The modern business world is becoming more tech-based, customers are getting more informed, and companies are forced to thoroughly understand what, why, how, when and to whom they should sell.
This means that sales leaders must not only think strategically but also train sales representatives to do that to achieve excellent results, increase sales, and maintain a high level of sales team productivity.
Here, we will give you 5 sales tips on how to stay one step ahead of the competition tomorrow.
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Automate Wherever You Can
Investing in sales automation software can be a daunting task, but in the end, your sales reps will save a ton of time that they can use to focus directly on sales.
Let’s take the most typical example: collecting sales data. Manual data collection ends up in frustration across the board. You can get inaccurate, or delayed data, or it can even get lost. In contrast, data entry automation tools can save your reps a lot of time, reduce administrative costs, and protect you from duplicate/inaccurate/lost data.
Let’s take, for example, the popular Einstein Activity Capture tool, an application that connects to Gmail or Office 365, auto-syncing all of your team’s customer communications to Salesforce.
It sounds great, but it’s not all rosy, since the tool has some flaws, namely:
- the data is not stored in Salesforce;
- there’s no API/Standard reporting access;
- no option editing/deleting emails captured by EAC available;
- triggering workflows option is absent;
- no proper backup for all logged activities and emails;
- default capturing (you can’t choose whether the tool will sync events and contacts and what direction they are to go in);
- recurring calendar events aren’t synced, etc.
This is a really good and necessary tool, but, due to its flaws, it won’t suit everyone. However, if you are looking for a decent data-capture automation tool, then you should try Revenue Grid, the best Einstein Activity Capture alternative. Revenue Grid is an advanced revenue operations and intelligence platform that offers some crucial benefits you won’t get with Einstein:
- it never stores the data, it just syncs it and sends it right to your Salesforce;
- it doesn’t sync all data by default, but according to your allow/denylists, and custom rules — be sure that your sensitive personal data will never fall into Salesforce;
- all data, that pass to Salesforce gets fully encrypted: Revenue Grid supports Microsoft Graph Security API for organizations that strive for full protection of their specific data;
- unlike EAC, the platform captures and saves data to Salesforce. It is 100% reportable in SFDC, and you use it to build reports for key metrics.
Also, Revenue Grid offers:
- free product implementation and full support;
- highest possible level of flexibility and customization according to specifics of your company;
- professional enterprise training and consulting;
- custom deployment options.
But that’s not all: Revenue Grid is a highly functional platform with many features such as revenue signals, pipeline visibility, deal guidance, team analytics, sales sequences, forecasting, and CRM and email integration, that will allow you to capture and de-silo your sales data, gain transparency into your revenue, guide reps across the sales cycle, and many more.
Start With The Accurate Forecasts
Sales forecasts are vital for both large and small organizations. Today, about 80% of companies do not meet their forecasts by 25% or even more. This is quite a huge amount of money that these companies lose quarterly.
Choosing the right forecasting method and creating accurate forecasts based on it allows the business to make better decisions, amplify the visibility of the pipeline, increase the efficiency of its salespeople, and, in general, be more confident in the future.
Steps such as developing a flexible process, using only complete & accurate sales data, implying an effective sales management system, taking into account all the factors affecting your sales, focusing on demand, but not on supply, and involving your sales reps in the process of forecasting will help you boost the forecast accuracy!
Integrate Sales And Marketing Teams
Today, amid the transformation and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the need for close and effective collaboration between these two departments has become a vital necessity.
According to Aberdeen Group reports, by effectively aligning your sales and marketing, you can:
- gain 32% higher revenue;
- retain 36% more customers;
- attain 38% better win rates.
However, today it’s not enough just to coordinate the actions of these two teams: it is necessary to fully integrate them and consider them as a single functional “Smarketing” revenue organization that creates a plan for achieving common goals and does it more efficiently and quickly.
To successfully align your sales and marketing, you should:
- create a unified customer journey;
- agree on a customer persona;
- use a “marketing first” approach;
- track joint KPIs;
- fully use customer feedback;
- keep your marketing messages steady and consistent;
- create strong marketing assets for closing sales.
Any Outbound Sales Strategy Requires Multiple Channels
Until recently, all you had to do was create an outreach cadence, which contacted potential customers using several different, most suitable channels, helping your company stand out. But today, a lot has changed, and communicating with prospects via multiple channels is no longer something out of the ordinary. Now it is simply a necessity to close even the smallest deal.
Choosing a modern, effective sales engagement platform is the easiest and most effective way to succeed. It streamlines all the ways you communicate with prospects, from email to social, and lets you do everything necessary in one place. These tools are extremely easy to use and can boast many useful features such as:
- engaging your potential customers with an extremely personalized approach;
- integrating all the disparate tools you use in one;
- automating CRM updation;
- using metrics to drive sales outcomes;
- using reports and dashboards to coach the deals forward;
- making the CRM you use even more powerful!
Gather A Group Of Customer Advocates
The final stage on the modern buyer’s path is finding customer advocates. These are clients who spread the information about their successful purchases, the success they were able to achieve by cooperating with a certain company, what benefits they received.
This is a great way to improve your company’s reputation and increase the loyalty of your potential customers. Customer advocates can create an environment focused on the expectations of the client, so he can be sure that he will gain a positive experience working with this company, too.
This approach also allows customers to share their knowledge and experience with both your salespeople and peers in their industry. And your sales team members also should embrace this approach and try to improve it from the very beginning.
Check out these tips for using customer advocacy in your business:
- start with a small group of customer advocates;
- use NPS (Net Promoter Score) to start an effective customer advocacy program;
- create a feedback loop;
- create marketing content such as customer success stories based on testimonials;
- encourage word-of-mouth by rewarding existing clients for their positive feedback and referrals within your customer advocate program;
- keep providing outstanding customer service, and your advocates will do the rest.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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