Double Inside Sales Rep Productivity in a Week

Two of the hardest positions to fill are inside sales reps and software engineers. So, when an entrepreneur comes to me and says they want to expand their sales team, I first want to find out if they are doing everything possible to maximize existing productivity. More often than not, they are using a modern CRM, like Salesforce.com, but aren’t taking advantage of so many other good sales tools.

Here are tools to double inside sales rep productivity in a week (disclosure: I’m an investor in the last three):

• InsideSales.com PowerDialer – Queue up and crank through a ton of calls much faster than dialing by hand.
• Google Voice with Google Chrome Extension for Click-to-Call – When not using an automated dialer, dialing should be a simple click of the phone number in the CRM.
• Quality USB Noise Canceling Headset With Microphone (Jabra BIZ 2400 USB headset is recommended) – Always talk hands-free. Always.
• SalesLoft – Quality prospecting starts with quality lists.
• Rivalry – Cultivate a culture of competition with live leaderboards and automated coaching.
• Voxa – Automate email logging, follow-ups, and other tasks to maximize time selling.

Sales rep productivity is a function of data, technology, processes, and, of course, time. Double the productivity by taking advantage of technology to make the reps’ time twice as useful.

What else? What are some other ways to improve the productivity of inside sales reps?