the marketing director checks Salesforce two weeks after the campaign, all that’s there is giant stack of untouched leads. How successful was the campaign? Is it worth running another one? There’s no good way to answer that question.
Unfortunately, at most companies, fixing this problem means asking sales reps to set aside multiple hours each week just to change lead statuses in the CRM. That’s just sitting there and going: “Click. Edit. Save. Click. Edit. Save. Click. Edit. Save. Click. Edit. Save.” Over and over again.
Meanwhile, the rep is probably thinking: “This doesn’t affect my compensation. Do I really care enough about getting my name off that scorn board to waste my time like this?”
Awful, right? That’s exactly why your sales reps don’t do it.
Obviously, the better way to handle this situation is through automation.
How to Automate Tedious Tasks and Focus on What Matters
Using the bidirectional sync between Salesforce and PersistIQ, reps can avoid the time trap of manually updating the same field in multiple leads hundreds of times. Let the computer do that work. Reps should focus on the next email campaign, following up on a warm lead with a phone call, or researching a priority account.
When a sales rep contacts a lead, it’s logged. When a lead responds to a campaign, it’s logged. Automatically. In Salesforce.
Reps won’t have to “Click. Edit. Save” just to get their names off the scorn board. And managers get an accurate picture of sales activity reflected in the CRM.
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Stay tuned for more of the latest in outbound sales best practices and methods.
This post was brought to you by PersistIQ. Our software empowers salespeople to easily convert prospects into a qualified pipeline and create personalized outbound campaigns at scale. See how PersistIQ can help you make your own sales efforts more effective today.
