As a sales executive, few things are more painful than lost opportunities. Your marketing team puts in time and money to generate high-quality leads for your sales reps, but those leads don’t always turn into new business.

A lot of the time, opportunities are lost because your sales development reps and account executives don’t manage their workflow effectively. In order to help you cut down on lost opportunities, here are a few tips that will help your reps better manage their workflow.

Require reps to have a task on every lead

Every contact in your AEs or SDRs pipeline should have an active task to minimize lost opportunities. If a lead is converted into an opportunity, the AE should create a follow-up task immediately after the demo is completed.

Your SDRs should have active tasks on all of their leads as well. If a demo is held and a lead is not converted into an opportunity, the SDR should find out the reason why it wasn’t converted and set a follow-up task accordingly.

It’s also a good idea to set tasks to run reports with SifData. If a prospect changes jobs, they will become a hot lead and the SDR should reach out as soon as they can. If your reps do not keep tasks on all of their leads, it will result in lost opportunities.

Segment your tasks for the day

In order to have an efficient workflow, your reps should segment their daily tasks. For cold calls, they should make call lists for their leads that they haven’t been able to connect with.

After making lists, they should call those leads in scheduled call blitzes during the morning or late afternoon hours. Call blitzes will help your reps get into a flow and maximize their chances of connecting with leads during peak calling times.

If your SDRs do their own prospecting, they should save that for the early afternoon or during other non-peak calling times.

Get to your new leads ASAP

Your sales team’s leads are the hottest whenever they take a specific action to be transferred to your SDRs, so you should make sure that your reps make contact as quickly as possible.

The interest of newly created leads decreases for every minute that the SDR does not speak with them, so you should ensure that SDRs give their newest leads the highest priority.

Prioritize leads that have recently changed jobs, and use SifData to alert your team of their job changes. If a lead was an advocate at their old company, there’s a good chance that they will do the same at their new company.

Automate everything you can

Your reps have a limited amount of time each day, so they should automate everything that they can. If they don’t use a sales engagement platform, you should strongly consider implementing one. Your reps can automate tasks like emails, demo reminders and calls to cut down on human error which can lead to lost opportunities.

You should also use an auto dialer. Many auto dialers can be integrated directly in your CRM, and they will help your reps reach more leads during optimal call times.

Send reminders before every demo

Anytime your SDRs schedule a demo, they should create a task to remind the prospect of the approaching meeting. Prospects are busy, and by reminding them of the demo the day before will increase the chance that they attend the call.

You can also create an automated email to remind the prospect of the demo. It gives the prospect more accountability and ensures that they keep the demo top of mind. You can include a white paper or case study in the reminder email to keep the prospect’s interest piqued.

Have your SDRs follow-up with every demo that doesn’t convert

You should require your SDRs to follow-up with any demo that is not converted into an opportunity by your account executives. If the prospect does not attend the demo, something may have come up and the SDR can reschedule the call.

If the demo occurs, but the account executive does not convert it into an opportunity, the SDR should still complete a follow-up call. This call can provide useful feedback that the SDR can use to plan their next course of action.

Sales reps have to juggle a variety of different tasks, so they must have an efficient workflow to be successful. Luckily, you can use sales tools like SifData, to save time and decrease lost opportunities.