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3 Types of CRMs (and How to Use Them)

CRM Types

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.

What is a CRM?

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.

Who Uses a CRM?

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.

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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.

The Core Benefits of a CRM

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:

Enhance customer relationships

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.

Reduce data entry

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.

Improve communication

With every piece of customer information in one place, you can ensure everyone across the business is communicating the right message consistently.

Visualize pipelines

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.

Reduce churn rate

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.

Increase revenue

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.

Collaboration

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.

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.

3 Main Types of a CRM

There are three main types of CRM systems:

  • Operational
  • Analytical
  • Collaborative

Let’s take a look:

#1 – Operational CRM

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.

Sales automation

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%.

Marketing automation

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:

Key Features

– 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

#2 – Analytical CRM

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

Customer service

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.

Customer satisfaction

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.

Employee performance

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:

Key Features

– 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

#3 – Collaborative CRM

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.

Key Features

– 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

Accelerate Your Pipeline With Customer Relationship Management

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.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

23 Field-Tested Sales Tactics That Work in 2019

Sales Tactics

Building a strong sales process is the lifeblood of any business. 

Sales tactics are the techniques managers and reps use to achieve lofty sales goals. They not only help close deals, but fill your pipeline with a steady stream of qualified prospects and opportunities. 

Today, there are countless sales tactics at your disposal. 

To help you succeed, we’ve compiled 23 proven sales tactics that work across any industry or vertical. 

But first, let’s take a look at why you need these tactics.

The Modern Buyer Journey Has Changed

The buyer’s journey has changed. 

And that’s mostly down to the Internet. 

Buyers now have a wealth of information readily available, and that puts them in control of the purchasing decision as they can use digital channels at all stages of their buying journey.

Longer sales cycle

Previously, the buying process was linear. The typical stages were Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Buyers moved along in an orderly fashion through the sales funnel:

Now, it’s more of an iterative process where buyers circle back to look at all the options and confer with other decision makers:

All these extended activities mean the buyer’s journey is longer.

More educated

The availability of online content also means buyers are more educated and informed about their options than ever before. According to a study by Accenture: 

– 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research at some point in the buying process.

As a result, buyers are quite happy to conduct initial research online and only connect with a sales rep later on in their journey to confirm their findings.

According to Gartner, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. And when they’re comparing multiple suppliers‚ they spend only 5% or 6% of their time with each sales rep.

More decision makers

Furthermore, the buyer’s journey has become more complicated because there is more than one person involved in the decision: 

– The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers.

Each person reports back to the group with several solutions to consider. And to make things more complicated, there are more technologies and products on the market.

This is why it’s more important than ever for sales teams to be equipped with the best sales tactics so they can efficiently and effectively navigate the complexity of a modern buyer journey. 

23 Field-Tested Sales Tactics That Work in 2019

The following sales tactics can work for sales teams in every industry, across each stage of the sales cycle:

– Prospect
– Engage
– Close
– Follow Up

Let’s start with prospecting…

Prospect

Prospecting is the process of searching for and identifying potential new customers for a business. It involves cold-calling as well as reaching out to nurture leads that have gone cold.

More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%):

But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you can ignore it. The most successful salespeople are those who block time off for prospecting. Setting aside dedicated time in your calendar each day results in more conversations and better win rates.

Deeply Understand Your Ideal Customer

To have any success with prospecting, you need to understand who your ideal customer is. Unfortunately:

– At least 50% of your prospects are not a good fit for what you sell.

It’s pointless chasing prospects that are a bad fit from the start. So make sure your prospects fit your ideal customer profile by verifying these key areas:

Demographics

– Where are they located?
– What industry/niche are they in?
– Are they the right-sized company?

Needs/pains 

– What are they struggling with?
– How will your product or service solve their problem?
– How will they measure results?

Decision-making process

– Discover who makes the buying decisions?
– How many people are involved in the decision-making process?
– How long do they take to make a decision?
– Which events or triggers lead them to buy (or not buy) your type of products or services.

Know Your Competition Inside Out

If you’re going to succeed with a prospect, you need to know what competition you’re up against. It could be one or more similar vendors, or it might be an internal team. Research their history to see what vendors they used previously and find out if they’re likely to buy from you.

Map Territories

Sales territory mapping lets you create and assign specific territories to each rep, whether they’re working on inside or outside sales. With territory mapping software like SPOTIO, you can: 

– Define regions that meet your ideal customer criteria. 
– Allocate them across your sales team to avoid any overlapping and poaching. 

Qualify Prospects 

Not all leads are created equal. The net result is sales reps wasting their valuable time on worthless leads: 

– 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers before taking them through the full sales process.

– 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. 

Ensure your sales team is only “working” the most qualified prospects (SQLs) to save time, energy, and money – and boost conversion rates.

Engage

These next set of sales tactics are all designed to help you engage your prospects.

Develop a Script

Ring DNA defines sales scripts as a “prescribed set of talking points” that telemarketers and sales reps use when speaking to prospects. 

Telemarketers tend to stick to a rigid script that forks in different directions according to the prospect’s responses. 

But for sales, a script should act as a ‘crib sheet’ and prepare you with the best questions and lines to ask.

