Six Ways to Step Up Your Sales Process
The Terillium Sales Cloud CRM Team has been busy this year implementing Customer Relationship Management solutions for businesses looking to modernize their sales tools. Kicking off a CRM implementation is a great time to revisit the business sales process and strategy. Our consultants help businesses review their current sales process and implement improvements. Below are some of our key tips to stepping up your sales process.
Define a sales process that is aligned with your business strategy
This seems obvious but anyone that has worked in sales knows it’s not easy. Sales professionals today are dealing with ever-changing technology, new communication trends and the sometimes complicated and ambiguous line between sales and marketing teams.
We have been fortunate to help some of our clients define global sales processes for their business as implementing a new CRM system creates the opportunity to do so.
Organize the data
Why is this so hard? With many people within an organization “touching” customer information it is difficult to implement and maintain one source of information. If your company has disorganized data you are not alone. Forty-four percent of companies have no formal data governance – in other words almost half of all companies have no strategy when it comes to the management of company data.
Having complicated systems that are not user-friendly for sales teams does not help. Even if your company has a data management strategy, if the tools available to end-users are too difficult to actually use they will likely find other methods and tools (like Excel) to help them do their jobs.
One of the first tasks when we start a new project is assessing a client’s data situation. A good first step is to review the data, then set clear standards and requirements for future data entries.
Empower your sales team
Sales Teams need to be equipped with the information and tools they need to succeed.
Only 16% of sales reps report being “extremely prepared” for a sales meeting. When you consider this, it’s not surprising that the percentage of forecast deals in recent years that went to no decision or were lost is 53.4%.
How can you help your sales team be more prepared? Getting through steps one and two above is a great start. Defining a global sales process can set the direction for key value messaging that your sales team can use. Understanding exactly what value the company offers to clients is a key factor for sales team success.
Having tools that are easy to use and allow sales team members to access the information they need, when they need it, is another way to empower the sales professionals in your organization.
Through our Sales Cloud CRM implementations we are able to configure helpful tools for sales teams, such as CRM/Outlook integration and mobile access. Plus we incorporate sales users in the entire process so they are involved in the testing and training, to ensure they know how to use the CRM tool – and that it works for their needs.
Maintain better existing customer relationships
Happy customers are the best sales and marketing tools. Happy customers will be a reference, and will refer business to you. Happy customers will help you tell the story of how you helped them, and can help others like them. Happy customers will use your services/products again in the future.
Whether it’s the same account rep who closed the deal, or another person in the organization – someone needs to maintain these important relationships with existing customers.
Using Sales Cloud CRM makes finding customer history and other important information easy. What information you want to track and report on is one of the many configurations that can be customized during the 60-day implementation process.
Track progress
What measurable goals did you set in step one? Or what measurable goals could you set, if you haven’t already? Once you have established measurable metrics for sales, you need a system to help you track and report on progress.
What metrics would give you insight into your sales process and performance? Here are some examples:
- Total sales in dollars need for the week/month/quarter/year
- Number of deals need to close for the month/quarter/year
- Number of outgoing calls to prospects per day/week
- Number of outgoing emails to prospects per day/week
- Number of meetings with prospects per day/week
- Number of qualified leads per day/week/month
Use insights to improve results
Collecting and reporting important sales data is only useful if you use the information to go back to step one and see where improvements can be made to increase results.
With Sales Cloud CRM you can create custom reports that tell you what you need to know about your sales cycle. Using this information to improve processes is one of the most helpful steps that leads to our clients attracting and closing more deals.
Learn more
Contact us for more information on sales process consulting and Sales Cloud CRM.