5 Ways Your Sales Team Can Recover Lost Revenue in 2021

With 2020 (blessedly) behind us, many businesses are scrambling to recover revenue they lost in the fray. The economic upheaval triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic left few companies unscathed. In fact, 97% of B2B companies have experienced lost revenue due to the pandemic.

As we kick off 2021, it‘s time to shift from survival mode to growth mode. While the "new normal" is still taking shape, businesses can‘t afford to sit back and wait for the dust to settle. Recovering lost revenue needs to be a top priority.

The good news? Recouping lost revenue is very doable—if you‘re strategic about it. Here are five powerful ways your sales team can recover lost revenue and get back on track in 2021.

1. Adjust prices to maximize revenue

When it comes to boosting revenue, few levers are as impactful as pricing. A mere 1% improvement in price can translate into an 8-12% increase in operating profits. Yet pricing strategy is often an afterthought for sales teams.

If you haven‘t re-examined your pricing lately, now‘s the time. The economic landscape has changed dramatically, and your old pricing may no longer be optimal.

To pinpoint your pricing sweet spot, you need to consider three key factors:

1. Your costs: How much does it cost you to produce and deliver your offering? Have your costs increased due to supply chain issues or other pandemic-related factors? Make sure your pricing enables you to maintain healthy margins.

2. Your buyers: How has the pandemic impacted your target customers‘ needs, priorities, and price sensitivity? What are they willing to pay in the current climate? Keep a pulse on changing buyer preferences.

3. Your competitors: How does your pricing compare to alternative solutions in the market? Are competitors raising or lowering prices? You don‘t need to match them directly, but you need to have a strong rationale for your pricing.

Based on those factors, adjust your pricing to maximize revenue and profitability. But avoid making drastic increases that could spook customers. Instead, get surgical about it.

For example, you may want to introduce tiered pricing to capture more customers at different budget levels. The key is to clearly define and communicate the value of each tier.

Here‘s how one B2B software company restructured their pricing to great effect:

Tier	Monthly Price	Features
Basic	$99/user	Core product functionality
Pro	$199/user	Everything in Basic + advanced reporting and integrations
Enterprise	Custom	Everything in Pro + dedicated support, training, and SLAs

By introducing a lower-cost tier, they were able to attract more SMB customers. And by adding a premium enterprise tier, they could better serve their highest-value customers. The result? A 15% boost in average revenue per user within one quarter.

Ultimately, pricing isn‘t a "set it and forget it" activity. Use data analytics to continuously monitor and optimize your pricing based on sales data, win/loss analysis, and customer feedback. Dynamic pricing is the name of the game in 2021.

2. Focus on accurate time-tracking

For any business that bills clients based on time (agencies, consultancies, contractors, etc.), accurate time tracking is make-or-break for revenue. After all, time is literally money.

When time isn‘t tracked properly, it‘s all but guaranteed that revenue will slip through the cracks. One study found that the average loss due to time tracking errors is 4.5 hours per week per employee. For a team of 10 employees billing at $150/hour, that translates to over $350,000 in lost revenue per year!

If lax time tracking was a problem for your team in 2020, make getting it right a top priority this year. Here are some best practices to implement:

• Use a user-friendly time tracking tool: Adopt software that makes it dead simple for employees to log their hours from any device. Look for features like automated reminders, one-click timers, and integration with your invoicing system.

• Enforce daily time tracking: Mandate that all billable time must be logged by the end of each workday while the work is still fresh in employees‘ minds. Time logged long after the fact is prone to errors.

• Be descriptive: Require employees to write clear notes describing how they spent their time, rather than just entering hours. This creates a helpful record to reference if any issues or questions arise later.

• Designate a time tracking "champion": Appoint someone on your team to own time tracking and be responsible for ensuring data integrity. They should review and approve timesheets regularly.

• Analyze the data: Don‘t just collect time tracking data—dig into it. Analyze employee utilization rates, billable vs. non-billable time ratios, and other KPIs. Share insights with your team to help them understand the impact of time tracking on the business.

