Sales Performance

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.

Accelerate the Sales Onboarding Process: 8 Field-Tested Steps

The success of your sales team depends on the strength of your reps.

But finding the right reps (and retaining them) is easier said than done. Training Industry Magazine estimates that it takes an eye-watering 381 days to train a new sales rep to perform at the same level as a tenured sales rep.

And even when they’re fully trained, the average tenure of a sales rep is a mere 2.5 years.

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Combine all that with the fact that the average cost of replacing a sales rep is $115,000, and the thought of losing reps becomes a little scary (not to mention, leaving a large hole in your company’s pocket.)

But there is a way you can lessen the financial blow to your company. By improving your sales onboarding processes, you can improve your sales rep retention stats and speed up their ramp time.

Let’s take a deeper dive into sales onboarding, and look at the eight steps your company can use to accelerate your onboarding process. What is Sales Onboarding?

Before we can talk about improving the onboarding process, we need to understand exactly what we’re talking about.

Sales onboarding is the process companies go through to welcome new sales reps into their organization and train them on new skills, company knowledge and behaviors.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies are failing miserably with their sales onboarding processes. A 2018 Sales Management Association study found 62% of companies believe they are ineffective at onboarding new sales reps.

It’s important to dissect this stat and look at how effective onboarding can impact a business.

3 reasons you need to nail your onboarding process

1. Better retention rates

Employees are 60% more likely to remain with an organization for three years or longer when a standardized onboarding process is used. Get your onboarding processes wrong, and it’ll cost you big time in rehiring and retraining sales reps.

But why is onboarding so essential for retaining reps?

Well, it’s their first taste of the company, and they want to know that the job they’re about to commit to is worth it. If you can’t get your onboarding processes right, it’ll be harder for reps to find their place in the sales team, and it’s unlikely to fill them with confidence about the company.

2. Less ramp time

The longer it takes to get your reps up to selling speed, the more money you’re investing into an employee that’s not making any sales.

A lot of companies are stuck in an old-school approach when it comes to onboarding sales hires. They make their new sales reps attend lengthy meetings and shadow other reps for weeks (or months) at a time without letting them make so much as a sales call.

With a solid onboarding process in place, your reps will be able to start generating sales sooner, which will cut their training costs at the same time.

3. Greater sales results

The most significant benefit of having a watertight sales onboarding process lies in the sales results.

One Sales Enablement Optimization Study found companies that used onboarding for the training services and taught their new reps best practices were able to boost their win rates by 14%. By streamlining your training at the onboarding stage, you can not only get reps selling more, but you can get them selling faster.

8 Best Practices for Effectively Onboarding New Sales Reps

Now you know why you need an effective onboarding process, let’s look at how to implement it in your own company.

#1: Outline core competencies

First things first – make a list of everything you need from the rep to perform at the top of their game.

There isn’t a set list of competencies you should outline as this step will depend on the goals of your sales team. Some companies will value negotiation and selling techniques, while sales teams with outside reps might include things like in-person conversational and closing skills.

Whatever you decide your company’s core competencies are, make sure they’re made up of suggestions from senior sales managers and reps. After all, they’re the ones on the ground selling, so they’ll know better than anyone what skills are needed to make new hires as productive as possible.

#2: Map out a standard process

Next, standardize your processes.

Even if you plan your ramp time for new hires to be short, without a process, it’s unlikely the whole thing will go smoothly. Mapping out and standardizing your processes will mean your new hires will know what’s in store for them in their first weeks and months at your company.

A standardized process will bring your new rep up to speed on aspects of your company like:

Company culture
Detailed sales processes and cycles
Products and offerings
Buyer personas
The company’s history
Team structures
Sales playbooks
Standard project lengths

Gong recommends giving new hires access to an entire activity map of a sales cycle, so they’re able to see how a deal is closed, end-to-end:

Using a CRM can help at this stage, especially if you’re hiring at scale. As you’re likely to have a ton of documents outlining your processes, personas, and product offerings, using a CRM like SPOTIO can help keep everything organized and on track.

For example, in the SPOTIO dashboard, you can create a pipeline to store all of your onboarding paperwork and guide new hires through their onboarding without a ton of manual effort from sales managers.

And even if your senior sales managers are out on the field, they can check in with new hires with the team chat feature to make sure they’re staying on track.

#3: Document everything

We’re talking about documenting your onboarding processes, as well as keeping track of how well reps are doing in their training.

Likely, your sales reps won’t be able to retain every single piece of information you throw at them during the onboarding phase. A study by Sales Performance International found about 50% of the content in sales training is forgotten within five weeks, and less than 10% of it will be remembered in a year.

So documenting everything, and making processes available to your new hires so they can revert back to, is crucial to successful onboarding.

It always helps to have some resources and reference guides that they can use to refresh their memory on the fly. You can also include helpful tips and tricks like phone scripts and templates so the rep can familiarize themselves with what your typical sales process looks like.

SPOTIO CRM can double up as an onboarding kanban to keep your processes organized

If you’re using a CRM for your sales onboarding, you can tie-in feedback to each process so your new hire can take a look at what they did well, and what they need to improve on. Giving your new hires feedback is crucial—more than 60% of sales reps leave their jobs if their managers are poor coaches. So help them be the best they can be from the moment they start at your company.

#4: Use pre-boarding

Pre-boarding can be a controversial topic. You’re essentially making content available to your new reps before they’ve started at your company.

But hear us out.

