How to improve sales team efficiency: 7 easy tactics growth-minded startups can implement today

Poor time management, regular rejections from leads, and a lack of understanding of the right target customer are just some of the many productivity-draining hurdles SDRs encounter daily.
Fortunately, you can solve each of these with the right processes, tools, and a listening ear.
In this guide, we’ll show you easy strategies for improving sales team performance. We’ve also got proven tips on how to motivate reps.
Knowing the heart of the problem solves almost half of it. For each best practice, we’ll first take you through the challenge reps struggle with, then highlight solutions to overcome each.
All in all, here’s a brief answer to your question on how can I improve my SDR performance:
Sales reps end up tied to an unproductive work cycle between manual prospect research, data entry, and other admin tasks.
The result? Reps can’t focus on qualifying and nurturing leads – their primary job.
Research from HubSpot confirms reps spend only one-third of their time talking to prospects. The rest of it goes into writing emails (21%), entering data (17%), prospecting and researching leads (17%), and scheduling calls (12%).
You can automate everything from choosing which leads to contact first to getting AI-backed suggestions on when to follow up with prospects.
How? Using a customer relationship management (CRM) software to handle all of this.
For example, a robust CRM can automatically curate prospect data from various sources. It can also track progress on each account by automatically logging in updates such as follow-up emails sent to prospect A, demo calls delivered to prospect B, etc.
Outreach calls can be time-consuming, particularly if SDRs are still learning to identify the best leads to reach out to. To add, these calls often lead to nowhere except for demotivating reps.
What’s more, it’s not uncommon to see SDRs focusing too much on a lead that never converts, all while delaying closing a warm lead.
All this points to one thing: helping reps better manage their time is necessary to save them from falling down a rabbit hole of inefficiency.
A sales script is a performance shortcut. And it can encourage reps to focus on leveraging proven strategies and tactics that deliver results.
The problem, however, is that not all SDRs realize the sales script’s potential. As a result, they struggle with sticking to using it.
Since the root of this inefficiency lies in not knowing the full potential of the script, here’s what you should do:
Not knowing who they target is a recipe for SDR inefficiency.
In fact, without a thorough grip on the ideal customer profile (ICP), reps are likely to waste a lot of their time chasing the wrong leads.
It also means there’s a high risk of them losing warm leads. The reason? Reps fail to reach out to them in time.
84% of sales reps hit their quota when their employers implement a sales enablement strategy, as reported by Aberdeen.
However, what makes a successful SDR program is ensuring you don’t just dump reps with sales enablement content. Instead, run them through the content to understand how, when, and why they should use it.
For example, explain how email templates can optimize their prospecting workflow to your reps.
Manually researching target account data can be time-consuming and error-prone.
On top of that, some tools that promise to deliver target data might not refresh it in time — leaving reps with wrong or inaccurate target account data.
To maximize SDR efficiency, it’s essential you invest time in identifying the right sales intelligence tools to increase sales productivity.
Keep in mind that the right tool can improve sales team productivity. And drive up your ROI by cherry-picking the right prospects for reps to connect with at the right time.
Take UserGems, for instance. Our B2B prospecting tool has helped companies like UserTesting grow their ROI by 18 times in one year.
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So how does UserGems helps? It feeds your CRM with the most up-to-date information on the target account. It also sends email notifications to reps informing them when a prospect or customer changes their job.
As a result, reps can target warm leads that are far more likely to convert than cold leads who aren’t aware of your product.
This is all too common when SDRs manually comb through prospect information from their database.
In fact, not only do they end up calling at the wrong hour, but they also commonly call incorrect numbers or contact the same number twice.
Build a dialer into your CRM – you can either get a CRM with an inbuilt dialer or integrate one into your CRM.
The dialer’s job? To give reps a preview packed with lead information before they call. This, in turn, not only minimizes human error but also prepares reps for their calls, improving their outreach.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace survey, 85% of employees aren’t engaged in the workplace.
When it comes to SDRs in particular, motivation levels are often low – thanks but no thanks to tedious tasks and (almost) consistent rejections from prospects they contact.
To recap, the answer to how to improve sales team efficiency boils down to:
To start though, begin with addressing the most challenging aspect of a rep’s job – sales prospecting. With 40% of them admitting that prospecting is their biggest struggle according to HubSpot, improve efficiency by getting a tool that helps with sales prospecting.
Still unsure which tool can help? Try UserGems for B2B prospecting today to identify warm leads right away and close more deals faster.
Unlike other B2B databases, UserGems monitors buyer job movements and their relationships with companies to help revenue teams differentiate from the competition, achieving their revenue & professional goals.