The sales growth plan is overstated if a quick response and a new script each promise an additional order from the same buyer: the money for their purchase will come in once. Improving sales efficiency in a team like this means removing double counting, choosing a specific obstacle to a purchase and freeing salespeople’s time to remove it. The gain is calculated after costs and losses in the work the team was taken away from.

The business owner pays for advertising, salaries and a CRM system. They want to get more from what they have already paid for. The suggestions are clear: respond faster, negotiate better, bring past buyers back. Why choose? It all needs doing.

Look, it is easy here to agree with each suggestion separately and approve an unachievable sales plan as a whole. On one list, a customer is waiting for a follow-up call. On another, the same customer appears among those who have received a proposal. On a third, the team is already planning to win them back. There is work behind every line. The number of lines has not increased the number of buyers.

I will not accept a sales plan in which the head of sales has added up the money from these three lists without comparing the deals themselves. I will also ask during which hours the salesperson will do everything promised. These are the two points where the growth calculation meets the real sales team: one buyer appears in several tasks, and one salesperson is needed for all of them at once.

A system for increasing sales: who exactly are we going to sell to

A system for increasing sales links each lost purchase to a cause the sales team can remove and to a head of sales who changes how the salespeople work. Several actions involving the same order are counted together; a new purchase enters the calculation only when there is a separate need for it.

One order goes through several stages. If a salesperson replies late and leaves a proposal without following up, the head of sales has to fix both actions. Then return to the stalled deal. All three tasks are useful. But promising an order for each means asking the buyer to pay three times for the same need.

The business owner has an understandable objection here: let the head of sales handle all three; that is what they are paid for. Yes, an abandoned enquiry is picked up straight away. Starting training, changing how enquiries are assigned and offering a bonus for winning customers back all at once is a different decision: it uses time, and the results of these actions overlap. The head of sales chooses the sequence and explains why that particular sequence will produce a gain.

A short guide is useful for this conversation. It helps distinguish four kinds of work hidden behind the request to sell better:

  • A suitable enquiry did not lead to a conversation. The history shows a late response and unsuccessful attempts to make contact. Enquiries are picked up differently when the person responsible is busy. The result is measured by the proportion of enquiries from the same flow that led to a conversation.
  • The proposal has been sent, but the buyer is silent. The last contact left an unresolved question or no follow-up was arranged. The head of sales works through that specific point with the salesperson. The result is purchases after the proposal, not the number of follow-up calls.
  • A past customer stopped ordering after a delivery fell through. Before the call, there needs to be a confirmed way to fulfil a new order. Calling without such a solution will lead the salesperson to the same refusal again.
  • A regular customer is due to make their next purchase. The team needs to know when the customer will need it and have a conversation in time. The result is counted over a full buying cycle: a buyer of consumables does not become a lost customer just because the calendar says so.

This picture is put together by the head of sales — the person who leads the sales team. The business owner needs the size of the groups, the reason for the loss and the chosen change. Going through every record in place of the head of sales is another job that cannot quietly be added to the owner’s workload.

And here, some of that attractive sum will have to go. The customer no longer needs the product — a call will not bring them back. The required configuration is unavailable — a new script will not make the proposal suitable. These refusals cannot be recorded as money the team supposedly failed to earn through lack of effort. Otherwise, the promised growth rests on things the salespeople were not allowed to fix.

Increasing sales volume: how many orders the changes will add

Growth in sales volume from the existing flow of enquiries is calculated by tracking buyers’ progress towards an order: how many enquiries led to a conversation and how many conversations ended in a purchase. The calculation uses one group that has already had enough time to decide; the sales value is found by multiplying the number of orders by the average value of a comparable purchase.

Take 200 suitable enquiries. The team spoke to half the buyers, and every fifth buyer they spoke to made a purchase worth 50 thousand roubles. That gave 200 × 50% × 20% = 20 orders, or 1 million roubles.

Now the team wants both to respond faster and to do better at turning conversations into purchases. Suppose the target proportions are 60% of enquiries leading to conversations and 25% of conversations leading to purchases. The calculation can be made like this:

  • With only the first proportion changing: 200 × 60% × 20% = 24 orders, 1.2 million roubles.
  • With only the second changing: 200 × 50% × 25% = 25 orders, 1.25 million roubles.
  • With both changing: 200 × 60% × 25% = 30 orders, 1.5 million roubles.

There really are two places for growth here. More buyers reached a conversation, and more people within this larger group bought. Changing both produces ten additional orders. Adding the separate gains — four and five — would miss one more: the improved conversation also works with those who could not previously be reached by phone.

So my question about any percentage in a sales plan is: which proportion does it change? If by a quick response and following up to close the sale the head of sales means the same follow-up call, the two gains in the calculation have come from task names. If different stages change, they are calculated in sequence. The arithmetic itself does not determine what is happening in the team; the salespeople’s actions show that.

There is another trap with customers won back and regular customers: the purchase happened after the call, but it was already in the forecast. Suppose that, of ten orders after a round of calls, seven were expected in the same month even without the new work. All ten are sales results, but it is too early to call all ten growth from the calls. To assess this, you need the previous buying frequency, the original forecast and what happens to similar customers whom the team is still handling in the old way.

