It looks like efficiency really gets results!

I started doing some research after reading a Blog that I follow and in that Blog they were discussing how to increase revenue. I think we all think about this and discuss it on a regular basis. In this Blog the author discussed some information from a Harvard Business Review that he had read. I found the information interesting so I decided to find it and read if for myself.


The review is entitled The New Science of Sales Force Productivity by Dianne Ledingham, mark Kovac, and Heidi Locke Simon. In it they discuss “The data, tools and analytics that companies are increasingly using to improve their sales forces will not only help top reformers shine, but they will also help drive sales force laggards to the middle of the curve.”

Having run a number of sales forces in the past I was intrigued by this statement and what exactly it meant.

I’m all about efficiency and giving sales people what they need to do their job better. What I didn’t realize was how much that could really affect the bottom line.

In the past, like many out there, I’ve been told that we need to increase sales by a certain percentage and then we go through the exercise of spreading it out over territories and figuring out where we can add heads to get the desired results. What I never realized was that wasn’t the answer at all.

What the study shows is that you can increase your revenue much faster by building in efficiencies than you can by adding head count. It shows that you can increase your revenue 79% over a five year period with 21% less head count if you can increase efficiency only 8% annually. It shows how it is much cheaper and more effective it is to increase productivity as much as possible than it is to add headcount. This can be accomplished through targeted offerings, optimized automation, tools, and procedures; performance management and sales force deployment – and only after this would it make sense to add feet on the street.

In another study I read that most good sales reps spend 20 to 25% of their time researching their prospects on the Internet. If this is true and a good sales rep works 50 hours per week that would mean they spend 10 to 12.5 hours a week looking for information. I you could provide them a tool that would automate that process and cut their time by two thirds or so you could give them back 6 to 8 hour per week to spend contacting clients. This is at least a 12% increase in efficiency which should equate to over a 20% increase in revenue per year plus all the cost savings of not adding all those people. I don’t know any business that wouldn’t love to have that.