Eric Hemati, the Division President at WorkFORCE Benefits recently wrote a blog post sharing exactly how his team adopted, implemented and uses SPOTIO to make selling easier and keep track of their day to day efforts.
You can view the original post HERE and I have reproduced it on our website with his permission.
If you’ve been reading me for any length of time at all, you’ll already know that I’m constantly looking for ways to make selling easier and more fun. Thanks to one of my new agents, I found an app recently which does just that.
If you’re in territory sales of any kind – I challenge you to check out SPOTIO. It will likely change your business as much as it’s changed mine. Their website is at SPOTIO.com.
Using SPOTIO to Manage your Territory and Leads
The SPOTIO concept is to have all your prospects geo-coded on a map with their status color-coded to where they are in your sales cycle. They then have a fantastically simple flat-concept database that is surprisingly simple for reps to use real-time in the field as they interact with their various opportunities.
Why use it?
- Better territory management
- More sales
- Real-time business intelligence
Increased latency / lead intelligence
Even if you’ve only been in outside sales for two weeks, you’ve probably been in situations where you worked an area for the day, went somewhere else for a few days, came back to the first area and couldn’t remember who you talked to or who was the best person for you to talk to RIGHT THEN.
You might have found yourself shopping on a Saturday, walked to your car with an hour to kill, and wished you had your pre-approach with you because you knew there were a couple good prospects somewhere nearby that you could catch up with real quick before you met up with your friends for drinks.
You’ve been leaving a no-show appointment early with 30 minutes to kill before your next demo and thought “Damn, which one of these referral sheets has some prospects that are nearby that I could squeeze in on my way to my next meeting?”
You might have had sales people that came on board and for whatever reason decided they don’t want to work with you anymore. If they’ve been using this system vs. keeping paper notes, you can transfer those pins to another rep to make sure the people who were interested can actually buy.
Using it on your phone
The terrific thing about this app is that you can use it right on your phone without having to lug around a computer.
In our business, we sell an insurance product to small business owners.
Imagine I talk to the owner of the bait shop (Paul) but now is not the right time to pitch him. I set an appointment by quickly editing the pin and setting the appointment in the pin itself. Then I enter Paul’s name if I don’t have it already, change the status to “Demo Scheduled” and SAVE.
Then I ask for what I call “Pre-Approach” (information I can use before I approach someone new) to the businesses around him – he tells me his buddy Rick owns the Dry Cleaners next door and some guy named Paulie is the barber across the street.
SPOTIO is so quick to use, that I can use my map view to see where I am, click on the building next door, enter “Rick” in the Name field, “Dry Cleaner” in the Business field and “Paul @Bait Shop” in the Referrer field. I change the status to “Referral” (since Rick is his buddy) and SAVE. I click on the building across the street, enter “Paulie”, “Barber” and “Paul @Bait Shop”, change the status to “Pre Approach” (since he’s just “some guy”) and SAVE.
To jot these notes down on paper and then try to find them later instead is just insane, in my opinion.
KPIs: Key Performance Indicators
My partners and I have an insurance agency. We sell our products to small business owners, employees, and individuals by referral. In our business, pins begin in one of five possible states: Reservice, Term, Business, Referral or Pre Approach. These statuses don’t give you any “credit” because they’re just suspects right now – we don’t know if they’re qualified, we just have someone new to talk to.
A “KPI” is a “Key Performance Indicator” – they let you know how well you’re doing turning suspects into qualified prospects, into likely clients, and finally into sales. As you change the status of your pins, you also change the underlying KPIs. By tracking those changes, you can raise your sales game and make even more money in even less time!
KPIs work like this:
Attempts: Trying to catch someone. This will show you how hard you’re working.
Contacts: Talking with someone at the business. They’re not the Decision Maker, but you’ve talked to someone. This will show you how effective you’re being with your time.
Qualified: You have connected with someone who can actually make a decision to buy what you have – but you haven’t set an appointment yet. This could be the business owner or operations manager – whatever. This will show you how effective you are at penetrating accounts.
Leads: You have an extremely hot prospect. This is someone you have a very high probability of selling. This would be like setting an appointment with a business owner or whomever your target happens to be.
Sales: BOOM! After a couple weeks, this will begin to tell you valuable information on how many of your Leads you are converting to sales. You’ll know if you need help with your close, price buildup, or urgency.
You’ll notice a number on top of every pin on the map. That will tell you how many times that pin has been interacted with. Every time you change the status from one thing to another, it not only helps you see what has been going on with that pin, but it affects your metrics on the leaderboards. It’s super-helpful when you’ve been away from an area for a while and are coming back to work it again.
Leaderboards
These KPIs translate directly to how you show up on the leaderboards in the app and in your account online. Not only does this help us focus on the real opportunity areas for every team member, but it makes for some really fun competition, trash talk, and esprit de corps. If they are winning in these numbers, they’re more than likely winning in their bank account too.
Finally, get intelligent about how you’re marking up your territory as you go.
Story: Every time you hear a story of someone who could have been helped by having your product, drop a pin and put the person’s name there and change the status to “Story”. Over time, you can show your prospects your map, point out all the pink pins and say something about how useful your product would have been. It’s extremely powerful.
Claim: Every time you hear about someone using a competing product in real life, drop a pin and change the status to “Claim”. Over time, you can show your propects your map, point out all the purple pins and talk about how important it is to have something like this in place when situations occur – because they occur all the time.
Bad Lead: If you have a pin on your map where the person has moved or the business is shut down, change the status to “Bad Lead” – DO NOT delete the pin!! Every so often, we’ll upload some business leads or a client list into the system; how amazing would it be to NOT have to stop by AGAIN just to find out that, guess what, that’s STILL not a valid pin.
Future: If you’ve given a great demo to a Decision Maker and they tell you they just can’t make it happen right now, but “Please check back with me the next time you’re in the area” – how amazing would it be to come back to that territory and head right for all those “Future” pins? They’re definitely the best place to start and now you don’t have to filter through all your notes to figure out where they are.
Not Interested: Don’t delete these people! Life is a crazy thing – maybe they have had a Story in their own life or a friend of theirs had a Claim. They’re kicking themselves for not getting what you sell when they had the chance. You can run a filter on your leads periodically for “Not Interested” pins that you haven’t talked to in the last six months or a year, and change their status to “Future” – next time you’re nearby, BOOM!
I hope you’re starting to get the picture of just how powerful a system like this can be for:
- Keeping you organized
- Saving you time
- Focusing you on your most likely prospects
- Working your territory tight
- Recapturing lost windows of time
- Competing with the rest of the team on stats
Making your business more FUN!
Make your life easier
I’m constantly looking for ways to make our business easier for our agents – not only to help new people get up and running more quickly, but also to help our seasoned agents more effective in less time so they can live the lifestyles they started in our businesses to enjoy – a lifestyle of abundance, impact and flexibility.
I truly see this kind of app as an essential tool in helping our agents get there and stay there. I’ve challenged them to fight through the learning curve, get used to this new method of collecting and tracking their prospects, and watch their business get easier and their bank accounts get fatter.
by Eric Hemati, Division President – WorkFORCE Benefits
SPOTIO is the #1 sales engagement and territory management app to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity in just 2 weeks.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
