11 Sales Optimization Strategies to Drive More Revenue in 2022

Sales optimization strategies are key to helping your organization drive more sales revenue - the #1 goal of every sales manager.

The nature of sales is that it’s results-driven, it always has been. Not only is producing revenue integral to the health of a business, but it’s also how success is measured.

There are, of course, many ways sales managers can optimize strategies to increase the amount of revenue their team is producing.

For most organizations, the best and most efficient way to increase revenue is by optimizing their current processes and empowering sales reps to be more productive.

All of which is made possible by using the right software.

Sales used to be an all-or-nothing game. Make a sale, get a commission.

There was no way to progress you towards that win and increase your chances of winning. Because of that, most reps didn't hit their quota.

20% of reps driving 80% of the revenue on average has become a norm.

With new data available and this shift to digital and machine learning, that is changing.

It turns out the best reps do the basics right at the right moment during the sales cycle. This is why it's key to use sales optimization strategies that are data-driven.

Before you read these 11 sales optimization strategies to drive more revenue, it’s important to understand that AI expands your ability to win more and win fast by realigning sales around small wins that lead to the big win.

You can download our Signal-Based Selling eBook to learn how to focus sales on the signals and techniques that close deals.

Take a read through the following sales optimization strategies and you’ll see for yourself how powerful leveraging sales intelligence software is for driving more revenue:

11 Sales Optimization Strategies to Drive More Revenue

1. Identify Smaller Wins en Route to Bigger Wins

Traditionally, sales have always been approached as a “win or lose” game where reps go all in chasing a sale.

However, here at SetSail, we know that big wins or sales don’t just happen. At least, not without deliberate planning and a series of small wins along the way.

We know this because by using SetSail, we’re able to analyze every interaction that goes into a business’s sales cycle. As well as measuring the impact each of the small “wins” has on the close.

This is something that’s only made possible by using intelligent sales tracking software like SetSail.

If you want to optimize your sales process and drive more revenue, you need to identify and improve on the small wins that happen along your own sales cycle.

Doing so will shorten your sales cycle, get your entire team on the same page, and accelerate your revenue.

2. Motivate and Empower Sales Reps

Let’s be real here - sales is a tough role. It really is.

It takes a special kind of person to be able to take the number of rejections, hear the word “no” over and over, and be taken on a long chase only to be let down just before closing on a deal as often as salespeople are.

This is why motivation plays a huge role in managing a sales team, and can be directly tied to the productivity and performance of a sales team.

There are a number of ways you can motivate sales reps, and some reps react better than others to certain rewards.

As a general rule, however, you need to empower reps with the tools and knowledge they need to perform at their best. Then set realistic goals with monetary rewards for exceeding those goals.

That’s sales motivation 101.

We’ve taken this one step further with SetSail. We’ve built one of the most comprehensive leaderboards of any sales software.

You and your reps can see exactly where they rank against one another on a leaderboard and how they’re progressing towards their targets.

They can also communicate with one another through the platform, which is great for strengthening inter-team relationships.

And, of course, you can set monetary rewards for hitting sales targets that are automatically unlocked as soon as a rep hits his or her target.

3. Build an Ideal Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a research-based or data-driven profile that depicts a target or ideal customer.

Essentially, you’re building a visual profile of your customers so your reps have something in front of them they can relate to.

By having this profile of your ideal customer, reps are able to better understand what their prospects and customers want.

More importantly, it gives reps a headstart to tailor and adapt key aspects of how they approach selling to customers for greater success.

Having a better understanding of a customer’s needs = more sales.

It’s that simple.

The good news is that creating a buyer persona is simple, too. SetSail’s sales intelligence collects and analyzes every customer interaction that happens within your business, enabling you to build a buyer persona based on real data.

4. Track and Analyze Sales Data

Every sales optimization strategy we’re covering in this article is important. But if there is one strategy you absolutely cannot overlook, it’s the power of tracking and analyzing your sales data.

If you’re not accurately tracking your sales data, you’re operating in the dark in regards to making decisions that will drive more revenue.

There are some things you can do to try and manually track sales data, but it’s just not efficient.

This is where sales tracking software like SetSail is a complete game-changer. SetSail collects more data points than any other sales tracking software on the market.

Not only that, it uses a combination of AI and behavioral science to turn that data into high-impact, actionable insights that will help you refine every aspect of your sales cycle.

You can gain deep insights into how your reps are performing, where they’re spending their time, tasks that can be automated, the list goes on….

This software is fully bespoke and adaptable to any sales environment. You can set and measure any number of KPIs that are important to your business, and use the data and AI-backed insights to optimize your sales cycle.

As we mentioned earlier, sales is a game of stacking small wins to achieve the big wins. It starts by having the data to enable sales teams to identify and achieve those small wins.

5. Fix Any Holes in the Pipeline

Pipeline management is another often overlooked aspect of optimizing and increasing sales.

Let’s not play down the importance of your sales pipeline. It’s literally a step-by-step process that guides prospects through your sales cycle and converts them into sales.

Therefore, if you have holes in your pipeline, sales are falling out.

Most sales managers have a good understanding of the top and the bottom of their pipeline. Seeing new prospects enter the pipeline is, of course, very important. As is counting the wins at the bottom of the pipeline.

But how much do you really know about what’s happening in between?

Unless you’re using sales tracking software, it’s hard to track pipeline activity down to the ‘small wins’ metrics like follow-ups, calls, having prospects sign NDAs, arranging meetings, and so on.

SetSail Discover leverages machine learning to analyze customer interactions at every stage of your pipeline and provides insights into potential bottlenecks or holes.

Find your data gap with SetSail's complimentary assessment

6. Automate As Many Of Your Sales Processes as Possible

If you manage a sales team you will have heard sales reps complaining about spending too much time on administrative tasks more than once.

