Want to Get Your Sales Team to Double Output?

Paul has an eight-person sales team that sold an average of $500K per sales person. When he brought me in, he didn't need a motivational sales speaker, he needed a strategy to increase each sales person's performance over the long run. Sales motivation was only half the problem--the other half was what Paul was tracking. In order to increase a sales team's performance, an organization must make two changes:

1. Focus Completely on Output

   When I first came into Paul's company, sales people were making between zero and 10 dials per day. Most of their time was spent following up on incoming leads, which were sparse. All Paul was tracking were sales numbers, not output. We changed that.

2. Create a Prospecting Playbook

   Once the focus shifted to tracking sales prospecting output, the sales people needed a plan to follow. Their prospecting playbook included making 20 dials to old clients each day, asking for five introductions a day, and going to two networking events per week. These were the most important tasks during their week.

Within just two months, we had more than doubled the sales teams' output and increased monthly sales by 45%. It wasn't rocket science--we just focused on output, rather than their sales numbers. Higher sales prospecting output will always lead to higher sales. They are directly connected, and more importantly, output is much easier to manage and track. There is always an excuse for lower sales in a month, but there is never an excuse for not making one's dials or not asking for introductions. So, the very simple solution to doubling a sales teams' output is to focus completely on that output to provide the team with a prospecting playbook. How do you increase sales output at your organization? Please share below.