Every business wants its salespeople to be successful—that is, to close more sales . Yet ask many salespeople and they will tell you that their organization often makes it difficult for them to sell to meet their quotas, by asking them to complete administrative tasks or not providing them with the necessary tools.
So what can businesses do to better support and free up their salespeople , so they can convert more prospects into customers? Here are seven tips that will help you achieve this goal.
1. Employ a sales-friendly CRM system
A good, sales-focused CRM system can help your sales team stay organized and focused . It will benefit from features such as lead prioritization, automatic reminders, lead nurturing and notes. It can thus ensure an increase in the sales closing rate and better productivity. Another benefit is that you can see how quickly leads are contacted, number of attempts made, total sales and idle time.
2. Take the time to qualify leads
You must first clearly define your target audience. Next, recognize that people who don't fit this definition are more likely to waste your time than lead to sales.
It's counterproductive to hand leads to sales when those people aren't ready for a sales conversation. So it’s important to take the time to understand the buyer’s journey . Provide them with useful content. Then, only hand them over to sales when they demonstrate they are ready to take the next step.
This is the whole advantage of a lead generation tool like Magileads. The omnichannel platform allows you to automate your prospecting process from A to Z. Your salespeople will only receive qualified leads, which will save them a lot of time and close more sales.
3. Arm your team with mobile communication and collaboration tools
Salespeople may spend most of their days in the field. So you need to provide them with easy, remote access to critical and timely customer and sales information through a mobile CRM solution or app . This allows them to always work with real-time data and update a lead's information immediately.
You also need to make it easy for your sellers to access the latest product specifications and contracts from any device. Additionally, your sellers can often write or modify documents. This could be a contract to close a deal at the end of a quarter, for example. You need to make sure they can easily do this.
For signing contracts, consider using a service like DocuSign . It’s a tool that allows your sales team to get orders and agreements signed electronically .
Additionally, if you haven't yet implemented an enterprise-level communications application, it's time to acquire one. Instant communication, coupled with data security and privacy, leads to better customer experiences. Also, your team will make fewer mistakes and develop cohesion.
4. Offer regular training and opportunities to share best practices
You absolutely must invest in your sales team if you want to increase your sales force . A well-planned training and development program, for example, provides a measurable return on investment. In this sense, you can organize technical training on products and services and on sales processes.
5. Minimize time spent on administrative tasks
Almost all sales functions have administrative or customer service aspects that are not related to sales. The problem is that too often these activities take more time than sales activities . So you need to think about ways to reduce the time salespeople spend doing administrative tasks.
To do this, you can:
- hire sales support staff;
- ensure non-sales related questions are routed to the correct department;
- provide tools that make it easy to enter customer data from a mobile device .
6. Use gamification strategies
Gamification appeals to the natural competitive spirit as reps strive to rise to the top of the leaderboard . Award points not only for customer wins, but also for sales activities.