Scripts can be used in different scenarios such as cold calling, leaving a voicemail, and writing emails. But whatever the situation, HubSpot recommends following this framework:

1. Identify a product or service to focus on
2. Hone in on your target audience
3. Develop your benefits
4. Link your benefits to pain points
5. Ask questions about those pain points:

a. How do you feel about the amount of time it currently takes you to fill open positions?

b. How many sales opportunities do you lose each month due to poor lead tracking and follow up? How much lost revenue would you say that equates to each month?

6. Don’t talk too much
7. Always close for something

True Needs Assessment

Salespeople love to talk – mainly about themselves and their company – when they’d be better off listening to their prospect’s needs. That’s why there’s often a disconnect, and sales reps fail to engage buyers:

The Sandler Pain Funnel is a method of asking open-ended, needs-based questions to uncover the prospects pain:

The pain questions start broad; e.g. “What are some things you would like to change about your current system/provider/product line?” and then move to more specific questions; e.g. “How long has that been a problem?” and “How much do you think that cost you?”

By asking open-ended questions and listening to your prospect’s answers, you can get to the root of what they actually need.

Contact Leads Within 5 Minutes

How long do you wait before contacting new prospects?

Velocify research found that timing is critical if you want to increase your chances of conversion: 

– Placing a phone call to a new prospect within a minute of lead generation can increase your likelihood of conversion by nearly 400%.

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While research by Lead Response Management found that the first 5 minutes are critical: 

You are 100x more likely to successfully contact a lead if you respond within 5 minutes and 21x more likely to qualify that lead.

Warm Up Cold Prospects

There aren’t many salespeople who like cold calling. However, there are a few tactics you can use to warm up your prospects.

– Talk about the prospect and listen to what they have to say. 
– Balance the conversation with useful information you possess; e.g. pricing, special offers, etc.
– Consider the technique of trend, solution, and proof.

For example:
Mention a pertinent industry trend:
“The biggest challenge will be in three years when fossil fuel resources are low…”

Suggest a few possible solutions or recommendations:
“Our clients are preparing for this by upgrading their engineering systems to be more self-sufficient.”

Prove you can do it:
“We’ve done this for several manufacturing companies including [client name], and they’ve seen excellent results, which is why I’m calling you.”

Follow Up Across Multiple Channels

It’s not often that a sales rep connects with a prospect the first time.

Research from TOPO found it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer. And only 23.9% of sales emails are opened. 

That’s why it’s essential to use more than one channel to follow up and engage with your prospects. In the same way that buyers use digital channels to research and select vendors, sales teams can use technology to reach prospects.

For instance, an HBR study found that 40% of sales people that regularly use LinkedIn indicated they have successfully generated revenue from the social network.

Call From A Local Number

What’s your reaction when you check the caller display on incoming calls?

If the number is blocked or toll-free, then you probably feel suspicious and are reluctant to take the call.

Contrast that to a local number. How do you feel now? I bet you’re more inclined to pick up and answer.

Research by Software Advice shows that people are nearly four times more likely to answer calls from local numbers:

That’s why you should apply the same logic when you dial potential buyers.

Put Boots On The Ground

With the wealth of digital channels available, is there still a place for outside sales teams?

Turns out there is:

– Out of the 5.7 million professional salespeople in the U.S., approximately 47.2% are inside sales professionals, and 52.8% are outside sales reps.

Plus, there are a couple more factors to consider:

– Companies who have a majority of outside sales reps have a 30.2% higher close rate than companies who have a majority of inside sales reps.

– Deals worked by outside sales teams tended to be 130.2% bigger on average than those worked by inside sales teams. 

Depending on your industry, it’s worth considering using both inside and outside sales teams to complement your strategy.

Assign Territories (Strategically)

Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to ensure the best use of company resources. Strategic sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base – whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship.

The old-fashioned way of creating and assigning territories involved drawing outlines on physical maps by hand. But SPOTIO’s Territory Manager software enables managers to create custom maps of different territories and assign them strategically to sales reps. 

For instance, managers can assign their top performing reps to the most important territories and customer accounts. Plus, having a clear picture of the territory assignments avoids any redundancy in sales activity.  

Provide Sales Enablement Materials

Sales enablement materials come in various formats, including:

– Blog posts
– Whitepapers
– Case studies
– Email templates
– Sales scripts
– Presentation slides
– Product info sheets
– Competitor/Product comparisons
– Social media messages
– Customer testimonials
– Video content – demo or how to
– Printed brochures

However, the content created for sales enablement is different from content created for content marketing purposes. 

According to Seismic, content created to attract leads and convert them into prospects is content for marketing purposes, while content created for the conversion and closing stages of the sales funnel is classified as sales enablement content. 

That’s not to say salespeople should ignore the marketing content. When marketing and sales are aligned, high-quality educational content can be used to address potential customer questions at each stage of the buyer journey. 

It’s a case of using the right content, at the right time.

Be Consistent

If you want to be successful, you need to be consistent. Set aside time each day for specific sales activities like prospecting, following-up, and nurturing to build relationships with your potential buyers.

Salespeople who leave everything to the last moment and try to cram in last-minute calls in the hope of clinching a deal fall short of their targets.

Close

When it’s time to close the deal you’ve been working on, try these sales tactics.

