7 Tips to Maintaining Sales Productivity During the Holidays

The holiday season can be a lot of things, but one of them is a distraction from sales productivity. It can be a challenge to keep your B2B sales team on track.

The season heralds employee vacations, company parties and cold weather. How can you combat these challenges and turn them into opportunities to meet sales quotas and goals?

Start with a Plan

It is important to realize that you need to plan your appointments around the fact that the days immediately before and after a holiday may not be productive. Therefore, adding appointments during the beginning of your month can put you ahead of schedule. Challenge your sales team to meet their quotas early in the month and reward them for doing so. You can even add tiers to this plan, with a higher-level reward for better performance.

Create Mini-Breaks

Offer your staff some holiday mini-breaks throughout the week to reduce stress and focus them on interim goals. Staff can take turns bringing in holiday treats for the breaks, or coming up with ideas of team activities for the day. You can offer progress reports during these mini-breaks to let them know how the team is doing and who might need help due to vacations or weather-related issues.

Offer Incentives

Gather your sales reps and inside sales team to brainstorm incentives for the holiday season. These incentives can be customer discounts, staff rewards or anything that will spur them to greatness during this busy month. Have the team vote on the list and use the top five or ten ideas to get them excited.

Create a Holiday Giveaway

Create a customer giveaway for the holiday season if they are willing to make an appointment with your sales rep. Your sales team can bring the giveaway item when they arrive for the appointment as an added incentive for the customer to keep the booking.

Encourage Development

If you have down time due to customer shutdowns or holiday scheduling, use it for sales development and education. You can create a team development session, or offer online or self-taught modules for sales staff. Staff can accrue points for completing these units and receive a reward based on their total units completed.

Deliver Client Gifts

If you are in an industry that gives client gifts, you can have your sales team call on their customers to drop them off and at the same time let them know about any products or services on sale during the holiday season. It gives customers an added reason to meet with the client, and can generate sales to take advantage of the savings.

Show Appreciation

Encourage your reps to support each other in this busy season, and show appreciation when they do. Both inside sales and outside sales reps have to work harder during the holiday season to meet their goals. They deserve to know that you are paying attention to their efforts.