If you are tracking field sales reps, then you need effective territory management software. By pairing the powerful planning and mapping software of SPOTIO with the flexible Salesforce platform, teams will strategize, scale, and grow business better than ever.
Boost your productivity by customizing your Salesforce instance by territory, and your users will never see irrelevant data again.
Territory Management in the Sales Cloud uses an intuitive user interface that guides your users through company procedures and best practices. Not only that, but managers have a view from above that allows them access to data at a glance.
With Territory Management, geography and hierarchy come together to help your company function as a cohesive unit.
Here we’ll take you through a quick look at how territory management can help your business, and show you solutions to empower your teams with even more practical field sales tools.
Available in both Classic and Lightning experience, Territory Management enables your company to use your management hierarchies already in place to guide an automated organize data and user roles in the same way that you manage sales territories. This new system of organization can revolutionize the way your teams bring in sales, which allows for even more accurate forecasts.
For a guided tour of how this works, click here.
Salesforce gives you territory modeling, letting you compare performance projections for new assignments and management hierarchies. It also provides management and team leaders a range of other tools to effectively collaborate and close more deals.
Let’s take a closer look…
You may be familiar with the Territory Management Component that was only available in Classic. Salesforce will phase this feature out in the Summer ‘20 update, so get ahead of the curve and learn about Enterprise Territory Management!
Role hierarchies are one of the touchstones of Salesforce, but what about when you can take them a step further? Use territories to guide your profile assignments, and you will make sure that your field reps only have access to what they need when they need it.
Worried about complex accounts? This robust tool allows access to users based on account characteristics, not just geography. This means you can sort accounts under multiple territories. Set up your company structure, and user permissions will fall into place!
Once you’re ready to build out your territory management, simply follow the instructions in Setup under Territory Settings.
If your Salesforce instance already has a role hierarchy in place, great! All you have to do is assign users to territories based on the predetermined structure. If not, no worries! Simply create your hierarchy based on the territories they cover.
What if everyone in your company needs access to a certain set of records? Maybe there are some big projects that reps from multiple territories need access to. This is where org-wide permission sets can come in handy.
Set your rules, and everyone can have access to the same version of information!
Generating leads and closing opportunities is great, but when it comes time to evaluate sales strategies, you’re going to want historical data and powerful forecasting tools.
Enterprise Territory Management comes with plenty of custom report types to accommodate your needs, such as:
– Accounts by Territory
– Territories without Accounts
– Users Not Assigned to Territories
– Territories Per User
With these reporting capabilities, your collaborative forecasting is going to be more accurate than ever. However, with such a dynamic feature, you’ll need to consider how your data will be impacted once you introduce territories. Make sure you test all new functions in the sandbox, and your company will thank you.
So you know how to use and enable territory management within Salesforce, but what if you need even more specificity when it comes to sales records on the go?
SPOTIO is specifically designed to keep your field data and CRM working as a synchronized unit.
2-Way integration with Salesforce syncs your information in real-time, allowing reps to leverage the power of historical reporting and enriched lead information no matter where they are.
Assign territories as specifically as you want with SPOTIO, even down to individual territories per sales rep. Enhance your Salesforce Mobile experience by automatically recording every step of your sales rep’s journey to Closed Won.
SPOTIO’s flexible integration boasts complex field-mapping as well as guided next-steps. When you complete an activity or update a pin within SPOTIO, a new task is created in Salesforce, ready for when you get back to the office.
Here are just a few of the powerful features and benefits that you can look forward to when turning to our proven field sales and territory management platform:
– Visual customer mapping for logical routes
– Real-time outside sales tracking
– Real-time performance metrics
– Custom maps of territories and assignments
– Enriched out-of-office notes
Investing in field sales is an investment in the future of your company. The better opportunities and leads are managed, the higher the chances of reaching a good rate and quantity of turnover.
After all, statistics show that sales reps spend just a third of their time selling, and only 65% hit their sales quotas.
No matter how good your reps may be, there is always a need to find better ways to improve sales accountability. Better performance means happier, more productive staff. Re-evaluating and optimizing sales territory management strategy is essential to meeting your core goals and quotas.
With the intuitive integration of SPOTIO’s sales support and Salesforce’s Enterprise Territory Management, your reps and teams will reach an all-new pinnacle of performance.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
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.
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A few years ago, Microsoft Streets and Trips users discovered their software was no longer supported. The exit of the software created a void for trip planners waiting for a new player to fill in where Microsoft left off.
SPOTIO provides an alternative for Microsoft Streets and Trips that fills that void with all the things Microsoft’s product did well for trip planning and then taking it to a new level of functionality and efficiency powered by the internet.
Before Google Maps or Siri, and before Bing Maps and all the other online navigation helpers, many people who needed to get around in the U.S. used a self-contained, offline navigation software called Streets and Trips by Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Streets and Trips was a mapping software designed for people unfamiliar with North America to navigate the U.S., Canada, and Mexico with a variety of services including route-mapping. You bought it on CD-ROM and loaded it into your computers, no internet required.
– Street-level maps of the U.S. and Canada which included 2.5 million points of interest along the way with easy-to-see icons of what restaurants and hotels are around your destination
– Trip planning functionality for multiple destinations, as well as scenic detours and fuel and rest stop planning
– One-click trip optimization to get the quickest way to your desired destination
– Road type optimization feature, so you choose the way you want to go, e.g., freeways, scenic route, country backroads
– Capacity to add notes, phone numbers, reservation codes to stops
– Offline high-speed planning capability, which some users said was faster than their internet connection
– Drag and Drop utility for rerouting on the fly, no internet connection required
The last version of the software also added customer ratings for businesses. However, you had to be online to see these.
As a DOS-Based program in an increasingly Internet-driven world, Microsoft Streets and Trips was discontinued at the end of 2014, with support ending a few months later in 2015. Microsoft sought to migrate Streets and Trips users to Bing Maps, their online mapping system. The move to sunset both Streets and Trips, as well as the business version of the software MapPoint, was part of a broader strategy by CEO Satya Nadella to focus on products that were part of Microsoft’s future rather than its past.
Microsoft purchased the program in 1994 from NextBase, a UK software development team based in a team member’s garage, and developed the program for the next two decades. The European version of the software was called Microsoft AutoRoute, which was also discontinued.
Once Microsoft acquired the program, it commingled NextBase’s route technology with the Encarta World Atlas mapping technology to create earlier programs that were separate, one for mapping and one for route planning that were released on Expedia in the mid to late 1990s.
In 2000, Microsoft evolved away from Expedia and merged the separate programs branding it Microsoft Streets and Trips (although in Europe, the AutoRoute brand remained). Today, the programming behind Streets and Trips and MapPoint were the basis for Bing Maps.
Microsoft Streets and Trips users who miss the software will find that new technology has filled the void and added to the features and benefits enjoyed by its users. SPOTIO’s navigation software does everything that Streets and Trips did, and more.
For example, with our routing utility, SPOTIO offers many of the same tools that Streets and Trips did.
Street level mapping enhanced by Google Places, which integrates directly with SPOTIO and provides detailed business information and map views of surrounding businesses around your destination.
Routes can be calculated for multiple stops, allowing you to pre-plan your trip in great detail before you ever turn the key on your vehicle.
SPOTIO creates efficient routes based on distance from point to point and optimizing it by the shortest path, or by the scheduled stop times and arranging them by meeting durations and calculating arrival times based on start and end times for events.
Captures notes about destinations, including pertinent trip information, which is available with a tap on the pin.
Just like Streets and Trips, you can make changes to your route as you go. However, unlike Streets and Trips, you can use SPOTIO on your Android or iOS mobile devices and change your routes from them. Drop pins on the destinations and tap them later for their exact address or to add information about the stop.
Plus, SPOTIO calculates driving and walking times to your destinations. It’s up to you to figure out which will give you a better option for your day.
SPOTIO also has automatic functions that simplify your planning.
For example, it automatically integrates into your calendar without ever leaving the app. You set the appointment in the SPOTIO calendar, and it goes to your Google or Outlook calendar, too.
Also, SPOTIO automatically calculates your mileage for easy tracking of distance and expenses.
SPOTIO’s integration with Google Places is one of the reasons it is the optimal Streets and Trips alternative for 2019. There are over 100 million “places” in Google Places, all with comprehensive points of interest data.
Also, Google Places data updates daily, to the tune of 25 million updates every day. Not only that, the Google Platform has one billion (that’s with a “b”) active users every month, giving the data a scale backed by an infrastructure that has no equal.
In other words, when you use SPOTIO’s trip planning software, you can trust that you have the most up-to-date information about your destination in real-time.
Consider the following comparison of SPOTIO’s user interface compared to Microsoft Streets and Trips.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
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.
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Sources:
“History of AutoRoute and Streets and Trips.” www.laptopgpsworld. Web. 29 May 2019. <http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/3562-history-autoroute-streets-trips>.
Jung, Brian. “Microsoft MapPoint vs. Streets & Trips.” Smallbusiness.chron.com. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/microsoft-mappoint-vs-streets-trips-55760.html>.
Smolaks, Max. “Microsoft. Plans to Retire MapPoint Software By The End of The Year.” www.silicon.co.uk. 18 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/microsoft-to-retire-mappoint-149394>.
Protalinski, Emil. “Microsoft will discontinue MapPoint and Streets & Trips on December 31, 2014.” Thenextweb.com. 7 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/07/07/microsoft-will-discontinue-mappoint-streets-trips-december-31-2014/>.
Fried, Ina. “Microsoft Quietly Shutting Down MapPoint in Favor of Bing Maps.” www.vox.com. 11 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://www.vox.com/2014/7/11/11628758/microsoft-quietly-shutting-down-mappoint-in-favor-of-bing-maps>.
Smart Selling Tools, an analyst and consulting firm specializing in sales productivity and performance technology, has just released their 2019 Top Sales Tools Guide and recognized SPOTIO as the leading Field Sales Engagement Tool.
“SPOTIO recognized that outside sales reps suffer from a lack of tools compared to their colleagues in inside sales. So, they created a platform designed to address the specific needs of field salespeople like, customer mapping, route planning and lead management”, said Nancy Nardin, Founder & CEO, Smart Selling Tools.
“By recognizing and solving this pressing need, SPOTIO was a shoe-in for this years accolades.”
Smart Selling Tools evaluated a multitude of sales software and solutions across seven technology categories to produce this years guide. SPOTIO received recognition in the Field Sales Engagement category.
“Our goal is to provide outside sales teams with tools and resources designed specifically for selling in the field, and we’re thrilled to have our efforts recognized.”
“SPOTIO is focused on making outside sales teams more efficient, productive and successful. The development of our one of a kind software provides outside reps the technology they need to be successful.”
– Ryan Dunagan, VP of Marketing, SPOTIO
About Smart Selling Tools
Smart Selling Tools, Inc., is an analyst and consulting firm that specializes in sales productivity and sales performance improvement through the use of smart sales tools. Businesses of all sizes can find suggestions and reviews for sales and marketing software along with great resources to learn about revenue generating tools.
