A major mistake I see in business is confusing efficiency with effectiveness and productivity. Streamlining a process without considering if it produces the results you want. Especially in sales.
20 years ago we’d be given a phone book and told to dial in the hope of making a sale. Hardly efficient or effective.
Today technology allows you send mass emails or LinkedIn messages.
It may be efficient, but is it effective? How many of these people become clients? And how many do you churn and burn?
To be highly productive you must balance efficiency with effectiveness. Put another way, efficiency is doing things right, and effectiveness is doing the right things.
Putting this into a sales context…
Sales effectiveness comes from improving your conversion rate. (Number of Sales / Number of Leads) x 100.
Efficiency comes from targeting leads who could be in a position to buy.
A great message to an audience who isn’t interested will fall on deaf ears.
So targeting is key.
Find prospects who both have the issue you solve and are in a position to buy. That’s leveraging efficiency and effectiveness into sales productivity.
Anything else is wasting your time and theirs!