As a business owner or Sales Leader, it can be difficult to know exactly what your sales reps are doing, on a day-to-day basis, to drive revenue. To know if they are, or are not, tracking to expectations. To know if they are, or are not, efficiently moving deals through your established sales process. To know if they will, or will not, meet (or better, exceed!) their quotas for the company’s revenue objectives. For all this, you need the right tools to not only set your sales reps up for success, but also give you, the Sales VP, the transparency you need for next-level sales management.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the non-negotiable importance of a sales process, the life-changing power of leading indicators and their role in sales coaching, and how a sales-specific CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution like Maximizer can help put your sales team on track for optimal revenue results.
Standardize Your Sales Process
A Sales Process is a clearly defined – and standardized – deal flow “map” that delineates all the phases of a sales conversation – from initial contact with the prospect to closing the deal and converting them to a customer. This eliminates all doubt as to where in the funnel any given deal sits, the distribution of deals in the various phases of funnel and, with the right analytics, an understanding of where deals are getting hung up and if they need a little grease to get things flowing.
Measure Your Leading Indicators
Leading indicators are the actual, day-to-day activities completed by sales reps and provide the very best metrics to predict sales success. As fully trackable metrics, leading indicators provide insight – for both the rep and their manager – into how well they are performing against established activity targets. Some common leading indicators include the number of calls made, the number of meetings scheduled, and the number of proposals sent out. By tracking these activities, Sales Leaders can better identify the specific areas where a salesperson may be struggling and intervene in a timely fashion to provide the necessary coaching, support, and resources to help them improve their sales outcomes.
Prioritize Sales Coaching
In the role of a Sales Leader, coaching is critical to helping salespeople achieve their quotas, and for the business to achieve its revenue targets. Far too often though, the sales boss will focus only on “after the fact” lagging indicators like quarterly quota and revenue results. Leading Indicators, by contrast, provide timely and data-driven coaching opportunities whereby the Sales Leader can step into their rep’s opportunity pipelines midstream, identify the bottlenecks, and affect sales outcomes before the month- or quarter-end results are published. And it goes without saying (…but better with!): Thoughtful coaching for a sales reps’ development not only helps them hit their quotas, but also elevates their long-term performance and job satisfaction.
Implement a Sales-focused CRM (we can help with this one!)
If you want to leverage your CRM to increase sales, then implementing a CRM that is designed for sales should be a top priority. Collectively, the above listed priorities of an integrated sales process, leading indicator tracking, and effective sales coaching tools will:
- Provide real-time visibility into all sales interactions with customers and prospects including emails, phone calls, and meetings.
- Generate activity reports on a rep-by-rep basis, which in turn identifies coaching opportunities as they relate to any given rep’s ongoing success and/or individualized pipeline challenges.
- Help identify trends and patterns in customer behavior, which can then be used to create targeted marketing campaigns for new lead generation and/or better customer retention.
- Mitigate risk as your CRM becomes a fully centralized, truthful, and transparent source of company data. No company is immune to turnover, and a thoughtful, sales focused CRM will ensure no data or information critical to closing an active deal is lost if and when employees move on.
If you’re ready to prioritize sales success with a sales-focused CRM, visit us here today for an interactive product tour or contact us today for personalized demo to see Maximizer in action!
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