Smart Selling Tools doesn’t sell sales software. They just provide great information to help you find the right sales tools for your organization.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
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 length of the sales cycle is a critical metric used within any sales organization. It’s for this reason that sales operations professionals are always reviewing the length of sales cycles statistics and looking for the respective stages where things are slowing down or things are speeding up. The overarching goal here is finding a way to reduce this timeframe.
Why?
Simply put, the shorter the sales cycle length, the faster the company earns money.
Your sales cycle is a series of predictable phases through which your sales representatives go in order to sell the product or service you offer. The sales cycle varies from one organization to the next based on the company itself and the products offered, so no two sales processes or cycles will be exactly the same.
That said, there are different stages to a sales cycle which have some flexibility from one business to another, depending on the complexity of the product. Generally speaking, most businesses have the following stages:
1. The prospect phase, where representatives handle phone calls or cold calling
2. The qualification phase, where representatives learn and understand about the prospects pain points in order to figure out if they are truly a good fit
3. The consideration phase where the sales presentation occurs
4. The decision phase where addressing of objectives happens
5. The closing phase, where theoretically the sale closes
6. The referral phase, where you request referrals from your happy customer
When you visualize the stages, they take the form of the sales pipeline.
Knowing the average sales cycle length can introduce a level of predictability into your sales forecasting. With this type of metric, if you receive a specific number of leads, you will know what the projected sales figures will likely be in one month, or even a few months down the line.
If you decide to set a KPI in order to reduce the length of your sales cycle, you can accelerate your revenue growth.
Tangentially, you can review which areas take longer than others and analyze any room for improvement. You can find out which months or weeks might be hitting the average mark or falling a bit behind. When reviewing individual representatives you can see how their average sales cycle length compares to the overall average.
The easiest way to track the length of your sales cycle is to start at the point of creation for a lead in your CRM and to end at the point the deal closes. If you leverage a CRM system you can give your organization a much more visually appealing sales pipeline in which to track each stage of the sales cycle.
With this method your marketing and sales managers will be able to view a customer journey from start to finish. From this, sales teams can learn how to improve their top of the funnel activities like prospect, lead generation, and marketing phases. These early stages are critical in terms of their success, without which customers are not propelled through the sales cycle quick enough.
There is some debate here because a lead can technically reach creation at any time. You might purchase a list of leads but then that list sits in the CRM for months at a time before anyone even looks at it. One of those leads could be someone who downloaded a marketing ebook from your company and then requested a demo months later, at which point they created a second lead and triggered the initial contact with your sales team.
Arguably, that second lead and the initial contact is what made them into a potential client and thus viewed as the start of the sales cycle.
That said, if you credit the moment when you receive that list or the person first signs up, then you are using the first touch attribution.
Measuring the length of a sales cycle can get a bit complicated if your organization has two or three touch points attributed to a single opportunity, like the initial creation of the lead followed by the request for a demo. In this situation the company would be relying upon the multi-touch attribution.
In any case, having the right tools makes it easier for sales leaders to decide how to peg the starting point of their sales cycle and therefore, review the length of the sales cycle.
Once you decide upon the start point, the calculation of the average sales cycle length occurs with the following equations:
Add together the number of days from the first contact with the customer conversion for all deals, which should equal the total number of days for all combined sales.
The total number of sales for all of the combined sales divided by the number of deals closed equals the average length of the sales cycle for your company.
Conclusion
In the end, you should automate when and where you can. Automating the entire process with modern sales software can reduce a large part of the burden of analysis. This occurs especially when you automate CRM data entry, analyzing conversion length, and the creation of reports based on different deals, different teams, or individual sales representatives.
Automation software can provide you with reports based on objective data pertaining to your sales operations and your teams. All of this occurs while concurrently freeing up time that sales representatives would have previously used.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to appropriately calculate your sales cycle length. It is up to you to find a method that works for your team and your company, and then dive in.
Take action now. Start implementing a reliable CRM with full data/reporting capabilities to improve your tracking of the length of your sales cycle.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
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.
On average, 50% of a sales rep’s time daily is wasted on poor prospects.
Even if you only have five full-time reps, that’s 100 paid hours every week that have zero ROI. You can almost hear the cash going down the toilet.
However, this stat might be less surprising when you learn that companies spend 5x more on hiring a sales rep than they do training them.
Wait, what?!
That’s right. Talk about failing to set your reps and managers up to succeed.
Poor sales training and unequipped reps is a problem that persists in any industry — despite the fact studies have shown trained reps sell 50% more effectively.
The solution to this mess?
Sales enablement.
Sales enablement is a support function. Its goal is to provide sales reps with information, customer-facing content, and tools, so they can guide a buyer through the purchase process successfully.
This could involve creating fact sheets, industry-specific case studies, and comparison tables that help a rep persuade a lead to buy.
It also means coaching reps on best practices and equipping them with the tools they need to be efficient.
Being able to do this in your organization requires an understanding of the ideal buyer, so you can provide resources they actually need and want throughout the journey.
There are two key stages involved in building a good sales enablement strategy:
1) Understanding who the ideal customer is, and mapping the buyer’s journey.
2) Creating sales plays, content, and training for reps to leverage at each stage of the journey.
Sales organizations in 2019 have a plethora of tools available to make every part of this process easier, and in this post we’ll dive into the best for your arsenal.
But first, a look at the power of sales enablement technology…
According to SalesHub, only 13% of customers believe sales reps understand their needs.
Crazy, right?
When the majority of your reps aren’t connecting with customers, there is costly disconnect.
The solution? Better support for reps, and better content for customers to support them throughout the buyer’s journey.
Propellor research shows that this is a big differentiator for customers:
Being able to do this at scale (or at all), you need a sales enablement strategy. Tools are essential to this, research from Brainshark shows:
“More than 2/3 of companies that invested in sales learning and development technology realized a positive ROI.”
On the flip side, companies that failed to invest in sales enablement technology in the last year have seen a 12% drop in sales goal achievement.
Almost two thirds of companies that have piloted sales enablement programs and seen positive ROI attribute the success to software; according to a study by CSO Insights, 62% of organizations view tools as the top priority investment in sales enablement.
(Source)
Tools can be used for the majority of the top priorities in the study above, too, like content and process improvement.
So, what are the effects of investing in sales enablement tools?
This research from Salesforce found that 84% of companies hit quota with the support of sales enablement tools and coaching.
Let’s look at the tools across each category that can help you research, deploy, and optimize your sales enablement strategy.
Sales enablement is built around the idea that reps can optimize the way they sell, and provide customers with informative content that helps them make complex purchase decisions.
That makes it part market research, part content management — and heavily reliant on analytics to understand and support your ideal buyer segments.
Market Intelligence
Sales Intelligence & Prospecting
Content Analytics
Content Sharing & Management
Market Automation
Sales & Team Communications
Sales Emails
Sales Presentations
Contract Management
Sales CRMs
Sales Training
Sales Management
Customer Feedback
To accelerate sales and ramp up rep productivity, you’ll need to make data-backed decisions. For sales, some of the most important data is around the companies in your target market. How many employees do your prospects typically have? What about funding, or annual revenue?
With that intel, you can make the way your reps sell and prospect more effective, and waste less time. Let’s look at the best sales enablement tools for market intelligence.
With Artesian, you get access to a vast bank of proprietary company data through a convenient interface that lets you discover new prospects, track engagement metrics, and deliver content to targeted segments.
Artesian can help your team deploy custom sales enablement strategies by letting reps create lists of leads based on rich data from millions of companies. To make sure you get the right content to the right prospects, Artesian uses AI to analyze prospects and cuts the amount of time reps spend on manual research.
For £89/user/month, a team of up to 10 users can use Artesian for company profiling, content research, and team performance optimization. Teams with over 10 users should get in touch for the enterprise plan.
D&B Hoovers integrates with the tools your team already uses — Marketo, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and more — to enrich lead data and help sales enablement teams analyze the pipeline and develop relevant content.
As well as enriching current data, it can be used to research leads in new markets and support strategies that expand your reach.
Pricing for Hoovers isn’t public, but a free trial is available before you connect with a rep.
Ever wanted an expert insider when you’re chasing a big lead? Emissary gives you exactly that, by matching you with a recent former employee from any given company that can guide you on how to close the deal.
It’s aimed at enterprise sales — with 75% of its connections coming from firms in the Fortune 1000 — and over two-thirds of its contacts were VP or higher at the company. Emissary is an effective high-touch way to develop enterprise enablement material, but also serves as a way for reps to get coaching from successful insiders.
Get in touch with the providers for pricing info.
Mattermark combines company profiles with social listening to provide lead and contact profiles, with over 80 fields of data per entry.
It provides data on 4,000,000 companies and 20,000,000 contacts imported via API into your CRM, or in exports to spreadsheets. With Mattermark automatically gathering data on prospects, the sales enablement process is made simpler; far less manual research is needed when a tool can fill in the blanks.
Aimed more at startups (and companies selling to startups), Mattermark also lets you segment companies by funding recency/amount, and growth signals. It also has a lower price tag than the other intelligence tools on this list, at $49/user/month.
Prospecting tools help your reps find the ideal customers for your product, based on a selected set of specific set of demographic and firmographic data points, like “leads within 50 miles of me, with over 200 employees, in the healthcare tech industry”.
An improved prospecting process is a core part of sales enablement because it helps reps up productivity by spending less time on bad leads and more time selling to those likely to convert.
Here are the prospecting tools we recommend checking out.
LinkedIn has access to one of the biggest troves of business data on the planet, owing to the fact that it has gathered so much insight from user-submitted information on its social network and the connections between different professionals.
When you get access to that data (not fully available through the social network alone), you can unlock every insight the network has gathered, including data on company size, activity, news mentions, posts, engagement, and connections. It also lets you nurture leads and reach out with that data in context through LinkedIn messaging.
Pricing starts at $79.99/month.
SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool, Lead Machine, allows managers to generate a list of qualified leads for sales teams in seconds.
The tool allows users to define geographic territories and mine data on all the companies within that area. Reps can quickly create an ideal customer profile by mining and sorting over 50 different data points – income, credit capacity, square footage, age of home etc.
After leads have been qualified, extract the data and import into the CRM and start selling.
Lead Machine helps businesses close more deals by having reps focus only on the most qualified leads in a given sales territory.
SPOTIO is priced at $25/user/month for up to two users, with credits charged for lead machine usage.
NerdyData.com gives you access to company technology usage data. You could search the database for every Intercom customer because your tool integrates with Intercom. Or, see who’s running your competitor’s software so you can send over a relevant comparison sheet.
It’s easy to see how this enables your sales team to make more personalized and informed decisions, and how it helps sales enablement initiatives research the tech stacks of different market segments to better understand the lead’s internals.
