In this comprehensive guide, we’ll talk you through everything you need to know about how you can take a multichannel approach to enhance prospecting efficiency and boost sales.
An outside sales rep spends countless hours each week communicating with prospects and customers, but more often than not, these activities go unnoticed. This is due to the fact that in order to document these interactions, it requires an average of 10.7 hours – or 23% of their time – each week to plug this information into their CRM. Time that should be spent selling.
We’ve recognized that this is a big problem and have created a solution… Spotio is thrilled to announce the release of Multichannel Activity Management.
This new feature offers activity management capabilities to include visits, calls, texts, and email; providing a complete view and real-time digest of the activities happening in the field. Get the visibility you’ve been missing.
Spotio’s Multichannel Communication feature eases the administrative burden of activity tracking by auto-logging the interactions taking place through the Spotio app into your CRM.
Eliminate rep administrative burdens and reduce manual work that goes into recording face-to-face interactions.
Provide sales reps with a central hub of call activities – inbound, outbound, and missed – to easily track communication with prospects.
A single view for all the texts that have been sent and received between a rep and prospect or customer. The automatic transfer of SMS communication into the CRM makes it easy to track and measure all text communication that happens.
Integrated with your email provider, auto capture every customer email communication for full picture of engagement.
By utilizing a tool that automates this list of activities, your sales team greatly benefits. Management can track performance over time and discover whether or not the activities resulting from visits are working or not; while reps greatly reduce the manual burden of having to document sales activities taking place in the field.
• Eliminate the costly guesswork and provide your outside sales team with the visibility they’ve been missing.
• Instantly sync every activity into your CRM.
• Auto-log each customer interaction for a complete picture of engagement, while keeping sales reps focused on what matters most.
• Run performance and activity reports by rep, territory, or by team.
• A complete view and real-time digest of the activities happening in the field.
To learn more, schedule your demo here.
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Questions or comments? Contact Spotio at info@spotio.com or comment below.
Spotio is the #1 outside sales software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
Successfully and strategically mapping out sales territories requires coordinating countless moving parts. Yes, you’ll need to manage the basic sales assignment process of connecting reps with their regions – but savvy business owners and sales managers recognize that a comprehensive field sales methodology requires far more than just outlining boundaries and choosing the right account executive.
Salesforce Maps (formerly MapAnything) has proven to be a popular choice for sales organizations looking to up their infield selling game. However, businesses across virtually every vertical often realize that the current SF Maps functionality doesn’t quite suit all of their needs.
To best optimize a sales territory campaign, executives must implement a full-scale, robust mapping solution that goes beyond program basics to include other factors such as gathering data sets, managing leads, and measuring performance.
Designed specifically for field sales strategies, Salesforce Maps does what all mapping software should do: help organizations add geographic context to the selling process. The system also automates standard selling situations, such as contact details, new account creation, lead gathering, and various customer service components.
Sure, SF Maps uses functional mapping and productivity optics. However, as B2B field sales team begin to experience the pressure of making sales in highly-competitive markets, they quickly realize that selecting the right territory mapping solution boils down to far more than cool visuals. Before you invest heavily in Salesforce Maps, it’s important to explore some key considerations that could shape your final decision
As a global leader in the CRM space, Salesforce platforms (including SF Maps) are typically reliable options for business owners. However, it’s important to note that just because Salesforce Maps is a good solution, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution for your outside sales team. While business owners may initially explore SF Maps when sourcing digital mapping strategies, many discerning entrepreneurs choose SPOTIO as their final solution.
Leveraging Field Sales To Grow Your Corporate Operations
Both Salesforce Maps and SPOTIO offer a diverse suite of sales automation and geographic technologies. However, Salesforce Maps’ configuration makes it uniquely designed for sales teams trying to sell (or farm) into already existing customers, establishing it as a potential option for businesses looking to sustain their current operations.
SPOTIO, on the other hand, goes head-to-head with SF Maps farming capabilities – and then takes things up a notch. In addition to providing system support when selling into established customers, SPOTIO’s functionality is positioned specifically to help companies prospect (or hunt) and find new business opportunities to grow their corporate reach and revenues.
The SPOTIO field sales solution, much like Salesforce Maps, provides the conventional mapping feature set, including:
SPOTIO’s map visualization technology uses a geographic interface to help users aggregate and analyze complex location data sets. The system offers big-picture intelligence that helps pinpoint new prospects, leads, and revenue-generating opportunities within a designated sales territory.
For reps, this means instant insight on where they have their best chance to maximize closed deals and overall ROI when spending time in the field.
For managers, SPOTIO’s map visualizations help pinpoint where reps are converting deals – and which region’s need a little more focused selling attention.
SPOTIO route mapping offers invaluable insight on how to get to your final destination as quickly and painlessly as possible. Reps and managers can develop and implement customized routes that minimize lost productivity. You’ll use real-time data to help your team lower windshield time and streamline output on every client visit.
Beyond these standard functions, SPOTIO stands out above other solutions like Salesforce Maps as a leading field sales acceleration platform by offering these seven essential hunter features:
Salesforce Maps captures and visualizes stored company data to help sellers understand their current state of affairs with any specific customer.
However, SPOTIO offers extended capabilities that allow users to develop ideal customer profiles. Your sales team can quickly sort live information by over 50 data points to help you pinpoint common traits amongst your very best customers to reference when developing prospect lists.
Salesforce Maps allows users to create territory boundaries. Unfortunately, establishing a sales territory based on sheer mileage alone is not enough to ensure success. It’s vital to develop territories that gives your reps access to a sufficient number of prospects within their district, without feeling overwhelmed, or capped.
SPOTIO goes beyond miles and square footage, allowing users to develop balanced territories based on the estimated number of homes in a region. In just a few minutes, managers can create selling regions that offer your team an equal opportunity for success while out hunting for new business.
SPOTIO’s platform integrates with Google Places to boost the benefits of mapping technology. Again, Salesforce Maps provides sufficient information on current sales customers and activities. However, with its native Google Places integration, sellers can use SPOTIO to designate the very best opportunities within their assigned regions.
For example, companies selling into healthcare organizations can use Google Places to identify other medical practices. From there, SPOTIO takes over, mapping out the best route to optimize efficiencies during the time in the field.
Like everything else in sales, the pipeline activity within your designated sales regions can be cyclical with upward swings and downturns. Salesforce Maps’ somewhat limited technology profile makes it challenging to accurately view pipeline activity within a district.
SPOTIO’s mobile functionality equips users with “notes as you go” field data entry that promotes accurate, thorough pipeline activity tracking that benefits virtually every level of a sales organization.
Busy sales reps appreciate having the ability to quickly zero in on their most urgent potential sales. Additionally, managers and group leaders value using pipeline activity data sets to pinpoint possible deals as well as marketplace momentum, trends, and dips.
Let’s face it: effectively selling often relies on an “if at first you don’t succeed” mentality.
Exceptional sales leaders understand that to truly optimize results within a territory, reps must continuously refine their strategies and increase their overall territory penetration. However, tracking the extensive volume of historical data through Salesforce and other (often more manual methods) can prove a major time waster. SPOTIO’s historical data functionality streamlines accessing past communication and transactions. Reps can quickly refresh on the details of the last appointment, while managers can use the stored insight to help the team better direct (and close) on the next engagement.
SPOTIO Routing technology quickly separates it from Salesforce Maps.
SPOTIO expedites route efficiencies, enabling account reps to best plan out their field days. The system utilizes current data sets to develop courses based on essential factors such as distance, appointment time, meeting length. The system even calculates time needed for both driving and walking. SPOTIO’s agile technology profile instantly calculates all relevant details to craft a map route that gives your account executives the best chance to lower time behind the wheel and increase time in front of your clients.
Unlike Salesforce Maps, SPOTIO prioritizes rep activity and performance. A simple push of a button allows users to determine the exact position of reps in the field, providing a live update every two minutes or whenever an app activity is logged. SPOTIO delivers the information managers need to help reps optimize their time in the field to close deals and grow the business without infringing on staff member’s privacy during off-hours.
SPOTIO integrates directly into your existing CRM. Bolt on the power of SPOTIO’s mapping and field sales acceleration platform to your Salesforce CRM. The system is designed to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and deliver accelerated value and usability.
SPOTIO’s 2-way CRM integration instantly redefines mapping visualization within your sales organization. Once installed, SPOTIO simplifies data intelligence aggregation, allowing users to store, analyze, and sync field information automatically into your existing Salesforce configuration.
Maybe you need more information to determine if SPOTIO is the right field sales solution for your organization. Or, maybe you’re worried that the integration process will hinder efficacy and productivity.
No matter what your questions or concerns, we can help. Contact us today to speak with an onsite SPOTIO specialist to get the information you need. You can also click here for a no-risk product demo to see for yourself what SPOTIO offers to sales organizations pursuing growth, increased revenues, and extended market share.
Sales are at the heart of any business strategy.
Whether you’re a software entrepreneur, an executive, or a sales manager, one of the best things that you can do to set yourself up for success is to write a sales plan that supports your company and helps it to grow.
Unfortunately, a lot of business leaders struggle with developing a strategy that can enrich and empower their operations.
A sales plan is the easiest way to layout your objectives, strategies, and tactics for success, in a way that your whole team can understand. Your sales plan also helps you to identify potential obstacles and roadblocks so that you can come up with ways to overcome challenges.
A sales action plan highlights what you’re going to do to achieve your sales goals, focusing specifically on the transactions and relationships that you can cultivate with customers.
Sales plans contain information about who you want to sell to, what your revenue goals look like, and how you’re going to structure your teams for success.
An effective sales plan:
– Communicates your sales objectives and goals
– Outlines responsibilities and roles for both your staff and leadership
– Delivers strategic direction for your sales team
– Guides your decision-making strategy to help you progress towards organizational goals
While a sales action plan is excellent for month-to-month guidance, it can also help you conduct a more long-term analysis of your sales team. Over time, you can compare your action plans against your outcomes to see if you’re achieving your targets.
So, how do you start designing an action plan that delivers real, measurable results for your team?
An action plan needs to give your employees direction and purpose. It should ensure that your staff have everything they need to achieve their goals when it comes to things like quotas and prospecting. The more detailed your action plan is, the less likely it is that your team will end up confused and struggling to make decisions for themselves.
Here are just some of the crucial activities that should appear in your sales plan.
If you want to achieve success in any aspect of your sales strategy, you need to start by identifying the people that you want to target. Get together with your sales team and ask:
– Which clients deliver the most long-term value?
– What company size are you targeting?
– How did your clients find success with your solution?
– Where did your best customers come from (i.e. cold calls, canvassing, word of mouth)
– What is your target industry?
Once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is to consider how you’re going to interact with clients to encourage sales. What do your prospects need most from you, and how can you help them to achieve their goals? Where are the best places to engage with your clients? Do they respond best to telephone calls, emails, or face-to-face interactions?
Your sales action plan needs to include a complete overview of how to find and nurture your clients.
Unless you’re a brand-new business, you should have some room to learn from your past mistakes and successes. Look back over your previous wins and losses and ask yourself:
– Which strategies led to the most revenue for your company?
– What kind of customers were most likely to respond to your sales pitch?
– Were there certain months or seasons where you were more likely to reach your quota?
– Which of your team members were most successful, and why?
