Maybe you aren’t quite reaching your sales goals. Maybe your profits are lagging behind your competitors. Whatever your reasons for wanting to improve productivity at work, here are just a few tips for getting it done.
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By Mikko Lemola
1. Ask for Feedback
This is one of the easiest ways to determine what is and isn’t working on your sales floor. What do your employees have to say about their jobs? Maybe they hate all of those mandatory meetings; maybe they’re distracted from their work when they have to spend so much time in the conference room. Maybe they love the free coffee; maybe it helps them re-focus and get over their midday slumps. You won’t know until you ask.
2. Switch to Paperless Technology
You’re wasting so much time and money on printed materials. Not only is a big chunk of your overhead going towards papers, pens, folders, binders and ink cartridges, but you’re also spending valuable work hours on typing, printing, copying, faxing and distributing all of your communication. Switch to digital messages and memos if you want to join the 21st century like a forward-thinking business.
3. Upgrade Your Software
This is particularly important if you’re using sales force applications. Instead of spending hours with data entry related to emails and customer accounts, why not upgrade to something like ZynBit? It can help you connect, track and optimize all of your tasks until you’re able to cut hours and hours of data entry from your schedule. Don’t be afraid to try new software in an effort to improve your workplace.
4. Incentivize Your Employees
Light a fire under your employees so that they’re always doing their best. You don’t want a disengaged staff to drag their feet and cost you money. Offer prizes if they can reach their sales goals; host random giveaways for your top earners or top sellers; distribute perks to people with high customer satisfaction rankings. The specifics don’t matter as long as your workers are sufficiently motivated by them.
5. Match Tasks to Skills
Knowing your staff abilities and behavioral styles is important for boosting performance. For example, you can say that an extroverted, creative, out-of-the-box thinker is possibly a great person to pitch ideas to customers. Though, they might struggle their best if they are given a more rule-intensive, detail-oriented work.
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When you ask your employees to be the best at everything just is not efficient–instead, before assigning a task to employee, ask a question from yourself, is this the person best match to perform this work? If you think, he is not, find someone else to whom you admit that his skills and styles are matching your needs.
6. Ask the Experts
If you can’t figure out where you’re going wrong, it’s okay to outsource the problem. Business consultation services can offer a fresh pair of eyes when it comes to things like efficiency issues. They’ll be able to provide a new, third-party perspective on how your business is both succeeding and failing, so they can have valuable insights about what you need to do to improve.
These are just a few tips for boosting productivity at your business. Whether you’re a salesperson hoping to meet your quotas or a manager wanting to improve departmental performances, these suggestions can help you achieve all of your goals. Good luck!