Let Prospects Sell Themselves

Sometimes you’re in that situation where you believe you’ve done everything right and your potential customer is ready to buy. Only for them to raise more questions like: “What can you do for me?” and  “Can you cut me a special deal?” 

At this stage, the best thing you can do is let the prospect sell themselves. How? – By asking questions to take control of the conversation. 

Instead of trying to convince your prospect, get your prospect to tell you what they want and why your product or service is the right one for them.

Prepare For, And Handle, Key Objections

Sooner or later, you’re going to get a “No.” But what do you do when your prospect raises an objection.

First, be prepared for objections. You should expect them, and you should be ready to handle them when they come. Think of objections as an excellent opportunity to close the deal.

Second, prepare some answers. Depending on your industry and product/service, you’ll know some of the objections you’re likely to face.

Here are 10 examples of sales objections and how to overcome them.

Customize Your Pitch

Before you even pick up the phone to make a call or visit an office to make a presentation, remember you’re dealing with a real person. It’s imperative to do your homework and understand the individual you’re pitching.

Research the prospect on LinkedIn, check out their work history and where they fit in at their current organization. Check other social media channels to see where their out-of-work interests lie.

When you know these details, you can customize your pitch to meet their requirements. 

As ClickTime’s head of sales, Bill Mooney says: “That means positioning your solution not just how you see it working for your prospect’s business, but in a way that solves the problem they personally care about most too.”

If you want to be successful in sales, realize that you’re selling to people, not companies.

Always Be Closing

The ABC for salespeople is Always Be Closing. It’s the make-or-break moment in the sales process. But which closing technique should you use.

Here are three for starters:

Assumptive Close

If you have a good relationship with your prospect, then you can use the Assumptive Close method. The technique is based on them trusting you. So as you walk through their requirements, list the items they want on the order form, and then, when the time is right, present it to them to sign.

Ben Franklin Close

The Ben Franklin closing technique is especially useful with prospects who aren’t sure or have trouble making decisions. It’s so-called because the Founding Father was fond of making a list of Pros and Cons, and then going with the longest list.

You can use this technique when a prospect is sitting on the fence. Just make sure your list of Pros is longer.

Puppy Dog Close

The Puppy Dog Close plays on the idea that folks who take a puppy home for a few days are unlikely to return it because they simply adore it. 

In other words, let your prospect have a “free trial” or “test drive” of your product knowing they’ll fall in love with it and agree to buy it.

BONUS RESOURCE: 16 Sales Closing Techniques Reps Should Add to Their Arsenal (with Examples)

Following Up & Referrals

A referral is a sales lead that comes from a customer. And they’re the best leads you can get.

According to the Wharton School of Business, a referred customer has a 16% higher lifetime value than a non-referred customer. 

But when and how should you ask for them?

Ask for Referrals After Delivery, Not Closing

There’s a right and wrong time to ask your customer for a referral. Many salespeople jump straight in after closing a deal. 

But think about it. 

You’ve just gained a customer, but you haven’t delivered the product or service yet.

Therefore hang fire on the request until you have proven you can deliver. Either stay in touch with the customer and check they’re happy with the service. Or, as Geoffrey James recommends, ask for the “right to ask.” 

Both of these options give your new customer the chance to consider the most applicable referrals based on your sales and service. 

Make it Super Easy

If you make it super easy for your customers to refer you to someone else, they’ll likely do it quicker and more often.

One way to make it easy for them is to create an introduction email template that they can forward on your behalf. 

Here’s an example from HubSpot:

[Referral],

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve been working with [Sales Rep] for a few months. The other day, I was talking with her about some of the things she and I have done, and I realized I should put you two together. So…

[Referral], meet [Sales Rep, with a LinkedIn profile URL].

[Sales Rep], meet [Referral, with a LinkedIn profile URL].

Can I leave the rest to you guys?

Talk to you later.

[Your name]

Use Timing to Your Advantage

You should always be on the lookout for an opportunity to ask for a referral. For instance, when a customer praises you in an email, posts an update about your product or service on social media, or makes a LinkedIn recommendation, then strike while the iron’s hot and ask them for a referral!

Recognize and Thank Your Referral Sources

Once a customer refers you, remember to thank them. Give them a call or send a note expressing your gratitude, and chances are they’ll refer you to more prospects.

Conclusion

The buyer’s journey has changed. The sales cycle takes longer as buyers take more time to research products and services before contacting a sales rep. 

The question is: are you ready? By using these proven sales tactics, you’ll be able to close more deals and get more prospects. 

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

SPOTIO, Your Microsoft Streets and Trips Alternative

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.

What Was Streets and Trips?

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.

The features were numerous, and included:

– 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.

What Happened to Streets and Trips?

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.

sales-intelligence-google-places

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.

product-sales-canvassing-mobile-screens

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.

The Power of Google Places Can Maximize Your Trip Enjoyment

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>.

 

How to Write a 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan (With Template)

Whether you want to impress a potential sales manager during a job interview or you are simply looking for a way to level up your sales game with the support of your management team, you can plan and track your development in a transparent way by creating and sharing a 30-60-90 day sales plan.

