How to Double Your Sales Team’s Prospecting Output

Managing a sales team is one of the most challenging elements that a manager must deal with. There are many components that go into developing an effective sales team.

One of the biggest, most important components is the volume of output that the sales team produces as far as prospecting.

Judy is the manager of a team consisting of nine salespeople, and one of her biggest challenges is that of getting her salespeople to prospect enough. By working together, we focused on four key areas that would help her team produce at a higher level.

The key focus for Judy (or in this case for yourself as a leader), should be that of shifting from tracking sales numbers to tracking prospecting activity.

As simplistic as this many seem, it’s actually a pretty drastic shift for most organizations.

Four Items to Focus on for Tracking Prospecting Activity

#1. Track activity with a CRM. With your existing CRM system you can almost always track prospecting activity: number of prospecting calls, referrals requested, sales meetings conducted, as well as the number of clients contacted.

Tracking such metrics will encourage salespeople to focus on activities that will ultimately build their pipeline. A mentor of mine once said, “What gets tracked, gets done.”

#2. Review these metrics in a weekly sales meeting. Very few organizations can get by without a weekly sales meeting, and in every meeting it’s critical that you track all of the metrics. Knowing that every week these metrics will be explored will motivate salespeople to perform them more consistently.

#3. Give the team a prospecting call script. The prospecting call is a common challenge among salespeople, and many don’t know how to approach this task. However, a script for calls would provide the tools they need to conduct prospecting activity.

#4. Get commitments each week. A commitment is not some generic, “I’m going to try to do more!” but rather, a specific affirmation. An example would be: “I am going to make 100 prospecting calls this week.” Hold your salespeople accountable to the commitments that they make and be sure that they’re very specific, clear and measurable.

By implementing all four of these key steps you will see a dramatic shift in your sales force’s prospecting output. Which of these steps does your company most need to implement? Please share in the comments below.