Let’s not play it down, there’s a lot of paperwork, data entry, and tasks such as maintaining customer records involved in selling.

Sales reps don’t want to spend their time on these tasks, they want to spend it selling. Just as you, as a sales manager, want to see them spending their time where they can move the revenue needle.

Automating your sales data helps you prevent bad data hygiene. SetSail is designed to automate and streamline many of the high-impact tasks and processes that take sales reps away from the front line.

Using SetSail, you can identify the repetitive and manual tasks that your reps are spending time on, and create a fluid workflow setting up rules to automate many of those tasks.

7. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

It’s estimated that misalignment between sales and marketing teams is costing businesses more than a trillion dollars per year in lost revenue.

We’re sure you don’t want to be part of that statistic.

And, the good news is, you don’t have to be.

Having marketing and sales teams align is rarely going to be something that happens organically, however, so steps need to be taken to bridge the gap.

The reason why it’s so important that these two teams are on the same page is that marketing drives sales - and sales help marketers better understand the customer.

It’s a virtuous circle that when done right is a recipe for more, targeted leads that convert well, and of course, results in more revenue.

The key to opening up communications and getting sales and marketing teams on the same page is by sharing data that helps both teams better understand your customers.

As a sales leader, using SetSail you can easily collect and share data with your marketing team. You can build buyer personas by analyzing customer interactions, share important KPIs, share your sales funnel and pipeline, and even create joint objectives and goals.

8. Implement Territory Management

Territory management is a sales optimization strategy that involves assigning responsibility for a customer group, geographic area, or any other defined “territory” to a rep or reps.

There are numerous benefits to doing this, two of the main ones are:

Better resource allocation - Without territories being clearly defined, it’s all too easy for reps to chase any and every sale and spread themselves thin.

By defining a territory, and in particular, one that plays into a rep’s strengths, your reps are able to leverage their skill sets and expertise on prospects they have a higher chance of converting.

It also helps ensure there are no territories within your customer base that are underserved and neglected.

Easier data optimization - By monitoring sales data narrowed down by territory, it’s often easier to optimize sales performance working on a territory-by-territory basis.

It depends on the type of territory you use within your organization. But generally speaking, you can leverage sales data to assign a rep with the best skills for a specific group of customers.

9. Nurture and Manage Leads Effectively

How well your reps nurture and manage leads plays a huge role in how much time is spent taking a customer through the sales cycle and the percentage of leads that turn into sales.

This is where building relationships really make a difference. A couple of strategies we’ve covered already overlap here; building customer personas and working with your marketing team.

Nurturing leads is all about better understanding your target customers and building stronger relationships.

If a rep reaches out to a prospect too soon or tries to sell them something they’re not ready for, they’re going to lose that lead before they’ve had a chance to work with them.

Educating your reps with a buyer persona, marketing to the right prospects, and understanding customer behaviors before they enter your ecosystem are the three keys to improving lead nurturing.

This is where leveraging SetSail’s AI and behavioral science is a game-changer. SetSail is able to collect and analyze more data points than is humanly possible and turn them into detailed insights into what your customers are looking for.

Don’t leave it up to chance or guesswork. Leverage sales intelligence to identify better leads and to develop a better understanding of how to nurture those leads. You’ll see the impact hitting your bottom line.

10. Monitor Rep Performance and Identify Coaching Needs

There’s no escaping the fact that your sales numbers are closely tied to how effective your sales reps are.

By monitoring individual - and collective - sales performance you can identify a rep’s coaching needs, and provide training to elevate that aspect of their sales game.

Motivating and empowering reps is not always enough. Let’s not forget that sales reps are more than numbers or avatars on a leaderboard; they’re individuals.

Some are born with innate gifts and talents and are more “natural” sellers, while others have greater coaching and training needs.

But with the right combination of training, motivation, and access to the knowledge and tools they need to perform at their best, we believe, or rather we know, that every salesperson can reach superstar status.

By collecting more sales intelligence and data points than any other software on the market today, SetSail is able to give you deep insights into how effective your reps are.

You can identify just exactly how they’re performing at every stage of your customer’s sales journey. This includes micro details such as how they’re interacting with customers and the types of communication they’re using, to how they’re closing - or losing - sales

11. Prioritize Your Highest-Earning Sales Activities

An easy win in terms of driving more revenue is to prioritize your highest-earning sales activities.

It’s no secret within sales that reps only spend about a third of their time selling. The other two-thirds is spent on activities that don’t directly generate revenue.

There are typically two key stages to this strategy:

The first stage is identifying those tasks that are keeping reps away from working with customers and finding solutions to automate or streamline them.

The second stage is to identify the sales-related tasks that are having the highest impact. Then finding ways to empower reps to spend more time on those tasks.

This is all made possible by using SetSail. SetSail Collect picks up every interaction between reps and customers and tracks exactly where they’re spending their time.

It then cleanses and enriches the data before passing it into your CRM. You can then analyze and dissect this data in a way that makes sense for your business.

Giving you data-backed insights into what the highest-earning high-impact tasks are, and exactly how you can reallocate your reps to spend more time doing them.

Conclusion

In this article, we covered 11 of the most impactful sales optimization strategies that will help you drive more revenue this year.

You will have noticed that all of these strategies have something in common - they’re driven by sales intelligence.

In this day and age, you have to be armed with data and intelligence to do exactly what improves your odds of winning.

This is where SetSail comes in.

SetSail is the market-leading sales intelligence software. It collects more data points than any other software solution and is the first Signal-Based Selling sales management software to use a combination of AI and behavioral science.

It’s a true end-to-end solution that helps you gain data-driven insights into how your sales team is performing and ways you can improve productivity and performance. Tour the product → 

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