5 effective ways to increase your sales team’s productivity using contact sharing

Sales Productivity is a hot topic!

There's no denying that the sales team is the one that earns the bread and butter of the company and is the key factor in the success and overall health of a business.

You can measure sales productivity by measuring the revenue generated by the sales team. In order to increase the productivity of your team, you will have to offer them various sales tools that all of them can be more efficient and save time. The more focused the team is, the better they are nurturing leads and closing sales.

When it comes to empowering your sales team to sell better, here are 5 ways that effective contact sharing can help increase team productivity.

1. Save the team’s time by saving and sharing common contacts

The ultimate goal of the sales team is to collectively move towards the common objective of increasing company revenue. You can do this by following various best practices that can increase proficiency and save the entire team's time.

Creating and saving Gmail contacts in the middle of a task is distracting and it can take up to 20 to 30 minutes for the sales rep to get back into the flow of working. Instead, you can use a powerful third-party Gmail contact sharing service to easily create contacts and share it with the entire sales team. As a result of saving, updating and sharing common Gmail contacts you save a lot of collective time as all members will not have to create the same contact separately.

2. Add labels to segment your contacts and share with the concerned person

A great way to streamline your sales process is by offering easy access to client/ lead contacts to the sales team.

A simple way to do this is by labeling the contact accurately, it could be either by lead stage, location, products or services they are interested in and more. You can share this contact with the concerned team members. For example, a new lead contact is shared either with the entire sales team or with a particular sales rep who is supposed to contact the lead. The team members or the sales rep can simply create a filter and find the contacts to initiate the sales process.

3. Nurture segmented leads by sharing relevant content

Segmentation of contacts can be a huge differentiator in your marketing efforts, especially for lead nurturing through email marketing.

As discussed earlier you can label your contacts as per lead stage or location or more. This will allow you to send more targeted content to your marketing qualified lead, transition them to be a sales qualified lead and conclusively shorten your sales cycle significantly.

For example, if your targeted lead has just started looking for the product or service you offer (Awareness Stage), you can send them content that generates awareness and provides information about your service industry. As your lead shows more interest (Consideration Stage) you can change the label and start sending them content that helps them evaluate your services like free trials or demos. By the time the sale team contacts the lead, your lead is already aware of your brand and service and is almost ready to make the purchasing decision.

On the other hand, if you don't segment your contacts, it can have a negative impact on your marketing efforts. For example, we all have answered cold calls from a service provider trying to persuade you to purchase their service (Hint credit cards and ISPs) only for you tell them that you are already a customer! Doesn't that make you feel harassed and question their system completely? Don't they check their database if a person is already a customer?

All this just because no one in the sales team updated the contact label from lead to customer. Not only is this a huge waste of time but makes the customer doubtful about your service.

4. **Let other departments thrive by keeping all shared contacts up-to-date **

Keeping shared contacts updated with relevant information contributes towards streamlining the company's operation. This is not only essential in the sales department but other areas of the organization like onboarding, support and marketing as well. Supposedly, if a customer has updated their email address and the sales rep misses on updating the shared contact. Unaware the accounts team can keep mailing invoices on the incorrect email address and the marketing team will keep mailing future promotion on an unavailable ID which can lead to losing future business from the client.

5. Add relevant information to stop other sales rep from contacting the same customer/lead multiple times

Sales leads are generally shared with the entire sales team. If the leads are not updated immediately, more than one sales rep might try to reach the prospect. This kind of communication transgressions exhibits poor and chaotic organization skills on the company's front. It also makes the lead feel that the company is badgering them and they don't really care about his/ her time. Thus, it is absolutely essential to coordinate and keep your contact information synchronized.

Conclusion

We can safely say that there are at least 5 effective ways the you can increase the productivity of your team. The team can share common contacts to save time, Add labels to segment your contacts and share with the concerned person, Nurture segmented leads by sharing relevant content, keeping all shared contacts up-to-date, avoid contacting the same lead multiple times and more.

You can share some of the activities you take up at your workplace to increase your productivity.