Bringing a purchase forward is useful too: the money arrived earlier. But the next month then starts with fewer expected repeat orders. If the earlier purchase is counted as a gain in the current month while also being left in the future, the sales plan will get the same money twice again.

The gap between the amount the company needs and the work that will bring it in is examined separately in the article “Sales are down. There is a sales plan — but what should salespeople do differently?”. Here, the business owner needs to decide whether the buyers identified are enough to reach the goal or whether the company needs new demand.

Improving sales quality: the cost of a higher purchase rate

An improvement in sales quality shows in orders the company has fulfilled on the agreed terms, without unnecessary discounts, cancellations or rework. If the proportion of paid orders has risen but the cost of delivering what was promised has eaten up the gain, it is the way the team sells that needs to improve.

The team has a simple way to show success: give the buyer more for less money. They will agree more readily. But the business owner asked for the company’s earnings to grow; the accounts department will later deduct the cost of urgent delivery and redoing the order from that same owner’s money.

Suppose an order is worth 100 thousand roubles and costs 70 thousand roubles to fulfil. That leaves 30 thousand roubles before other costs. After a 10% discount, the customer pays 90 thousand roubles, leaving 20 thousand roubles. To get the same 60 thousand roubles as before, three orders are now needed instead of two — 50% more, with the same costs for each.

Two orders brought in 200 thousand roubles in revenue. Three at a discount will bring in 270 thousand roubles. The report shows growth of 35%, while the company has the same 60 thousand roubles before other costs and one more order to work on. If paid urgent delivery was needed for the third, less money was left.

This leads to a very specific discussion about the discount. The team shows where the third order will come from, what it will cost to fulfil and whether the team can do it in time. The business owner decides whether that kind of sale suits them. A single discount limit across the whole range hides this difference when products have different costs.

The quality of the conversation also shows at the point when the order is handed over. If the salesperson agreed a deadline without checking with production, and after payment those fulfilling the order have to negotiate with the buyer again, the mistake happened before the money arrived. The head of sales needs to change when the deadline is agreed and go through with the salesperson what they promise before confirmation. More training in politeness will solve nothing here.

Improving sales team efficiency: who frees up time

Improving sales team efficiency starts with the head of sales deciding which work the team will stop doing or hand over to make room for additional sales. If new customers were left without a response while old ones were being won back, those losses are deducted from the result of winning customers back.

Suppose five salespeople each spend an hour a day on a new task. Over five working days, that will take 25 hours. There is no money allocated for the calls in the budget: the employees already receive a salary. In their schedules, there is a cost — 25 hours of their previous work.

What interests me here is the head of sales’ decision before the first call. Which actions will stop? Who will handle enquiries while a colleague talks to a past customer? If the answers amount to salespeople trying to fit it all in, the head of sales has approved a wish and left the salespeople to choose which task to fail at.

It is good if hours can be freed up: remove duplicate data entry, hand over paperwork, stop preparing calculations before finding out what the buyer needs. When that is not possible, expanding the work comes at a cost in staffing or timescales. It is worth debating this before starting. I examine the connection between being busy and lost deals in the article “Sales are down. Why are salespeople busy all day?”.

The head of sales puts together the first trial over five working days. On the first, they separate out the chosen group of customers and its initial result. On the second, they set the new way of working and free up time. The third day reveals obstacles in enquiries already being handled: someone has been assigned to pick them up, but the second salesperson cannot see the correspondence; a call has been moved, but the freed hours have been filled with calculations again. Here, the head of sales must grant access or remove the competing task.

On the fourth day, it becomes clear who notices a failure without a message from the business owner. If it is once again the owner writing to the salesperson to say that a customer is waiting for a reply, there is another person doing the work in the trial — the owner. On the fifth, the head of sales records the actions taken, the costs and the date when the financial result will be assessed, based on the usual time it takes to buy. If a purchase takes a month, the chosen group is given a month before the money is assessed; by Friday, the head of sales shows the work completed.

Suppose that, after this period, additional sales totalled 200 thousand roubles. Fulfilment cost 120 thousand roubles, and bonuses and additional work cost 30 thousand roubles. That left 50 thousand roubles before the company’s other costs. If the new work cost 90 thousand roubles, the same sales produced minus 10 thousand roubles. Lost orders in the area from which the hours were taken are counted separately.

It makes sense to continue with an approach in which the team carries out the new actions, buyers go on to place orders, and the gain remains after costs and losses elsewhere. When the actions are happening but customers are still blocked by the same reason for refusing, the solution needs to change. When the actions are not happening, the head of sales removes the specific obstacle: workload, access, skill or waiting for approval.

If there is no one to manage this daily work, RENTROP takes it on through its “turnkey sales management” product: increasing the company’s sales through faster handling of enquiries, following up to close sales, winning customers back and repeat sales.

Crossing out orders counted twice makes the sales growth plan shorter. That is unpleasant: the business owner needs money, while the head of sales is crossing out the promised gain. But this is exactly where they begin to take responsibility for the team — when they can explain which orders the team will bring in and what it will cost them, before extra promises turn into a missed sales plan.