Key Metrics in Measuring Sales Rep Productivity

Sales automation is a way to work smarter instead of harder.

And while automation gets rid of administrative tasks that would otherwise take up most of reps time and it empowers them with data they can use to sell better to customers, a concept management has not yet been able to really define is the productivity measuring aspect using a sales automation tool.

If you already have your KPIs in place then monitoring productivity should not be hard. The good thing about automating your sales process is that it gives you a head start by allowing you to access real time field data that you can analyze and monitor everyone's productivity and progress in the field as the day goes by.

KPIs?gives you metrics that you can evaluate your rep's performance with against your company's sales and organizational goals. Through enforcing the right KPIs you give your team a chance to focus on the right activities to perform while they are in the field. So the first thing would be to define your KPIs then see how you can tie them to your rep's everyday tasks.

Using Solutech SAT, these are some of the ways you can track productivity.

Working Time

The first thing reps do on the app is?"Starting their day". Once this is done, immediately work time starts calculating till the point the work day comes to an end. This gives you:

• What time they started working. This can be measured against the time you had set for them to start work.

and

• How many hours in a day they work. When the day ends, you get the total number of hours they worked.

There is also check in time which calculates time spent interacting with customers or time spent at an outlet. With this you are able to:

• Calculate the time spent at each outlet.
• Using an aggregate of all the time spent at every outlet, you get a sum of the time each rep spent interacting with customers.
• Deducting outlet aggregate time from the day's working hours gives you a clear view of productivity hours and how best you can maximize on the hours wasted.

Visits

As reps go about their day, they are expected to visit customers. From this you can get:

• All number of outlets visited by each rep in a given day.
• Their outlet coverage performance.
• Route coverage performance based off the set targets of customers to visit.

To differentiate between point two and three, let's give an Example:

Scenario 1: John has a route/ routes that has a number of customers that he should visit by the end of the day. His route has 60 customers and he only manages to visit 10 of them. At the end of the day, calculating his route coverage:

The no. of visited customers / Customers to be visited?multiplied by 100%. In this case, John's coverage will be 16.66%

Scenario 2: Magdalene who is John's manager sets a target for him to visit 30 customers. John manages to visit 27 of these customers. As before, his route coverage would be

The no. of customers visited / The set target of customers?multiplied by 100%. In this case, John's route coverage is 90%

Strike Rate

Normally we equate a visit to what we term as a "call". Another way to measure productivity is through gauging successful calls and actual calls.

Actual call: An actual call is a customer visit.

A successful call: A visit that turns fruitful by either making a sale or taking an order is credited as a success.

Strike Rate: The conversion rate.

To calculate each rep's conversion rate. Divide the number of successful calls by all calls then multiply by 100%

Example: Peace visited 30 customers. Of the 30 customers, she managed to sell to 17 of them, took orders from 6 and skipped 7 due to various reasons(shop was closed, out of stock..).In this case, her strike rate would be 76%.

New Customers

Your sales reps ability to sell is why they are ambassadors for your brand in your absence. Sales reps recruiting new customers on a daily is a good way to measure their selling skills. You can gauge this skill by checking the number of outlets added by a sales rep on a daily.

Going further, incentivizing recruiting of new customers by offering something like a commission based off the number recruited and sold to can spark that drive to focus on the task at hand.

Status

Using real time updates of status activities. From the dashboard, you have access to a status column that updates you on the status of your sales reps. Whether they are active or inactive, when they were last active, the number of hours worked as well as battery percentage as you never know, their handset might have gone off!

Feedback Gathering

Businesses that heavily rely on customer insight understand the importance of gathering feedback to propel sales. Number of feedbacks collected by sales rep would be a good performance indicator. You may want to gather insight on different areas of concern like:

• Pricing of products
• Quality of product brands
• What people think about your new product

Your rep going round gathering information that you can use to better your product or pricing strategy can work as a means to measure their productivity.

Sales Performance

Setting sales targets to meet and comparing them with what has been achieved is a good way to track progress and input. The user dashboard is designed to update the rep on their target amount against their current sales amount. As they sell, they have a view of how close or far they are to achieve.

On the management end, gauging rep's performance can be done by dividing the sales amount by the target amount and then multiplying by 100.

Example: Tekla has a monthly target of 500,000 Ksh, to achieve this, she roughly needs to be generating a sales value of 25,000 daily, if you count working days as Monday - Friday. At the end of the month, she manages to surpass her target by 125,000Ksh by generating 625,000 Ksh. Her performance percentage?would be 130%.

These are just some of the ways you can use to determine if your reps are delivering as expected. Your defined KPIs should be able to guide you on the metrics to use.

If you are wondering where to start, automating your process is a good place to begin from. The summary given can work as your foundation of tracking and measuring your sales rep productivity.

With the right salesforce tool like Solutech SAT, you get to benefit from higher sales-force productivity and much more. Reach out to us today to kickstart your journey.?

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