– Which areas delivered the most ROI for your team?
Examining your historical performance will help you to get a better idea of where your current customers and prospects come from.
Sales tracking software can give you a more complete history of this information. Make sure that you examine not just when and where inbound and outbound leads convert, but also how your teams prospected with these clients, and which tactics were most successful.
| Bonus resource: 8 Compelling Reasons to Invest in a Sales Activity Tracker |
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Once you know what you’ve accomplished, you begin to determine what you need to do next. For instance, you might have achieved your sales quota 60% of the time in the last year, but by the end of this year, you want to achieve an 80% success rate.
Having a target or goal that you want to reach will help to guide your decision-making for your sales quota. Remember, before you get into the details, you need to be specific about what you want to achieve both long-term and short-term.
Ask yourself:
– What is the big picture destination for my team? (A 100% quota success rate)
– Annual sales goals? (Maybe a 20% increase per year)
– Quarterly objectives? (Something closer to 5%)
– What can sales teams do to improve monthly?
– What is my team going to aim for each day?
– What activity metrics will we measure in order to keep the entire team
Outline what you want to go and how you’re going to get there.
For instance, if your big picture goal is to generate more closed sales overall, then you might need to start by asking your reps to complete more outbound calls each day.
The more calls you make, the more chances you have of sales. On a monthly basis, your team can work on improving their success rate, and you can measure your overall growth quarterly, aiming for greater results each year.
Now you know where you’re going, what tools do you need to accelerate your opportunities and empower your teams?
The most essential resource you have is your salespeople, so ensure that you have the right number of people on board to reach your target. This includes building an enticing commission structure that motivates employees to succeed.
Next, invest in the tools and technologies that will power your success:
Gamification and Workforce optimization: How are you going to empower friendly competition between employees, do you have a budget for incentives?
CRM tools: How will your teams track their interactions with crucial clients and customers?
Prospecting tools: What kind of sales analytics and lead nurturing tools do your employees need? Should automations be put in place?
Once you know which tools your employees need, make sure that your team members are well-equipped to use them. This could mean implementing training sessions, assigning mentors to new team members, or holding one-on-one meetings.
Now it’s time to make sure that there’s limited overlap in your teams. It’s hard to reach your goals when everyone is focused on selling to the same area.
Assigning territories ensures that your sales team is targeting the right customers, in the right areas, and ultimately eliminates costly redundancies.
Make sure your most valuable and profitable reps are working on the biggest accounts. Remember, you can assign your territories by everything from geography, to customer type, sales potential, and industry.
Clearly defined territories help sales teams to work more strategically to address the needs and expectations of their clients. You can:
Assign to top-performers to the highest value accounts
Align salespeople to the segments or regions best-suited to their talents
Ensure all reps have an adequate number of lead to work and accounts to service
Open the door for stronger long-term relationships between your brand and customers.
| Bonus resource: 7 Step Guide to Building a Profitable Sales Territory Plan (with Examples) |
Now your sales team knows where it’s going to be focusing; it’s time to guide them in accelerating their chances of sales. For instance, you can build templates for phone calls, follow ups, emails, voicemails, and more.
To guide your scripts, remember to focus on addressing the pain points of your customers. Remember – people buy emotionally, and justify rationally.
The Sandler pain funnel can help with prospecting, qualifying and closing more deals:
Encourage your team members to find out about the pain points that your customers face and discover solutions to their problems in the scripts that you create. As a general rule, the conversation should have a 70:30 split on the side of the customer.
Think about how your sales team can use the scripts you give them to qualify the leads that you generate. Can you ask questions that will help with segmenting customers and improving your chances of bigger upsells and cross-sells?
With support and guidance, your sales teams should have everything they need to accomplish real, measurable goals within your sales strategy. This is when you can begin to put teams to work by setting minimum daily sales activities.
Remember, although it’s valuable to challenge employees, you still need to be realistic. Asking staff to accomplish more than they’re reasonably capable of could lead to disengagement.
Measure and track things like:
Leads: How many new leads should your employees be finding to contact every day? How will they qualify and nurture those leads? The Lead machine from Spotio can make it easier for agents to find new batches of leads every day.
Contacts: How many people will your sales teams contact each day? This can include contact such as in-person visits, emails, phone calls, or social media connections. It’s all about working leads across multiple channels to build a relationship.
Follow-ups: How will salespeople attempt to improve their chances of a sale to people who haven’t answered the phone or responded to an email? You can also look at “follow ups” in terms of upsells and cross-sells to existing customers.
Referral requests: How will your employees follow up with clients to ensure that they’re as satisfied as possible? What can you do to improve your chances of positive testimonials, and referrals to new clients?
| Bonus resource: 15 Key Sales Activity Metrics to Track in 2020 (According to the Experts) |
Once you have defined the kind of things that your employees should be accomplishing with their work each day, how are you going to make sure that they’re delivering? Do you have lead nurturing pipelines and software in place which shows you which team members are reaching their targets?
Tracking all of the sales activities that your employees engage in each day has a number of benefits. First, it means that managers can see if goals are being met, and which strategies should change if not. Additionally, a dashboard also allows individual employees to track their own performance.
Salespeople are often competitive, and like a chance to prove themselves against their peers. You could use a leaderboard in your workplace to celebrate and showcase your most successful salespeople.
Tip: once you have identified the top sales reps, consider pairing them up with new or lower performing reps for some cross-training.
Tracking performance is something that you need to do at a team level, individual rep level, and business level too. Are your reps hitting their activity targets? If they’re not, what’s causing them to fall short of the mark? What kind of opportunities are they missing out on?
Tracking your performance will help you to see the friction points in your sales pipeline. A lot of sales teams fail to track crucial data and KPIs, and this often means that they don’t know what they need to do to improve their chances of success.
By tracking the performance of your team at every level, you can uncover your top-performing reps, figure out which reps need more training, and even pinpoint which sales strategies aren’t impacting the bottom line.
Aside from looking at individual reps, ask yourself:
– Which territories are performing best?
– Which sales actions are driving the best results?
– Are there any bottlenecks in our pipeline?
– How can we rectify these issues?
Your Sales Action Plan is all about giving your sales team the guidance that they need to make smart business decisions. When you can support sales team members by addressing issues that are within your direct control, such as a lack of guidance and direction, you can improve results.
If you find a strategy that works for reps, and make sure that they have everything that they need to follow each step correctly, then reaching your targets should become a lot easier. You’ll find that the meetings, demos, and closed deals will follow naturally.
A successful sales action plan is all about focusing on the proactive actions that your business can invest in, and letting the process develop for everyone. Don’t be afraid to accept feedback from your employees, as well as examining the quantitative data in your sales activity tracker.
Your employees might be able to offer some insights into the steps that they need to take to improve their chances of closing deals and achieving better outcomes.
Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to delivering excellent sales numbers and outcomes. The key to success is to figure out what works for your team by examining your processes, employees, and even your customers.
Designing a sales action plan will help to guide your employees towards more successful results, while making sure that they have the guidance that they need to thrive.
Let’s be honest, managing a high-performance sales team is hard. Especially when you consider that 57% of sellers missed their sales quotas in 2019. How can anyone be expected to effectively lead a group of sales reps when over half of them are likely to underperform?
Missed quotas aren’t even the worst of it. The average annual turnover rate for sales teams is a whopping 35%. Since the cost to replace a departing employee is, in general, 1.5 – 2x their annual salary, turnover gets expensive fast. No wonder upper management is always trying to raise sales quotas.
Now, we’re not trying to discourage you. We simply want to give you a clear understanding of the situation so that you can better prepare yourself for success as a sales team manager. Success is 100% possible. You just have to follow a few proven team management strategies.
Whether you manage an inside or outside sales team, improving your sales management process is the most critical step to increasing rep satisfaction, improving performance, and growing company revenue.
In this guide, we’ll look at 19 sales team management strategies you can use to win at sales and propel your company forward in 2020 and beyond.
Ready to improve your sales team management skills? Then follow the 19 strategies listed below. Let’s dive in!
Setting proper sales goals is an art. You want them to be ambitious enough to stretch your sales team and ensure they give you their best effort. But you also need them to be realistically attainable so that your reps don’t continually miss quotas and get discouraged.
To find the perfect balance, set S.M.A.R.T. goals, an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
Specific: The more specific your goals are the better. This will give you and your team a tangible target to shoot for.
Measurable: Make sure the goals you set are easily trackable. That way you can gauge progress along the way.
Attainable: Like we mentioned, goals that are too ambitious will discourage your employees, which is definitely not what you want when managing a sales team.
Relevant: Don’t simply choose goals at random. Aim for targets that are relevant to your company’s overall objectives.
Timely: Lastly, goals without deadlines rarely get achieved. Make sure everything you aim for has a desired due date.
Set S.M.A.R.T goals for your sales team and you’ll have more success managing salespeople.
There are two main sales models to choose from: the island and the assembly line. Let’s look at each one in greater detail:
1. The Island: This is the traditional approach to sales where every salesperson on the team is responsible for each aspect of the sales process. They generate their own leads, make their own sales calls, close their own deals, etc. It’s an easy model to implement and manage because there aren’t a lot of moving parts to worry about.
2. The Assembly Line: The assembly line method splits sales duties between four different groups. There’s the lead gen team, sales development reps, account executives, and customer success associates. Each group deals with leads and customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.
Both models described above can be effective. The one you choose for your organization largely depends on what phase your business is in. For example, the island method generally works better for startups, but the assembly line methodology is generally ideal for established brands.
Everyone on your team should know exactly what their role is. If they don’t, you can’t possibly expect them to consistently achieve objectives. The trick is doling out responsibilities that correlate with personal skill sets. This is much easier if your company is using the assembly line sales model, described above.
For example, you might manage an employee who is dynamite when it comes to generating leads, but crumbles like a cookie any time he has to actually talk with a potential customer. This person should be asked to join the leads gen team and allowed to focus on what he does best.
Do your best to assign tasks and responsibilities to those who have the best chance of completing them successfully.
One of the keys to managing a sales team effectively is creating systems and processes that can scale. By implementing a systematic approach, you’ll enable your sales team to work more efficiently and increase margins.
Your sales process should be customer-centric, clearly defined, repeatable, predictable, goal-oriented, and measurable.
Develop a sales system that every one of your sales reps can follow. That way, when new reps join your company and are onboarded , they can immediately begin selling at a high level.
Since we just mentioned it, let’s talk about onboarding.
Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into a company. It includes all of the legal paperwork that must be signed, any training a new team member needs to go through, introductions to other employees within the organization, and more.
To improve your sales team management skills, configure a consistent onboarding plan for all new sales. Make sure it trains them properly and teaches them the scalable sales process you’ve implemented.
Lastly, look for ways to improve your onboarding the process. The easier it is for new reps to become comfortable selling your company’s products, the more success your team will have.
Unfortunately, most salespeople only spend 35% of their time selling. Which means your sales team is probably spending two thirds of its time on tasks that don’t directly relate to selling products and boosting revenue.
A good sales CRM can help your team win back a significant portion of their day — especially if you invest in one with automation capabilities. Sometimes sales team management comes down to simply providing your reps with the tools they need to succeed.
So many things in business are out of our control. For example, we don’t decide what the next big trend is or when natural disasters happen. If we did, trends would hardly ever change and hurricanes wouldn’t exist.