Making onboarding materials available to your new sales reps is a great opportunity for them to familiarize themselves with the company, and what their new role is going to be all about. Sales reps might take it upon themselves to look through the documents and immerse themselves in the companies practices, particularly if it means it will get them selling faster.

Pre-boarding can also help your new hires to find their way around your sales software, which will help to speed up their ramp time. After all, the quicker they’re able to start selling, the faster they’re able to start earning commission.

#5: Instill focus with a 30-60-90 day plan

Starting any new job is tough, but you can help to ease the pain by giving your sales reps a clear plan of what their first three months with the company is going to look like.

Assigning new reps with a 30-60-90 day sales plan helps sales managers determine their approach to learning the business, ability to create and track measurable goals, and willingness to hold themselves accountable.

Sales Enablement Manager Brian Goth recommends creating a detailed plan that’s broken down into processes, products, tools, and industry.

The ultimate goal of having such a detailed plan in place? To get sales reps selling quicker and bringing money into the company faster. In a example from Gong, reps can add up to $60k in extra revenue if you can get them selling in their second month instead of their fourth.

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Pro-tip: Make sure you don’t just “set and forget” your 30-60-90 day plan. As a rule of thumb, have a senior sales manager review it every 3-6 months to pinpoint what worked, and what needs to improve to make the next onboard even more successful.

#6: Provide ongoing training

As Ryan Robinson points out on Close.io, the learning never stops when it comes to sales training techniques.

And giving your reps ongoing training pays off. After all, high-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training than their low-performing counterparts. As we highlighted in a recent blog post, a trustworthy rep closes more sales, and they have a certain set of traits:

– They ask the right questions and get to the heart of a prospect’s problem
– They provide insight that allows prospects to understand their problem fully
– They leave their prospects feeling clear about what to do and what to focus on
– They use terms like “certainly” and “absolutely” to inspire confidence

Without ongoing training, it’s hard for new reps to achieve these key traits.

Make sure you’re giving your sales reps proper, personalized training when they’re first hired. This means making sure they know how your company’s products work, how they can solve a prospect’s problem, and they understand the sales process your team follows.

You can even go one step further and track how much training a rep is receiving and how knowledgeable they are about the offering, and set up reminders for your sales managers to make sure they’re nurturing new reps.

Pro-tip: Once your new reps are getting settled, you can build a sales leaderboard in SPOTIO to encourage some healthy competition and drive the business forward.

#7: Show reps how “top-performers” do it

There’s a reason that new sales reps shadow top-performers—it’s one of the best ways for them to learn how processes work, and what’s expected of them.

Pairing your new hires up with top-performing sales reps is one of the best ways to cut their ramp time, and show them the company’s standards on interacting with customers and closing deals.

Having new hires shadow your company’s top performers can also:

Light a competitive spark: By nature, sales reps are competitive (I mean, we’ve even built a leaderboard for it!). Having your new reps see how the best people in the company perform can engage them in the sales process and ignite their competitive streak to want to be a top-performer themselves

Help them see their future prospects: Room to grow in a company is important. If a new hire is able to see professional growth opportunities within your top-performers, this can help boost their interest in their role

Promote teamwork: The best teams work together. Pairing up your top-performers with new reps can create a “mentor” bond that will open up the opportunity to work together down the line, and share sales tips and tricks once the new rep settles in

Be warned: not all top-performers have time to nurture new sales reps, so it’s important to spread the responsibility around. Don’t have your top-performers constantly being shadowed by new hires. Instead, try pairing up reps with top-performers on a rotational basis, and only assign top-performers who you think will be a good match, personality-wise, to the new hire.

Once you’ve assigned a top-performer, get them involved in the new hire’s onboarding process as soon as possible. This will ease the responsibility on the team’s sales manager to keep their onboarding process on track. Plus, it will give the rep mentoring them a sense of ownership in their onboarding as well.

#8: Track rep performance

Finally, make sure you track your new rep’s performance using KPIs.

Even if they’re settling in well and they’re completed the onboarding process, it’s important to track ramp metrics like:

How long it took to fulfill their quota
How many leads in their funnel/demos booked
How many deals they closed
How long it took to close their first deal

Tracking your rep’s performance is essential for a bunch of different reasons. Firstly, it can give you an overall picture of their selling abilities in their early stages. But it can also help you to see how effective your onboarding process was, and what you should be doing to improve it.

To get a larger picture, track whether the rep is hitting their KPIs at the right time and if their training mentor believes they are competent. For outside sales reps, it’s also essential to take a look at how they’re planning territories, and if they’re sticking to their sales routes.

Using SPOTIO, sales managers can build custom reports for each new hire in real-time to get a clear picture of their conversions and benchmarks. Tracking a rep’s performance using solid data can give you a better idea of how many sales they’re bringing in, and if they’re earning their spot on your sales team.

Start refining your sales onboarding process

Bringing new sales reps into your team without a process is hard.

Without a process, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to train and nurture a rep in an efficient way. Not to mention it’ll look sloppy on your part, and during the onboarding phase, new hires are also sizing up your company to make sure it’s a good fit for their career goals.

The cost of replacing a sales rep averages at $115,000 and new hires are 60% more likely to stick around if a business has a standardized onboarding process in place. Refining and perfecting your sales process makes sense—for your employee retention rates and your bottom line.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

4 Costly Limitations of Sales Territory Mapping in Google Maps

Is your team still mapping sales territories in Google Maps?