NerdyData.com’s pricing starts at $50/user/month.
Clearbit is an API you can hook into your existing source of customer data, whether that’s Intercom, Close.io, or Salesforce. With a company name or domain, Clearbit pulls in anything else your sales team should know about that lead, such as the number of employees or industry.
As well as enriching existing data, Clearbit can enable sales to do a more efficient job by building prospect lists and revealing the company profiles of anonymous site visitors. This all helps your team get a better look at the kinds of companies they attract so you can create effective enablement content to support future deals.
Access to Clearbit’s Enrichment API costs $99/monthly. Pricing for other products in the suite is available on request.
SellHack helps expand your funnel by making prospecting easier. It’s a browser extension, so you can add leads you find on LinkedIn to existing prospect lists and automatically hunt down their email address.
With segmented lists and easy email outreach built in, SellHack empowers teams to get the right content to the right leads, informed by data SellHack stores.
For 150 email lookups, you can get SellHack at $19/user/month.
Did you know that a big-name exec and their team were browsing your site yesterday while evaluating solutions? You’ll certainly agree that would be powerful to know. But how will you find out if it’s not something you’re tracking?
Albacross enables all that and more by keeping a log of companies and potential customers that visit your site, and enriching the data with the best way to contact that lead.
Once the visitor data is stored in Albacross, you get a lead list that grows by itself and is able to be filtered by fields like revenue, company size, and location. Push that lead list to your CRM or any other sales tool you use by integrating Albacross with Zapier.
Pricing starts at $79/month for one site and 1,000 leads exported.
LeadFuze helps sales teams build prospect lists quickly — not one-by-one — by giving reps access to data on a lead’s industry, media updates, company size, and even PPC spend. With that data, reps can search by tightly-focused criteria to expand their outreach lists and pipeline.
To help save time with data entry and manual research, LeadFuze can also take a list of domains or company names and turn them into the best point-of-contact with a double-verified email address.
Pricing starts at $97/user/month, for 500 lead credits.
DataFox is an Oracle-owned CRM enrichment tool that allows sales team to harness AI — backed up by over 100 human staff — to expand sales intelligence and enable more targeted prospecting and conversations.
Based on filters, new leads in your CRM can be automatically assigned to reps. This makes it possible to train reps on specific plays with specific enablement content, and always ensure they’re pitching to the right people.
Despite being an Oracle product, DataFox has native integrations with Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and Terminus. Its pricing is available by request only.
Growbots allows you to create prospect lists by selecting an ideal customer profile, and then automate target outreach to those lists.
Straight away, it’s easy to see how this empowers a sales enablement strategy. Your Growbots prospect lists are created based on criteria like company size, industry, and email activity. With that insight, you can automate the distribution of relevant sales enablement content and design plays around specific market segments and prospect needs.
Pricing for Growbots is available by request only.
Owler is a lookup database for company information that can be used to explore profiles via the web or enrich CRM data with their API.
Uniquely, Owler focuses on the trust score of a company’s founders and the funding a company has historically received. This makes it great for selling to startups and early-stage high-growth businesses.
Alongside company profiles, you can see all recent news and social mentions for a given company so you can research competitor progress and prospects in context of current events.
Pricing for Owler is not public.
Once you get a piece of sales enablement content like a product fact sheet in front of a lead, how do you know what happened next? With old school tools, you can make guesses on what content is converting customers and pushing the sales process along, but you can’t be sure how leads engage with it.
Content analytics platforms solve that problem by measuring user heatmaps, copy effectiveness, and other metrics beyond the scope of a non-specialized tool like Google Analytics. Optimize the way you measure the success of your sales enablement content with these hand-picked tools.
Ever wanted to know exactly how leads engage with your sales enablement content? Atomic Reach takes your content analytics past the point of just clicks and views, into the realm of rich engagement data that explains why content is performing, so you can replicate the formula.
To help you create content, Atomic Reach also analyzes pages you create for their ability to persuade and convert. Optimize enablement content easily, and accurately track its performance.
Pricing for Atomic Reach is available on request.
Crazy Egg provides heat maps and analytics that you can use to measure if/how leads and website visitors engage with your content.
With that data, you can run A/B tests on a page-by-page basis to boost conversions, dwell time, and other vital metrics you use to judge the effectiveness of your sales enablement content.
Crazy Egg pricing starts at $29/month.
You’ll need a centralized location to store and distribute customer-facing content and training material, or you’ll be stuck searching for files on your local computer (and so will all of your frustrated reps).
Content sharing and management tools let you create internal documentation, host files for customers, and control who inside your organization can access which resources. Let’s look at some of the best options for sales enablement.
Your sales enablement training material and customer-facing content needs a home. When multiple reps need to access internal content — regardless of when or where — you need a robust cloud storage tool like Box.
Box is an enterprise file sharing and storage tool that integrates with plenty of top sales tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. The integration allows you to associate Box documents with leads, making it easy to match the right content to the right person.
Box’s pricing starts at $5/user/month for unlimited storage.
If you’re already living in the Microsoft ecosystem at work, then SharePoint is a great choice to manage sales enablement content, either on-premises or in the cloud with Office 365.
Create internal wikis for your sales team’s training material, and neatly categorize centralized enablement material with ease.
SharePoint is available on its own for $5/user/month, but is at its most useful as part of Office 365. For $20/user/month, you can get the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan that has SharePoint included alongside Outlook, Word, Excel, and other Microsoft software.
Allbound is a sales intelligence tool designed to help businesses manage relationships with partners and deploy enablement content to those partners that will make selling easier.
It features company data lookup, content collaboration, and analytics reports that give insight into content performance. If you’re running a partner sales program, Allbound is the perfect line of communication between you and your external channels.
Pricing starts at $995/month for access to the full Allbound platform.
Bigtincan improves sales success by helping sales teams better prepare for meetings, boost engagement, enhance collaboration, and ultimately improve overall win rates.
Bigtincan Hub is only AI-powered sales enablement automation platform. With Bigtincan, transform the way sales and service organizations access, share and collaborate on the sales content.
For pricing, email them at sales@bigtincan.com.
Named a leader by Gartner in the field of Sales Enablement Automation, Showpad is one of the first dedicated sales enablement tools. It provides a platform where sales and marketing can collaborate, sharing content and metrics.
With Showpad, it’s easy for sales teams to surface and share relevant engagement content with buyers and match content to lead profiles based on filters. It is also possible to build and deploy sales training inside the app, then track rep engagement with it.
Pricing is available on request only, and the content platform is sold separately from the training platform.
Any efficient sales enablement strategy is built around automation. It only makes sense that reps can do a better job if their lead nurturing happens automatically and they get better qualified or ready-to-buy leads as a result.
Plus, many marketing automation tools also act as a way to get insights into your lead’s mindset — find which leads open and engage with your emails most often, or reference a lead’s historical engagement to know which content they have and haven’t seen.
Here are our top picks in the field of marketing automation.
For many companies, Marketo is where lead and customer data already lives. Leveraging this data, you can use Marketo to analyze your site’s content and find sales enablement recommendations based on the lead’s company profile and history. After sharing content, Marketo logs the lead’s interactions to gather metrics you can use to make optimizations.
On top of this, Marketo is an industry-leading marketing automation platform you can use to nurture leads with targeted messages and build a stronger pipeline.
Pricing is unavailable online, but you can request a demo to find out more.
Eloqua is Oracle’s marketing automation solution, aimed at the enterprise market. It integrates with your CRM to enrich lead data, trigger automated messaging, and track engagement with your website and content.
Since it stores data on your existing leads, Eloqua can be used as a sales enablement research tool that gives you a pulse on your current pipeline.
Pricing information is unavailable online.
Customer.io is email marketing for companies that collect in-product data — namely SaaS and web tools. Sales enablement teams can use Customer.io to develop relevant content and training based on the different segments of product user.
Customer.io can be integrated with other customer analytics tools like Segment and Heap, so you’re able to deploy content over email based on historical data like signup date, industry, user count, and last bill amount.
Pricing starts at $150/month for products with up to 100,000 users.
Conversation and collaboration tools bring your sales team closer together and put the resources reps need right at their fingertips — they also give managers a platform to analyze how the team interacts and sells.
Sales communications is a broad category. It covers anything internal content management, rep call analysis, and instant messaging. Here are some of our top recommendations.
Wherever you are — Slack, or in your browser — Guru allows you to find the enablement content you need without wasting time switching between documents, your CRM, and a dozen other apps.
You can query Guru to surface the right content for the right leads, and then deliver it through Salesforce, Intercom, or other tools with which Guru has native integrations. This gives you a centralized place to store content, so you can control what reps are distributing without making updates in 10 places at once.
Pricing starts at $380/month, or $2,400 if you want API access.
Optimize the way your reps talk to leads by storing and analyzing their sales calls automatically. This is great for developing training material or providing an AI coach for your team that fine-tunes their sales technique and helps them close more deals.
Chorus.ai stores call analysis next to lead data inside your CRM, so you can see call history and outcome wherever you already work. Pricing for Chorus.ai is not publicly available.
Slack has quickly become to go-to chat and notification hub for teams everywhere. Since it’s where your sales team hangs out already, why not power it up with integrations? Slack can be used to automatically notify reps when new signups come in, segmented by potential deal size with integrations to a customer data tool like Clearbit or DataFox.
Outside of strict sales activity, Slack is a simple way to hold team meetings, search conversations, and even deliver presentations.
Pricing starts at $8/user/month.
Skype for Business is a collaboration tool for teams, offering a way to streamline internal communication and great customer-facing presentation features for sales demos.
As part of Office 365, Skype for Business integrates with PowerPoint and Word Online so you can easily search and present documents and slide decks that exist in your org’s folders, all without leaving the app.
Skype for Business starts at $8.25/user/month when you buy Office 365 annually.
Connect your conferences with lead data and your CRM by using UberConference to run sales meetings, both internally and externally.
UberConference automatically pulls in data on participants so your reps can be as informed as possible while they’re on the call. As well as UberConference data, it’s possible to display data from most other likely sources, such as Salesforce and Office 365.
Shared content and call history is logged inside UberConference, forming a basis for sales performance analysis and a way for reps to surface content they shared with other prospects.
Pricing starts free, with $15/user/month for calls with over 100 participants.
Calendar was created to streamline your day and improve productivity. With features like recorded meeting transcripts, have a calendar that showcases you and maximizes your most valuable resource: your time.
Basic accounts are free, and paid plans start at $10/user/month.
Vanilla email doesn’t cut it for sales. You need a tool that lets you create outreach playbooks, manage follow-ups, and track engagement metrics.
Here are our top tools for outreach and sales email management.
Attach is a centralized content hub for sales enablement material that allows your team to store material and then get insight into how leads consume and engage with it.