Sales activity metrics measure things that we can control. In most circumstances, we decide how many cold calls to make a day, the number of times we’re willing to follow up with prospects, etc. When managing sales reps, it’s important to take notice of these figures.
Track sales activity metrics like the number of leads created, number of calls made, and meetings scheduled for each of your reps, as well as standard KPIs.
Marketing teams often talk about the need to be transparent with customers. As a sales team manager, you need to be transparent too — with your sales team.
Craft a selling environment that’s focused on the key sales metrics you’ve identified for your company and allows the natural competitiveness of your team to work for the common good of your company. In other words, make each team member’s sales numbers visible and allow them to compete with each other for top seller honors.
There are many different ways to compensate your sales team. Should you pay them a base salary + commissions or commissions only? Should they make higher commissions for selling specific numbers of products? And what about residual and variable-rate commissions?
There is no one size fits all approach to sales team compensation. The key is finding the right commission structure for your specific organization. Study the different structures out there. Then choose one that fits your company’s needs.
A commission is a percentage of a sale, awarded to the salesperson who closed the deal. For example, a $25 commission would be given to a seller everytime he or she sells a product worth $500 at a 5% commission.
An incentive, on the other hand, is a reward of some kind, granted to a salesperson who achieves some predetermined level of excellence. Incentives are used to motivate sellers.
When managing a sales team, part of your job is to motivate them to work as hard as they can. That’s why incentives are so powerful. Choose an incentive plan for your team that will get them excited and want to put in extra effort.
The volume-versus-value ratio will help your sales team become more efficient. To implement it, task your top sellers with the lowest volume/most important jobs, such as building relationships and securing referrals. Then assign your lower performing sales reps with high volume/low pressure activities like generating leads.
This philosophy can also be applied to prospecting. Rather than trying to build giant lists of so-so leads, focus on finding ultra-targeted prospects who have a high probability of buying.
Territory assignment is an important sales team management skill. You need to make sure your sales rep’s territories don’t overlap, that each rep has enough accounts to work, and that your top sellers are given the highest value areas.
A tool like Spotio can help with this. The solution’s territory management software will help assign sales territories effectively and boost results.
Data is the lifeblood of modern business. If your sales team doesn’t have the ability to source up-to-date information for each and every lead they generate, they’ll waste a lot of time.
Spotio’s Lead Machine feature ensures this doesn’t happen by giving sales reps the ability to tap into 50+ data points for their prospects instantaneously. This means that they only focus on high-value prospects with the greatest chance of becoming paying customers.
Succeed at sales team management by giving your reps the ability to quickly sort leads via income, credit capacity, age of home, and more.
One of the best ways to train new and/or struggling sales reps is to pair them with a top seller in your company. That way under performers can see, first hand, how to succeed at their jobs.
You do have to be careful with this sales team management strategy as not every sales master is interested in mentoring others. We don’t suggest forcing your sales reps into mentorship roles. But if you find a few willing participants, take advantage of the opportunity.
One-on-one meetings are the secret weapon for all management professionals. They will allow you to build solid relationships with your employees, get a general feel for team morale, provide constructive feedback, and learn new insights you can use to improve your sales processes.
Be sure to prioritize these get-togethers. It can be easy to shrug them off because of a busy schedule, but this is a mistake. Meet regularly with your team and watch your success soar.
As we just mentioned, one-on-one meetings are the perfect time to deliver feedback to your sales reps. Just make sure you’re doing it the right way.
Feedback should be constructive and detailed. Tell your employees what they’re doing right and where they can improve. As long as you’re delivering criticism in a respectful way, your team will appreciate your candor. In fact, 65% of employees wish they received more feedback.
If the only training your reps receive is during the onboarding process, your sales team management approach needs work. Training should be an ongoing process.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to train your employees. You could, for example, send them to sales conferences, invest in sales training courses, and invite notable sales experts to come to your office and speak to your team.
You could also take a more DIY approach and ask your top sellers to share key strategies they’ve been using during lunch breaks.
Communication is key to sales team management success. If you can’t contact your reps, or worse, they can’t contact you, your company will fail to close as many deals as it could. Make sure your team has multiple channels to get in touch with you, from any device — even if they happen to be attending sales meetings in the field.
Finally, if you want to retain your staff (trust us, you do!) then you need to make retention a priority. Fortunately, implementing the strategies listed above will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you in this regard.
Employees want to work at successful companies where they feel appreciated and engaged in their duties. By giving your team every chance to succeed, providing them with training opportunities, and giving them regular feedback, you’ll create an environment they enjoy being a part of.
But if you’re looking for bonus ways to retain sales reps, consider offering retention rewards for employees who stay for multiple years or giving your top sellers more autonomy.
It will be much easier to implement the sales team management strategies listed above if you use a sales management platform. Make sure the solution you use allows you to:
Have you ever spent time researching a lead, only to call them and realize that what your company offers isn’t of any interest to them? All sellers have experienced this. Save your sales team time by empowering them to prospect smarter.
A tool like Spotio with its sales intelligence software will allow your reps to quickly and easily generate lists of warm prospects who are ready to buy.
Want to know the key to managing a successful sales team? Put your reps in a position to succeed. That’s the secret! One of the best ways to do this is giving them access to sales enablement collateral. We’re talking about customer maps, pre-recorded sales presentations, contracts that can be signed electronically… Anything that can help your sales team close more deals in less time.
The sales management platform you choose for your company should make it easy to empower your reps with sales collateral.
The best sales management platforms provide complete transparency and allow sales team managers to see, at a glance, how close each of their reps are to hitting their quotas. They also enable management to view their entire team at once and assess general effectiveness. This information can then be used to adjust strategy if need be.
Do you manage outside sales reps? Then you know all about territory mapping. The sales management platform you use should allow you to easily assign sales territories to each member of your sales team.
The Spotio solution has been proven to save field sales rep management professionals up to three hours a day because it makes territory management so simple. Make sure the software you use when managing a sales team is just as intuitive.
It’s important to track your company’s sales pipeline and ensure it’s free of bottlenecks. This is much easier to do with an intuitive sales management platform.
This kind of tool will usually feature CRM capabilities that will enable you to analyze customer journeys and remove common roadblocks, thus increasing sales. It will also allow you and your team to easily catalog new leads and classify them appropriately.
Sales is all about communication. Your reps need to properly communicate product information to their potential clients and you, as the sales team manager, need to clearly communicate goals, feedback, and praise to your team in order for them to improve and enjoy their jobs.
Choose a sales management platform that allows for quick communication between you and your sales team. If possible, choose an app that’s also accessible on mobile devices so any outside sales associates on your team can contact you at any time.
Managing sales people isn’t an easy task. Fortunately, the 19 sales team management strategies listed above will help you do it effectively. We encourage you to read back through this guide and begin implementing the strategies that make sense for your organization.
And don’t forget to invest in a proper sales management platform! If you’re not sure which solution is right for your company, request a free demo of Spotio. Our solution is powerful, affordable, and loved by our many users.
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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
The buyer’s journey has changed.
With the internet at our fingertips, consumer’s have the ability to research and compare solutions like no generation before. They also have access to mountains of user generated content like peer reviews – which are trusted nearly as much as referrals.
More empowered buyers has resulted in longer sales cycles. People no longer go straight to the source to make purchase decisions.
Today, there are an average of 7 decision-makers involved in the B2B buying process. And, 50-90% of the journey is complete before a buyer interacts with a sales rep.
This shift in behavior should be taken seriously by any sales team, whether inside or out in the field.
With so much change, sales managers need to look at current research and trends to find insights to guide strategies.
Here is a list of 130 sales statistics broken out across 20 categories. Use the data to drive your sales approach into the second half of 2019.
Note: We have included a table of contents below so you can jump to specific statistical categories:
1. Inside sales statistics
2. Outside sales statistics
3. Sales prospecting statistics
4. Sales call statistics
5. Social selling statistics
6. Sales referral statistics
7. Sales email statistics
8. Sales follow up statistics
9. Sales closing statistics
10. Lead nurturing statistics
11. Lead qualification statistics
12. B2B sales statistics
13. Inbound sales statistics
14. Outbound sales statistics
15. Sales productivity statistics
16. Sales training statistics
17. Sales career statistics
18. Sales success statistics
19. Sales CRM statistics
20. Door-to-Door sales statistics
Inside sales is one of the fastest growing areas of the sales organization. Statistics suggest that one of the largest growth levers of inside sales is the opportunity it presents a company to be a “first responder”.
– An outside sales call costs $308, an inside sales call costs $50 (PointClear)
– 44% of inside sales pipeline comes from marketing, and inside sales average dials are down 20% year-over-year (Bridge Group Inc)
– 37% of high-growth companies use inside sales as primary sales strategy (vs. 27% for field sales, 23% for internet sales, 8% for channel sales) (Pacific Crest)
– Only 33% of inside sales rep time is spent actively selling. (CSO Insights)
– Sales reps can spend up to 40% of their time looking for somebody to call. [Source:Inside Sales]
– Research shows that 35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. [Source: InsideSales.com]
Takeaway: Speed is everything in sales. Having a structure in place for inside sales reps to make quick and efficient calls can make all the difference. If a company can be “first to the scene” on a regular basis you’re going to see an uptick in conversions.
Outside Sales is probably what you think of when someone says “salesman”. While the sales ecosystem is shifting, this field still has some of the highest quota attaining percentages out there.
– Face to face or field sales teams make up 71.2% of the sales force.
– 65% of outside account executives are attaining quota which is 10% higher than inside reps.
– Outside Sales Reps Now Spend 89% More Time Selling Remotely Than in 2013.
Takeaway: Pound the pavement. Outside sales teams are a big driver when it comes to hitting sales quotas. While technology gives us the ability to “be” anywhere in the world at any time, there is no substitute for real-life one on one interaction. Inside and outside sales teams can, and in most cases should, work together.
The way companies prospect for leads is changing. Face to face used to be the best (and sometimes only) way to really connect with potential clients. Now with the introduction of mobile devices, email, texting and other digital channels, reps have countless avenues to find, vet, and reach prospects.
– More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%).
– 8 in 10 prospects prefer talking to reps over email, which matches up with the percentage of reps (78%) who use it.
– Prospects are open to communicating with sellers at industry events (34%), via LinkedIn (21%), text (21%), voicemail (21%) and social media (18%).
– 50% of buyers like speaking over phone, compared to 70% of reps. This percentage increases the higher up the ladder (VP or C-suite) you go.
– More than 50% of prospects want to see how your product works on the first call.
– 9 in 10 companies use 2+ lead enrichment tools to learn more about prospects.
Takeaway: Prospecting is one of the hardest tasks assigned to a sales rep. Today’s technology makes it easier to find, and reach, prospective customers. Invest in a toolset that allows you to quickly build profiles and find accurate lead data in your target market.
For example: Spotio’s Lead Machine gives reps and managers a competitive advantage because they are able to quickly build detailed customer profiles and map territories filled with qualified prospects in minutes.
You might have heard the saying, “cold calling is dead”. Well, the data suggests otherwise. An industry study showed companies who said cold calling is dead experienced 42% less growth than those who said it was alive.
– Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment (Leap Job)
– 74% of companies don’t leave voicemails
– In 2007 it took 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts.