Three in ten businesses are still assigning sales territories geographically because it’s “the way things are done.” But using Google Maps to plot and plan sales territories is an old school approach. The territories have to be created manually, and it leaves a lot of room for error.

What does that mean for your business? Well, it can lead to missed prospecting opportunities, and more importantly, lost revenue.

To optimize your sales mapping process, you need to include details like prospect demographics, existing customer data and have clear boundaries. Otherwise, your sales reps will be door-knocking the same houses, crossing into each other’s territories, and ultimately⁠—wasting their time.

Let’s dive into why using a free tool like Google Maps to do your sales territory mapping could actually be costing you money, and why you should start mapping territories in a smarter way.

4 Costly Limitations of Assigning Sales Territories with Google Maps

Sometimes, the best things in life aren’t free. And when it comes to sales territory mapping, using a free tool like Google Maps to plan your sales prospecting can cost you money in the long run.

It’s not that Google Maps is totally useless. In fact, our territory mapping software relies on it for geographical data. But if you’re using Google Maps as a standalone mapping solution, you’ll run into several costly limitations.

Problem #1 – No idea how many homes are assigned to reps

It’s a typical Tuesday morning, and your sales reps are out canvassing neighborhoods you’ve assigned them on Google Maps.

But, how many homes are they supposed to hit in that area?

If you’re using Google Maps, you’ll have no idea. The fact is, you could assign two reps to the exact same geographically sized area in Google Maps, but there is no way to know the actual number of homes you’ve assigned to each rep.

Unless you manually input every home in each sales territory, it’s impossible to know how many homes are in each one. [Image source]

One area might have 50 houses, and the other might have 500.

This is a recipe for disaster when it comes to making sure territories are fairly balanced. If a rep is constantly given areas with fewer homes than other reps, not only will they be closing fewer sales, but they might not be too happy about their commissions at the end of the month, either.

Problem #2 – No idea how many existing customers you have in each territory

Talk about flying blind.

Google Maps gives you the tools to assign territories. But it doesn’t give you any information about existing customers inside the area.

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This is a problem for two reasons.

Firstly, your sales reps could be door-knocking current customers and trying to sell to them. This is a bad look and makes the rep (and your company) look unprofessional. Secondly, it rules out any chances of reps using existing customers for referrals when they’re targeting a territory—because they’ve got no idea where the existing customers are located, and as a result, cannot customize their script.

Problem #3. No demographic information on the homeowners/businesses you should be targeting

An article by Alexander Group found the best and highest performing territories are those that have been ‘optimized’ for sales reps.

So, the more a territory has been scrutinized into fitting your company’s target persona, the more chance reps have at closing clients. Using Google Maps, it’s almost impossible for reps to have this data on hand, and it makes even less sense to send them to an area without knowing the profile of the prospects they are trying to close.

Does the area fit your company’s target persona? Are there businesses or homes in the area that are already customers of yours? Can the prospects in the area afford your product, or more importantly… do they even want it?

You won’t be able to answer these questions if you’re using Google Maps to assign territories, and your reps will be essentially selling blind.

Problem #4. No ability to plot multiple routes at a time

Plotting routes in Google Maps isn’t just time-consuming⁠—it’s limiting. You can only plot a single route at a time.

For a sales rep, this is very restrictive. They must plot a single route and complete it, and then map out another plan. This adds up to a lot of extra admin time for your sales reps. A study by Salesforce found sales reps spend a whopping 64% of their time doing non-selling tasks like admin and service tasks.

But restricting the number of routes a rep can map out not only takes up a big chunk of their time, it makes it easier for prospects to slip through the cracks. If they’re rushing to manually map out routes, they might miss potential prospects in the area.

How to Map Sales Territories Faster and More Efficiently with SPOTIO

Here are 5 ways using a sales territory management app can supercharge your sales efforts.

1. Map Territories With Demographic Data

To start selling smarter, you need data.

Using a sales tracking app, you can build sales territories using prospect data you’ve already got on file. When your sales reps are out in the field, they’ll be able to see every prospect and customer’s geographic location.

This can save them valuable time if they’re out selling and a new lead enters your company’s sales pipeline. Because SPOTIO helps build a rep’s selling route, it can automatically adjust their route if the new prospect is in the area, so they don’t fall through the cracks.

2. Pinpoint Existing Customers & Get Referrals

For reps out in the field, using existing customers as examples can be a powerful tool in their sales toolkit.

Picture this. Your rep is canvassing a street, and they can see on their app that the prospect’s neighbor is an existing customer of your company. This will give your outside rep the ammunition to open their pitch with something like, “You know John Smith next door? He actually hired us last month and was very impressed with the work we did. In fact, seven of your neighbors in the area have trusted us to work on their home.”

See how that ice breaker completely changes the tone of the conversation?

But having powerful data like this can also help supercharge your rep’s referral process, too. Your customers can provide your reps with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads– referrals. They just have to ask.

In fact, 86% of buyers want to be able to ask in-person questions before making a purchase, and a further 90% of all buying decisions are based on recommendations. So if a rep is out selling in the field and getting referrals at the same time, they can kill two birds with one stone.

3. Assign Territories By Number of Homes

Making sure that sales reps have enough doors to knock is essential to their performance and the amount of commission they can make.

But it’s also essential to maintain a balance in your sales rep’s workloads. Using a sales territory mapping app can help assign a fair number of homes to a territory in a more accurate way.

For example, using SPOTIO you can create fair, balanced territories for your reps in less than 10 minutes. Let’s say you want to assign each rep 300 houses to target for the week. Using SPOTIO, all you have to do is start drawing out an area, and the software will tell you the estimated number of homes in that territory.

