How to Increase Sales Productivity in Scaling SaaS Startups
While Series A companies are still finding their footing and developing a profit-driving business model, investors expect Series B startups to be at the stage of development where they’re scaling their processes, optimizing team performance, and expanding market reach to meet demand.
This is why these SaaS startups need to increase sales productivity so that they can meet their sales goals efficiently and make more money while spending less. Here's how to do it.
Understanding Sales Productivity
For revenue leaders, sales productivity is crucial to long-term, scalable growth in their Series B SaaS startup. As Chris Sorenson, CEO at PhoneBurner, says, “Productivity becomes the backbone of scaling efficiently at that stage. Teams are often under pressure to show rapid ROI, and wasted time on repetitive tasks or misalignment can quickly derail momentum.”
Here’s what revenue leaders need to know about increasing sales productivity.
What is Sales Productivity?
Sales productivity is a measure of how effectively the sales team generates, qualifies, and closes deals without overextending on available resources.
According to Sidharth Ramsinghaney, Director of Corporate Strategy and Operations at Twilio, “Sales productivity in SaaS isn't just about individual performance metrics—it's about creating systematic, repeatable success at scale.”
Sales productivity in SaaS isn’t just about individual performance metrics—it’s about creating systematic, repeatable success at scale.
Importance of Sales Productivity Post Series-B
Post-Series B funding is when investors start to expect a return on their investment, and growing SaaS startups face more pressure to demonstrate efficient growth and quick results.
Peter Lewis, CEO at Strategic Pete, points out that “For SaaS companies, where metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) and sales velocity define success, productivity isn't just a goal — it's the foundation on which survival is based.”
To generate more revenue with less input, sales teams need to minimize administrative work and team misalignment while increasing behaviors that enhance momentum — like defining their sales process and closing deals faster.
Key Challenges in Enhancing Sales Productivity
Here are some key challenges businesses might face to enhance sales productivity.
Scaling Sales Operations
For Ramsinghaney, “The challenge post-funding isn't just hiring more salespeople — it's maintaining productivity while scaling.”
Early on in their growth stages, company leadership tries different strategies and tactics before they figure out what works for them. This often means most processes aren’t documented or even standardized. As a result, when the company increases its headcount, it isn’t easy to provide new hires with operational best practices.
Sorenson agrees, saying “In my experience, one of the biggest challenges in scaling productivity is aligning the team around a clear process and the right tools. When you’re growing fast, it’s easy for inefficiencies to creep in.”
Maintaining Team Cohesion and Performance
Pre-funding startups may have smaller sales teams that are easier to align on goals. However, as the sales organization grows, it can be difficult to keep track of the team’s individual performance.
For Daria Shevchenko, CMO at Snov.io, one of the main challenges was onboarding new hires into an already strong and productive team. “When you've boosted productivity and started scaling rapidly like we did, the hardest thing is to maintain it that way. Although the team is perfect, the more you grow, the more people you need. Plus, it's just good practice to involve new talent once in a while. So, the challenge here is for new hires to be able to fit into the stream of work right away and start bringing results. This can really limit their adaptation period.”
When you’ve boosted productivity and started scaling rapidly like we did, the hardest thing is to maintain it [when adding new people to the team].
Sales expert at Academized Eric Frost agrees, arguing that “Scaling with a tight focus on team alignment is probably the most difficult challenge when it comes to productivity. Adding growth creates uncertainty and the mismatch between sales and RevOps can lead to bottlenecks.”
Internal team misalignment can pave the way for less productive reps to fall through the cracks.
Strategies to Boost Sales Productivity
Improving sales productivity has a net positive impact on your bottom line. According to Forbes, boosting sales productivity leads to higher revenue, improved profitability, and better competitive advantage. Here are some strategies you can use to boost sales productivity among your team.
Implementing Effective Sales Processes
A well-defined, effective sales process is the first step to increased sales productivity. Harvard Business Review notes that teams with a formal sales process generate more revenue. Ad hoc sales processes waste time and keep sales reps focused on tasks that won’t build the bottom line.
In Sorenson’s experience, one of the biggest challenges in scaling productivity is aligning the team around a clear process and the right tools. He addresses this problem by “maintaining a tightly defined sales workflow and ensuring everyone is trained on our systems, which include our own dialer software integrated with CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce.”
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To improve sales productivity, avoid ad hoc processes that confuse reps, create friction, and waste time. Instead, clearly define and document a sales process that aligns everyone on the revenue generation team towards a shared objective.
Leveraging Sales Productivity Tools
For Frost, sales enablement tools helped with efficiency throughout the sales process. “Following our Series B, we launched a CRM-based sales enablement tool. It enabled us to significantly minimize the time we spent on administrative activities so that our staff could invest more time in actual selling.”
V. Frank Sondors, Founder at Salesforge.ai, also uses technology to automate repetitive tasks — “In one case, automating 40% of repetitive tasks boosted rep productivity by 25%.”