– On average, sales managers make no more than 2 attempts to get a lead through cold calls.
– It takes an average of 18 calls to actually connect with a buyer.
– 42% of sales reps feel they don’t have enough information before making a call.
– 85% of prospects and customers are dissatisfied with their on-the-phone experience.
– Sales reps spend about 15% of their time leaving voicemails. —Ringlead
– When leaving a voicemail for a prospect, the optimal length is between 8 and 14 seconds.
– 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call.
– The best time to cold call is between 4:00 and 5:00 PM.
Takeaway: Persistence. Persistence. Persistence. Making sales calls, especially cold calls, will never be an easy task. The key to success, however, is having thick skin along with a plan to follow up. Provide reps with call scripts, and train them on handling the most common sales objections. This will make the process much more approachable.
Set clear call goals, and always track activity in your CRM.
While almost everyone is on social media these days, adoption and integration into the selling process is slow. Most reps rely exclusively on email and phone calls to find, close and retain business. While these channels are all important, missing the social selling train can be very costly.
– 65% of salespeople who use social selling fill their pipeline, compared to 47% of reps who do not.
– 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers.
– 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level or vice-president level executives use social media to make purchasing decisions.
– 31% of B2B professionals said that social selling allowed them to build deeper relationships with their clients.
– Sales reps who use social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their quota.
– 63.4 percent of sales reps engaged in social selling report an increase in their company’s revenue (compared to just 41.2 percent of non-social sellers).
– Four in 10 reps have closed 2-5 deals directly thanks to social media.
– Using social selling tools can increase the average deal size by 35%.
Takeaway: Reps that embrace social selling usually have more prospects in the pipeline and outsell their competitors. Make it a part of the sales process to first connect with prospective clients before engaging through other sales channels – outbound, email, phone etc. Warm connections will usually deliver higher response rates, and more set appointments.
Referrals are gold. Getting a referral from a happy client is stronger than any sales pitch you could make.
Despite the bottom line value of weaving referrals into the fabric of your sales process, very few reps are actively asking for them.
– 73% of executives prefer to work with sales professionals referred by someone they know. [Source: IDC]
– Salespeople who actively seek out and exploit referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than those who don’t.
– 84% of buyers now kick off their buying process with a referral.
– 92% of buyers trust referrals from people they know.
– 91% of customers say they’d give referrals. Only 11% of salespeople ask for referrals.
– Companies with formalized referral programs experience 86% more revenue growth over the past two years when compared to the rest.
– The lifetime value of referred customers is on average 16% higher than that of non-referred customers. [Source: Wharton School of Business]
Takeaway: Ask for referrals – get more sales. It really is that simple. There is no better way to start a sales process than with a referral from a trusted friend or colleague. Make this a mandatory part of your ongoing sales strategy. Specifically, make it a point to ask for referrals after positive customer engagements – testimonials, reviews and high NPS scores.
Email is one of the most powerful sales tools for any company – the channel has a reported 44:1 ROI. With so much potential, comes a lot of competition. The average person receives 147 emails every day! The battle to stand out in the inbox is more fierce than ever. Sales teams need to embrace and adapt to this challenge if they want to realize the bottom line benefits of email marketing.
– Only 23% of sales emails are opened. [Source: TOPO]
– Email marketing has 2x higher return than cold calling (source)
– 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. [Source: Convince and Convert]
– B2B customers have become desensitized to words such as “reports”, “forecasts”, and “intelligence” (source).
– 40% of emails are opened on mobile first – where the average mobile screen can only fit 4-7 words max.
– Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. [Source: Aberdeen Group]
– Using the words “Sale,” “New,” or “Video” in subject lines boost open rates. [Source: Adestra]
– Personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened. [Source: Adestra]
Takeaway: People are bombarded with emails from sunrise to sunset. It’s important to craft subject lines that use power words proven to win the open. Also, with nearly four in every ten emails opened on a mobile device subject lines should be kept short.
Bonus: Use social and email together to get higher engagement rates. A simple way to do this is connecting with prospects on social media prior to sending emails. Once the connection has been made prospects will be more likely to open an email from a familiar source.
Most reps give up on the sale way too early. Prospects typically require multiple touchpoints across numerous channels before they ever speak to a sales rep, especially in a B2B setting where sales cycles are longer with more decision-makers.
– 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting.
– 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up
– 50% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first.
– Drift tested the response time of 433 companies. Only 7% responded in the first five minutes after a form submission. Over 50% didn’t respond within five business days.
– An analysis of more than 2,200 American companies found those who attempted to reach leads within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who waited even sixty minutes.
– On average, it takes 8 follow-up calls to reach a prospect. — Telenet and Ovation Sales Group
Takeaway: Be prompt, be persistent. Very rarely will a sale occur on the first touch-point. Make sure your sales reps are following up multiple times across different channels in the days or weeks following the initial contact. Use lead management software to make sure reps are following up at the right times.
– Best-in-class companies close 30% of sales qualified leads while average companies close 20%.
– 48% of sales calls end without an attempt to close the sale and the national sales closing rate is 27%.
Takeaway: Closing is hard. A lot of reps avoid it. Always have a clear call-to-action at the end of every touchpoint. This doesn’t have to be a sale, but it should at least be a scheduled follow-up call with key decision makers to keep the sales process moving along.
The sales cycle is longer and more complex. As a result, the way businesses generate and nurture leads is changing. Single touchpoint sales are rare. Both marketers and sales teams now need to work together closely to guide consumers along the path to purchase.
Companies who have implemented a repeatable system for nurturing leads have shown much higher lead-close rates.
– 74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority (Hubspot)
– Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report)
– 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
– 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
– Companies excelling at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research)
– Businesses using marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads
– 51% of email marketers say email list segmentation is the most effective way to personalize lead nurturing. (Ascend2)
Takeaway: Make sure you have a sales CRM in place to educate, build trust, position and move prospects through the funnel.
As you plan out a lead nurturing sequence, think about the types of information a lead will need to be tagged as sales-ready, move into the opportunity phase, and ultimately close into a paying customer. This content will likely be different for each persona, so make sure you are properly segmenting lists in the CRM to ensure the right information is sent to the right person, at the right time.
Not all leads are created equal. Ensuring your sales team is only “working” the most qualified prospects (SQLs) will help improve productivity – save time, energy and money – and boost conversion rates.
– 46% of B2B sales reps list lead quantity and quality as their top challenge.
– 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers before taking them through the full sales process.
– 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
– Just 44% of companies use lead scoring systems. (DecisionTree)
– Only 25% of marketing-generated leads are typically of a high enough quality to immediately advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)
– There is a 10x drop in lead qualification when you wait longer than 5 minutes to respond, and a 400% decrease when you respond within 10 minutes versus 5 minutes. [Source: Harvard Business Review]
– Only 5% of salespeople said leads they receive from marketing were very high quality. [Source: HubSpot]
Takeaway: Sales reps spend a lot of time and energy working unqualified leads. Set up a lead scoring system to ensure reps are only engaging the leads ready to buy.
The B2B sales process is longer and much more complex than ever a few years ago. There are more decision makers involved with many more touch points along the way. As a result, much of B2B sales process is done well before a rep ever contacts a prospect.
– In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decisions (Gartner Group)
– B2B buyers are 57%-70% through buying research before contacting sales.
– 9/10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decision
– 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally (Sirius Decisions)
– 84% of CEOs and VPs use social media to make purchasing decisions (Source IDC)
– 62% of B2B buyers say a web search was one of the first three resources they use to learn about a solution.
– 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information from a series of articles versus an advertisement. (B2B PRSense)
– 84% of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral. ~ Sales Benchmark Index.
– Average Lead to Close length is 102 days (Source: Salesforce)
Takeaway: B2B buyers (heavily) research and compare competitor products. Organizations need to create in-depth comparison guides that make it easy for buyers to weigh up a product against the competition, and clearly see why it is a superior offering. These assets can not only drive targeted mid-funnel traffic to your website, but also act as powerful sales enablement materials that reps can share through email with prospects in the evaluation stage of the buying cycle.
Today’s buyers are more educated than ever before. No longer should sales and marketing teams operate in silos. Teams need to collaborate using content to not only educate and engage buyers, but to also enable sales reps to become effective closers.
– 46% of marketers reported that inbound marketing gave a higher ROI, while only 12% reported outbound did.77% of B2B purchasers said that they would not even speak to a salesperson until they had done their own research (The Corporate Executive Board)
– 93% of B2B buying processes begin with an online search.
– 94% of B2B buyers will research online before finalizing a purchase.
– Over half (57%) of the selling process is completed for consumers before a company even has a chance to interact with them (The Corporate Executive Board).
– When asked which marketing tactic provides higher quality leads for the sales team, 59% of marketers responded inbound, and 16% reported outbound (source).
– 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of the company’s content before talking with a sales representative.
Takeaway: Sales and marketing teams need to be tightly aligned. Sit down and brainstorm a list of topics/ questions your ideal customer is searching for online during the awareness, consideration and purchase phases of the buyer journey.
Craft content that answers those questions, and amplify it across the channels where your target customers spend the most time. The more educated the buyer, the faster and easier they close.
Outbound sales can be the lifeblood of your company. The trick is making sure sales reps are put into a position to succeed.
– 52% of outbound marketers say their marketing efforts are “ineffective”.
– 42 percent of sales reps feel they don’t have enough information prior to making a call.
– 75% of surveyed executives are willing to make an appointment or attend an event based on a cold call or email alone. — DiscoverOrg
– Only 16% of marketers say outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for sales. (HubSpot, 2017)
Takeaway: While inbound marketing has seen an explosion in popularity, there is still a place in most organization for traditional outbound sales tactics. The key is make sure reps are armed with enough information about a prospect’s business, pain points and goals to craft a message that will resonate enough to win email opens, call backs and appointments.
In an ideal scenario, sales reps would spend all their time prospecting, sending emails, making phone calls, following up and nurturing leads. But, as you’ll see, this is not the case. In fact, most of a reps time is spent on non-sales activities.
– Only 39% of a sales rep’s time is spent selling or interacting with prospects and customers.
– It takes 10 months or more for a new sales rep to be fully productive
– Only 60% of sales reps meet quota (source).
– High-performing sales teams use nearly three times the amount of sales technology than underperforming teams (source).
– 79% of sales executives say a leading driver of hitting new targets is improving the productivity of existing sales reps (source).
– 81% of companies say productivity would improve with better process, skills, or competency training (source).
– 84% of sales executives cited content search and utilization as the top productivity improvement area.
– The typical organization spends 24K per person on improving productivity, yet 49% of organizations have zero or limited means to measure productivity (source).
Takeaway: One of the key takeaways is to use a mapping solution that eliminates the productivity-killers that comes with using legacy solutions like Streets and Trips, MapPoint, or even Google Maps. Make sure you have the right processes and tools in place to help reps work smarter, not harder. We put together an in-depth guide on how to increase sales team productivity.
Hiring dynamic reps who are passionate about your product or services is only half the battle when it comes to building and retaining a high-performing sales team. Today, over half of reps lack basic sales skills, and don’t receive adequate training. This is crazy when you consider ongoing training is the leading driver of high-performing sales organizations.
– According to Forbes magazine, 55% of salespeople lack basic sales skills.