Once you reach the amount of houses you want each rep to target, all that’s left is to assign the territory so they can start selling.

4. Use City & Zipcode to Eliminate Grey Areas

Distributing territories by city or zip code is one of the easiest methods because it’s black and white.

There’s no grey area, and it minimizes the risk of sales reps crossing into each other’s territories. But there’s a catch. Assigning territories by city or zipcode can lead to unbalanced territories, and one rep having higher amounts of prospects than another.

Because cities or zip codes vary in the number of houses, you may need to give two cities to a single rep, while one city might need three reps. Using SPOTIO to assign these territories can eliminate all this guesswork. SPOTIO can help to ensure you distribute the number of houses for each rep to work evenly by the city or zip code.

5. Use Google Places Data to Find, Filter & Target Businesses

SPOTIO’s native integration with Google Places makes it easier for reps to find the best prospects in their territories.

Let’s say your target prospects are restaurant owners. Using Google Places, sales reps can pull up every restaurant in the area, and then SPOTIO will automatically plan out the best route for them.

And because Google Maps is constantly staying up to date with businesses’ information, your reps won’t be wasting time in the field chasing down leads with outdated addresses.

Integrating Google Places into your rep’s sales plans can make sure the prospect information they’re using is up to date.

Final Thoughts

Google Maps is a great tool to help find a restaurant if you’re out walking the streets. But if you’re trying to use it for sales territory mapping, it’s another story.

For sales reps to be successful in the field, they need more than just a map with boundary lines on it. They need existing customer information, demographic data, and smarter sales routes.

Planning sales territories in Google Maps may be free, but it’s also very limiting. When you add up the cost of lost prospects and the extra admin time spent manually planning routes, ask yourself… what’s free mapping software actually costing your business in the long run?

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Understanding A Sales Pipeline

Are your sales currently stagnating? Do you need to improve the performance of your company?

If so, it might be time for you to evaluate your sales pipeline.

A strong pipeline will help you to make improvements to your sales team at each stage of the process, and with the aid of data-driven sales software, this is easily accomplished.

Sales Pipeline Basics

A sales pipeline is an effective way of looking at where your current prospects are within the sales process and showing how many deals your reps should close in a given week, month, or any other length of time.

If you have a pipeline value of $100,000 and your conversion rate from the time you get a lead to the time you get a sale is 10%, you should be able to get $10,000 worth of new business regularly.

If you want to reach $20,000 worth of new business in a given season, then you know your sales representatives will need to convert twice as many leads.

This is where your sales pipeline comes into play. This is where you can figure out which stages of your pipeline are giving you the best results and which stages can do with some improvement.

All this helps you improve your revenue growth.

Pipelines Are Not The Funnel or Forecast

It’s important to clarify that sales pipeline are not the same as a funnel or a forecast. Pipelines includes every opportunity that a sales rep is handling; while a forecast simply estimates how many of those opportunities are likely to close and a funnel follows the prospects that are being worked on.

Buyer’s Journey Through a Sales Pipeline

Your leads move continuously through a pipeline, and as they do so, they hit different stages that coincide with the buyer’s journey.

The first stage of the buying journey is awareness. This is where a potential buyer becomes aware of an opportunity or a potential problem.

The second stage is consideration, where the buyer figures out what opportunity or problem they have and develops their own criteria for what they will do to resolve the issue or capitalize on the opportunity.

The third is the decision stage, where they figure out their strategy and are now comparing the available solutions.

By keeping their journey in mind as you cultivate your sales pipeline, you will help your sales representatives succeed.

Connection. A connection is established between you and a potential buyer. This is where the potential buyer engages with your salesperson, whether it is through downloaded content, an email from your sales personnel, or via a webinar they attend.

Appointment Setting. The buyer agrees to meet with your company to learn more about the solution you can offer them.

Appointment Completion. The buyer has shown up and you have confirmed their interest in completing the next steps.

Solution Proposal. The buyer is interested in using your product to solve their issue or to capitalize on their opportunity by engaging the solution you have presented.

Proposal Decision. This is the final stage. The buyer reviews the proposal you have presented and they make their decision.

Makings of a Good Pipeline

So what makes a good pipeline?

A good pipeline is staged properly and coincides with the different steps a prospect takes. Another characteristic that makes for a good pipeline is one that is the ideal size. You need to have milestones at each stage for your sales reps so that they can objectively measure the progress they’re making against the overall goals.

A good pipeline is regularly cultivated. If your pipeline is not growing, it should at least be stable. Tangentially, you need to have a standard follow-up process (as described below) so that your leads are not lost at any given stage in your pipeline.

This standard follow-up requirement might be something to the effect of inbound leads being contacted within a matter of 5 hours, or every lead receiving at least 10 touches over the course of a month; or every lead receiving a combination of phone calls, emails, or social media touches.

A uniform and consistent strategy is imperative.

Improving Your Sales Pipeline

As a sales manager, you can improve your sales pipeline by keeping the sales cycle short. The longer the process, the more opportunities your prospects have to change their mind or go to one of your competitors. That is why you want to keep the cycle as short as possible.

Your pipeline shouldn’t be very long. If leads are going cold and your team isn’t closing enough, you might need to shorten the length of your process.