Unlike a generic solution like Google Drive, storing your content in Attach lets you see which leads viewed which documents and for how long. You can also easily deploy updates to live enablement content without having to send the lead to a new URL. In line with Forrester research that suggests 90% of reps don’t use content because it’s outdated, this is an invaluable feature.
Attach pricing starts at $27/user/month.
Yesware is a Chrome and Outlook extension for sales teams, offering a way to supercharge your everyday inbox with CRM-like capabilities. This includes data on open/reply rate, attachment opens, and even presentation slide engagement.
With its email templates and sequences, you can add proven, relevant sales plays to your team’s repertoire easily.
Yesware is available for free, with premium plans starting at $12/user/month when billed annually.
Mailshake was built for sales teams to deliver personalized outreach at scale. It’s a platform that your sales organization can use to create sequences, lead segments, and automation that help reps reach more leads with more targeted messages.
Pricing starts at just $29/user/month.
Close.io is a powerhouse CRM, with everything you need to track calls and emails with prospects, leads, and existing customers. It has support for custom fields and lists, so you can create tightly-focused segments that match your sales play and enablement material.
Integrated with a product data or enrichment tool, Close.io acts as a rich data warehouse, storing email history alongside in-app activity and company profiles.
Pricing starts at $59/user/month, but for automation the monthly fee goes up to $99.
Outreach lets you create sales email sequences that save reps from the mental burden of remembering to follow up, or remembering to send the right content to the right lead. With its lead prioritization and task feature, reps will always know what the next step is with each contact. This keeps your team productive when they’re doing manual work, and automates the remaining emails.
Pricing for Outreach is available by request.
Reps need more than just a basic video chat tool if they’re going to deliver winning presentations. And managers need a way to file presentation content for reps and track its performance. Thankfully, there are powerful video conferencing tools that are built for sales demos, and dedicated meeting apps for measuring the conversion rate of outbound calls.
Here are the sales presentation tools we think are the best to check out.
GoToMeeting makes it easy for your team to give sales presentations to practically any lead, without having to get them to download a bulky desktop app or go through a lengthy verification process. For that reason, it’s low friction — a vital benefit in the low-patience world of sales.
For sales pitches and demos, its screen sharing and annotation features are among the best on the market. You can give presentations that are as detailed and engaging as you need, or offer one-to-many training sessions with reps when you roll out a new piece of software.
Pricing starts from $14/user/month for the starter plan.
CustomShow is a B2B sales presentation platform. Unifying sales and marketing, CustomShow is revolutionizing the art of sales presentations.
B2B companies from various industries around the world are using CustomShow to turn their sales presentations into an effective marketing channel the drives business and delivers results.
For pricing, contact CustomShow at info@customshow.com.
Prezi is a different kind of presentation tool. Like PowerPoint 2.0, but with none of the boring WordArt.
Instead of forcing the presenter and audience through a linear narrative, slide by slide, Prezi is laid out like an interactive, free-form map that you can seamlessly zoom and navigate.
It also collects analytics on the audience’s reactions to the presentation, so you know where to improve in the future. In this way, it powers sales enablement to make optimizations to the standard presentation process reps follow.
Pricing starts at $7/month for the standard plan.
ShareDemos is software specifically built for sales enablement. It’s a way to create and distribute sales enablement content internally and externally — that includes sales onboarding material and product fact sheets for customers.
Since rich content can be designed and edited through the ShareDemos platform, sales managers can make updates to content that appear whenever the lead or customer accesses it. This solves the issue of having old content being sent to leads, or reps worrying if the material they send to leads is up to date.
Pricing for ShareDemos is publicly available.
ExecVision is a sales call analysis tool that can process call recordings to gain insight into how the ways reps make calls is affecting your sales conversion rate.
Load you sales calls into ExecVision, and you’ll get an indexed database of your call logs which is searchable and includes metrics such as keywords and interchange frequency. With calls added inside ExecVision, you can get metrics like average call length, calls per rep, and more. As a bonus, you can feed all of this data into the CRM you already use, like Salesforce or HubSpot.
Pricing for ExecVision is available on request.
The exchange and review of contracts can be a long, drawn-out process. If it falls through, you’re wasting all of the marketing effort that went into winning that lead, and all of the sales work done to convert it.
Instead of relying on a Word doc template and freeform follow-up notes, try a dedicated contract management tool to help you create, distribute, and track metrics around contracts.
Are you still making your sales proposals inside Google Docs? How are you going to track if your prospect actually reads and engages with the proposal you send?
With Proposify, you get a simple user interface to create proposals with, pre-loaded with data from your business that makes creating proposals a snap.
Pricing for Proposify starts at $25/month for one user account.
HelloSign is cloud-based document management software that makes paper contracts a thing of the past. For sales enablement purposes, you can use HelloSign to draw up contract templates for deals and make it easier for your reps to distribute them and track progress.
HelloSign features native integrations with Oracle CPQ, Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Zapier, which provides connections to over 1,000 other apps.
Pricing starts from free, for three monthly documents. The cheapest premium package, which offers unlimited documents from a single sender, costs $13/user/month.
DocSend is a content management tool for sales enablement material. It helps you surface and organize your comparison sheets, white papers, and other content that your sales team needs to close deals. Since documents are distributed by the app, you can use DocSend’s analytics to track content usage and make optimizations.
Pricing for DocSend starts at $10/month for one user.
With PandaDoc, you can create and send branded proposal documents that help you reps close deals.
Using pre-made templates and your in-built company data, you can spin up a proposal in minutes and get it distributed. Plus, after it’s sent you can track metrics that tell you whether or not a prospect is engaging with the material.
PandaDoc pricing starts at $49/user/month.
Conga is a content management system for sales teams that allows reps to create templated, branded documents with ease. Build approval workflows and templates inside Conga, and you’ll have the systems in place already to enable reps to create their own material and submit it for review.
Conga also integrates directly with platforms like Salesforce, so you can track customer metrics inside your CRM to get a better look at your content’s performance.
Pricing for Conga isn’t available online.
A salesperson’s CRM is their #1 most-used tool. If it’s a pain to use, won’t automatically enrich lead data, and doesn’t offer time-saving automation, it’s a big problem for sales enablement.
Since reps spend less than 36% of their time selling, the remainder is spent on data entry, menial tasks, and in the CRM. A good CRM could put an end to all of that time-sucking work.
Here are our top picks in the category.
HubSpot is a free CRM with a full feature set — contact management, email history, lead data, and more — all for free. This alone sets it apart from most other CRMs, which can come with a high price tag.
You can automation outreach and build follow-up sequences that are optimized to allow your reps to make the most high-converting plays.
As one of the most popular CRMs out there, HubSpot offers great support for other products and has integrations with over 1,000 apps through Zapier.
Best of all, HubSpot CRM is entirely free! No hidden costs 🙂
As the #1 CRM on the planet, Salesforce needs no introduction. It’s widely supported with integrations, so practically any data you collect from other tools can be added to your lead profiles easily.
It acts as a rolodex for your leads, whether that’s leads you haven’t reached out to yet, or leads partway through the funnel. For opportunities in the funnel, Salesforce tracks deal status so you can filter your sales opportunities and enable reps to save time.
Salesforce’s pricing starts from $25/user/month.
Pipedrive tracks rep activity across every lead in your database and gives you a birds-eye view of your entire sales funnel.
Through its marketplace, Pipedrive has native integrations with over 100 apps you already use, like Asana, Intercom, Slack, and Help Scout. This allows you to pull in everything you already know about a lead and track sales activity no matter where it happens. More data means your reps are better able to make a pitch that converts.
Pipedrive is priced for the SMB and startup market, with packages starting from just $15/user/month.
SPOTIO is a field sales CRM which houses your organization’s lead data complete with locations, rep and territory assignments. Leads are enriched with unique metrics like home value and eco-friendliness automatically, which gives reps a way to tighten their targeting and waste less time on qualification.
The SPOTIO CRM features a shared meeting appointment calendar and a historical log of rep activity.
Pricing for SPOTIO starts at just $25/user/month.
Sales training is a vital component of enablement. Not just as a one-off deal, but when practiced continuously. That’s because salespeople will forget 80-90% of what they learned in training within a month without revisiting the material.
Because of this startling reality, sales teams often use a dedicated platform to manage, deliver, and monitor training content for reps.
Here are our top picks from the category.
Brainshark is a sales training tool with a focus on video. With it, you can create sales training videos to deploy to your reps and enable them to close more deals.
Industry-wide, turnover for SDRs is high. That means you need good onboarding or you won’t be able to get reps up to speed fast enough. Brainshark optimizes your sales training by giving reps a centralized hub they can use to find and consume material. Then, you get metrics back that tell you how to improve.
Pricing for Brainshark isn’t available on the web, so contact sales for more information.
With Playboox, you can build sales playbooks directly into Salesforce and make it easy for reps to know what to do next and cut time-wasting activities (like searching for information) to a minimum.
Taking a playbook-focused approach helps your reps ensure consistency and success because they’re using proven standards versus their own improvised techniques. With Playboox, this is simple to design and add to your CRM.
Pricing for Playboox is available on request.
Sandler isn’t your typical sales training tool. Rather than leaving it all up to you, you get connected with a sales training expert to design your processes. Sandler teaches SDR their winning methodology to ensure you get the best results, and offers metrics that help you make optimizations.
As a service rather than a piece of software, all solutions are custom. Find a center near you for more info.
Lessonly is a sales training platform that helps you build, store, and distribute training content while tracking the most vital success metrics, like whether or not reps have undergone training and engaged with it.
Creating a solid knowledge base for new hires and existing reps — with material about selling a new feature, or key personas — is essential for onboarding and retaining reps because it empowers them to be successful and be motivated by more commission.
Pricing for Lessonly is not public, and only available through requesting a demo.
MindTickle helps organizations train and coach sales reps with microlearning, gamification, and quizzes. Admins can easily create and publish training content to the platform, and then analyze how it performs. Reps get a simple mobile-ready interface they can use to participate in bite-sized training courses that help them hit their goals.
MindTickle’s pricing is available on request.
Jiminny is an internal sales collaboration tool, CRM, and training base, all in one.
It’s a central place for you to share leads, notes, and training sessions with other sales managers and reps, ensuring that no vital information goes missing when you need it most.
Jiminny also integrates with Slack to feed your team’s best call into a channel you can use for training purposes and to keep reps on top of the company’s selling activity. For pricing, contact a member of the sales team.
Process Street lets you create structured process documents, share them with your team, and then track their progress.
For example, you might want to make your lead qualification process more consistent and build a qualification checklist inside Process Street. This helps reps do the best possible job each time because they’re following an up-to-date, comprehensive process that has been tested and optimized.
Process Street integrates with over 1,000 other apps your sales team uses, like Close.io, Salesforce, and HelloSign, so you can automate your workflows with ease. Pricing starts at $12.50/user/month for unlimited processes.
Managing sales rewards and training schemes can be difficult, especially if you have a lot of reps to track. That’s where LevelEleven comes in.