– 58 percent of buyers report that sales reps are unable to answer their questions effectively.
– According to a recent survey, 84% of all sales training is lost after 90 days. This is majorly due to the lack of information retention among sales personnel.
– 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared. [Source: Blender]
– According to a recent report, every dollar invested in sales training returned $29 in incremental revenues.
– According to a recent report, the best sales training will improve the performance of an individual on average by 20%.
– According to an ATD report, US companies spend $20 billion yearly on sales training.
– Firms where salespeople use the company’s methodology and get consistent coaching see 73% quota attainment.
– 65% of employees say the quality of training and learning opportunities positively influences their engagement.
– High-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training as low-performing ones.
Takeaway: Untrained salespeople doom companies. Organizations that spend more time training reps see better sales numbers. Seems like a no-brainer, but over half of sales reps are lacking the proper skills to become effective at their job. A long-term commitment to ongoing training – seminars, workshops, books – will give your sales team a competitive advantage.
The sales industry isn’t for everyone. Large scale turnover is a real thing. Understanding this can help companies prepare for, and handle the change. Statistics show what kind of people will succeed in the sales industry which can help inform the hiring process.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 6-percent employment growth for sales representatives by 2026
– Only 39% of salespeople intended to go into sales.
– Forrester predicts one million sales reps will be out of a job by 2020.
– The average SDR performs 94.4 activities a day, including social, call, voicemail, and email touches.
– The typical account executive spends 2.7 years on the job and takes 4.7 months to ramp
Takeaway: Sales is hard. Turnover is a lot higher than other industries. It’s critical your organization has a clearly defined process for finding, interviewing and hiring high-performing reps. Look at the top sales reps and make a list of what makes them good for the position. Hire more of those people.
There are a lot of good sales reps, but few are exceptional. In order to be better than good and become successful, reps must to earn the trust of their prospective buyers. What approach can you take to go from a good rep, to a great success?
– Successful reps are 10x more likely to use collaborative words like “us,” “we,” and “our” and avoid words like, “I” and “me.” (Chorus)
– Asking questions about your buyer’s goals and pain points leads to better sales success. (Gong)
– Optimistic sales pros outperform pessimists by 57%. That’s even true when pessimists have better selling skill sets. (Forbes, Seligman)
Sales CRM’s are an imperative tool for a modern sales team and a very powerful tool to have in your arsenal.
– 57% of sales pros spend 3–10+ hours per week using CRM tools. (State of Sales, LinkedIn)
– CRMs are the most popular sales tools, followed by social prospecting, data services, email, phone, and sales cadence. (SalesforLife)
– CRMs can boost sales by 29% and productivity to 34%. (Salesforce)
– 24% more sales pros meet their annual quotas when they have mobile access to their CRM. (Aberdeen Group)
– CRMs can boost sales by 29% and productivity to 34%. (Salesforce)
In the age of technology and remote working, door-to-door sales is very much alive and well. Being successful takes grit, persistence, and a “never say die” attitude. To be a successful D2D sales rep, it takes:
– Successful door-to-door reps canvass a neighborhood 3x and talk with 90% of the residents.
– The average sales pro can create one lead for every 50 doors they knock on. (realestatecareermentor)
– About 2% of all door-to-door knocks will generate a sale. (leadheroes)
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High-performing sales teams don’t just happen – they know which activities drive the best outcomes and stop doing the ones that aren’t adding value.
To build a consistent pipeline that fuels ongoing results, sales reps and sales managers need to know that they’re executing the right activities every single day.
For an overwhelming number of sales teams, the majority of a reps time is spent on non-selling activities; a problem that boils down to not having a clearly defined process and necessary technology to execute.
“But, where do we start?”
There are so many different activities a rep and manager can be working on in a given day, week, month or year. Not all are created equal.
With the help of smart technology and data-driven insights, reps and managers can scale by uncovering where and how they can allocate their time, energy and resources for the highest return.
In this post, we’ll look at 10 data-backed sales activities reps and managers can adopt to build a pipeline that drives predictable sales results.
Let’s get crystal clear on what we mean by sales activities.
Sales activities are the day-to-day actions, tactics, or practices that reps and sales management take part in. Over time, these activities lead to results, like winning a big opportunity or exceeding a sales quota.
Sales activities can be divided into two categories: qualitative and quantitative
– Contacting new prospects or existing customers
– Presenting your product or service
– Nurturing strong client relationships
– Following up diligently
– Customer satisfaction
– Brand awareness
Although qualitative activities can’t be measured by data, they do provide insight into how your team is doing, offers a way to motivate, gives insight into customer satisfaction, and helps fill in the overall picture of sales performance.
Quantitative activities can be pulled as raw numbers, which is very useful when it comes to understanding the efficiency of your sales team. You’re able to see the number of new opportunities, new leads, amount of revenue last quarter, etc.
Quantitative insight allows you to assess the current state of your reps and team, coach those who need help in a certain area of the sales cycle, as well as model future growth based on past performance data.
Increased activity doesn’t necessarily lead to increased results, however; not all activities are created equal. By understanding which sales activities yield the strongest results, sales teams can make the most of their time.
Monitoring and tracking key sales activities lets you know where the sales team is at as a whole; allowing you to drill down to identify what’s working, what’s not working, who needs coaching, so on and so forth.
Having a grasp on the following 10 activities will set your organization up for success.
Lack of tracking is one of the most critical gaps faced by sales managers when trying to identify the most important sales activities. If sales teams don’t know what they’re doing, they have no way of knowing which activities are leading to results.
CRMs fill this gap by helping sales teams keep track of contacts, accounts, deals and activities.
In fact, SPOTIO’s Field Sales CRM gives sales leaders visibility into how top outside reps are making it happen and where leads are falling off in the sales process. With features like pipeline visibility, next best action to take, simplify and automate prospecting, sales material management, and document storage.
Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to better track sales, streamline prospecting, map visits, and overall enhance how a reps time is spent in the field.
In addition to cutting out the noise of low-return accounts, thoughtful sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base – whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship. It allows sales teams to focus their attention on viable accounts and spend more time in the field making face-to-face contact.
SPOTIO’s territory management software is one great tool that enables managers to create custom maps of different territories for assignment to sales reps.
Sales reps have the potential to waste hours of valuable time wandering aimlessly without a strategic plan for where and when they will spend their time. Smart route planning is an essential activity to ensure sales teams spend their time in an optimal way.
Route planning software, such as SPOTIO Routing enables reps to see exactly where to go, what to do, and the most efficient way to get there. Users can set up meetings, update notes in real-time, and prospect new accounts in between meetings.
These days, there’s copious amounts of data available to sales teams for tracking the activities that lead to the best results. Most organizations have data at their fingertips, but only the best sales teams put deliberate motions in place to monitor and track data to augment activity and improve results.
Some useful activities to measure include the volume and timing of email, sales calls, meetings, marketing campaigns, and phone calls. By monitoring your data, you’ll be able to track the activities that lead up to a sale.
Some examples of tracking data:
– View Pipeline activity inside territories
– Historical prospect, contact, and opportunity data
– Real-time insights of rep activity and performance
– Performance tracking
– GPS verified location tracking
– Colorized data views
– Real-time rep visibility
Smart CRM solutions like SPOTIO field CRM goes beyond aiding the sales team by tracking and organizing data so it can be easily consumed and actioned by sales leadership.
Sales reps are almost always juggling tasks and priorities. Between prospecting, nurturing, working a deal, or closing there’s a lot to be done. To ensure the pipeline flows smoothly, sales reps need to schedule important tasks to make sure nothing falls off the radar.
92% of salespeople give up after no sales on the 4th call. 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes (source).
By scheduling follow-up tasks and committing to your schedule, you can avoid getting lost in the moment and getting consumed by a single activity. Time is your most important asset. Scheduling specific follow up activities by prioritizing the outcomes you’re looking to drive at a strategic level.
SPOTIO’s appointment setting functionality empowers users to create appointments right in the calendar tool for themselves and other team members. It gives users the ability to see busy and available times for anyone on the team and book appointments accordingly.
One way to optimize time in sales is to focus on the most qualified prospects in your pipeline. Specifically, you want to focus on those prospects who have shown interest in your product or solution – the ones who just need a little push. Those who haven’t engaged are not as worthy of your time.
When you’ve identified your best prospects, your role is to keep them engaged. One example of an activity you can perform is sending an email with a link to an article your prospect would find useful. Another thing you can do is stay active on social media where prospects can see the way you interact with happy customers.
One way to make your lead management activities more efficient is to segment your leads by where they are in the sales process.
For example, cold leads may need to be re-engaged, warm leads may need follow up or nurturing, and hot leads that are further down the funnel need to be pushed to the finish line.
By segmenting your leads and lead management activities, you can organize your time to focus on certain types of activities in bulk. You can use templates and repeatable behavior to be efficient and stay focused.
SPOTIO’s lead management software allows you to further identify prospects by assigning them a specific color based on where they are in the sales funnel. This creates a database of “lead intelligence” within the app (colorization).
Instead of monitoring every move a rep makes outside the office, you can use sales tracking technology like that offered by SPOTIO to track sales data instead. A sales activity tracker will help your team identify which activities are driving results, as well as which ones are not, so you can improve the sales process.
If performance is down, you can go straight to the source of the problem and correct it. Likewise, if you notice certain activities are driving a lot of sales, you can dedicate more resources to them and scale. Tracking and acting on sales activity data is one of the few ways sales teams can control their outcomes.
Sales management should be tracking both quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitative data helps you paint a bigger picture of how customers view your company. Quantitative data can be used for more concrete things.
For example, you can create clear sales goals like increasing your lead generation by a certain percentage over the next quarter. After the quarter is up, you’ll have some data on what part of your sales funnel is generating the most leads, and what parts need work.
The most successful sales teams are super focused on nurturing their customer relationships to fuel repeat and ongoing sales. In fact, a Bain study cites that repeat customers are known to spend more than 60% more than new customers.
The best way to nurture customer relationships is to learn their business, understand their biggest challenges and goals, and make your interactions about them and how you can help them reach their potential. You can do this by ensuring you celebrate their successes, either via social media or with an acknowledgement phone call.
You can also keep them engaged by ensuring they’re the first to know about any new product releases, services or company news.
All great relationships hinge on the quality and consistency of your communication habits. Great communication ensures that everyone involved is clear on expectations, marching toward the same outcome, and familiar with where they stand. Poor communication, on the other hand, often leads to mismatched anticipations and disappointment.
In a management scenario, clear communication is necessary to clarify desired outcomes, maximize productivity and minimize churn, and perhaps most importantly, prevent frustration and failure. For sales teams who spend the bulk of their time on the road, clear communication is critical.
To get the best results from their teams, effective sales managers use a mix of communications tools in-app chat, email, team meetings, dashboards, and one-to-one conversations to keep the lines of communication active. They concentrate on predictability and consistency.
Some sales enablement solutions like SPOTIO offer communication features like Team Chat that encourage sales rep engagement and create an open feedback loop with managers. With the ability to talk with individuals 1-on-1 or chat with a specific group, these tools keep the line of communication frequent and open.
Successful sales organizations know that the secret to success is to work smarter, not harder.
Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day, so the key is to find ways to make the most out of your time with a focus on the things that add value to your customers and accelerate sales.