Now, obviously follow-up is important. Most people need to be contacted and followed up with approximately 6 times or more before they make their decision in certain industries. You don’t want to bombard the same lead with all six follow-ups in a single day. But you might simply reduce the amount of time your representatives wait in between follow-ups or reduce how long it takes your marketing team to follow-up.

You might also believe that a pipeline should be different for every customer and as a result, you may see your sales representatives employing different sales techniques.

Each sales representative might have a different routine for their sales calls, their meetings, their outreach, or their follow-ups. But realistically, all your target customers have the same things in common which is why they all fall under the same umbrella, as your target customers.

Their underlying reasons for using your services or products are broadly similar and that means you can use such information to standardize your pipeline. Standardizing your pipeline will decrease the time and money needed to create customized techniques.

A standardized pipeline will help you cultivate repeatable sales processes that you can fine-tune and scale with your company as it grows.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Outside Sales: The Complete Guide for 2019

Outfit pressed and hair coiffed, it’s time to set out into the field to meet with prospective clients. Being the face of the product/service makes the role of an outside salesperson an important one. This face-to-face interaction is what sets outside sales apart from their inside selling counterparts.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll talk you through everything you need to know about the world that is Outside Sales.

What is Outside Sales?
Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales
What Does an Outside Sales Rep Do?
Most Important Skills for Outside Sales Reps
Average Outside Sales Rep Salaries
How to Hire Top Performing Outside Sales Professionals
Outside Sales Interview Question
6-Step Guide to Building a Winning Outside Sales Strategy
Inside and Outside Sales Teams Can Work Together
Outside Sales Training Resources
Outside Sales Tools

What is Outside Sales?

Investopia defines outside sales as “the sale of products or services by sales personnel who go out into the field to meet with prospective customers. Outside sales professionals tend to work autonomously outside a formal office and formal team environment. They travel to meet customers face-to-face, as well as to maintain relationships with existing customers.”
Outside means exactly that… outside. An outside salesperson is spending the majority of his or her time out in the elements meeting people in person.

Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales

How does outside sales compare with inside sales? The ultimate objective is the same… to close the deal, of course. However, the way it is done between the two have some significant differences.

When looking at outside sales, you’re working autonomously most of the time. The area around you is your “office” – in that you meet with people all over the place – and you spend quite a bit of time driving around in your car.

With inside sales, you are more likely to be in a team environment in an office setting working set hours, depending on the industry you are in. You will likely make many more contacts with prospects in customers in a day since you are not spending any time driving around to an appointment.

It is important to note that while inside sales is being adopted more and more, outside sales is still a big driver in achieving sales quotas. A top performing sales strategy will include elements of both inside and outside sales strategy.

What Does an Outside Sales Rep Do?

A day in the life of a sales rep can be broken up in the following ways:

Prospecting For Leads

According to a poll done by Hubspot.com, when salespeople were asked what they struggle with the most, 42% said it was prospecting. It doesn’t matter how good you are at selling, if you have nobody to talk to, that skill won’t matter.

Below, we will discuss various methods and tools one can use to aide in sales prospecting success.

Tools that you can use to aid in prospecting:

Build a targeted prospect list:

– LinkedIn.com
– LimeLeads.com
– Mattermark.com
– SPOTIO’s Lead Machine

Search for emails:

– VoilaNorbert.com
– Emailhunter.com
– Sellhack.com

Sales territory mapping. How many people that are a prospect for your product live or operate a business in a given area? How close together are they? How many of them are near an existing customer that you could introduce yourself to in case your appointment cancels or ends sooner than you thought? This is where sales territory mapping comes in.

As I mentioned before, spending too much time in your car zig-zagging across town all day will minimize the efficiency of the time you spend out in the field. Knowing where to go, with minimal travel between engagements, is a great way to maximize your time and energy during that day.

Customer mapping. Where are all your customers located? Is it a concentrated area or is it spread out all over the place? Where are they in relation to prospects you’d like to meet? When you take the time to do this, it is a very enlightening thing. You may find out that you haven’t penetrated a desired market nearly as much as you would like to. Maybe you’ll see that you are into an area more than you would like to be, and there are more profitable markets to pursue. Knowing your footprint from past deals, and how it relates to where you would like to go is a vital part of managing your existing business as you seek to grow it.

With field sales software tools (such as SPOTIO), this process is automated. The whole premise of SPOTIO is to drop pins on properties located on a map so that you have a physical representation of a desired territory. It’s much easier to actually see on a map exactly where a desired property is located rather than staring at unorganized data on a spreadsheet or even a handwritten list. Having this level or organization at your fingertips is one of the main benefits of using field sales software.

Appointment setting. Okay, so you have the names. Now it’s time to set appointments with them. One of the most important skills a salesperson can invest time in would be what to say, whether it be in person or on the phone, I’m a firm believer in scripting. Why? Because using a well thought out script will eliminate a robotic, bumpy, and awkward presentation that lacks a connection to the prospect.

Here is an example call script:

Sales presentation. Data shows 75% of sales presentations leave prospects feeling like the salesperson just didn’t get it. Obviously, this will have a negative impact on your chances of closing that deal. We want the prospect to not only feel that we “got it”, but that we are the answer to their situation. What are some things that can be done to make this a better part of your overall process? The article referenced above gives some great tips.

Make sure the presentation comes after a thorough discovery. It’s self-defeating to make a pitch when you haven’t gotten the answers to all the pertinent questions in order to MAKE that pitch to begin with. It’s possible that you are either the perfect answer to the problem the prospect has, or that you are the last solution they need to look at – this will be determined when you ask the right questions to determine if a presentation is even warranted.

