Skip to content.
Back to Walnut
The Sales Insider
Brought to you by
Sales Tips
6 min read

5 Sales Optimization Strategies to Set Your Sales Team Up For Success

You know the famous sales chant:

What do we want? 

To meet our sales quotas! …And maybe also a nap!

When do we want it?

Now! …But also in a frantic rush right before the end of the quarter!

Oh, you didn’t know that chant? Okay, we may have just made it up.

But the point is that while many people and companies will tell you all sorts of things about sales, here we’ll tell it to you straight: sales is mostly a bunch of anxious, tired, and hardworking people trying to meet impossibly high quotas.

That’s because sales is goal driven. The sales department is responsible for producing the revenue that keeps the doors of the business open, which is why sales managers are constantly looking for new ways to optimize sales and improve results.  

The way they do that is by trying to streamline and improve current processes and empowering reps with sales and productivity tools. This is known as a sales optimization strategy.

What is a sales optimization strategy?

A company’s sales optimization strategy is focused on identifying and implementing new sales methods and tools within a sales team to maximize their performance and increase revenue. 

This is done by analyzing past interactions, providing support and guidance, and empowering the teams with valuable sales tools. 

Top 5 sales optimization strategies you can start using now

Let’s get down to it. 

In order to drive more sales, meet your quotas, and increase your company’s revenue, you need to optimize your sales.  

Well, you came to the right place. Here are our top 5 ways you can optimize your sales team’s output.

1. Measure data accurately (and in the right way)

Have you ever heard the expression, “What gets measured gets managed”? 

(This one we didn’t just make up, we promise.)

Without the right sales data at your disposal, you won’t be able to measure the impact of optimizing your sales efforts. Of course, you don’t want to tie your sales teams to their desks capturing data. Aim to capture information as automatically and as unobtrusively as possible. Choosing the right sales tool, including a CRM that logs sales activity and customer data (and generates comprehensive and insightful reports), is key. 

Focus on data, including sales metrics tied to company goals that you and your team can impact. When you track metrics that work towards your goals and are within your control, you gain actionable insights instead of meaningless information.

This includes tracking:

  • Sales activity, including calls made, emails sent, time spent on calls, meetings booked, demos delivered, and sales targets reached or exceeded per rep.
  • Sales performance optimization, including response rates, call reach rates, trial sign-ups, and pipeline value.
  • Sales conversions, including sales by channel, average conversion time, average deal size, retention rates, and customer lifetime value. 

This information will pinpoint areas for improvement within your teams and sales processes.

2. Simplify and experiment with the sales process

Once you have the right data, evaluate your current sales process, build on the elements that work, and slowly eliminate what doesn’t work. Making small, incremental, and measurable changes over time will deliver the right results and provide your team with the right foundation for success. 

Changing everything at once makes it harder to determine which changes led to the results. So start by changing a single metric. 

For example, start with the activity at the top of the funnel. Do phone calls close more sales than emails? If so, replace demo follow-up emails with follow-up phone calls for two weeks during the next stage of your sales process and revise the results. 

If your team is great at qualifying leads but not good at moving them further through the funnel after the demo stage, focus on improving your product demos

Once your numbers noticeably improve, keep doing what works and start working on a different metric. Over time, it takes experimentation to find what works—not a complete overhaul at once.

3. Empower your sales teams

To hit your targets and optimize your sales, you have to set your sales team up for success. Use the data you’ve gathered to evaluate each salesperson’s performance individually. 

Spend time coaching them and guiding them through the key areas needing support and improvement. Set up opportunities for review where the whole team can learn from victories (and mistakes). 

Secondly, ensure that the team has the right sales tech stack and access to the right resources to succeed. This includes CRM tools that automate sales information (as mentioned earlier) and email templates, sales scripts, and powerful, high-impact demo platforms. 

4. Focus on a target profile

Sometimes a prospect (or even a customer) is not a good fit for your product or service. These customers will probably end up churning, taking up the time of your support staff trying to fit the product to their needs, and potentially damaging the reputation of your firm. 

Find a good fit for your business by building an ideal customer profile (also called a buyer persona) to identify the customers to focus on. Start by listing the ideal demographic and emotional characteristics and criteria the customer should meet, including:

  • Likes and dislikes
  • Problems that motivate them to purchase products/services
  • Feelings and emotions they are experiencing that will push them to make a change
  • Common objectives 
  • Buying behaviors
  • Budgets 
  • Demographics (including age, gender, location, and education level)

A buyer persona helps your team better qualify leads and find prospects who are far more likely to want, need, and enjoy your product. 

5. Upgrade your demos

A sales demo, when executed correctly, can be the most convincing sales asset you use. But it will also be the one thing that convinces customers NOT to close the deal when done badly. 

Create an interactive demo that is engaging, crash-proof, personalized, and informative. If you want to shine, customize the demo to show the specific features your client wants to see. Your demo should let prospects understand how your product or solution solves their pain points and help them see what using the product will feel like if they buy it (and what they stand to lose if they don’t). 

Optimize your sales by switching your focus

Sales optimization, including sales funnel optimization, is an ongoing process. It’s important to keep challenging processes and assumptions by examining your data and making improvements. 

But a great way to know if you are going in the right direction is by analyzing how enjoyable of a sales experience you are creating for your prospects. Are yous sales cycles getting shorter? Are your prospects quickly understanding what your product is and how it can help them? Are they engaging with the sales assets that you are sending them?

Sales teams that use interactive product demos throughout their sales process let prospects see their product earlier on and sell quicker. By using a sales demo platform like Walnut, sales teams can quickly create personalized demos for individual prospects that showcase specific features of your product that solve their unique pain points.

This leaves both sales rep and customers happier.

So what are you waiting for? Book a meeting with us now by clicking that big purple “Get Started” button on the top of the screen.

You may also like...

Qualify B2B Leads
Sales Tips

How to Qualify B2B Leads & Stop Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Learn everything there is to know about qualifying sales leads.
18 min read
Keep reading
Build a Sales Process Flowchart for SaaS
Sales Tips

How to Build a Sales Process Flowchart for SaaS

Your Sales Process Flowchart is a valuable tool your SaaS business can use to improve lead conversions through the sales…
12 min read
Keep reading
The Full Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Sales Tips

The Full Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Learn all about account-based marketing and how to identify the right accounts for your ABM campaign. And how to build…
22 min read
Keep reading

You sell the best product.
You deserve the best demos.

Never miss a sales hack
Subscribe to our blog to get notified about our latest sales articles.

Let’s get started

Fill out the short form below so we can tailor our offer to your needs.

Are you nuts?!

Appreciate the intention, friend! We're all good. We make a business out of our tech. We don't do this for the money - only for glory. But if you want to keep in touch, we'll be glad to!


Let's keep in touch, you generous philanthropist!

Sign up here!

Fill out the short form below to join the waiting list.