In the sales profession, it’s not uncommon during the hiring process to be asked to provide a 30-60-90 day sales plan as it helps the sales manager determine your approach to learning the business, ability to create and track measurable goals, and willingness to hold yourself accountable.

Writing a 90-day sales plan may be the key to a smooth transition into a new role and will remove much of the on-boarding stress your sales manager might have had otherwise.

What is a 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan?

A 30-60-90 day sales plan is a tool used to lay out a course of action during a period of on-boarding or growth. When used during on-boarding, a well thought out 90-day sales plan maximizes progression into a new role by identifying development targets that include a clear timeline for completion.

Ultimately, the plan gives reps and sales manager alignment on what success will look like in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. It leaves very little ambiguity for measuring a successful transition, by keeping everyone pointed in the right direction.

While following a 30-60-90 day sales plan will help you get off the ground, the value is less about learning tasks and more about generating alignment with your new management team on what success looks like. At the end of 90 days, success should demonstrate you were a good hire and set a foundation for career growth.

Goals of a 30 60 90 Day Sales Plan

Each phase of your 30 60 90 day plan should be grounded on specific outcomes that align with your individual priorities, your team’s goals, and a plan for measuring success. Measurements should be quantifiable. In cases where they’re not easy to quantify, they should be designed to ensure it’s easy to demonstrate successful completion.

Align to team goals

When identifying your own priorities, you must first understand your team’s goals. These are typically set out by management and will greatly influence your personal priorities. Be sure to go beyond the surface level to understand the purpose behind your team goals, what strategy they align to, and what success looks like for the team.

Identify your priorities

By deeply understanding the purpose behind your team goals, you’ll be well-equipped to identify your personal priorities. Identifying your personal priorities will provide you with a foundation to refer to if you’re not sure if a task should be prioritized. By aligning your personal priorities to the team’s goals, you strengthen your accountability to the team.

Measuring progress and success

A plan is not a plan without a clear way to measure success. To track your progress, be sure to include a way to measure each item on your 30 60 90 day sales plan. Depending on the activity, your goals should tie to one of the following things:

1. What you’ve learned
2. How well you’ve adjusted and integrated into your new team
3. How ready you are to perform your role without extra support

Two Scenarios that Call for a 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan

During the Interview

One scenario that calls for a 30-60-90 day sales plan is during the final stages of the interview process. In some cases, a hiring manager may informally ask how a candidate would approach their first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job.

In this case, it’s useful to be armed with a formal plan which demonstrates you are thinking ahead and serious about the job. In addition to having a formal plan, you should be prepared to speak to it, articulating the highlights in response to the questions.

In addition to showing you’re ahead of the game, the plans show the hiring manager how you prioritize tasks and organize time.

It also provides the opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the role while helping the hiring manager see your capabilities and how you will approach the tasks at hand.

First Week On The Job

Another scenario for sharing your 30-60-90 day sales plan is during your first week on the new job. During this time, onboarding is critical. Sharing the plan upfront gives you and the management team goal alignment, helps them understand the way you operate, and reduces the chance of miscommunication.

Even if you’re not asked to craft a 30, 60, 90 days plan during the first week on the job, it’s highly recommended. Not only does it provided alignment, it’s also helpful for you as an individual to stay grounded during a time where you’ll be getting comfortable in a completely new environment. Having a plan in place will help you feel like you have control of the situation. It also gives you something to refer to if you feel lost or stuck.

A Simple 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan Template

Now that you understand the value of a 30-60-90 day sales plan, let’s talk about the appropriate milestones for each phase.

30 Day Plan

You’re starting from scratch, and should begin by answering, “What does success look like in the first 30 days?”

In many cases, the first 30 days should include completing your company/role training plan, understanding the target market, mastering the company’s products or services, and getting to know your colleagues.

Here’s a sample checklist of things to consider for the first 30 days:

Have you completed all required company training?

Do you understand the high-level priorities for your company and team? What are the core goals and objectives your company plans to achieve in the next year?

Do you have a complete understanding of the target market?

Do you understand your company’s key products and/or services?

Do you understand what makes your company different and unique?

Do you understand the competition?

Have you developed connections within the organization?

Do you have a clear sales plan?

This part of the plan should be heavy on information gathering.

For each of the items in your plan, and any others you add, schedule weekly checkpoints to track progress. This may be a 1:1 with your manager or mentor. At the end of the first 30 days, be prepared to report back on your completion of the plan.

If you didn’t complete a key commitment, that’s okay. Sometimes once you become more familiar with a job, items on your list may be deprioritized and rolled into the next phase.

60 Day Plan

During the second month, you’ll be able to spend more time in the field. During this phase of your onboarding plan, you should focus on getting to know your market, meeting and developing relationships with prospects and clients, understanding the customer experience, including what’s working well and where your team can better support customers.

During the 31-60 day period, you should also make sure to get feedback from your manager, team, and customers on what you’re doing well and where you can improve. This is also a great opportunity to establish weekly personal goals that will help you stay on track for success.

Aim to have more hands-on experiences that will drive you to a deeper understanding of all aspects of the business. One way of increasing your awareness is by spending time reviewing customer comments to guide you into defining solutions for common roadblocks.