Only present solutions to your prospect’s challenges. How annoying is it when someone presents a recommendation that doesn’t meet the challenges at hand? Stick to the issues at hand and focus on solving them.

Don’t present “one last thing.” Focus on the issues at hand directly, and handle them.

Use case studies. Many presentations can be dry, so using real-life situations where you solved the same struggle(s) that the current prospect is facing will go a long way to build your credibility in the room.

The 60-second rule. Don’t dominate the conversation. In order to maximize your chances of closing the deal, it needs to be an interactive presentation. Never talk for more than 60 seconds without an interruption. Ask for questions, etc. Pull them in.

Use feedback loops. This is how you solve the 60-second rule. Asking “Does that make sense?” or “Are we on the same page?” will prompt responses that will keep the prospect engaged.

If you lose them, stop. When/if you feel like you’re starting to lose your prospect, there is nothing wrong with just stopping and mentioning that to them, backing up and seeing where you missed it and fixing that to move forward.

Keep it as short as possible. Getting off track will cost more sales than it will land. Stick to the points at hand. If you do anything other than present a solution to the problems that the prospect has, you’re going to lose them more often.

Clear and scheduled next steps. One-call closes are pretty old-school anymore. Most of the time, there are going to be next steps before you can close the deal. Make sure they are clearly defined, and most importantly SCHEDULED so that nothing is lost due to ambiguity here.

Lead management. How do you keep track of all the prospects that you have? At any given time, your “sales funnel” can range from hundreds of leads to thousands. When someone says “call me in a month” or anything else that isn’t leading to a sale right now, how do you store them? What do you do to make sure you don’t forget to call that client again in a month? There is a saying that “not all leads are created equal”, and it is very true. Due to the many categories that leads can fall into, it’s very important for a salesperson to organize his or her leads in a way so that you are spending your time appropriately with the right leads at the right time(s).

The process and method of lead management is what drives the success of a sales team. Capturing specific details about each prospect quickly and efficiently, and then being able to use this data to increase productivity and sales is the goal of SPOTIO’s lead management software.

Sales reporting, or as I like to call it, keeping score. There are so many activities that salespeople engage in, and most of them are important. How do you know if you’re effective enough at what you do? What are the most important metrics to keep track of so that you can keep everything else in line? Here are some of the most vital metrics you should be privy to:

– Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
– Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
– Team performance and best time and day to knock
– Number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales

Sales Dashboards provide real-time insights that identify exactly where each individual team member needs assistance in your sales process. You will be able to spot train reps on the areas where they need the most assistance to be successful.

Most Important Skills for Outside Sales Reps

If you are thinking about Outside Sales as a career path, it’s probably a good idea to assess yourself and see if you possess the skills that employers are looking for. I’m certain that employers will debate heavily as to what the most important skills are, so this isn’t an all-inclusive list. However, I doubt that many would doubt that any of the following skills would be very useful, if not vital.

I know this sounds obvious, but this is a big one. Have you ever asked a salesperson a question on a product and they didn’t know the answer? Annoying, wasn’t it? You must be a subject matter expert when it comes to whatever you are selling. You need to be able to answer any questions that come your way, and in a confident manner. If you aren’t confident in the answer you are giving, then your prospect may have a hard time being confident in you.

Do your research. In other words, know who you are dealing with. When you make your approach and have those initial contacts, being able to talk about their company shows that you are a professional that is truly interested in their business. It will also help you avoid making a contact with a prospect/company that is not a good fit.

Know your metrics. It’s hard to ever know if you’re hitting an objective if you don’t know what it takes to get there.

Sales Metrics You Need To Know To Improve Sales Performance

Contact Rate: the number of decision makers (DM’s) a rep speaks with.

Lead Rate: the number of leads generated from conversations.

Close Rate: the number of closed-won opportunities from the number of leads.

Average Revenue per Sale: the average amount of revenue a rep generates for each sale made.

Rate of Follow-up Contact: number of opportunities with at least 1 follow-up activity recorded.

Be organized – all the way through.

The person that is planned spends less time doing unproductive activities and also has contingencies in place to make the unplanned situation productive anyway.

The first impression.

When someone opens a door you knock on, or a decision maker in a business takes a minute to shake your hand, you have a very short period to win another several minutes with that person. Your smile, the handshake, what you say, how you say it; all these things have a major impact on whether you can hope to turn this prospect into a client.

Handling rejection.

You must have the ability to “shake it off”, don’t take it personally, and move on to the next one with the same smile on your face as before. If you’re down, the person interacting with you will sense that.

Know when to move on.

Any individual you meet with will fall into one of 3 categories: they will right now, they will buy later, or they will never buy. Your job is to figure out which one they are

and do it as soon as possible. The sooner you can figure out what kind of person you are dealing with, the sooner you can either take them to the next step or move on to the next prospect.

Qualifying the prospect.

This is the process of asking very deep, meaningful questions to determine if you are able to meet the challenge(s) your prospect if facing, and how to do so.

Close the deal.

This is where you are putting all the information you gathered together and forming the solution to your prospect’s need(s) and asking for her business.

Answering objections.

Most objections at the forefront aren’t the real objection, but a “smokescreen.” Being skilled at answering objections is vital to keeping a valid sale alive.

Average Outside Sales Salary

The range of salaries for outside sales is all over the board. If you look at it as more of a “big picture”, with all industries included, you will see a range of $31,000 to a little over $92,000. That range includes salary, bonus, profit sharing, and commission. As you can imagine, the numbers will vary quite a bit from industry to industry.