LevelEleven is a sales management and motivation tool designed to encourage revenue-creating behavior with competitions and scoring. With it, you can get insights into the top-performing reps’ habits so you can create training material that enables your reps to convert leads.
LevelEleven’s pricing is available on request.
Without sales analytics, you can’t hope to transform the way your reps sell. Why? Because you can’t measure what you can’t manage. Sales analytics tools let you collect and analyze data on reps and their deals, so you can make strategic decisions about the sales enablement work that needs to be done — and track your strategies effectiveness. Here are our top picks.
SPOTIO’s sales tracking software provides sales operations teams with real-time insights into what is happening in the field.
See detailed location activity of sales reps, deal support, and start making business decisions based on real-time data. Track sales rep activity across territories, and create custom reports using dozens of different data points.
Pricing starts from $25/user/month.
Lattice is a platform for performance reviews, employee goals, and sharing feedback. It helps companies grow by giving managers a central hub they can use to track how sales reps are tracking against their performance goals — especially useful in large sales organizations.
Pricing for Lattice starts at $9/user/month, but reporting and analytics are only available on the $12 package.
With so much of the buying cycle happening in the background these days, sales teams desperately need to get insights into their anonymous traffic so they can be informed of the lead’s past activity and knowledge and be equipped to sell better. With 6sense, you get to look behind the curtain and reveal everything a lead has done before they reached out to sales — and analyze the lead’s behavior using AI.
Pricing for 6sense is available on request.
InsightSquared makes it possible for you to create reports using your entire bank of sales data, from day one. Just connect it to your CRM, and you’ll get a library of pre-built reports that you can use to extract insight and sell more efficiently. InsightSquared has native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and more — anywhere your data lives, InsightSquared will be able to access it.
Pricing is available by talking to the InsightSquared sales team.
Managing a sales process also means managing the people that run that process. That includes performance metrics, employee engagement, and sales contests to improve productivity.
The sales management tools selected below will help you make reliable decisions about your team’s health and drive up motivation.
Hoopla is a sales performance management tool that gives sales managers a platform to run competitions with leaderboards. It’s designed for a TV screen in your office, so can be used as a static leaderboard or a place to display alerts and updates on sales activity.
The metrics you collect from Hoopla can be used for performance reviews and monetary incentivization, so you get the immediate benefit of a competitive leaderboard and the long-term benefit of gathering historical data on your reps.
Pricing starts at $199/month.
SocialChorus is an internal content management platform that teams can use to share playbooks, standard procedures, and other documentation.
It’s not like just storing your files in Google Drive, though — SocialChorus features analytics that help you (and stakeholders) see the value of having a central hub for internal documents and communication, rather than using multiple disparate tools.
Pricing for SocialChorus is available by request only.
SpearFysh helps reps be engaged with leads during meetings instead of checking their computer for notes and log timestamps. It does this by recording meetings on a tablet app, and then allowing the person giving the meeting to tap quickly to add notes to the conversation.
Using Spearfysh means you get a detailed history of rep activity and reps will be more effective and less distracted during important meetings.
Contact a Spearfysh rep for pricing information.
Typeform is a simple, powerful, and beautiful form creation tool you can use to distribute post-sale feedback forms to your customers and improve your sales processes. Or, you can use Typeform to collect missing lead data, pre-sale, and send it to your CRM automatically.
Typeform is so flexible, it’s just about the last form builder you’ll need. You can even just use its API to give your team a central place to store and analyze form data, regardless of the way it’s captured.
Pricing for Typeform starts from free, with premium tiers from 25 euros monthly.
OpinionLab integrates with your product to help you deploy customer experience surveys with ease. After installing OpinionLab, you’ll get a Feedback button in your app or on your website that customers can use to leave feedback that OpinionLab stores complete with metadata.
By collecting feedback from your customers, you can transform the way you sell. Feedback can tell you which kinds of customers should be sold on which features, or even what to avoid mentioning around a particular type of lead.
Pricing for OpinionLab is available by request.
Chameleon is a product marketing tool that lives inside your app — like Sumo for in-product messaging, you can deploy banners, modals and tooltips that coach users on the benefits and get them to their aha moment faster. But that’s not all.
As well as in-product messaging, Chameleon offers the option to deploy surveys to different segments of users with data brought in through integration partners like Heap, Segment, and Intercom.
Improve your post-sale survey response rate by triggering surveys contextually in-app, driven by your product’s unique metrics. Pricing for Chameleon starts at $99 monthly for unlimited users.
UserReport is both a feedback form tool and a way to communicate with customers that leave feedback. With it, you can gather NPS feedback that tells you how to improve your sales process. For example, poor NPS feedback could be the result of a bad-fit lead buying your product — and with UserReport, you can find that out and get to the root cause.
It’s free to add UserReport’s feedback forms to your app, plus it integrates with Google Analytics to enrich your existing data. Pricing for the premium package is available on request.
Crowdsignal is a form-building tool that gives you an easy-to-use platform to collect information from leads and customers. With its simple interface, you can construct mobile-friendly forms that you can distribute through social media, your product, or transactional email.
Pre-configured reports can analyze data as it comes in, or offer exports to Excel where you can crunch the numbers. Pricing for Crowdsignal starts from free, but for premium features like reporting you’ll need the Pro plan for $200 monthly.
There you have it – 68 sales enablement tools to level-up your sales performance in 2019.
Which tools are you going to try? Any good ones we missed?
Let us know in the comment below.
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Questions or comments? Contact Spotio at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is 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.
Whether you’re a sales rep, a sales manager, member of the ops team, or the business owner, you share one fundamental concern: how to increase sales volume. From top to bottom, everyone is serious about increasing sales numbers.
Sales drive the business. They fuel the growth, fund the new ventures, and fill the coffers from which the salaries are paid.
With so much riding on sales, it’s essential to have sound strategies for increasing sales volume. Following is a list of 25 ways you can increase sales volume and boost revenue.
#1 | Assign Top Reps to High-Value Territories
When you want to increase sales volume, it makes sense to put your most successful salespeople in front of the accounts that have the most potential. A manager’s formula for success is first to understand which reps produce the most sales and then draw a territory that maximizes that potential. Technology can be a tremendous asset here.
Spotio’s Territory Management Software can create strategic territories based on criteria like zip code or neighborhood. With the area already targeted, the sales rep can then plan an efficient day — and get in front of as many potential customers as possible.
#2 | Find Your Client’s Needs
Your job is to identify pain points and offer a solution that will solve their needs.
Once you determine what your client needs, assign a value to what the problem costs in revenue, over time, lost opportunities, customer churn or all of the above. Breaking it down in dollars and cents is an excellent way to emphasize how your product or service can benefit their business.
#3 | Focus on the top accounts
To increase sales volume, your most valuable resource is time; you want to spend it where you can get the most bang for your buck. That will be at the accounts with the most potential.
To identify top accounts, first understand your target customer profile. You want to get as specific as possible so you have characteristics that you can use to sort through a list and find matches. Some examples could be annual revenue, the number of locations, type of industry, and so on from there.
Once you have a target customer profile, you can use technology to do the heavy lifting for you. Spotio’s Lead Machine, which is part of the lead management software on the platform, can identify accounts that match your criteria in the various territories. After you draw an area on the map, you then enter the ideal customer details, and the software does the rest for you.
#4 | Seal cracks in the sales process
Every sales organization and even every salesperson has their sales process, and like the humans that created them, they have areas of opportunity. Streamlining and optimizing the sales process can help you increase sales volume.
A sales process has different stages for each of your leads. If you track the relationship of the lead, or the stage they are in the sales process, you can tailor communication that addresses where the individual lead is at the moment.
However, time is still your most valuable resource, so automating these communications is vital to your sales strategy. For example, the Lead Management services on Spotio includes lead intelligence, like colorization for your leads based on their current stage in the process. It can also yield reports for prospects that warrant a second call or identify the “hot” lead.
Pertinent messaging for the appropriate stage leads to improved potential for engagements and progress to the next step. It stops leads from falling through the cracks.
#5 | Employ a thorough qualifying process for prospects
In addition to focusing on top accounts, meaning those with the most potential that fit your target profile, you also need to qualify your prospects. You need to ensure they are an appropriate fit for your product or service.
Qualifying involves asking questions. You need to ask about their current situation, whether the contact can make purchasing decisions locally, how much budget this available, among others.
If the prospect’s answers fit the parameters of your target customer (and they can sign the purchase agreement), you have found a match. If not, you would likely be better served to move to an account with greater potential.
#6 | Use tools to scale your prospecting
Once you know who you want to sell to, you must find as many of those people—as fast as possible. Prospecting is a crucial part of your sales process. However, it can also be time-consuming and frustrating.
However, many tools exist to help you find as many excellent prospects as possible without you using as much of your precious time. Spotio has a Sales Prospecting Playbook that includes techniques, tools, and examples for you to use.
Spotio’s Sales Prospecting Software can scale the prospecting process and generate more leads to close. With three programs to help you, you can identify the accounts with the most potential (lead targeting), automate the administrative tasks associated with the sales process (lead management), and schedule appointments without difficulty (calendar integration).
#7 | Always remember WIFM
WIFM is an acronym for “What’s in It for Me?” and it is essential to increase sales volume. Your prospect does not buy because of you or because of all the features you shared about your product or service. They buy because of what the product does for them.
Of course, knowing WIFM is imperative for the sales rep. You must have complete clarity on your product knowledge and be able to position yourself in a way that shows how your product benefits the customer.
Features are only what the product has, benefits are what the product does.
An essential part of your strategies to increase sales volume should include a focus on what the product or service does for the lead’s business. Not only will sharing the benefits engage your prospect, but it will begin to build a relationship of trust between you.
#8 | Employ Pain-Based Selling
Pain-based selling is a technique to reinforce that the prospect needs your product or service. It also lays a foundation for a partnership between you and your customer.
Pain-based selling has a process. You first ask the customer what their biggest challenge is in their business. Then you follow it up with what would happen if they should fail to meet that challenge. Next, you ease the prospect’s pain with the benefits of your product or service, which will (lastly) begin a partnership.
Sandler Training uses Sandler’s Pain Funnel with their pain-based selling efforts. The process reveals the reasons for your prospect’s pain, even when they might not have been aware of it themselves. You begin the process after the prospect has shared with you what they are willing to tell you at the beginning.
Most of the questions in Sandler’s Pain Funnel are open-ended, meaning they invite the customer to share more information rather than a yes or no answer. The point of the questions is to get the client thinking about how they feel about the problem and how they might need a better solution than they have now.
#9 | Align Sales with Marketing
Peanut butter and jelly is an example of a combo of things that is better when paired with the other. You can say the same thing about sales and marketing, too.
Sales is a customer-facing team. The sales team have direct contact every day with what customers want, the questions they ask, and the problems they face.
Marketing is an operational team. The marketing team understands how to deliver the information to customers that can lead to a sale.