With features that allow you to maximize your time, SPOTIO’s solutions are a great place to start. With CRM capabilities designed for reps in the field, territory management functionality, route planning, scheduling, sales tracking and more, SPOTIO is the perfect tool for capturing sales activities at the rep and manager levels.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
Spotio is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
We sat down with Adam Bensman to learn how he uses direct mail to get highly qualified and affordable leads.
Adam “The Roof Strategist” runs a 100% FREE Roofing Sales Training on YouTube. He focuses exclusively on self generating leads, marketing, and sales. He has personally sold, managed, or consulted on over $100MM in sales and has worked with companies across the US and Canada.
Where to find Adam and access his resources:
– Website
– YouTube
– Email: adam@roofstrategist.com
Video Transcription:
Trey (00:00):
Hey, it’s Trey Gibson, the founder and CEO at Spotio, our core purposes, we’re transforming field sales to achieve more with the coronavirus thing come in. As all y’all know, it’s basically wiping out the ability for field sales teams to even do their job. And our core purpose is kind of taken on a whole new meaning. So we’ve come together as a company and are focused on helping field sales teams to adapt to this new reality for the time being, by giving you resources to do what we’re calling virtual field sales, tactical and practical strategies on how you and your company can thrive through these times. So with me today, I have none other than Adam Benjamin from the roof strategist. I was really excited to have him on the show because I’ve known Adam for a long time. Not only has he done the job, but he’s a marketing expert and has brought some really cool tactics to getting leads.
Trey (00:52):
And our topic for today is how to use hyper-targeted direct mail to get cheap qualified leads. And maybe if we have time at the end, I can twist his arm to talking about his new cold call script. I don’t know. Adam, why don’t you introduce yourself, tell a little bit about your history and for those people that might not know about you.
Adam (01:11):
Yeah. Awesome. Trey Fe. First of all, thanks for reaching out. I’m super stoked to be on here with ya. So again, my name is Adam Murray strategist. I run 100% free roofing sales training channel on YouTube. I’m all my, I’m just doing things backwards. Every everyone charges for training. I do it free and a marketing and lead gen is my thing. So I do have options available for people who want to purchase my stuff. But the, the 32nd snapshot, I cut my teeth in door to door sales, getting into roofing sales.
Adam (01:38):
Quickly worked my way up to COO of about an $8 million a year company and ran ran sales teams. And then from there fell into the business management consulting and sales training side training teams across the U S and just this year surpassed 100 million in sales that I’ve personally either sold manager consultant on. So yeah, that’s my quick and dirty background. Nice. So the topic about hyper-targeted mailers, like how did you come up with that? So where did that, where did that come from? Cause I know you’ve probably done that before and you’re in your past, right? You know, I did, I learned it in the past through some very bright people in the marketing world, specifically for roofing. And after learning that I found out how important it is to have a very well crafted letter and the right strategy to make those letters effective.
Adam (02:34):
And the reason that we came to this targeted direct pieces, we used to use mass mailers and roofing, you know, where it’s like, here’s blasting a zip code. Well, one, the real expensive to mistakes are not cheap. You know, we somehow mailed, I forget how many tens of thousands of dollars worth of mailers out with the tracking phone number that was misprinted so didn’t even work. And you know, you get this thing in the mail [inaudible] it’s hyper glossy. It’s screams marketing material. Yeah. So step one of a letter is, is the right list getting in front the right people. So if it’s targeted, meaning you drive by, you know that that’s a home. And this applies if you’re doing solar, if you’re doing home security systems, if you’re doing roofing remodeling, it doesn’t matter. You know, what homes you want to hit. And it’s either driving by and pulling onesie, twosies or just blasting the whole street.
New Speaker (03:20):
But when you have the right data, that’s step one. Step two is getting that letter opened. So making it personal, right? Not putting it in an envelope, hand address, hand stamp, using blue ink, having crappy handwriting on purpose. And you know, people are curious like who is this? So that’s getting it open. And then two is getting the whole thing read. And, and I started to study some of the copywriter greats of our time Joseph Sugarman and, and him, specifically Dan Kennedy. And I’m looking at Michael Masterson, those guys figuring out what goes into a letter to get someone to read it, to get them to pick up the phone and call you right there. So played with the concept, tested it and have proven it to be super effective for roofers and now have just been modifying the approach with people that I work with to help them generate leads during the time when you can’t go knocking doors.
New Speaker (04:12):
So yeah. Yeah. So that’s right now we’re stuck inside you know, having to find new ways to generate leads for these guys that are used to banging on doors all day. Yeah. A letter might be a complete new concept. So let’s break it down, kind of, you know, the what, you know, give as much as you can on, on the, the nuts and bolts of what it’s going to say. And, and you know, maybe even like, okay, they called back, am I setting up a virtual appointment? Just your, your, your strategy behind that. Yeah. Awesome. Let’s do that. I’m actually pulling up on my end, just a letter so I can reference it. So the, the main thing with the strategy is first how to get the, get the data. And I, I’m looking over my whiteboard. I literally just filmed a live video on my YouTube channel.
New Speaker (04:56):
You want to start with past customers and working the areas around them. It is much easier if you think about the, these letters there, there’s cold, cold and then there’s warm and there’s hot. So cold cold is, no one’s ever heard of you. Warm as you’ve got a reason just to be reaching out. You can mention a neighbor by name, a street name, a recent project, something of a like and then that makes it not cold so they’re more curious to open it. Same things you have past customers and current customers, no matter where you’re at. And then specifically in progress. So any builds or installations, whatever it is that you’re doing, those are the ones to start with. Just to get your mind thinking about it. So element one is grabbing the addresses. There is no better time than to then during an install mailing, like just like you would go knocking doors around that the, the home you’re doing the install, if you can’t go knock the doors I highly recommend mailing around it and also layering in the cold calling, which we can talk about.
New Speaker (05:53):
So first, get your data, find which homes you want to do. I love what you’re doing with spotty so we can just literally be, you know, just cause you’re a stay at home owners. I mean you can’t like drive around, you know, don’t get out of your car, don’t break the rules, but you can drive through a neighborhood and say, Hey, that’s a, that’s an address, that’s an address. And the most efficient way to do it if you are in the field is just right down the street name and then just a bunch of numbers and get back to the office. You can reconcile it. Grab a standard envelope, you know, that’s going to print out regular old paper on your home printer and a hand address enhanced stamp it. And put the stamp on crooked. That’s totally fundamentally pod. Crooked dice. I haven’t heard that one.
New Speaker (06:32):
You’ll want to make it where no one will even think this was a mass mailing cause you don’t want it to go straight to the trash. Right. That’s the first decision tree when people sort mail garbage or not garbage. Yep. So we just want to get open. So I use either, if I can’t, worst case scenario, I hand write. By the way, this is information I got from my high school teacher that, and this was back when he used to write papers by hand. For those of you that might read was like that people who wrote essays in blue ink scored higher than those in black ink. I have no idea whether this is true. I have not found that study, but that still is with me. So I always use blue ink because it pops more contrast more so I always grab white envelope, blue ink and I’ll write dear homeowner on it or neighbor.
New Speaker (07:19):
Ideally now, you know with, with the app spotty or you can pop in and click it and be like, Oh, now I know their name so you’re not generic. So write their address and then my return address, I never ever use a company name. You can use whatever address you need, your home address or the business. But don’t put the company name because that again, someone’s like, why is this roofing company mailing me or solar company or whoever it is. So just leave that blank. The idea is to pique their curiosity enough to get it to open. So that’s step one. I’m opening that letter every single time. Every time. Yeah. Who wouldn’t? So fundamental in any questions on that before I breeze through, I have a tendency to talk a million miles. It makes complete sense. You know, it’s, it’s, I think the important thing that you said that the guys, it’s the list, right?
New Speaker (08:03):
And like every good marketer tells you that starts with the damn list. So for everybody that’s out there that’s used of knocking the 500 doors in an area, not caring, like you’re not going to hand a dress 500 envelopes maybe cause we do got a ton of time, but you know, pick, make sure your F your list is good, who you’re going to address this to counts because that’s when you get phone calls. You want it to be qualified. So I think just just reiterating that no, everything else is awesome. Makes complete sense. Awesome. And it’s the same way with any sales, right? So especially in door to door, you’re not, if you’re selling to homeowners, you’re not going to go to an apartment complex and knock on each door in the apartment. You’re wasting your time. Yeah. So it’s the same concept. Email, direct mail, whatever it is.
New Speaker (08:43):
So I’m hand address, hand stamped. Second. do not overproduce your letter. This is the one mistake that almost every company owner makes is they want to overproduce, sorry, let me explain what over-producing means. That means designing it, handing it off to your digital marketer, your graphic designer to spruce it up. Put it on letterhead, put your logo on it. All of that screams marketing. Okay. Lightning bolts. I do all the roofers like that. I know the light picture, a hail, you know, plain paper three. All of my stuff is rudimentary and simple and it works really well. I had a guy write me the other day, he says, Adam, one of your letters made me millions last year. And I was like, Oh cool. They work. And it was great. I know they work, they’ve done that. But one dude use these things and it works. So again, plain paper.
New Speaker (09:27):
So that’s the second thing. Third thing, big old, bold headline across the top. So first thing someone’s going to read, it needs to capture their attention. And I’ll read you the headline. I want just one of my, I have a, I have a five of these things that I use at different stages, at least for roofing. So this says, after leaving my [inaudible] quick adjustment, this is an edited one for the covert 19 specifically for use right now. So anyone that’s listening, this is to be used right now after leaving my customer’s house on and then type in the street name. Okay? And if, if that’s the street they live on or in proximity, that level of specificity is going to peak their curiosity and inside their mind are going to say, Hey, this is relevant to me. I live near that street. Okay? After leaving my customer’s house call it Lexington lane, I wanted to stop by comma, but I’m mailing you instead to practice social distancing dot, dot, dot.
New Speaker (10:18):
That’s it. So someone who reads that, they have no closure. They know that you’ve been in the neighborhood, you referenced the street and that you wanted to stop by, but didn’t. So what’s the natural thing that’s going through your head? Try just for fun. W w why were you going to stop by exactly. Great. Read my letter. Then it starts with dear homeowner. I want to stop buying the way back from visiting with my customer on the street, but realize how important it is for all of us. Practice social distancing. That’s why we have this brand new. No contact needed service, I’m writing to you about. And then you continue your pitch, whether it’s roofing, whether it’s solar, whether it’s window replacements, whatever industry you’re in, you can use that same kind of swipe, so to speak. Replay this, write a word for word, you know that is to get someone down the slope of every sentence is I want to know more what’s next, what’s next.
New Speaker (11:06):
And that’s the, what I love about the marketing piece is trying to get inside the customer’s head to figure out what are they thinking and how do I say one step ahead to just get them down all the way to the end where it says call me for your free whatever it is. That’s a, that’s gold. I love it. That’s great. So are you typing the letter or is this your handwriting? I typed the letter. So my letters that I provide, everything’s typed. And in formatting’s really important. Like you want to make it where people can quickly and easily read it. You know how if someone sends you an email and it’s like a giant block of text, the first thing I do is like read later. I don’t, I just don’t want to get into it cause it’s intimidating. If you take that same email and you break it up line by line, my spacing easy, not intimidating, you bold what needs to jump off the page.