For example, one IT consulting firm found that their utilization rate (the percentage of employees‘ time that is billable) had slipped to 60% by Q3 of 2020 due to inefficient operations. By implementing stronger time tracking and identifying operational issues, they were able to increase utilization to 85% and recover $200K in billable hours. That‘s the power of time tracking done right.

3. Work with marketing to optimize lead generation

Recovering lost revenue starts with getting more qualified leads into your pipeline. But sales can‘t do it alone. To really move the needle on lead generation, you need to work hand-in-hand with marketing.

Unfortunately, sales and marketing misalignment is still rampant. Only 37% of sales and marketing teams say they are aligned. The disconnect often stems from differences in goals, KPIs, and customer data.

In 2021, it‘s critical to bridge that gap. Schedule regular sync-ups between sales and marketing leaders to get on the same page about:

• Target audience: Who are your ideal customers and what are their key characteristics? Document your buyer personas in detail and ensure sales and marketing are aligned on who you‘re pursuing.

• Messaging: What pain points, benefits, and value propositions resonate most with your target buyers now? Gather feedback from sales conversations to help marketing refine messaging.

• Lead qualification: What criteria indicate a lead is sales-ready? Agree on a common definition of a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL).

• Handoffs: What‘s the process for transitioning a lead from marketing to sales? Document a clear lead handoff workflow and SLAs. Use automation to ensure no leads slip through the cracks.

• Reporting: What KPIs will you use to measure the health of your lead generation efforts? Agree on a shared dashboard with metrics like leads generated, MQL-to-SQL conversion rate, sales accepted leads, etc.

For example, one B2B tech company held a "sales and marketing summit" to align on all of the above. By getting aligned, marketing was able to launch an account-based marketing (ABM) program focused on the tier-one accounts most likely to convert. The ABM efforts generated 50% more marketing qualified leads and $4M in pipeline in just one quarter.

The lesson? When sales and marketing work together like a well-oiled machine, lead generation will thrive.

In terms of the most effective marketing channels and activities for B2B lead generation, recent data shows that the top performers are:

1. Content marketing (blog posts, videos, eBooks, etc.)
2. LinkedIn advertising and organic posts
3. Email marketing
4. Sponsored webinars
5. Search engine marketing (SEM)

The common thread? They all allow you to reach and engage your target audience where they‘re already spending time online. Invest in creating value-add content that addresses your buyers‘ needs and pain points. Then use digital channels to promote that content and drive leads into your funnel.

4. Streamline and automate administrative tasks

When your salespeople are buried in administrative tasks, they can‘t spend as much time on actual revenue-generating activities like prospecting, presenting, and closing. And all those tedious manual tasks add up to a lot of lost productivity (and therefore lost revenue).

Case in point: Salespeople only spend about one-third of their time actually selling. The rest is eaten up by other tasks like data entry, quote generation, scheduling, and reporting. Imagine the revenue opportunities you could unlock by streamlining those tasks and giving your reps more time back in their day.

That‘s where sales automation comes in. By leveraging technology to automate repetitive tasks and processes, you can significantly boost your team‘s efficiency and productivity. According to a recent survey, 75% of sales leaders say sales automation tools are either "important" or "very important" to closing deals.

Some of the most impactful areas to streamline and automate in 2021 include:

• CRM data entry: Automate the logging of sales activities, customer interactions, deal updates, and other CRM data. Look for tools that can capture data from email, calendars, and other sources and sync it to your CRM automatically.

• Prospecting: Use technology to streamline your lead research, list building, and outreach processes. For example, an AI-powered prospecting tool can automatically find contact information for your target buyers and flag which ones are most likely to convert based on buying signals.

• Reporting: Automate the creation of sales forecasts, pipeline reports, and performance dashboards. Use pre-built templates and drag-and-drop builders to generate professional reports in minutes rather than hours.

• Order processing: Digitize your order forms, contracts, and other sales documents. Use e-signature software to get them signed electronically. Integrate your CRM with your ERP system to automatically process orders and invoices.