When you combine the street-knowledge of the sales with the messaging skills of the marketing,, you have a much better tool with which to communicate. Allying the two groups has a direct effect on increasing sales volumes.
One example of how you can use the combined efforts of the two teams is to create an excellent presentation for prospects. It should communicate the benefits (or WIFM) to the customers in a creative way. Whether it’s PowerPoint, an interactive web demonstration or a video, making an effective presentation is paramount to increasing sales volumes.
#10 | Exploit your strengths & work on your weaknesses
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what those are are vital in order to become the best sales rep you can be.
Self-Awareness can help you make the most of what you are good at while addressing your “areas of opportunity.” Make a list of all the activities involved in the sales process, e.g., prospecting, qualifying, engaging, presenting, closing, etc. Then, divide those tasks between two columns labeled “Strengths” and “Weaknesses” (or if you prefer, “Opportunities”).
Next, make a plan for the following week. In the morning, while you are energized and ready, set aside time to engage in an activity that addresses a specific weakness.
For example, you can job shadow a colleague for an hour who is excellent at cold calling to get some tips. Another example is practicing closing techniques with someone who is outstanding at asking for the order.
Once you have your time for addressing a specific skill set scheduled, you can now turn your attention to your strengths later in the day. If you are excellent at qualifying leads, build in time to make some calls to new leads. If you love canvassing in person, set aside time to get out and about.
#11 | Improve your time management skills
As we mentioned before, time is your most valuable asset when trying to increase sales volumes. You need to maximize your time to yield the best possible results.
It’s an excellent idea to have some idea of your closing average when you are addressing your time management. You should know how many cold calls it takes for you to find a good lead. You also need to be aware of how many leads you need to find a qualified prospect. Finally, you need to know how many qualified prospects it takes to close a sale and how much your average purchase agreement is.
With the numbers you now have, you know what activity you need to accomplish in a week. For example, if it takes five cold calls to get one lead, and you need seven leads to find a qualified prospect, you now know you need to make 35 calls to find a proper opportunity. Depending on how many qualified leads you need each month, you now can ensure you make enough cold calls to get there.
Time management means that you use your time as wisely as possible. Knowing how many cold calls are going to get you to your sales numbers, you can start by scheduling time each day to cold call. Cold calling before you even open your email is a great way to get the day started—and your time management efforts kicked off, too.
Technology can also help you streamline your planning and maximize your time. Spotio’s Sales Route Planner can optimize your course, allowing you to visit as many targets as possible in the most efficient path. Also, you can employ the e-contracts feature to close on site rather than lose momentum while the buyer is waiting on “the paperwork.”
#12 | Encourage word-of-mouth advocacy
When customers are delighted and surprised by a great experience, they tell their friends about it. As part of your multiple strategies to increase sales volume, you should encourage your most loyal customers to share their experiences with their friends and colleagues.
To incent more advocacy, you can reward them with little perks or gifts. Some organizations award points for customer referrals to put toward technology or gift card rewards. However, you might discover that your best customers will refer you based on your relationship alone, with or without the extra bonuses.
Your best customers are easy to identify. However, some of the other accounts you work with might be willing to provide referrals as well. To determine if an account would advocate on your behalf, PowerHomeBiz.com, a small business publication, encourages you to ask three questions:
1. What feature do you like best about my product or service?
2. How can we make our product or service even better or more valuable for you?
3. Who do you know that could also benefit from my product or service?
Not only will you receive valuable feedback from your customers and show that their opinion matters to you, but you also can get some great tips for leads to follow up on afterward.
#13 | Share case studies
It’s one thing when you talk about how a product or service will benefit a prospect’s business; it’s another to have someone who uses your product or service talk about it. Case studies are success stories from past or current customers that give prospects another perspective on whether your product or service will benefit their business.
An excellent way to get customers to endorse your product or service through a case study is to write a rough draft for them to edit. Few customers have the time or energy to start from a blank page. As their sales rep, you usually have a decent idea of how your product or service has improved their bottom line or solved a problem they faced in their business and can write a version for them to tidy up and add pertinent details (i.e., dollar amounts or percentages of growth, etc.).
A rough draft serves as a way to streamline the process for your account to share their story with minimum effort on their part. Then, you have a useful (and authentic) sales tool to help prospects feel more comfortable moving forward with your proposal—from an unbiased third-party.
#14 | Calculate incentive compensation automatically
Commission structure is the most motivating aspect of a salesperson’s job. It’s human nature (especially salespeople’s nature) for you to want to know what your incentive amount will be on any given sale/week/month.
However, figuring amounts can be time-consuming. Perhaps more importantly, it distracts you from the task at hand: earning that commission through increasing your sale volume.
Sales incentive programs usually motivate salespeople. When you automate the calculation, you create a win-win situation. You know what you are going to earn, and you can get back to work earning more in as little time as possible.
A commission should be paid within a month to be an effective motivator. Also, shortening the time between the closed sale and the commission associates the reward with the activity, which is beneficial to inspire behavior.
#15 | Strive to win sales contests
Another excellent motivator is the sales contest. Sometimes the reward is significant, like a luxury vacation or a large cash amount. Sometimes the prize is silly, like possession of the team’s Tiki-God or bragging rights.
Sales contests bring out your competitive spirit, which is a lot like the spirit that drives you to hit your sales goals. When your sales manager invests time and resources in a sales contest, you should take full advantage of it.
Technology can help you keep track of where you are in the contest as well. Spotio’s Sales Performance Management Software has a Sales Leaderboard and Team Management software that can track the team’s performance.
Whatever the trophy or honor, striving to win a sales contest will increase your sales volume. Moreover, one of the best prizes will be making your sales plan.
#16 | Visit prospects in person
The human connection between the salesperson and potential customer is a powerful tool for increasing your sales volume. Face-to-face interaction trumps online interaction for emotional engagement.
It is not always the best choice. For the sake of your time management and your potential customer’s, online and phone interaction can handle much of the business involved in the sales process. However, it should not replace your human contact.
When you invest the time and effort to visit a prospect in person, you invoke a natural relationship-building element. One of the ways it enhances the likelihood of making a sale is that it demonstrates that you are interested in your client and care about their business. It also begins to build a foundation of trust.
#17 | Increase your outreach to your potential customers
Making as many contacts as possible is a practical strategy for how to increase sales volume. Ensuring potential customers know what you have to offer is essential to the sales process.
Today’s selling environment has a plethora of ways to make contact. The tried-and-true methods of in-person meetings and phone calls are excellent.
Automated email strategies can also aid in your outreach efforts. When used in concert with Spotio’s Lead Management software, you can craft email blasts for your potential customers.
Social selling is another channel that can help you get the message out to your future customers. Using the different social media platforms, you can post content put together by your marketing team or mock up your own to access more qualified leads. Canva.com has a significant library of templates that can help you create a catchy and professional looking marketing status update.
#18 | Promote offers
If WIFM is the essential message of your pitch, your proposal is a close second. People need to know what you are selling, the bargain they get in exchange for the WIFM you shared.
The best offers are clear, simple, and provide significant value to your customers. However, your offer should also create urgency, meaning the customer has to decide within a specific time frame.
Urgency not only helps customers decide to move forward, but it also shortens the sales cycle. And a shortened sales cycle decreases the amount of time you wait to get your commission check.
Your offer can feature many different motivating factors. What you include in the proposal is up to you. It could be a sale price. It could be a cash-back offer or access to a premium level of your product or service at the regular level’s price point.
The only essential is that it adds something of value if the prospect acts by the deadline. One caveat is that specific industries have restrictions for what they can include in the offer. Ensure that what you promise is within the bounds of the laws that govern your industry (We’re looking at you, medical and pharmaceutical sales).
How you communicate the offer is also an essential part of your strategy. If you send out information on a future sale, you can position the proposal as an “inside scoop,” meaning they have first dibs on the goods. If you contact prospects after the deal, you can capitalize on the positive feelings from their first sale with a follow-up purchase.
#19 | Eliminating your prospect’s feeling of risk
People have a natural risk aversion. Psychologists call it Loss Aversion, and it is one of the parts of Prospect Theory.
Loss Aversion can make it difficult for your prospect to try something new because they might perceive it as a risk, that they might lose something if they buy your product or service. It can be an obstacle to them moving forward in the sales process.
If you can eliminate your prospect’s feeling of risk, you might be able to move them forward to a sale. Money-back guarantees are one assurance you can give your future client. Risk-free trials are another way you can remove this obstacle.
Many times, once the customer feels they are not going to lose anything, they feel more comfortable moving forward with the sale.
#20 | Create affiliate programs
An excellent way to increase sales volume quickly is to deepen the relationship you already have with customers. It is easier and faster to work with customers you already know than it is to attract, find, qualify and close new customers.
This strategy to deepen your relationship with existing accounts is well-served by affiliate programs or strategic partnerships with an organization that complements your own. Finding additional products and services that work with both of your client bases can increase sales volumes for both organizations.
A successful partnership will have services that do not duplicate but work together to provide a full complement of solutions for your customer.
For example, a window installation organization could have a partnership with a window cleaning company, or a SaaS (software as a service) organization could have an IT support company they work with for their customers.
In some cases, you can use the existing client lists of both companies to market each organization’s benefits. This effort could save both companies time and money in customer acquisition costs while providing a valuable resource to existing customers.
#21 | Keep the customers you have
Per HubSpot, customer retention is an excellent strategy for increasing sales volumes. Customers that have bought from you before spend 67% more than new customers.
HubSpot recommends a few different ways to leverage the customers you have to increase your sales volume. You can do something as simple as raise prices, starting with a lower percentage test to ensure it doesn’t have the opposite effect. You can also build a loyalty program that rewards customers for repeat business with increased value propositions, like premium service add-ons or other additional perks.
Implementing a subscription service is another tactic to increase sales volume with existing customers can also be how you can increase sales volume. HubSpot also recommends personalizing the buyer’s journey to increase emotional engagement that leads to customer loyalty.
However, there are other benefits of customer retention for you. When you hold on to your customers and build customer loyalty, your current customers will recommend you to friends and family. And let’s not forget all the money that you save in marketing costs and lead acquisition; you already have your customers’ information.
#22 | Never stop cold calling
Keeping your sales pipeline full is a foundational skill for any salesperson. Today’s cold call is tomorrow’s qualified lead—and next month’s new business. Prospecting is an essential activity for increasing sales volume.
The point of a cold call is to introduce yourself and determine if you can move the contact to the next position in your sales funnel. As Brian Tracy says, you are warming up a potential customer.
Cold calling can be frustrating. Remember it is a numbers game, meaning the more calls you make, the more potential you have to make a connection. The diligence will pay off and make the effort worthwhile.
#23 | Become a master of persuasion
When it comes to how to increase sales volume techniques, persuasion is an essential one. Convincing people to get to a yes that will enhance their business and solve their problems is a foundational skill for increasing your sales success.