During this time, you should also be teaming up with coworkers to role play, shadowing peers and reps in the field, and discussing with your manager optional tools to help train you to see issues before they are problems.

This shows your sales manager that you are eager to keep up with the team and that you want to help move the company forward.

Here’s a sample checklist of things to consider for your 60-day plan:

Have you introduced yourself to key clients and prospects?
Have you completed a customer experience and satisfaction review?
Have you participated in adequate job shadowing with peers and management?
Have you completed all formal training requirements?
Have you started developing new leads?

By the 60-day checkpoint, your goal should be to get in the game – show that you can handle the workload and that you’re ready to succeed on the team.

It’s not uncommon for new team members to stay quiet in meetings and engagements out of fear that they’ll disrupt a meeting flow or look foolish. Between days 30 and 60 you should have enough of an understanding of the business to speak up, ask questions, share ideas, and engage in discussion.

90 Day Plan

At the end of 60 days, you should feel ready to hit the ground running. Days 60-90 are all about building on what you learned during the first 60 days to begin making an impact.

This may mean you start optimizing your prospect list with larger, more strategic clients. It may also mean adjusting your goals to make even more impact.

Your plan for days 61-90 should cover how you’ll establish and build relationships with clients and prospects, as well as how you’ll provide feedback and input into your own sales organization to drive broad impact.

Here’s a sample checklist of things to consider for your 90-day plan:

Have you met all key accounts and started developing relationships?
Have you started prospecting for new leads?
Have you actively asked for feedback from your peers and management?
Have you used feedback to adjust your strategy and approach?
Have you established a schedule that works for you, your clients, and your team?
Have you established credibility within the team?
Do you feel successfully “on board?”

At 90 days, you should feel like you’re flying. While nobody will expect you to be a seasoned expert, you should know enough to perform critical sales tasks without a ton of support. You should also be very clear on where to go for questions or support if you get stuck, and have a strong network in place to ensure success.

3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building a 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan

You should be off to a great start in developing your 30-60-90 day sales plan. But, as with anything, things can easily get derailed.

In this section, we’ll cover common mistakes and how to avoid them.

#1. An ambiguous plan

As you’ll recall, the most important aspect of your plan is to provide alignment between reps management teams. The biggest enemy to alignment is ambiguity. To avoid an awkward conversation during one of your check-ins, make sure that your plan has no room for misinterpretation. Include specifics in your plan including dates, numbers, and other things that can be quantified as SMART goals.

#2. No plan to measure success

It’s not really a plan if there is no way to measure success. Within each phase of your plan, be very specific on what constitutes successful completion of a task. Think of this as your onboarding scorecard.

#3. A fixed mindset

When you start a new role, you don’t know much. By the time you start executing on a plan, you’ll likely find some of your assumptions were off, and you’ll need to adjust the plan accordingly. Don’t let this bog you down, or worse, stop you from following through. Make sure your plan is flexible enough to make adjustments as needed.

Conclusion

Your 30-60-90 day sales plan should serve as a tool to establish yourself in a new role, organization, and time of growth and development.

It includes specific objectives, deliverables and timelines, and should include a scorecard to measure success.

Coming to the table with a plan is the best thing you can do to hit the ground running and build credibility by showing team members you are eager and prepared.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 sales acceleration software designed 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.

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How to Create a Sales Meeting Agenda

Sales meetings are a necessary part of managing a sales team. However, they’re often unpopular because the sales team feels like they are a waste of time.

Many sales managers do not have a sales meeting agenda, choosing instead to wing it or follow a plan to which only they are privy. This strategy is also not an indicator of success and leads to the feelings that the unpopular meeting is, in fact, a waste of time.

The most successful sales meetings are ones which utilize a sales meeting agenda because they help keep your meeting organized, on-track, and on-time.

The benefits of improving your sales meeting agenda include:

Define the purpose of the meeting

Communicates the priorities for the sales team and provides an organized process to facilitate productivity

Increases engagement with the priorities, as well as boosting their accountability to their targets

Opens the flow of dialogue and collaboration, which can lead to improved team bonding and performance

It helps organize all these items and set expectations for the goals of the meeting.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at sales meeting agendas, explore what items we recommend as topics, and share some share tips and tricks for how to use the sales meeting agenda to run the session.

Ready to learn how to run your sales meeting efficiently and effectively?  Let’s get to it…

11 Sales Meeting Agenda Topics

1. Introduction

The intro is a chance to help everyone transition from what they were doing into what they are doing now. Chances are they could use a second to get into “meeting mode.”

The intro should be brief; a quick review of what you are going to talk about at this session or a recap of what you talked about at the last one.

One important caveat about the introduction: it should be positive. An upbeat beginning is an excellent way to transition your team into meeting mode, but with energy and anticipation rather than dread and anxiety.

2. Sales Team Performance Review

Once everyone is settled in and ready to work, you should review sales team performance per your key metrics. The idea is not to call anyone out or do a deep dive on the numbers but have an overview of how everyone’s performance is on the four or five metrics you have identified as vital to their evaluation.  

Tools like Spotio’s Sales Tracker can help you have an idea of what is going on in the field. Plus, the reporting features make preparing it for the meeting easy.

Next, you should have a sales update. Not only does it hold your salespeople accountable, but it also helps motivate everyone.