New Speaker (11:56):
So I’ve typed them up in the beauty. So the beauty of having them typed is when you’re hitting a street, nothing changes. You literally type it up. You hit print 50 copies on your home computer, we’re computer, whatever, or excuse me, printer and a computer can sign them in blue ink at the bottom there where those space for the signature is slip your business carbon side. That’s it. And if you want to get real clever and don’t mind some postage, you can use some crafty tricks, which is like putting, don’t use confetti. Customers hate that stuff. Yeah. You know, you can, you can slip things in the envelope and call them 3d mailings. So it’s, it’s things that actually might be the name of a company. So, but I know that the concepts 3d stuff, male or when the color, it’s a surprise. You’re, you’re curious.
New Speaker (12:43):
It’s like a little thing in there. You know when people put in a trashcan or picture of one or sticker, your beer bottle cap, like it doesn’t matter what it is, gets people to open it. If you can tie into the story, you know, to be like a miniature shingle. I haven’t tried that one yet. I should maybe do that. But but any who, yeah, fill, fill them out, print them out. This is all rudimentary, low cost. I had our salesman doing it every night when they were sitting at home. You can be drinking a beer, watching TV, whatever it is you do to unwind at night. Like this mindless work. You can outsource it for stupid cheap and postage is, what is it, 55 cents a stamp now? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s cheap. It’s, it’s cheaper than going door to door. It’s cheaper than gas.
New Speaker (13:26):
If you think about your time, how many homes you can hit, the amount of time it would take to go knock 60 doors in between the dead time walking, like all that stuff. You can take those same exact concepts and apply them into two direct mail and just crush it, just crush it. How many loans are you sending that same letter multiple times or, or kind of, I know you said you have five, so I’m sure you have a sequence you send, but just concept wise, do we need to send multiple letters over a week period or two in the same week or do you kind of have a sequence in mind? That’s a very good question. As with anything, I always teach multi-touch marketing. So when you’re out canvassing, when things do return back to normal, which hopefully won’t be too long. I know it feels like eternity.
New Speaker (14:11):
Even if it’s two months, it’s two months. You know, this will be a blip on the radar. It’s frightening to think about, cause I know a lot of us have slowed down. But it’s literally going to be a blip on the radar. So when, if we take the concepts of what works in door to door canvasing, you don’t just go through a neighborhood and slam on doors one time and then be like, Oh, hit that one onto the next one. Right? I mean, I used to do that when I was a dummy, you know, but then you, what you, you knock on the door, you know who’s home and who’s not. You leave a letter. Again, same thing. I sell letters because if you hang a door hanger like everyone else, you’re just everyone else and it goes straight in the trash. So print it out, fold it up.
New Speaker (14:46):
People are curious, why is their piece of paper folded up? Yeah, that’s inside, right? Not on the outside, just piece of paper. Someone they’re going to want to know. So anyway, layer that on, then send a direct mail, then cold call. So there’s four touches on the same house and then go back again when you’re doing an install, right. Knock the neighborhood. So same concept applies. I have different letters for different scenarios. Personally, like I stopped by and you weren’t there. Are you sick of other people knocking on your door? That one’s not really relevant right now. We have a build in progress from a neighborhood notice and, and things like that. Let’s see. I also do them specific for the I just have a general one I use for cold if you’re doing larger lists, all the under the radar sales letter.
New Speaker (15:30):
So it’s just a general pitch that has less specifics in it. So yes, layer mine, but definitely call after, I mean, yeah, that way it’s not cold calling. You’re calling to say, Hey my name’s out on the roof strategist. I pop the letter in the mail the other day and just wanted to give you a friendly followup call and ask what your thoughts were after reading it. You know, and then you’re ending with that open ended question instead of did you get a no and then they hang up. So the main thing which I know we’ll, we’ll hopefully touch on in cold calling is 100% of the time have an open ended question. Never say, can I do this? That’s a yes or no. How are you doing? Good. Great. I’m not interested in how are you doing? Tic technically is an open ended question, but the way our society answers it is always the same.
New Speaker (16:16):
Yes. Right? Yup. Either good or something horrible happened. You say not so good. Yeah. Yeah. So but yeah, cold calling. Ha. I mean that open ended question. Did you get my letter? And I wanted to follow up to see what your thoughts were after reading it. You’re forcing them to think, who in the hell are you? What letter did you send? Did I read it right? And then if they don’t, they’re like, Oh, you know what? I didn’t read it. You’re like, who cares? You’re in a conversation. It just gave you a reply for you to start a conversation and talking. But the worst thing you can do is say, did you get my letter in the mail? And they’re like, no. Who are you? And then they hang up. Yeah. No, again, keep it simple. Just start a conversation. So I want to get into that.
New Speaker (16:56):
I have one last question before we get into cold call. It’s do you have an idea on response rates? I’m just curious like it’s hard to track this stuff. I know, but any idea on, I send out a hundred a thousand letters. How many calls should I get? That’s a really, really good question. So I have found a one to 5% response rate is typical and I have seen higher, I’ve seen people that have used this and gotten 50% callbacks. Wow. So I’m going to touch on a couple of things. One is what will dictate response rate is how well the letter is written and presented. Does it get open to is the list. So if you’re driving through a neighborhood and writing down all these homes, but they’re not the ideal market. If it’s roofing, let’s say the roof got done. If you’re working a hailstorm for any restoration contractors, if they’re already through the process like there, they’re already not qualified.
New Speaker (17:52):
So that’s going to impact your callback rate. The other is the intangibles is market recognition. If your Chuck in a truck roofing company who’s never been in a market before and no one’s ever heard of you and you drop this thing, could you get callbacks 100% absolutely, because you’re top of mind. But if your w let’s say have no presence online or have a horrible reviews on Google and someone wants to vet you first and they’re going to see who it’s signed by, may hop online and look for you, then they’re likely not going to call. Whereas if your website is set up to rank properly and they search for you by name and they see reviews and you look legit, you know there may be a vetting process and then there’s the obvious brand recognition. If you’ve done 10 homes in the neighborhood and someone’s like, Oh, I know this company, I know the neighbor, right?
New Speaker (18:39):
So that you’re top of mind. So there’s all these factors that that layer in, but typically on the low end, one to 5% so every hundred letters should get a lead. The leads that come off, these things are hot, highly qualified. And even at that, I’m, I suck at math, but let me get my calculator out. So if you send a hundred of these things on the fly math, let’s see, let’s see how it goes. Yeah, I’m watching my videos on YouTube. I do math. I have to like pause. I’d get my phone out. So my calculator going, so 50 that’s 55 bucks in postage for a hundred calculate. Even if it’s another $55 in envelopes in printer ink, that’s $100 for a high, high qualified lead on the worst end. On the best, that’s five. So that’s $25 for a lead for someone calling you specifically not off of a weird ad off of direct mail.
New Speaker (19:32):
I found the close rate on these things are through the roof. They’re exceptional. So qualifying. You know, the funny thing about, you know, me knowing the different home improvement type industries is that a storm restoration contractor values a lead at like, let’s say 25 or 50 bucks. But if you go to a solar company or a replacement, you know, a retail contractor, they’re paying 500 to seven 50. That’s why $100 to $780 for a qualified lead. So what you just said is like [inaudible] some change. Chump change. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you can even, if you wanted to factor in the time a hundred of these things, I would, I would, you can get done a hundred of them in less than an hour. Yeah. Well, if you’ve got a 15 year old like I do, that’s playing freaking Fortnite all day, I’d have him ride. I’d be, I’d have the whole damn town ribbon if these letters paying about 10 cents a one.
New Speaker (20:26):
So yeah, if y’all need your letters written, I’m sure I can farm out by my teenager. He, right. So, so it’s, it’s super cheap. It’s super cheap. It’s really effective in the folks that call from Amar are, you know, they’ve taken the time to read your pitch essentially. And again, you’re not asking for the sale. You’re doing nothing more than showing how you can help identify their purpose, your problem, and presenting a valuable free something inspection report. You know, free estimates aren’t sexy enough. You’ve got to spruce it up. What are you going to package in there, right? So when you, when you offer something, and I use intriguing stuff like for roofers in the hail side, just to give a an example, I say ask about my price lock guarantee. And that’s a a phrase I coined. That is designed to reposition the deductible as, Oh my price lock guarantee all means working through, through with, with me.
New Speaker (21:21):
You owe your deductible in the morning or less that there’s no surprises and it goes into positioning the contingency agreement, all that stuff. So again, ask about something, right? Ask about 0% financing or how you can have make no payments for three months. How you can win a free something or other, right? I’m trying to think of examples for all these types of industries, but leading with some value, making them feel like they’re going to get something out of it. So, and the other thing I wanted to touch on that I space is I had a guy who bought my stuff and he, he he sent me a message. He goes, Adam, your letters aren’t working. And I said, tell me how you’re using him. He says, why I don’t want to pay postage and I’m just leaving him on people’s doorsteps.
New Speaker (22:02):
And I said, dude, try him in the mail. Do this. So now I have a testimonial from them, unsolicited. This says, your letters are working now homie, and I got this question yesterday via email also. So these letters are designed to be mailed. Okay. There’s other things that I produce and there’s other times to leave things at the door, but when something is in a mailbox, it’s a very different story. And if it’s not, okay, well he’s always trying to cheat the system, you know, just it’s made of mail, just mail it, right. Everybody’s trying to get creative. So now we’re getting, let’s see, we got a few minutes left. I know people are gonna want to know about the cold call. You touch on a little bit. So they read the letter, super qualified lead, they call in and you’re saying, Oh good question. The idea here is to provide, right now we need to provide no context service.
New Speaker (22:53):
Everyone listening is in a different world, right? Security companies. I don’t know. Are security companies considered essential businesses right now? I think yeah. For insight with laces. They are, yeah, that would make sense to me. I know HVAC a lot of is a lot of them fall under the plumbing, you know the mechanical or plumbing. Gotcha. Yeah. So yeah, in in roofing is, so I’m going to share what I am teaching people to do for roofing and then we’ll, we’ll adapt to anyone that needs to get inside the home. Cause any contractors that are doing exterior remodeling, windows, roofing, siding, gutters, all that stuff. Restoration contractors. What you’ll want to do is say, Hey, we are offering a 100% no contact service plan and all that we’ll need to do is select a time for me to show up when I pull up. You don’t even need to answer the door.
New Speaker (23:41):
I’ll either call you or text you just as a real friendly reminder that I’m there and going to take photo and video of my inspection. I’m going to walk the perimeter of the home, set my ladder up and be on your roof so they know what to expect. Right? You don’t want to just like just show up and you’re tromping around on the roof while a kid’s trying to nap or something or because we’re all at home working like that has been their wife is on a video conference. It’s important. And the doctor. So courtesy call, I’m going to take photo video and then I’m going to share my findings with you over text or email, which do you prefer? Once they say it, collect it and say, great. Once I’m done we’re going to set up a phone call or video conference. And if it were me, I would push the video conference 100% of the time with sure and use the call as a fallback.