Of course, investing in sales automation technology is just the first step. To maximize the value of these tools, you also need to:

1. Choose the right tools: Not all sales automation software is created equal. Do your homework and select tools that integrate well with your current tech stack and truly solve your team‘s pain points.

2. Train your team: Make sure your reps are fully trained on how to use the new tools as part of their daily workflow. Provide clear documentation and ongoing enablement to drive adoption.

3. Measure the impact: Quantify the time savings and productivity gains you achieve through automation. Track metrics like time spent on data entry, lead response times, and forecast accuracy.

4. Iterate and optimize: Regularly collect feedback from your team on what‘s working well and what could be improved with your automation approach. Implement best practices for things like CRM hygiene to keep data clean and campaigns optimized.

For example, one B2B fintech company implemented a sales engagement platform that automated their reps‘ prospecting activities like email outreach, call logging, and meeting scheduling. The result? Reps saved an average of 10 hours per week on admin tasks, translating to over $300K in additional revenue.

The key is to approach sales automation strategically, not just as a band-aid solution. By streamlining your processes end-to-end, you‘ll free up your reps to focus on high-value activities that drive revenue growth.

5. Refine your lead generation infrastructure

Generating a consistent flow of high-quality leads is the lifeblood of any successful sales organization. But for many teams, lead generation is more of an ad hoc activity than a well-oiled system. If that describes your current state, it‘s time for an upgrade.

In 2021, you need a rock-solid lead generation infrastructure that runs like clockwork and delivers predictable results. That means moving beyond one-off tactics and building an integrated "machine" that combines people, processes, content, and technology.

The key components of a high-performing lead generation infrastructure include:

• Ideal customer profile (ICP): A crystal clear definition of your target buyer, including demographics, firmographics, pain points, and buying triggers. Your ICP should guide your entire go-to-market strategy.

• Lead generation channels: The specific marketing and sales channels you‘ll use to find and attract leads, such as content syndication, paid search, social media, events, etc. Choose channels that align with your ICP.

• Lead magnet content: Valuable, gated content assets that motivate your target buyers to share their contact information, such as eBooks, webinars, assessments, etc. Lead magnets should be highly relevant and useful to your ICP.

• Lead capture mechanisms: The tactics and technologies you use to convert website visitors into leads, such as landing pages, opt-in forms, pop-ups, live chat, etc. Make it frictionless for leads to raise their hands.

• Lead management system: The processes and tools used to track, qualify, nurture, and hand off leads, typically a CRM combined with a marketing automation platform. Your system should enable transparency between marketing and sales.

• Service level agreements (SLAs): Documented agreements between marketing and sales that define key processes like lead scoring, routing, follow-up timeframes, and feedback loops. SLAs create accountability on both sides.

By putting these foundational pieces in place, you can scale your lead generation efforts more efficiently and effectively. But simply having the infrastructure isn‘t enough—you need to continuously monitor and optimize its performance.

Some of the most important metrics to track include:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) generated
• Sales qualified leads (SQLs) generated
• Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate
• Opportunity-to-customer conversion rate
• Average lead response time
• Cost per lead
• Return on investment (ROI) by channel

For example, one mid-market software company built a new lead generation infrastructure from the ground up. They invested in content creation, paid media, conversion optimization, lead scoring, and sales enablement. As a result, they tripled their MQL volume, improved their MQL-to-SQL conversion rate by 50%, and generated $30M in new pipeline—all within one year.

By tracking these metrics religiously, you can identify areas for improvement and double down on what‘s working. Remember, your lead generation machine is never "done"—it should continuously evolve based on data and results.

Road to Recovery

Recouping lost revenue is never easy, but it‘s far from impossible. By focusing your efforts on these five areas—pricing, time tracking, marketing alignment, sales automation, and lead generation—you‘ll be well on your way to recovery in 2021.

The key is to be proactive and strategic. Don‘t just fall back into old habits and hope for different results. Use this opportunity to critically evaluate your sales operations and find ways to optimize for the new normal.

It won‘t happen overnight, but with the right mindset and approach, you can bounce back stronger than ever. Here‘s to recovering lost revenue and kicking off your best year yet!