Once you have covered sales, go over the activity of the people in the room. Having people talk about what they are doing and what is working for them is an excellent way for the sales team to collaborate with and learn from one another.

3. Pipeline and Prospect Presentation

Obviously, you don’t need the whole rundown. Focus instead on the most significant opportunities and also any that have been in the pipeline for a while. The team can help make suggestions on how to move these opportunities on to the next step.

This agenda item is also where team members should share feedback. As the customer-facing part of the team, they have unique access to what’s happening in the market. It can be an invaluable resource for your organization to share and document this information.

4. Scheduled Sales Activity

Another excellent way to keep your sales team thinking about what’s next is to request a scheduled sales activity report.

Technology can help the preparation or review for this agenda item. Spotio’s Sales Territory Management functionality gives you an excellent overview of each sales rep’s territory and scheduled activity. Moreover, you can outline exactly where to go and what action is needed at each prospect, which streamlines the prep and frees up more time to spend selling.

5. Quarterly Sales Goals and Objectives Review

At the beginning of each quarter, you likely assigned some specific goals for each of your team members that will help them be successful. The sales meeting agenda should ensure these objectives are analyzed from time to time.

What the quarterly goals are vary by the rep and the organization for whom they sell. Some organizations assign training objectives for sales reps, like clinical education for highly specific medical or dental equipment. Others might have trade show goals for their sales reps, like bike equipment manufacturers attending the big bike races in a region.

No matter what they are, you should touch base on them from time-to-time to ensure that the progress you expect is made in those areas. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Related) goals is an excellent way to stay on track toward a long-term goal.

6. Tips and Training Time

It is an excellent rule of thumb that every meeting should provide value for your sales reps. Adding to the sales meeting agenda some time for training on relevant skills is an excellent way to ensure that value.

Some organizations do something called a Pitch Round Table. This activity involves bringing your best pitch tips and tricks and sharing them with the group. Then in a collaborative effort, everyone takes the best of the best to improve their pitch.

There are quite a few options for training time. You can have everyone bring two common objections and have everyone brainstorm ways to overcome them. You can also show a video, share a blog post, or stage a role play for different sales skills or scenarios.

7. Internal Company Updates and Housekeeping Items

When everyone is together, it can be an excellent time to cover important company business and any housekeeping issues for the team. From policy changes to feedback from other departments, including these areas can help—just be sure to move through them efficiently.

As the sales manager, including these items on the sales meeting agenda is crucial to upholding a transparent culture. As the manager, you often have information that the team does not. Be sure they understand the company’s strategy, are aware of any new product launches and know about the latest marketing campaign.

8. Success Story Sharing

Sharing success stories has two essential goals for your sales meeting agenda. First, it gives an opportunity for a sales rep to bask in the glow of success while telling their colleagues about a significant win. Second, it provides other members of the team ideas for what they can do to create success stories of their own.

It’s also an excellent way to keep a positive vibe in the meeting. Energizing the team with a great story of success can contribute to a productive meeting.

9. Competitive Intelligence or Market Trends

Knowing what is going on across town or across the country with your competitor can help you respond to threats to your business. Also, having an idea of what is going on in your industry as a whole will react appropriately with the way you approach prospects in the territory.

Assign every sales rep one or two competitors. Then have them report back over time on what they know about the competitions offer, products and pricing, and any news or changes at their organization. Then, have the team brainstorm on how to respond.

Another idea is to assign one competitor to the entire group and have time devoted each week to take a close look at the designated company. You can analyze their business strategy, proposed unique selling proposition, marketing campaigns, and even how they target their territories and brainstorm strategy to counteract them.

Technology has ways to use this data to enable your team to qualify leads in the field. Spotio’s Lead Machine helps you target the best possible areas for canvassing by providing up-to-date data.

10. Opportunities, Threats, Roadblocks and Miscellaneous Items

Opportunities and Threats are two items typically used in a SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Knowing what openings could be present for your team to capitalize on and preparing strategies to counteract for any pressures or risks to the territory that can derail you are an excellent activity for the group.

Roadblocks can be obstacles that could deter you from your goals in the coming week. Perhaps there is an internal roadblock because another department has an issue, like a product going on back-order or weather-related delays in logistics or maybe a key person in the organization will be out of the office at the end of the week. Discussing these roadblocks in the meeting can have reps already thinking about ways to manage them in the coming days.

Miscellaneous items or “walk-ons” are areas that were not on the agenda but needed addressing. These issues might have come up in a discussion during the meeting or one of the team members introduced it. Use a couple of minutes to see if it is something that can be addressed quickly or if it should be set aside for the next week’s sales meeting agenda.  

11. Action Items and Expectations

A great way to close a successful sales meeting is to review any action items. Everyone should know what they need to do when they leave the meeting and plunge back into their territories.

Also, clearly communicate your expectations about what a complete action item is. For example, if you want a sales rep to follow up on a competitor’s marketing offer, and you want all the collateral and links to their media ads, be sure you say exactly that to the sales rep. (Otherwise, it’s your fault if they do not come back with the right materials—at least in part, anyway.)

