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6 Sales Tips to Keep Ahead of the Competition in 2021

By maximizing the productivity of your sales team and increasing closing sales, you will be able to outperform your competitors, which today is the main way for your business to survive in a crowded market.

A salesperson's productivity depends on a thousand little things, from the sales call techniques they use to the tools they turn to on a daily basis. Of course, to improve the productivity of your team, you need to use a holistic approach and know what productivity-increasing strategies and sales trends your competitors are using.

Use these tips to survive in a tough '21 market!

1. Embrace data analytics

Sales analytics tools help salespeople to manage, evaluate and analyze the existing sales data. Using today’s business intelligence tools, businesses gain a deeper understanding of the sales data they’re collecting and what it means.

These insights can help sales teams to:

understand the current state of affairs;
make more informed (and more effective) decisions about prospects and customers, product lines, market opportunities, and performance;
easily identify new or developing leads in all kinds of channels;
increase close rates;
forecast future performance and drive revenue growth.

75% of fast-growing businesses are already using the newest analytics tools, and, 53 to 61% of companies have yet to catch up.

Einstein Activity Capture, ActiveCampaign, InsightSquared, Clari, HubSpot Sales Hub — almost everyone knows these tools that help to make predictions, based on past experience. However, it makes no sense to test different new tools when there are universal solutions like Revenue Grid. It is the first fully dedicated guided selling platform that provides sales teams with step-by-step guidance to win key deals using full sales data, and your proven strategy and expertise.

Revenue Grid allows salespeople to obtain complete visibility into your pipeline, process, team, and customers, understand what happens at each front of revenue generation, know risks, progress, and next steps, and leverage stronger customer relationships.

2. Make it clear with sales dashboards

Salespeople need to have full control over their pipeline, all crucial data at their fingertips at any time they really need it. Using sales dashboards makes it simple and convenient to analyze various parameters like team’s performance, sales opportunities, closed deals, sales management, etc.

Revenue Inbox’s (a product by revenue Grid) highly-customizable and easy-to-use sales dashboards allow you to strike that sweet spot between tracking too few metrics and trying to track them all.

Either it is team activity reports, or opportunity engagement reports, or stalled opportunities — you can clearly see how well your team is engaging with the most important deals or opportunities that need a fast reply.

3. Automation is new Efficiency

According to Clearbit, sales reps spend 64% of their time being busy with non-sales, routine activities. This is ridiculous given the huge choice of tools that could automate most part of such activities.

Just imagine: if you add up all this time and devote it to closing deals, you will be able to skyrocket your sales productivity!

Within the traditional sales function, automation can boost sales productivity by 14.5%. With nurturing sales automation becoming more and more popular, companies see a 225% increase in the volume of prospects that convert to sales opportunities.

Automation technologies help to eliminate time-consuming tasks that could otherwise go to nurturing leads. Just one automation platform can help you automate your outreach process, your follow-ups, and schedule all calls.

4. Make the most of using AI

Automation Hero claims that today, AI can take over almost 40% of sales tasks, while Salesforce shows that AI adoption for the teams is projected at 139% for the next 3 years.

Using AI not only helps teams to collect important data on prospects and customers that they can use to create successful marketing strategies and boost their sales; it provides valuable insights that help reps to make suggestions to consumers, based on their customer behavior. Also, it can help sales with identifying industry trends and creating forecasts.

Other important benefits of implementing AI include productivity-boosting, better lead scoring, and higher customer satisfaction.

5. Win hearts and minds of Gen Z representatives

Considering by 2025 it is estimated that 29% of the U.S population will be Gen Zers, the digital generation representatives with their $45 billion of spending power. So, it’s crucial to understand Generation Z consumer behavior to gain this demographic’s trust.

Gen Zers are practical, always look for value, prefer an omnichannel experience, and use mobiles to the fullest. Keeping these guys’ attention is a real challenge (the average attention span is only 8 seconds), and only something grand, unique, and trustworthy can attract them.

Check out some of the sales techniques that will help you to draw the attention of these kids:

make your website and brand mobile-friendly;
move to social media and use Youtube (+TikTok);
engage them in dialogue through gamification, polls, promotions;
create Stories, motivational viral videos;
use the most effective hybrid formats - games, flash mobs, video conferencing, a series of dynamic and static images;откажитесь от лишних постановочных элементов, неестественности;
when creating custom content (keep in mind to make it maximally personalized and non-intrusive);
cooperate with micro and macro-influencers with 100-300 thousand followers;
use chats and instant messengers: when it comes to Gen Z, real-time communication is more efficient than email marketing;
create edgy, story-driven campaigns;
focus on positive experiences;
keep your campaigns short and authentic.

6. Outsource your sales

This is another secret the companies use today to improve the sales process.

The Global Outsourcing Market was worth a total of $85.6 billion in 2018, and it’s projected to grow to $82.2 billion by 2022. Capital Counselor shows that 80% of logistics leaders claim that the most important thing is how many processes are outsourced.

Small businesses experience rapid growth, and outsourced sales teams are trained to handle the changes that go with it.

Using this method, dedicated sales groups can focus on identifying leads, marketing to different segments, using different platforms, and converting potential customers. Also, this helps you save on costs and get the huge experience needed for achieving greater success. Another benefit is that it gives you better scalability.