The average life insurance agent makes $34,229 per year. The average automobile salesperson makes $38,801.Pharmaceutical salespeople average just short of $70,000. Monster.com gives a list of sales jobs that are the highest paying… from Consulting Sales ($120k – $150k base salaries plus commissions to Digital Media Sales ($170k – $180k base salaries plus commissions), they list the higher end of this spectrum.

Some people have chosen their path in sales strictly because of the highest earnings potential. Others have gone with what they are passionate about and that drives them to be a top performer and blow past the average for his or her field.

How to Hire Top-Performing Outside Sales Professionals

Plain and simple, hiring the right people is hard. And expensive. It costs as much as 1.5–2.0 times of the employee’s annual salary to replace them and takes an average of 4 months to hire their replacement. This makes having a bulletproof hiring strategy absolutely essential. So, how do you go about finding, hiring, and retaining your ideal candidates?

The job description.

Personally, I believe that a lot of thought should go into this document that is taken for granted a lot of times. Remember, you want to attract the best possible fit for that job. So, this job description should describe that person. How do you do that? What skills would that person have? What would be his/her responsibilities? What kind of experience and qualifications would he or she have?

1. Skills – what kind of skills would your superstar possess?

New business development
Customer relations
Account management

2. Responsibilities – what would this person be able to handle?

Attending trade shows to create new leads and contact existing clients
Keep on top of industry trends to ID opportunities for the company to grow
Collaborate with the management team to improve marketing techniques and grow the company’s presence in the existing and desired markets

3. Experiences and Qualifications

Familiarity with a CRM
“X” amount of years’ experience
Proven track record of exceeding sales quotas
Industry-relevant certifications
Sales awards
College education

Try to avoid ambiguity.

Be very specific about who your company is, what it does, and why. It’s hard for a salesperson to sell something if they don’t believe in it. If you’re worried that being specific might scare away a superstar, think of it like this: chances are that he or she wouldn’t have been a superstar with you. Remember, you want the right person to come to you. That means you won’t have to interview 20 people to hire the “perfect” one… maybe you can cut that down to 3-5. Think of how much time and energy you just saved yourself or your HR team in interviewing people that aren’t the right fit from the start?

Outside Sales Interview Questions

Okay, you have figured out the profile of who you want to hire. You have created an amazing job description that has gotten some dynamite applicants to contact you for an interview. What kind of questions should you ask to sift through the pool of great candidates and find “the one”? If you focus on 3 main areas – personality, skills, and performance – you can do that very well. Some examples might be:

1. Personality Questions

What drives you to succeed?
What are you looking forward to in this role?
What would you like to achieve in the next 3-5 years?
In an ideal world, how would you collaborate with your team members?
How do you prefer to work with your sales manager?
-What is your optimal sales environment?
-How do you see yourself fitting with our company and this team?

2. Skills Questions

Would you rather call or email prospects? Why?
How do you deal with rejection?
What is your closing percentage?
How do you get around the gatekeeper when you make a call on a prospect?
When do you decide to walk away from a prospect?
Does social media play a role in your sales process? If so, how?
How do you stay up-to-date with industry trends? What specific resources do you reference?
What is your negotiation style?

3. Performance Questions

Tell me about a time when you were in a competition to win a prospect’s business that you ultimately won. What caused that to happen?
Tell me about a time when you were dealing with a very hard-to-convince prospect that you won over. How did you do that?
When you lose a deal, what is the most common reason why?
Tell me about a time that you didn’t hit your performance objective. What caused you to fail and what did you do to make sure it didn’t happen again?
Tell me about the achievement you are most proud of in your career thus far.
What is the length of your current sales cycle?

How often do you beat your quota?

6-Step Guide to Building a Winning Outside Sales Strategy

Any company that has a sales division wants that wing of their corporation to thrive. After all, they are responsible for selling the products that they make to the marketplace, right? So, how do you build a sales division that doesn’t just “win”, but will thrive? Here are what I think are 6 steps that will help in this area.

1. Identify the team that you need.

Outside vs. inside team – Do you need an outside sales team? Inside sales team? Both?
Build a profile of the people you want in each role that you’re looking for.

2. Customize your recruiting process – and make it repeatable.

Build the job description.
Identify sourcing tools.
Who does what part of your process?
What does the interview look like?

3. Make sure the sales managers are the right ones.

Build profiles.

An outside sales manager will have different characteristics than an inside sales manager. Using the same person for both isn’t going to always be the best option available.
– Can they lead people?
– If they were successful as a salesperson, can he/she clone themselves? MUST be able to train people.

4. Get with the times. In other words, modernize your sales process and tools as much as you can. Many companies will cut corners here, and cite costs as the reason. This approach is narrow minded due to the costs on the back end. What productivity is lost when the salespeople are spending more time in the office doing things they shouldn’t have to do because their tools are out of date instead of being out there doing what they do best – selling?

CRM system.
Tracking software.
Assign proper sales territories.
Planning and organization software.
Enable mobile updates.
Personalized dashboards.

5. Make sure that your Marketing department is aligned with your sales department.

Qualify leads with inbound marketing.
Create lead nurturing campaigns.
Track leads through the sales cycle.

6. Rewards.

Create a multi-tiered incentive structure.

Research shows that a multi-tiered incentive plan will drive production.
Use the salespeople to help develop it.
Make sure to include a way to motivate the ones that fall behind.