Bonus Sales Meeting Agenda Item…Motivational Topics: Ending on a positive note is crucial to a successful sales meeting agenda. As a sales manager, your job is to encourage the best performance from each of your team members. Motivating them is a vital part of this effort.

Some sales managers like to share the company’s success at this point in the meeting or the success of the sales team as a group overall or in a particular area. Others might share a success story from another industry or from past or present sales team members. Some people like to share philosophy concepts or a pertinent quote from sales training organizations.

You can get creative with this one. It is all about creating that engagement to do a little extra to hit the sales goal.

15 Tips to Improve Your Sales Meeting Agenda

What you include on the agenda is only part of your sales meeting agenda success. How you run the meeting is vital.

1. Start (and end) your sales meetings on time.

One way to prove to your team that sales meetings are not time-wasters is to commit to a start and end time. It also shows you value and respect their time.

Your sales meeting also serves as an example of how you want your team to treat customers. Be a good example and keep the meeting on track and on time.

2. Focus on the agenda.

Losing focus in a sales meeting is an easy thing to do. Salespeople (and sales managers) like to talk. Also, phones, tablets, and watches tend to interrupt our lives, too. It’s up to you to keep the meetings on track with the agenda.

One way to keep the meeting focused is to set up “house rules,” which can be anything from whoever is holding the talking stick has the floor to no technology at the table.

You can also use a timer to keep discussions within a specified time limit. If the debate isn’t over, you can always assign the topic to the next meeting.

Another idea is to make a rule that no one can introduce new business once the agenda is set. Instead, you can assign that topic to the next sales meeting agenda.

3. Distribute the agenda before the meeting.  

Like anything in sales, you need to plan for success with your sales meeting agenda. It will communicate the purpose of the meeting, establish the topics to be covered and set the proper expectations for the team.

Sending the sales meeting agenda out two or three days before the meeting not only solidifies your plan for the meeting ahead of time, but it also sets proper expectations for the team, both on what they should prepare and what they will learn.

4. Confirm the purpose of the meeting, for the attendees and for you.

Salespeople do not appreciate when it is unclear why you want to meet. When you confirm the purpose of your meeting through the agenda items you include on the plan, you clarify your reason. Not only that, establishing the intention helps you focus your time on the most pertinent sales items you need to relate to the team.

5. Choose goal-achieving topics.

Once you have a set reason for your meeting, the agenda items you include should roll-up to that purpose. In other words, the topics need to contribute to the confirmed purpose of the meeting.

Let’s say the theme for the sales meeting is pipeline replenishment and maintenance. Agenda items should include pipeline filling and management topics like prospecting, qualifying, and scheduling demonstrations. Another idea is to practice overcoming objections to move leads through the pipeline faster. Maybe you have your best prospector share their cold calling techniques with the team.

What you don’t want to do is to set the goal of pipeline management topics and spend the meeting covering the sales planning for next quarter. The agenda needs to focus the energy on the issue at hand.

6. Estimate the duration of the meeting.

Another way to assure your team that the meeting is not a waste of time is to propose a meeting duration. You can do this for the overall session, or you can include time estimations on each topic. We recommend reviewing past agendas to produce accurate time estimations.

To stay on track during the meeting, you can set a timer or alarm on your phone. Make a commitment that when the alarm goes off, you will end the session within two minutes if you are still talking. That should give you enough time to wrap things up or make a plan to resolve whatever you haven’t yet covered.

7. Tailor the length of the meeting based on the topics you need to cover.

While we are on the subject of estimating time, we should mention that some meetings take longer than others. Not all sales meeting agendas are created equal when it comes to duration.

Per MeetingKing.com, research shows that people’s attention drops off after 30 minutes. The drop off in attention span increases as the meeting time does. Therefore, the shorter your meeting, the more engaged your sales team is likely to be.

Also, many people come from one meeting only to go straight into another. Then, the second meeting starts late, and so on. If you were to schedule your sales meeting to end five minutes before the half-hour or hour, you could help eliminate that timeline slide.

The default option in many meeting scheduling systems is one hour. However, you should only have an hour-long meeting when absolutely necessary. Examples of when a more extended session is required could be for an annual review, a project with many participants that need to weigh in or discuss portions of the project or to introduce a new product or offer launch.

Avoid scheduling meetings longer than an hour. The occasions where meeting for more than an hour is necessary are rare. Some examples could be an outside trainer is attending, or a new technology implementation is underway. However, for all regular sales meetings, strive to be short and sweet regularly.

8. Review numbers and set goals at a rapid pace.

Taking time to hear from everyone about the sales activity in the sales meeting can be a useful part of the sales meeting agenda. However, it should not be a section to which a lot of time is devoted.

The point of the exercise is to have your sales team accountable and ready to contribute to the meeting—with a possible side-effect of igniting that competitive spirit so prevalent in successful salespeople. If you spend too much time in this area though, you could have the opposite effect.

Remember that your CRM can provide sales reporting. If you want a more comprehensive review at the meeting, then run the reports right before the sales meeting and distribute. Have your team share the highlights and low lights and then, move on to other topics.

9. Focus on Shared Learning and Improvement.

Saleshacker.com recommends devoting time on your sales meeting agenda to shared learning and collaborative improvement. Have the team members present something they learned over the previous week to the team. Then, discuss as a group what the team member discovered.

