Let’s not talk about inspirational quotes, promise of bonuses, sales rep competitions or passionate rep talks to boost your sales team efficiencies. Increasing the productivity of your sales team needs more than these. Improving sales effectiveness is a continual process and not an event-based approach. Every selling environment is different. So, how do you get hold of that perfect sales environment?
Sales Pipeline Management
It is the key way to increase sales. Right from the first point of contact with a prospect to the closing of a deal, sales pipeline has five important stages
Prospects: The process involves outbound technique as cold calling and inbound technique to identify prospects resembling buyer persona.
Qualification: Prospects are assessed against certain criteria to determine whether they’re worth following up.
Proposal: Once the prospect qualifies, sales rep presents a proposal to demonstrate how the service can solve the prospect’s issue.
Decision: Prospect’s decision depends on what the sales rep has presented.
Repeat Business: After closing the first deal, sales rep keeps in constant touch and nurtures the relationship to encourage further sales.
To maintain consistency with each one of these stages, you have to work on the momentum and flow within your sales pipeline. This requires understanding of the stage velocity, which is calculating the average time it takes for the prospects to move from one stage to the next. However, to understand this move, you have to identify:
Pay Attention to Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
The key to the success of an organization, measurement of performance and indicator of future results – KPI provides visibility into the existing activities that will impact future sales team productivity. However, you need to measure two types of indicators – Lagging Indicators that are outputs and results measured after the sale and Leading Indicators, which are actions and activities that are measured during the sale process as and when the pipeline is being built.
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Most importantly, analyze whether you’re selling the products your customers want to buy. Assess real data in real time and do not rely on hopes and assumptions. Timely assessment of the performance of your team members is crucial to coach and plan effectively.
Implement Digital Tools to Accelerate the Pipeline
There’s nothing more frustrating than nearly closing a deal and then realizing the heaps of paperwork to complete for the same. However, with digital tools, sales reps will process documents faster and close the deals successfully. The social media and customer relationship management tools help them to improve their performance and drive more sales. So, take back the hours of time your team has spent documenting information and dedicate it to selling more and closing deals.
Focus On When To Upsell and Cross-Sell a Service
The aim is to introduce customers to complementary products that can get instant acceptance. Every time a customer wants to buy something, and if you can successfully offer additional products to complement and support the main product or persuade the customer to switch his purchasing decision to a more expensive product, you’ve successfully implemented the cross-sell and upsell techniques. The sales rep needs to observe the right opportunity as when they can increase the deal sizes and how to improve the probability of winning more deals by adding value to their proposals. The team needs to closely analyze the deals and identify the trends associated with it. The greater familiarity your customers have with the additional services offered, the more likely they’re to get associated with your business. However, the customers should feel the worth of every penny they spend after your products and services.
The Sales Velocity Equation for Your Team
The Sales Velocity Equation represents four important factors –
Here Are Some Of The Best Practices To Implement Each Of These Factors:
Increase the Number of Deals
Increase the Size of Deal
Increase the Win Rate
Curtail Sale Cycle
Assessing sale rep performance will always help you to improve sales team efficiency and enable you to identify areas of improvement on a per person basis. The benefits of having an efficient and effective sales process are worth your effort.
