3 levers to boost the performance of your sales team
Sweet-talking, aggressive, uncoordinated... if the sales force is the most clichéd job in the company, it's the one that's most expected to perform.
But while the ultimate goal of every salesperson is to sell you their product or service, you need to be aware of one fact: salespeople don't spend all day selling! A recent study showed that the sales force actually spends less than half its time making sales!
So, are salespeople taking it easy? The study conducted by the Sales Inside Lab research center among thousands of salespeople revealed the following 3 facts:
- The sales force spends 66% of its time on non-sales activities.
- The 3 things that take up the most time in a salesperson's day-to-day work are: managing emails, recording activities and entering customer and sales data.
- In view of these constraints, 57% of sales people expect to miss their targets for the year.
But what if the performance of your sales team depended on more than just their innate gift for the gab? Digitizing your processes, automating your sales management and using sales intelligence tools, discover three essential levers for boosting your sales team's performance.
1. information: centralized, unified and shared
We can't say it often enough: customer knowledge is power! But while we are confronted every day with a constant flow of data, the real question is how to harness it intelligently to transform it into added value for your company.
Identify your data silos
Every company collects data at different levels of its organization. The "data silo " phenomenon arises when part of the information is isolated and inaccessible to the whole organization.
Data siloing stems from three well-known problems:
- a lack of connections between the various tools used internally,
- a corporate culture based on withholding information,
- a multiplication of data collection channels, which generates numerous problems for the company.
Your objective? Identify and neutralize these data silos to create a coherent data path and minimize information loss.
Centralize your data on a collaborative platform
Now that you have a clear vision of how your data is organized, you need to centralize it. CRM is the essential tool for this. As a salesperson's toolbox, CRM enables you to present your customer knowledge in a structured and intelligible way, so that it can be put to good use.
Don't forget to choose an open solution that can be connected to the various tools you use internally. For example, does your marketing department use a marketing automation solution? You need to be able to feed "hot" leads back into the CRM so that they can be processed commercially.
This simplifies sales management by centralizing and visualizing your sales force's activity, customer engagement, conversion rates and latest customer activity in real time... This data is invaluable, and helps you gain sales intelligence and flexibility.
2. Automate sales management
Do salespeople spend 66% of their time on activities other than selling? I hope you've memorized this figure, because it's vital information for analyzing your performance. One piece of information, two possible readings:
- The sales force doesn't spend enough time selling.
- The sales force spends too much time on administrative tasks.
Simplify administrative management
As you can see, the challenge is to free up your sales force's time so that they can refocus on selling. Here again, CRM can help simplify your sales management. Choose ergonomic solutions to ensure that your teams are fully on board. Here, we're looking for all the features to simplify your day-to-day work. Click-to-call, email messaging, automatic reminders, tasks and appointments, sales opportunity tracking... make the most of the toolbox to boost your team's productivity.
Integrate sales intelligence tools
Over the last few years, new technologies and digital technology have greatly changed the way people shop.
By following up your leads within 5 minutes of contact, you're 9 times more likely to convert them.
It's not a question of sending all incoming leads to your sales reps; you need to prioritize the hot contacts that need immediate commercial follow-up. This is where technology comes in! Let's take the example of an almost indispensable tool: the sales chatbot.
B2B sales is a complex process, and your website is at the heart of the sales process. As the main channel for lead generation, the website is often more complex for visitors to understand than they think, and they need to find the information they need - and in the easiest, most engaging way possible - to make a purchasing decision. The chatbot is a very interesting tool insofar as it enables your prospects to get answers faster, eliminate friction and increase your team's responsiveness.
As you can see, you shouldn't hesitate to use automation to create personalization. Marketing automation, chatbots, predictive prospecting- give your sales force the tools they need to increase responsiveness and personalize their sales pitch.
3. Develop individual and collective potential
Because confident salespeople are more productive, it's essential to consider the strengths of each individual and not neglect the "human" management strategy of your sales force. One of the sales manager's missions, if not to coach, is also to reassure his or her team of their ability to achieve the sales targets set. This is essential if salespeople are to truly take ownership of the company's objectives.
Pipe management and objectives: determining the right sales benchmarks
Setting sales forecasts that are both ambitious and realistic, collective and individual, influences the motivation and performance of your sales force.
But it's not that simple. Between management's expectations and achievable targets, forecasting requires a skilful mix, but above all a coherent vision based on real indicators.
At INES, we track every stage of the sales cycle using CRM. I can see the conversion rate achieved by each sales rep, the number of calls before an appointment is made, the number of appointments before an estimate is drawn up, or the number of estimates before the customer places his first order... All these elements enable us to establish a genuine sales strategy with achievable targets not only in terms of turnover, but also overall sales volume, which wins over the sales force.
Engage your teams
Changing sales habits, introducing new tools, restructuring your sales team... every change has an impact on your employees, and can generate a negative or positive impact on their performance.
Targeted knowledge sharing, ongoing training and long-term coaching will enable you to maintain a collective dynamic around your objectives. In this way, you can make the most of everyone's feedback to adapt and develop your actions.
A salesperson has a tendency to slip into a comfort zone. That's where the risk lies! We mustn't forget either that the new generation Y is gradually entering the job market, and is much more open to change and adept at using new technologies and digital tools (applications, social networks...). The challenge, therefore, lies in bringing together different generations of sales staff and uniting them around a single set of tools, without forgetting, in some cases, to support them in managing change.
Article translated from French