Sales Productivity: Communication Methods Teams Should Adopt Today

The way salespeople communicate and collaborate at work is vital to their success, and performance can rise and fall very quickly if communication fails. To increase sales productivity, start with their communication methods. Simply put, nothing enhances a company’s performance more than solid communication.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to improve output, these sales productivity methods should be considered to increase productivity, boost sales, and build more efficient processes.

Why is Communication so Valuable in Sales?

At the core of sales, success is the ability to collect and provide information in a way that makes people want to do business with you. Communication sits at the heart of everything from the value proposition and pricing, to the features of your products or services.

Businesses need to be incredibly attuned to their audience. It helps companies understand:

• What prospects are looking for in their own words
• How you can build your communications around a prospect's preferred style
• Creates a vital opportunity to communicate well within internal teams

To achieve this, everyone needs to be on the same page so that you’re speaking to the customer about a pain they have, in a place they will read it, with a solution you can provide, all in a language familiar to them.

Add Collaboration Software

In many companies, your sales team is spread out across different departments and locations, which can make collaboration tricky. But employees need to have ways to quickly and effectively contact one another, otherwise big decisions and conversations can slip through the cracks.Without ways to ask peers for further details or updates on new developments, teams can become disjointed and ineffective. Empowering your sales team with the right communication tools can help to increase productivity and makes it easier and quicker to facilitate conversations for greater transparency and accountability within the business.

Craft a Story

Facts and figures won’t be remembered, but experiences will. Using storytelling in sales to craft your message and bring humanity to the business. It can help colleagues understand the relevancy of a specific strategy and can form the foundation for conversations among the team.

Stories can help employees understand key values and processes and they can foster a greater understanding of the risks and benefits to the company.

Don’t be afraid to mix up how you communicate within teams and encourage those in the business to do the same. One such way you can achieve this is by making your employees part of the story. Here you see a LinkedIn post example of a story at Stryker which shows humanity in the business while being amplified further through their content strategy for employee advocacy.

Start Tracking Engagements

Sales staff that rely only on emails or instant messengers can misinterpret tone and delivery. You don’t want misalignment within the business purely from messages getting lost in translation, so it can help to use open, trackable communication methods that make it easy for everyone to see what’s going on and respond as needed.

Tools like Google Workspace or Microsoft Teams are versatile, accessible by everyone, and make it easier to collaborate in real-time. They’re great for quick updates, attaching a document for a remote employee, or hopping on a video call as a group. Virtual meetings can also be recorded for future use, so no one needs to miss out on updates.

Take a Headline Approach

Senior members of the business operate differently, so it can help to take a headline approach – that is to say, get straight to the point and think quality rather than quantity. This means presenting your most valuable information and key facts first rather than starting at the beginning and building up. This works well with both verbal and written communication.

Metrics, results, or information pertaining to demographics should be front and center. Look at this as your hook. Keep it clear, concise, and, most importantly, understood.

Final Thoughts

Sales productivity communication methods evolve over time but always hold your team together and keep everything working. It needs to be continually reassessed to make sure it’s as efficient as possible. With the methods above, your sales team will work more effectively with one another, providing better results for the business, and fostering a stronger culture within the company.