An example could be an innovative way to automate follow up with prospects. If a team member discovers something that could help everyone automate lead maintenance for their pipelines, have them share it with the team. Then, the other team members could ask questions or offer suggestions that might tweak the solution even more.

Saleshacker.com also recommends having a place where people can submit their learning (possibly email or an online shared document). Then you can add it to the agenda for the discussion.

10. Ensure your meetings deliver value.

Your meetings should all provide something that will help your sales team achieve their goals in either sales or customer satisfaction. Each session should have something they can use the same day toward either of these goals. From role-playing to best-practice sharing, industry trends to TED talks, you have lots of sources for this value-delivering agenda item.

11. Consistency is key.

If you want your team to value and respect your sales meeting, have a consistent meeting date and time. When you frequently cancel or skip it, you send a message that the sales meeting is not important.

12. Review common objections and overcoming them.

One thing your team members have in common regardless of experience is hearing objections. Sharing how to overcome these objections once encountered is an excellent item for your sales meeting agenda.

The value of this exercise is two-fold. First, it is morale boosting for newer team members to know that even the battle-hardened experts face objections. Second, it gives everyone new ideas and ways to position the product or service in the market and increase the value proposition they are selling.

13. Allow for others to present and discuss.  

Having an interactive sales meeting is energizing to the team. Listening to one person talk for 25 minutes (or more) is not. Ensure that your sales meeting agenda includes time for lively discussion or other presenters to keep the team engaged and excited about the topic at hand.

A discussion is a team-building exercise. For sales team members that are struggling, the supportive environment and instructional nature of their team members can lift their spirits and inspire them to continue to strive for excellence.

14. Mind the “Before’s” and “Afters.”

You should establish prep tasks for the meeting. Everyone should know what you expect from them in detail.

After the meeting concludes, you should do a quick recap of the topics and assign follow up tasks via email or group message. For example, if you discussed learning more about your competition, assign people research tasks. If you trained on overcoming objections, have each rep prepare two times he or she used the techniques suggested and what happened as a result.

On the subject of follow up, if you have a pertinent issue to discuss with one member of the team, be sure to discuss it after the meeting. The sales meeting agenda should focus on issues that everyone needs to hear and consider, rather than the specifics of one individual.

15. Motivate the team and promote your desired culture.

The sales meeting is your time to motivate the team. It’s even better when you use the items you include on your sales meeting agenda to help them drive each other with team-building discussions or collaborative problem-solving.

Also, the sales meeting might be the only place where the team interacts with people at the company regularly or for any length of time. So, the sales meeting agenda should contain the type of content that promotes the culture you want to foster with the sales team.

Go out with a bang.

EZ Cater.com, an online order site for office catering, suggests ending the meeting on a high note to energize the team. The team should finish the meeting feeling positive about the company, their product and their ability to hit their goals, and galvanized enough to go out and do it.

There are many ways to “end on a high note.” You can pay a compliment to their presentations and recap what they contributed to the sales meeting. You can share a success story from your past or, better yet, from one of them. You can tell a joke, provided you have talent in this area, and it’s HR-approved 🙂

Bonus Tip: Let the team own the meeting, not you.

It’s easy to establish a tone to a sales meeting where you are the teacher, and your team are the students. If you are the center of the agenda and control all the content, as well as being the one who answers all the questions, then the team is likely to feel like this meeting is about you.

However, the sales meeting should be about them, not you. Through what you include on the sales meeting agenda, you should let the team own the meeting. You should facilitate and manage it more than “run the show.”

Open up the floor to your team to inspire their engagement. Also, having other people lead the topic will decrease the “classroom” feel and increase their ownership in the issue at hand.

Your team is more likely to participate in a genuine way when they feel like they are part of the meeting rather than a party to it

From defining the purpose to communicating expectations, the sales meeting agenda sets the stage for increasing sales team engagement and accountability. Also, the items you include present the type of culture you expect for your team and facilitates collaboration, which boosts morale and increases team bonding.

Keeping your meetings focused and streamlined is another vital contribution a sales meeting agenda can provide. The most successful sales meetings don’t just happen; they are planned ahead of time with careful consideration and deliberate organization.

Perhaps most importantly, an efficient meeting is effective at providing value to your team. And when the team gains something that will help them improve their performance, they will not think of your sales meeting as a waste of time. Instead, they will consider it an investment in their success.

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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.

SPOTIO Recognized as a Top Sales Tool by Smart Selling

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.

25 Ways to Increase Sales Volume & Revenue

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.

Download your free Playbook, here.

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.

So how do you increase sales volume? These 25 ways are a start.

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/>.

CRM Implementation Best Practices for Sales Reps, Managers & Operations

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.

Sales Operations: How To Determine The Right Fit

Business needs

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.

Looking toward the future

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?

Reliability and consistency

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.

Cost

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.

Return on Investment (ROI)

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.

Training and adoption

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.

Sales Management: Data Driven Decisions

Sales reporting

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

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.

Sales process improvement and adoption  

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.  

Sales Reps: Data Input

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.

Focus on the benefits

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.

According to Nucleus Research, data accessibility shortens the sales cycle, on average, by 8-14 percent.

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.

Involve your team in the implementation

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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