Brian Tracy champions the “Four Ps” of Persuasion:
– Power
– Positioning
– Performance
– Politeness
Power means the way you present yourself to your prospect. If you think of yourself as an expert in your product or service, the prospect is far more likely to be influenced by your opinion for their business.
Positioning is a complement to power in that it addresses the way you talk and act. When you assert yourself in specific ways, people think of you a certain way, which can be helpful when you are trying to convince them to act in their best interest.
Performance means that you strive to do your very best at everything you do. People respect competence, hard work, and excellent follow through. Ensure that you perfect these areas in your career, and customers will want to work with you.
Politeness is another vital quality. Respecting others and what they do is crucial, in work (and in life).
Part of becoming a master of persuasion requires you to be an excellent negotiator. Proficiency in negotiation techniques that find win-win opportunities for both parties is essential to increasing sales volume.
Brian Tracy says master negotiators have three qualities. First, they ask good questions that uncover the needs of the prospect and move them to the next phase of the sales cycle. Second, they are patient and listen for ways to give the prospect something they want.
Finally, they are prepared for their interactions and can move the sale forward if the opportunity presents itself. Part of this skill is learning how to overcome objections.
Objections are the reasons prospects give not to move forward with the sale. They are offering resistance, but only because they are interested. Having a handle on the common objections you might encounter with your product or service is an excellent way to increase your sales volumes.
#24 | Nurture Relationships
Having successful customer relationships is a foundation of a salesperson’s career. The ability to build rapport and trust with your accounts is a significant factor in sales success.
Nurturing relationships is a traditional method for increasing sales. However, it has stood the test of time because it works. People like to work with people they like and trust, two significant factors of successful relationships.
However, strong customer relationships do not come without a price. As Forbes points out, strengthening relationships requires time and energy.
Nurturing relationships involves listening to what your clients need and giving it to them, even if it means customizing the package or adding in personalized services. The extra effort is worth it; Saleshacker reports that 53% of C-level executives buy because of their relationship with the salesperson.
#25 | Create packages
Creating a package that solves your prospect’s challenges is an excellent way to position yourself as a partner. If you are a single-product supplier, it might necessitate contacting some complementary products and services providers to present a comprehensive solution.
However, it is crucial to limit the choices. When a prospect has too many options, it can be as frustrating as not having enough and can lead to indecision.
You can limit choices a couple of ways. You can arrange the proposal in a way that controls how many options a prospect sees. You can filter the choices by using qualifying questions to eliminate certain products or services for the initial proposal (although keep them on the back burner; as you develop the relationship you might revisit the option).
Another way to create packages is to arrange a system of pricing tiers. Pricing tiers are based on the psychological principle of Choice Architecture. One of the principles of choice architecture dictates that how you present the options is as important as the content of the options themselves.
A decoy option is an option that is added to the mix because it is less attractive than the other options. For example, if you think of drinks in a restaurant, the small is often the most expensive per ounce for the least amount of drink. Not surprisingly, most people choose either the medium or large drink instead.
Tiered pricing can simplify the decision for a prospect, especially when presented in small, medium, and large options. Most people will choose the option in the middle because it’s not too small, not too big, it’s just right.
Let’s face it; everyone wants to increase sales volume from up in the C-suite on down. Sales are the engine that drives the organization, providing the funding for all the goals of the company.
These 25 suggestions can help you fuel that engine with more revenue and improved strategies to increase sales volume. Try them out and put the pedal to the metal toward smashing your sales goals.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation 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.
Sources:
Wallace, Tracey. “6 Ways to Boost Customer Retention Rates.” www.hubspot.com. Web. 23 February 2019. https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-retention-rate.
“14 Proven Strategies to Increase Sales of Your Product.” www.briantracy.com. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.briantracy.com/blog/sales-success/proven-strategies-to-increase-sales-of-your-product/>.
“The Four Ps of Persuasion.” www.briantracy.com. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.briantracy.com/blog/sales-success/the-four-ps-of-persuasion/>.
Kappel, Mike. “Small Business Strategies to Increase Sales.“ www.forbes.com. 25 January 2017. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2017/01/25/small-business-strategies-to-increase-sales/#53f9ac215b1b>
Skala, Emmanuelle. “What Happened to Relationship Selling?” www.saleshacker.com. 30 August 2017. Web. 23 February 2019. < https://www.saleshacker.com/relationship-selling/>.
So, you’re looking to implement a new CRM? The decision to invest in your company’s technology solutions is always an exciting one. While a CRM investment will undoubtedly pay off in many ways (increased sales, shortened sales cycle, increased rep productivity, etc.), there are many things to consider to ensure a successful implementation.
With many products on the market, you’ll need to invest substantial energy in finding the system or service that best meets your needs. Most importantly, you’ll need a bullet-proof plan for bringing your team along; sales management and sales reps will make or break your investment.
In this article – whether you’re in Sales Operations, Sales Management, or a Sales Rep – we examine what you should consider when making a CRM investment to ensure that each arm of the sales team is set-up for success.
Depending on the size and maturity of your business, your industry, and existing processes and systems, your CRM needs will differ.
While simpler business models may only require a basic system that auto-responds to potential customers signing up for an email subscription, more mature and complex businesses will require a robust system that integrates important processes like marketing automation, contact and lead management, point of sale (POS) functionality, sales reporting, sales process management, employee tracking, and more.
You will need to consider the time and resourcing your organization will need to dedicate to implementation, training, and maintenance. While some systems are simple and well-supported, more custom CRM implementations require entire teams within and/or outside the company to build, maintain, support, and further develop the solution.
When choosing a CRM, it’s important to think not only about where your organization is today, but also where your organization is heading. As your organization grows and evolves to meet new customer needs, you will likely need new features and functionality.
As you plan, start by asking yourself where you expect your business to be in one year, three years, five years. Consider what needs you’d have if your customer base grows significantly or if your company expands to serve new audiences or offer additional product lines.
Would your CRM needs change? Would the system you choose today be able to grow with you or would you need to start from scratch?
When looking at different CRM options, do your research to ensure you understand the reputation, pros, and cons of the CRM solutions you are considering. Look at how the CRM provider ensures the solution is stable and reliable.
Keep in mind that your CRM is an important and integral part of your daily business operations. An unstable and under-supported solution can cause major disruption or loss for your business.
While some CRMs publish pricing directly on their website, make sure you look beyond the obvious platform and service costs. Consider the cost of implementation, consulting and training costs, third-party integration, as well as other opportunity costs.
While investing in a CRM may seem like a no-brainer, you need to consider how you’ll measure ROI to prove value for your organization as well as to help fuel future investment decisions. At the most basic level, you should expect your CRM to help you boost sales and revenue while decreasing the cost of acquiring a new customer.
Measuring increased sales is straightforward. Using your accounting records, you can pull sales and revenue reports for the past three years and compare them with the new reports from your CRM. Measuring decreased acquisition costs will prove to be more complex as you’ll need to look at a variety of costs such as marketing, travel, labor, and more.
Have a plan for what you’ll look at and keep in mind that even if costs stay the same, the cost-per-sale improves with more revenue.
Consider the investment you’ll need to make in training your staff, process documentation, and driving internal adoption. CRM implementation is not easy. It’s likely that your sales staff will initially see it as an unnecessary new administrative burden, particularly since they won’t see the benefits immediately.
A robust training and adoption plan will be critical to your success. In addition to the end-to-end processes, workflows, and tactical instructions, your training and adoption plan needs to cover how everyone will benefit from using the new system.
What new data will the system provide to help sales reps close more business? How can they use the CRM to automate tasks and get time back? This piece is so important since you’ll only see full benefits with 100% adoption.
With a CRM, sales managers and their teams are able to collect and aggregate data about prospects and deals. With dashboards and reports, sales managers get visibility into each sales reps pipelines, deals, and contacts, allowing them to better support and coach the rep for success.
Sales managers can also track each reps progress toward attaining their quotas towards quota attainment, monitor revenue, and see where things may not be moving as expected.
Forecasting is a critical activity for sales managers, allowing them to plan strategically and make informed decisions. CRM allows management to view trends and perform data-driven forecasting with proper pipeline visibility, visibility into which lead sources are proving to be most successful and metrics like year-over-year growth.
Sales manager can use this data to form sales projections for upcoming months and adjust pipeline estimates if needed.
With a single place to track leads, prospects, and customers, sales managers can surface patterns to identify the sales processes that are working well and which ones require improvement.
A CRM is only as good as the data inside of it. A sales leadership and management team will get zero value from the investment if the data is incorrect, inconsistent, or missing.
Too often, while trying to drive adoption, organizations focus on the new tasks and accountabilities for sales reps, forgetting to emphasize the benefits to the reps themselves.
The sales team has worked hard to establish their client relationships and industry networks, which can make some of them a bit reluctant to share their data with the entire office. Demonstrating the benefits is the most important factor to adoption.
It’s important to sell the system as a valuable sales enablement tool and not a way for management to redistribute their accounts or monitor every contact and activity.
For example, sales reps can expect to see a shorter sales cycle due to data accessibility.
Sales reps will benefit from increased insights to their prospects and customers including things like how they interact with marketing efforts or usage and consumption of your products and services. They gain the ability to create and use activity reports and see data that will improve the volume and size of their sales.
To make sure your sales reps are on board, consult them through the implementation process. Get their valuable feedback on the features that will help them the most and take the time to understand their pain points so you can design the solution to help.
In addition, get feedback on the usability and design of the system to ensure its intuitive, easy to use and adds value.
Once the system is implemented, make sure you have adequate support in place to aid in the transition, answer questions, and remove any roadblocks that may slow adoption.
Conclusion
Investing in a CRM is highly likely to benefit your organization. In fact, according to Nucleas research, for every dollar spent on CRM solutions, companies experience an $8.71 return on investment.
As you look at options, build a plan and move toward implementation. Keep in mind that having your team on board is critical to a successful data-driven future with CRM.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
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.
Whether you’re in sales, marketing or customer service, a CRM is critical to the success of your business. It acts as the internal system of record and single point of truth for the company.
Research by Salesforce shows that CRM applications can help increase sales by up to 29%, sales productivity by up to 34% and sales forecast accuracy by 42%.
A CRM lets you establish and cultivate long-term relationships with your customers so that you can increase revenue, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
But which type of CRM do you need? Which is best for your business?
CRMs make up the largest software category – estimated to reach $35B by 2023 – with thousands of vendors catering to different industries, company sizes and sales team structures.
Across the categories, three main types of CRM emerge:
1. Operational
2. Analytical
3. Collaborative
So it’s important to know which type is best for your business.
In this article, you’ll discover more about each type of CRM, what each one offers, how you can use them in your business, and why they should not be viewed as a silver bullet.
A CRM – short for Customer Relationship Management – is a software solution that helps businesses to capture prospect and customer interactions in a single database.
