Keys to Strong Sales Productivity in a Hybrid World, According to Experts

Sales has never really been a "butts in seats" type of profession. Reps are often on the move, traveling and meeting with clients. Their performance holds them accountable more so than superficial indicators like time spent in an office chair.

Still, the rapid onset of hybrid and remote work can create ambiguity on both sides – rep and manager – when it comes to productivity. The simple reality is that this is new ground (literally) for many of us.

In a new episode of Sales Think Tank, host Liam Halpin was joined by experts Paul Liesching, Nisha Mullatti, and Mitali Pattnaik to tackle this pressing issue: How can sales leaders ensure productivity in a hybrid work environment? 

You can watch the full episode, Productivity in a Hybrid World, to see these experts go deep on solutions to overcome emerging challenges and use this evolution as an opportunity to fundamentally improve sales processes and experiences.

Here are a couple of key takeaways from the discussions that you can start incorporating into your sales process right now: 

What are the productivity challenges you’ve seen during the pandemic? How are you bridging those gaps?

As with many professions, there is a sense among some that sales pros could exploit the lack of accountability afforded by a virtual environment, where they’re not pressured to “look busy.”

Ironically, however, Liesching explained the challenges he’s seen have been the exact opposite — and they came about from the paranoia of the assumption.

“I have no question that my salespeople are working more… but are they being more productive? I think the answer is no,” said Liesching. “I think what’s happened in lockdown is we’ve forgotten the art of sales and we’ve forgotten to be fixated on the customer.”

“I think as sales leaders we’re guilty because in a remote work situation, we become paranoid about what our sales teams are doing, so we ask them to report to the machine more and more to give us some comfort about what they’re doing. But that reporting takes time, and it impacts their drive and their ability to actually interact with the customer.”

- Paul Liesching

What sort of tasks should salespeople be spending more time on, and which tasks should they be spending LESS time on?

The most productive way to spend time as a salesperson will always be establishing relationships and deepening trust with the customer. Productivity has fallen in a hybrid work environment because salespeople have less time to spend doing it. 

Therefore, as Liesching said, “We need to remind ourselves that the art and job of sales is engaging with the customer.” 

The secret to higher productivity in a hybrid work environment is to find ways to spend less time dealing with data entry or tracking down basic information about clients and more time using that information to build pipeline and strengthen relationships.

Technology can help with that.

What role can technology play in enabling higher productivity?

According to Pattnaik, LinkedIn’s tools were created for the express purpose of cutting down on busy work so sales teams can get back to the truly productive work of interacting with their customers.

“The whole point of tools like Sales Navigator and Sales Insights is really to help with that,” she said. “To subtract much of the heavy lifting, admin work, research, and customer understanding legwork, so salespeople can spend more time with their customers.” 

Solutions like the tools LinkedIn provides can accomplish this, she said, in a wide variety of ways. One of the most beneficial is in the automatic organization and unification of account data into a single source of truth. 

LinkedIn sales tools collect all information from across accounts, including account maps, contact info for decision-makers, engagement and relationship history, and more. It’s all centralized in one place that the entire team can access. 

Not only do these tools free up the time for more productive activities, Pattnaik suggested, but they also help salespeople understand what their next priority should be.

“Sales Navigator has been a wonderful tool in terms of enabling our account managers and our new business salespeople to really understand and get close to the customer, and get that insight to enable our virtual outreach. It’s given us sales insights we could use to tailor our messaging to a highly curated target list like we never have before.”

-Paul Liesching

As a sales manager, how do you lead in a virtual environment and make sure your sales teams have everything they need to be successful?

Mullatti made a good point here: “Even with the flexibility of work-from-home, I think people still need to meet. In my organization, we have a mantra: when people come together, magic happens.”

Mullatti was also quick to note she doesn’t mean people necessarily have to come together in person. “In the times where we couldn’t be face-to-face building relationships, we actually worked together in building virtual relationships.” 

She even noticed some distinct advantages to virtual meetings. 

“Innovative ways to engage and collaborate have emerged. We have seen teams coming together a lot more, globally, even though they are virtual. We’re thinking of ourselves as less siloed and more global.”

Ultimately, all participants agreed: success in sales is about establishing trust. Therefore, ensuring success in virtual and hybrid selling is about finding a way to recreate that trust virtually. 

Between informal, regularly-scheduled meetings, one-to-one videos, and LinkedIn messaging, savvy salespeople are finding ways to bridge the communication gap created by the hybrid workforce, internally and externally.

For much more on how sales leaders are using technology to overcome the challenges of a hybrid work environment and reinventing the way sales works in the process, check out the full Sales Think Tank episode: Productivity in a Hybrid World.