Marty Bauer, Director of Sales at Omnisend, implemented digital tools to boost productivity. “For example, we built a custom Smart Signal tool from other tools we already had – Hubspot, CRM insights, and Slack. This helped us quickly create a system that tracks non-paying user behavior and alerts the right team member when it’s time for a direct conversation.”
Tools like customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you systematize lead management, prospect outreach, and pipeline generation. Analytics tools can also help you track metrics and KPIs to gain a more accurate understanding of your team's performance.
Investing in Sales Training and Development
Leaving your growing sales team to figure things out on their own leads to a ton of wasted sales tactics, duplicate work, and unaligned tactics. To maintain high productivity levels, Series B startups should prioritize ongoing training and development to keep their reps in excellent selling shape.
Effective training is specific to each rep and is ongoing, focuses on skills, and is part of their daily routine as a sales rep. This keeps them refreshed, shows them you care, and helps them maintain high productivity levels.
Harvard Business Review found that companies who trained their sales managers to manage their pipelines saw 9% faster revenue growth than those who didn’t. Additionally, one study found that companies with robust sales enablement and training programs experience
- 31% high quota attainment
- 24% better individual rep quota attainment
- 23% higher lead conversion rates.
Measuring and Monitoring Sales Productivity Metrics
It’s not enough to add more headcount, expand your market, and even document your sales process. Without key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to track progress, your team will be operating in the dark and unaware if what they’re doing is actually working.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track
Sorenson’s team focuses on KPIs like calls-to-demo conversion rate, average deal cycle time, and revenue per rep. “We also analyze team activity data to pinpoint bottlenecks, such as where leads are dropping off. For example, by measuring the connection rate during outbound calls, we’ve been able to adjust targeting strategies, which led to a 20% boost in call productivity for our sales team.”
Ramsinghaney, on the other hand, advocates for KPIs beyond traditional metrics. “While everyone tracks pipeline coverage and conversion rates, the most insightful metrics often focus on efficiency.” These metrics include:
- Sales ramp efficiency: Time to productivity for new hires
- CAC payback period: How quickly customers generate profit
- Sales motion effectiveness: Win rates by segment and use case
- Sales capacity utilization: Active selling time vs time spent on admin tasks
Ramsinghaney says these metrics are especially powerful because they help identify systemic issues versus individual performance gaps. “For instance, if your CAC payback period is increasing while win rates remain stable, it might indicate a targeting problem rather than a sales execution issue.”
Utilizing Data Analytics for Continuous Improvement
Collecting data analytics helps you track your team’s progress and optimize as necessary. When used effectively, data eliminates guesswork and pinpoints areas of success and opportunities for improvement.
Frost believes that measuring the right things is critical for productivity gains to be quantifiable and sustainable. At Academized, they look at a combination of activity and revenue impact metrics. “For instance, keeping track of deal velocity and average contract value along with pipeline hygiene offers practical guidance on where productivity can be optimized. When we observed that deal velocity was slowing during a boom time, we identified the cause as an approval bottleneck. It was easier to streamline that step, and this led to a productivity increase and increased close rate.”
Keeping track of deal velocity and average contract value along with pipeline hygiene offers practical guidance on where productivity can be optimized.
As Sondors says, “Measuring productivity must also ensure that the entire team moves unitedly toward clear goals and systems.”
Case Studies of Successful Sales Productivity Improvements
When it comes to boosting sales productivity, different companies employ different strategies based on their business model and the specific needs of their sales organization.
Lead Quality Over Quantity
Shevchenko’s team at Snov.io enhances productivity by focusing more on leads who are more likely to convert than every prospect that comes through the funnel. They do this by looking at user behavior and engagement rates to see who’s interested in their product and interacts with their brand the most. This hyper targeting helped them increase lead conversion by 15% in 3 months.
Prioritizing Sales Rep Activity
Lewis, who found that sales reps often get distracted juggling admin work, prospecting, and follow ups, implemented a time-blocking system tied to deal stages. “We solved this by mapping their day to pipeline priorities: mornings were reserved for prospecting and outreach, mid-day was for discovery calls and demos, and late afternoons were dedicated to admin tasks like updating the CRM.”
As a result, his team got back 10 hours a week, and deal velocity rose 18%, as reps spent time pushing qualified deals rather than just following non-end deals.
Integrating AI Agents
Sondors likewise targeted repetitive tasks that took his reps away from pipeline-driving activity. He integrated AI agents to handle tasks like lead qualification and follow ups. “Our AI system scored incoming leads based on engagement, industry, and company size, prioritizing the best ones for the team. This helped qualify prospects who are more likely to convert.”
Within 3 months, their team saw a 30% increase in qualified meetings booked and a 20% reduction in average deal-closing time.
Scale Your Sales
The secret of keeping sales up with SaaS is being data-driven and not losing sight of new opportunities as the team grows.
For Series B companies, driving scalable growth and achieving ROI is a key priority for the business and their investors. Improving sales productivity allows you to do more with less — generating more and better outcomes with less intensive inputs.
“The secret of keeping sales up with SaaS,” says Frost, “is being data-driven and not losing sight of new opportunities as the team grows. Small but effectively implemented changes can make a giant difference, particularly at a time of rapid growth.”