In 2008, only 12% of businesses used a cloud-based CRM – this figure has now increased to 87%!
Research by Innoppl Technologies showed that 65% of sales reps who adopted a mobile CRM solution hit sales quota. Only 22% of reps using a CRM without the mobile functionality hit the same sales targets.
Teams can use the information in a CRM to send emails, make calls, add notes, schedule appointments, create reports, and manage sales pipelines from the CRM system. Any interactions from the customer are automatically added to their record, so everyone has the latest visibility.
Sales teams can use a CRM to learn more about their prospects and customers, and manage their sales pipeline better. The CRM also helps automate day-to-day tasks, like scheduling follow-up calls at an agreed interval. And managers can track, view, and report on their team’s performance.
| Editor’s note: Different sales team structures – inside vs outside vs channel – have very different needs and should not take the same approach to customer relationship management.
For example, a field sales CRM should look, feel and act a lot different than an inside sales CRM. The type of CRM should always match the business model. The risk is lower end-user adoption. In fact, over 90% of companies have a CRM adoption rate less than 40%. And the #1 reason for lack of CRM adoption – manual data entry. |
Marketing teams can use a CRM to target their ideal customer profiles (demographics, location, etc.) when planning campaigns. The CRM also measures the ROI on their marketing activities and campaigns so they can adjust accordingly in the future.
Customer service teams can use a CRM to help maintain and retain existing customers. The CRM database provides insights into a customer’s previous issues and interactions, so they can manage the current situation and plan future customer engagement activities.
A CRM solution allows you to focus on selling and keeping your customers happy.
But there are other benefits, too, like enhancing customer relationships, reducing customer churn rate, increasing sales and revenue, and automating communication and tasks.
Let’s take a look:
Research by Software Advice shows that 74% of users said their CRM system gave them improved access to customer data.
A CRM captures every interaction along the customer journey (prospect to lead to customer) from multiple teams to create a 360 degree view of the customer. Using this information enables you to provide better customer service and communication across all departments.
A CRM reduces the mundane data entry tasks by automatically adding and updating customer records in the database. For example, when a potential customer visits your website or signs up for your mailing list, or when existing customers send an email, their information is automatically loaded into your CRM.
With every piece of customer information in one place, you can ensure everyone across the business is communicating the right message consistently.
A CRM helps to visualize your sales pipelines so you can prioritize which deals to work on. By visualizing the pipeline, managers can create conversion percentage benchmarks and immediately see when deals are falling through the cracks.
Research by Capterra shows that 47% of polled CRM users said their CRM had a significant impact on customer retention.
Using data from the CRM – e.g. user requirements, preferences, buying habits, etc. – you can customize and personalize your products and services to help reduce churn rate.
Insights from a CRM help you identify your most profitable customers and build stronger relationships with them. This inside knowledge increases your sales revenue as you know the optimal time to target repeat business.
With a deep understanding of the ideal customer profile, you can create “lookalike” accounts when prospecting. For example, once you know who your most valuable clients are, and where they are located, you can formulate more targeted marketing and field sales campaigns.
Without a CRM, business functions often work in silos with separate pieces of customer data. A CRM shared across business functions means you can work together to achieve the same goals and objectives.
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Editor’s note: We’ve looked at the core benefits of a CRM solution, but the application and use cases will vary depending on the specific needs of the team using it. In the next section, we’ll cover the 3 main types of CRM tools, and focus in on the sales team use cases for each different type. |
There are three main types of CRM systems:
Let’s take a look:
An Operational CRM is the most common type of CRM and is used in many different industries.
This type of CRM is excellent for handling customer-facing communications and helping businesses manage their day-to-day sales, marketing, and customer service operations.
An Operational CRM can automate your sales process from lead generation to closing sale, as well as managing your sales force. For example:
Scheduling follow-up reminders to contact prospects at agreed intervals.
Tracking a contact and updating their status from prospect to qualified lead once they’ve completed certain actions or met specific criteria.
Reporting on sales team performance.
Field sales example:
SPOTIO’s CRM helps Field Sales Reps build and visualize their pipeline with its lead management module. Reps can filter leads, opportunities, and customers with colorized pins to visualize their pipeline:
Inside sales example:
Salesforce offers a variety of CRM categories, including Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, and Sales Cloud with functionality best suited for larger inside sales teams.
Inside sales reps can use the Sales Cloud CRM to manage contacts, access sales enablement documents, track sales activity – leads, opportunities and closed deals – and take action from any location, on any device.
The CRM allows reps to spend more time selling to the right prospects, and do it with the best data at their fingertips.
| Editor’s note: It’s important to remember that one size does not fit all.
For instance, an early stage inside sales software company should be using a different CRM than an enterprise outside sales team. Similarly, many companies have both outside and inside sales teams. In this situation, it’s better to have one primary CRM and then “bolt-on” a mobile technology built specifically for the needs of the field sales teams. For example, large enterprise sales teams often use Salesforce for its core internal sales activities and then bolt on SPOTIO for its field sales reps, as both tools work together seamlessly. SPOTIO’s native 2-way integration with Salesforce makes it easy for reps to collect data and record notes in the field then sync it back into Salesforce in real-time. See how Salient Medical Solutions bolted SPOTIO’s mobile CRM functionality on top of Salesforce and increased field sales productivity by over 15%. |
An Operational CRM also allows you to automate some of your marketing activities at various stages of the customer funnel. For example:
– Adding and tagging new email subscribers to your CRM automatically.
– Initiating a welcome email campaign whenever a new prospect enters the system.
– Identifying existing leads in your CRM for your next marketing campaign.
HubSpot allows you to automate your email campaigns using targeted workflows, and then personalize your emails for each recipient using specific details from your CRM:
– Stores and organizes contact and lead information
– Streamlines daily business operations
– Automates some sales and marketing activities
You should consider an operational CRM if:
– You have a linear sales process
– You are a sales and marketing led business (new business focused)
– You lean towards workflow automation and prefer software to perform redundant administrative tasks
An Analytical CRM gathers, stores, and analyzes information about your customers. This typically includes customer data, marketing data, sales data, and service data.
Here’s how each of them dovetails together.
Customer data includes general details like location, age, gender, marital status, and income bracket. The more data you gather, the clearer picture you create; e.g. What does this person want? What are their buying habits? These reports help you plan your marketing campaigns.
The SPOTIO Lead Machine is a great time-saver when you want to generate qualified leads in a chosen territory. Using up-to-date customer profile data you can find prospects who are ready to buy in three quick steps:
1. Select your target area
2. Create your ideal customer profile (e.g. income, credit capacity, age of home, eco friendly, square footage, etc.)
3. Import your leads and start selling
Marketing data lets you measure the success of your campaigns. For example, you can generate reports to discover which leads convert the best and which campaigns yield the highest ROI.
Sales data, along with marketing and customer data, help you plan new campaigns, assign sales territories and track rep performance. Reports can help identify sales trends and patterns. So, for example, you can understand:
– Which products are your Top Sellers
– Which products sell least in Winter
– Which products sell most in Florida
– Which reps sell the most
– Which territories should be assigned to different reps
Service data helps with three core areas:
1. Customer service
2. Customer satisfaction
3. Employee performance
Your staff has access to data in the CRM which includes buying habits and past purchases, so when they’re dealing with a customer, they can quickly check for up-sell or cross-sell opportunities.
An analytical CRM system allows you to capture and address customer satisfaction issues early on. For example, if customers complain about the same thing; e.g. a software bug, you’ll be able to see the pattern and issue a quick fix to stop any further escalation.
As well as tracking customer complaints, an analytical CRM can also track how your employees are handling those complaints, plus other customer interactions in general. These reports help identify areas for improvement in performance reviews.
For example, SPOTIO gives managers a clear view of how the top sales reps are performing and also where leads are falling off in the sales process:
Historical data shows exactly what happened with every prospect up to the point of the last contact. The background knowledge saved within SPOTIO prepares the sales reps for their next customer meeting and helps sales managers coach their team to success:
– Gathers, stores, and analyzes customer information from multiple teams.
– Helps organizations to plan sales and marketing campaigns.
– Tracks key performance indicators set by the business.
You should consider an analytical CRM if:
– You have account management driven sales process
– You have a finance led management style
– Your end-users are data driven and value metrics
A Collaborative CRM – sometimes called a Strategic CRM – enables an organization to collect, organize, and share customer information across multiple teams. For example, sales and purchase history, customer service contact, marketing preferences, and technical support interaction.
When teams collaborate and share customer information, they can maximize profitability, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
There are two significant parts to a Collaborative CRM:
– Interaction management
– Channel management
Interaction management allows you to record and analyze every interaction a customer has with your company. Monitoring interactions helps you identify issues that an individual or groups of customers may be experiencing.
Channel management allows you to record the preferred method of communication for each of your customers. Some customers prefer text messages, others prefer a phone call, and some might prefer email. Either way, it’s better to contact your customers using their preferred method, so you get a positive response.
For example:
Imagine your company sells a mobile app. A Collaborative CRM would allow multiple teams to resolve issues reported by customers.
The customer service team can get an overall view to see how many customers are experiencing the same problem with your app.
If it’s a widespread problem, they can alert the technical support team and request a quick fix to alleviate the situation. Then, when the fix is ready, the customer service team can contact each customer using their preferred communication channel to advise them of the next steps.
Furthermore, this information can be shared with the marketing team so they can tailor messages in the future.
The integrated e-Contract functionality in SPOTIO gives sales reps immediate access to office files and documents. Instead of emailing documents back and forth, customers can sign contracts on the spot:
Reps can also take pictures onsite as well as access files, such as product spec sheets, presentations, etc.
– Collects, organizes, and shares customer data across multiple teams
– Improves the overall customer experience with unified messaging
– Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty
You should consider a collaborative CRM if:
– You have multiple stakeholders and departments moving in and out of the platform
– You have multiple locations or have a digitally driven company culture where most communication occurs online
– Your comfortable with customer data being easily accessible by most in the company
So, what type of CRM does your business need?
Here’s a quick recap:
An Operational CRM is excellent for handling customer-facing communications as it helps businesses manage their daily sales, marketing, and customer service operations.
An Analytical CRM is best for getting an overall picture of your sales, marketing, and service performance as it gathers, stores, and analyzes customer information from multiple teams.
A Collaborative CRM is best for connecting multiple teams and improving customer loyalty, as it gives a 360-degree view of the customer journey from prospect to customer support.
All that said, a CRM is not a silver bullet. Rather it is a foundational cornerstone of your sales tech-stack, and companies that are achieving the most success – whether operational, analytical or collaborative – recognize this.
A CRM will only take your sales, marketing and customer support so far, and oftentimes you’ll need to purchase additional software to integrate with a CRM as your team evolves and business grows.
Outside sales teams looking for an all-in-one CRM solution that accommodates operational, analytical and collaborative use cases should try a demo of Spotio’s field sales CRM today!
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
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