New Speaker (24:22):
But not everyone’s set up to be tech savvy customers specifically here. So once you do that, go through your presentation as you would if you were there. Honestly, do it from your truck sitting in the driveway. Who cares? Okay. So that’s how to handle the process. And then you have two options on paperwork. If you can get set up on some sort of electronic document signing, we’re in a great age. There’s plenty of options. If it’s too much for you guys to handle right now, then drop off your paperwork with a pre postage paid and addressed envelope. Make it easy. You’re right there, you get a little plastic baggy or a nice reusable grocery bag. That’s what would be my preference that we’d all hang onto your swag, hang it on the door. Say, listen, I’m going to put everything you need in an envelope for you.
New Speaker (25:11):
It’ll be on the door once I leave. You can grab it and just execute where you need on the dotted line. Pop it in the mail to us, your deposit checks, everything. But we got to keep cashflow coming in right now. So getting deposits in the queue, making sure customers know that as all this returned back to normal production is going to get backlogged. So we’re getting people into queue in priority. So to do that requires a deposit. So that’s another way just to keep cash coming in right now is to secure the right spot. We can go on on that, but I know, yeah. Let’s, so real quick the, the cold calls. So how, what’s your thoughts on that? So you send a letter and you’re following up with a cold call and then, and maybe just your framework on, on, on how that would go.
New Speaker (25:56):
Yeah, great question. So framework typically you want to reference something specific. So first if it were me, this is how I do it, I’d say, Hey, my name’s Adam. I just left Peggy’s house on Lexington and I wanted to stop by, but I’m calling you instead to practice social distancing and keep everyone safe. Okay. So there’s, there’s relevancy to their home. You’re written naming a name in a street. The reason I’m calling is I just help Peggy do whatever it is. Plug in your trade. You do this self series, this and blah blah blah. While I was there I I wanted to stop by and ask how was this going for you? Okay. Open ended question for roofing in storm restoration and say I wanted to stop by and ask how is the claims process going for you? Okay, that’s it. I want to start a conversation.
New Speaker (26:45):
It’s not, Hey, while I’m in the neighborhood I want to offer you an inspection. Can I give you an estimate like way too soon, just ask how it’s going adapt to your industry, right? Whatever it is needs to be an open ended question that makes them think because whatever they tell you will cater how you’re going to present the next round of information and the roofing side on the hail claim side, if they haven’t filed a claim yet, if they have filed a claim, if they’ve been denied or if there is a check that they already have, well we’ll dictate how I’m going to proceed if they have a check in hand. And I’m offering an inspection that’s useless and be like, why don’t I need that? Right? Yeah. So again, first is relevancy. Some name familiarity. Get them to say, Hey, that’s near me.
New Speaker (27:26):
Second, let them know you going to stop by, but you’re calling instead to respect the current situation. Call it coven. 19 coronavirus social distancing, whatever, right? Respect the stay at home orders and just acknowledgement to keep everybody safe. Okay? So that’s the second part of the formula. Third part is give the reason for your call. I’m calling because I helped so-and-so do this. Okay? And while I’m in the neighborhood, there’s your reason. And the fourth is that is to open or set the hook for conversation by using an open ended question. Whatever your industry is, ask a question that requires thought, not a yes or no answer. This is the hardest thing for salespeople to start doing because it’s so easy without writing it down to say, Hey can I stop by and offer you a free estimate? That’s yes or no. Nope. Click right?
New Speaker (28:13):
Yeah. Yeah. So even if it’s solar, you know, talk about the credits. Hey, I just want to stop by and ask, you know have you been curious about what these have you been curious as a yes or no? Anyway, talk about the incentives. I’m having a hard time coming to the solar, but I didn’t prepare for that one because they did it right. Like, you know, ask them an open end question about their energy, current credits, federal regulations, opportunities, deductions, anything like that that might pique their curiosity to say yes or no. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a man. We covered a ton right there. I have my quick fire questions for you. Just wrap up with a few. Sure. Ready for that. I’ll hit you with it. So if you, what, and maybe we’ll put you in the, in the frame, in the mindset of one of your clients, but w what’s, what should their mindset be going through this?
New Speaker (29:08):
I’m a, I’m a business owner. I own a company, you know, what should my mindset be as I’m battling through these crazy times? That’s a super good question. To customers first is the first thing. Right now it is crystal clear what companies are going to survive and who’s going to increase brand loyalty. This whole pandemic is helping us all connect on a human level in a way that we never have right hashtag in this together in this together, the companies that are stepping up to to provide service. I just went and got dog food the other day. I called up getting my credit card. They ran it outside. My veterinarian would pick up pills from a dog. Same thing. They literally ran it outside. People are, you know, they’ll pick the dogs up from your car. So people are adapting to keep everyone safe and to keep businesses going.
New Speaker (29:58):
So number one, customers first. Number two, rise to the occasion. I’m, I’m personally doing a live every single day, Monday through Friday as a way to give back. I’ve also updated all of my material for people who’ve already purchased for which you could very easily say, well, they bought my stuff. Like, that’s cool, but I’ve updated it for specific to be specific to the Kovac 19 pandemic and I’m giving it out for free to help people keep momentum up and it’s included if for anyone that does purchase, you know, moving forward. So just rise to the occasion and and, and know that we will get through this and keep your foot on the gas cause the minute you stop, you go out of mind and we’re all going to have a shorter selling season because of this, which means shorter install, which means busier. And if you’re not prepared to, to ramp it up, you’re going to be screwed.
New Speaker (30:48):
What permanent changes do you see happening in the business world because of the coronavirus situation? Good question. To spits to come to mind right out of the gate, remote work and the use of so remote work and video stuff. And just the, the human element of connecting with people. I th I think that it’s interesting. I agree. I agree with both of those and I’ve talked about with other people about the human now it’s like, I dunno, it just feels like it’s, we got so wrapped up in our devices and even though we’re separated, we’re somehow more together now. I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Yeah. Weird. I like it. Yeah. It’s gonna people, people have always wanted to buy from people and not faceless corporations, but that and that trend was already on the rise. And I think that spiking to be, people want to buy from people that they know, like, and trust in a deeper way through all this.
New Speaker (31:44):
Yeah. And now this is normal. There are companies that never used to do remote stuff or video conferencing with clients or vendors and now it’s standard. So the human side is going to be going to be a big shift in my opinion. So where can people find you? I mean, God, we went through so much. People are going to have questions work in, they track you down to, to hit you up. Yeah. Good question. So I always welcome personal emails. That’s adam@roofstrategists.com. I’m adamant roof strategies that come and then you can find me on YouTube. If you just search the roof strategist or if you just search roof strategists, either one, they’ll both pop up but you’ll find my channel there. And I’m doing a bunch of lives in every single YouTube video I have. There’s links to all this stuff that I have available from my marketing battle pack, which is everything I described to some one-on-one work, hiring ads, things like that.
New Speaker (32:36):
Oh cool. I’m specific to roofing and I am, I do have a number of people just in general door to door sales that watch my videos on cold calling a senior pitch up the door and all that stuff cause the concepts still apply. So yeah, I welcome it all and I do respond to all my emails personally. May take me a bit, I’ve been a little busy, a lot of people reaching out, but I will always get back to you personally and I do take the time to respond with some thought. That’s awesome. Any, any final message to the field sales rep, the owners, managers out there, you want to leave them with? Yeah. One positive thing. Focus on what we can control and don’t lose sight of that. If you’re thinking that you’re stumped cause you can’t do this and you can’t do that, it’s gonna kill you.
New Speaker (33:18):
There’s a lot you can do and you put your time and the energy into adapting and being agile, shifting from going door to door to cold calling and using direct mail and working customers and building referral networks and relationships. Stay on the gas and you’re going to be in a really good spot once things start returning back to some semblance of normalcy. That’s great. Thanks so much for your time, Adam. I had a hell of a time. Perfect, amazing information in here. And you know, we’ll, we’ll get through this together. We’re, we’re, as you can tell, both Adam and I are focused on providing value to the marketplace at no cost. We’re here with y’all side by side pushing through. So good luck to everybody out there. Adam, we’ll talk later. Yeah. Thanks again for everything. We’ll see you soon. Tray.
When there’s any global or economic crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, it’s natural for businesses to fear what the future holds. While the coming months or years may seem uncertain, there are ways you can assess and adapt your business to help you weather the storm.
We’ve identified three types of businesses based on what was going on in your business before the current situation, as well as what you should be doing now to keep your company moving forward.
Let’s dive in.
Before you can react appropriately, you need to audit your current business. Here are the questions you should use to gain an understanding of your position:
– Do you have reliable, well-documented processes?
– Are there established communication channels and rhythms between employees?
– Is there trust between the leadership team?
– Do you use multiple marketing and sales channels to drive revenue?
– How impacted will your customers be? Will they continue to buy your product or service, stop completely or somewhere in between?
– How much of a financial “runway” do you have to continue operating with, particularly in times of decreased revenue?
Based on your answers to these questions, you’ll fall into one of three categories:
1. Survive at all costs
2. Assess and adapt
3. Thrive
These three levels cover how your sales have changed, whether or not your business can serve customers at home, and your ability to maintain current business expenses.
You likely already have a sense of what state your business is in, and for how long you can continue doing “business at usual.” Now let’s cover what’s most important—your next steps.
Businesses in this category are either cash-poor or are in an industry that has been severely impacted by stay-at-home orders, or both. If relationships or communication are rocky, income streams are limited, or financial health is weak, it’s time to go into conservative “survival mode.”
Cut expenses as fast as possible. It will feel uncomfortable, but it can mean the difference between your business surviving or not.
Renegotiate any payables. You may not be able to push back obligations for all payments, but it’s worth it to try.
Accelerate receivables. How can you bring cash in fast? Try to hasten payouts where appropriate.
Find new ways to drive revenue. How can you boost sales? Some may argue that discounts or sales can train customers to pay less, but right now, you need cash flow.
If your business has seen a dip in income, but you see an opportunity to adjust to circumstances and come out on the other side of the crisis, you fall into the “assess and adapt” category. Your priority now is pivoting your strategy to maintain a competitive advantage.
Examples of businesses successfully adapting include companies that have begun making face masks, field sales companies who can switch to cold calls, and restaurants offering delivery or food/alcohol sales.
Cut variable expenses. You don’t need to slash costs as much as some businesses, but you should take a second look at variable or non-essential expenses to conserve cash.
Plan for revenue drops. Hopefully, you never see further declines in sales. However, you should plan what expenses you’ll cut next if you need to slim down further.
Determine how to continue serving customers. You may not be able to operate as you once did, but how else can you still help customers? Think about where they need support in these times.
Get creative. If there ever was a time to put on your thinking cap, this is it. How can you alter your offerings or meet customers in new channels?
Some organizations, thanks to their prior financial health or industry, aren’t at risk of going out of business. In fact, companies such as at-home workout software or equipment, medical supply companies, or essential goods manufacturers may see an increase in sales.
Even though you’re in a good position, there are still opportunities to adapt and improve.
Bring in newly-available talent. As businesses around you suffer, so too will their employees. There may be talented employees who are now looking for a job that might be a perfect fit for your organization.
Ramp up production. If you see an opportunity, seize it. You may have a hectic few months, but the world needs you now.
While there may be a tendency to make quick corrections during a crisis, your team needs a leader in times like these. If you’re trying to adapt your sales strategy to stay competitive, check out our webinar, Stay Productive Knocking Doors While Social Distancing.
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