Inside and Outside Sales Teams Can Work Together

In my experience with an organization that uses both inside and outside sales teams, it has been an “us vs. them” mentality. And most of the time, that mentality starts from the top. If the executive team doesn’t respect and see the need to work together to be mutually beneficial, then it isn’t likely that the sales teams themselves will either. So, it starts there; make sure the executive team is in alignment so they can model that behavior to their respective teams and spearhead efforts in working together.

Visibility is also a key. The entire team needs to know what the other members of the team are doing. Communication plays a big role here. Are the marketing people actively developing leads in one of the field salesperson’s territory? He or she should know about it. Is that salesperson following up with those leads in a timely fashion? The marketing people should know about that. There are systems in place that can help everyone see that, and with the proper accountability in place, this can make things very transparent to everyone involved.

Ultimately, utilizing this approach will end up causing your entire sales team to build a strong relationship among each other, just like they do, hopefully, with their prospects and clients.

Outside Sales Training Resources

Any true professional should continually be a student of their field; finding ways to get better at what she does. The sales profession is no different. Phone skills, general prospecting skills, fact-finding, closing technique, asking for referrals, marketing as a whole, client retention… these are all areas that a salesperson should continue to get better.

The following are some resources to help develop those skills:

1. Wilson Learning focuses offers resources and programs for sales, leadership and workforce development. For sales, they offer programs on foundational and strategic selling, along with consulting, sales management, and sales support and service.
2. Customer Centric Selling offers sales training through training workshops around the globe. Their focus is on a buyer-driven sales process.
3. Sales Performance International uses online curriculum and technology to facilitate their training and development programs.

There are literally hundreds of other places to seek out sales training in any area, whether it be based on a certain part of the sales process, or even based on industry.

Outside Sales Tools

Every salesperson is interested in being more productive. And, so should each company. There are many tools out there that will help make various parts of the job easier… from mapping to CRMs, sales tracking and everything else. Here are some resources to take a look at for various sales tools:

1. Spotio has various software tracking tools (sales territory mapping, sales tracking, lead management, field sales, territory management, canvassing, customer mapping, sales rep tracking, and outside sales tracking) that will keep tabs on all the different things that you would want to keep an eye on, making key data and metrics available to you with a click rather than someone having to keep track of it all on their own.

2. Sales Hacker provided a list in February of this year of over 160 sales tools that I found to be very comprehensive, covering 11 different areas:

Account-based Sales & Marketing
Analytics
Communication / Conferencing
Content Sharing & Management
Contract Lifecycle Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
Email Management
Lead Generation, Productivity, Prospecting
Performance Management
Sales & Market Intelligence
Search Engine Optimization

3. LinkedIn is primarily meant to be used as a networking site. Today, salespeople use this as a way to expand their footprint, develop leads, and ultimately create new sales. Can be a very effective networking and recruiting tool. It is also a great tool to do some research on a prospect before you contact them.

4. Profit Story is a tool that will help you calculate margins on proposals pretty easily. It is driven by profit-based metrics.

5. CamCard lets you take a picture of a business card and automatically saves the information to your contacts. Knowing that business people – especially outside salespeople – tend to collect many business cards, this is especially useful.

6. Doc Scan lets you snap a picture on your smartphone of important documents and generates a PDF for you.

7. DocuSign is an e-signature service that allows you to get the signature no matter where you are.

8. Dragon is a note taking app that will transcribe what you say into notes if you would rather not use the texting method to do so.

Conclusion

Outside sales is a very broad topic, and it’s impossible to cover everything in one article. However, the objective of this piece was to draw some attention to some key areas that will raise or lower the bottom line results in your organization and team.

From getting you sales team organized to equipping them with the tools to make them as pro productive as possible; all of these things require due diligence to ensure you are “stacking the deck” in your favor. Best of luck in your endeavors!

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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.

3 Key Strategies That Will Improve Your Sales Process

To improve your sales process, there are tools and techniques you can implement to make these changes easier for your company. If your salespeople aren’t equipped with the resources they need to succeed, your organization will suffer from employee turnover, trouble with quota attainment, and low sales morale.

As a sales leader you need to focus on helping your staff do what you hired them to do – close more deals. In this article, we’ll explore three key strategies that you and your sales team can implement to improve your sales process and boost your company’s bottom line.

3 Key Strategies That Will Improve Your Sales Process

1. Training, Training, and More Training

The first and most important thing you can do to improve your sales process is to train your team on a regular basis. This is not something that you do just once.

Yes, your initial training lays the groundwork for most of the conversations that your reps will have and it gives them the tools they need to tackle client questions and concerns that regularly manifest during a sales pitch.

Beyond that, you also need to offer training every week. You need to be available to work with your individuals for just a few minutes at a time, once a week. Then offer group training every two weeks where you focus on a different small group of sales representatives each time.

Staggering your training like this allows you to give reps the tools they need to improve their sales process without taking them all off the phone at crucial times throughout the day.

That said, what should your focus be during these training sessions?

A good way to make sure you’re providing the most impact is to look at specific KPI’s that your reps are measured on and use training as a way to improve these metrics.

For example, if your reps are struggling to set appointments, work on prospecting. Or, if they’re unable to get verbal commits on prospects, focus on framing your solution and building value in the prospect’s eyes. If they have trouble with contract negotiations, work on closing skills.

By breaking down your sales process, finding out where your team needs the most help, and helping them cover any gaps, you’ll be well on your way to improving your team’s numbers.

Uncovering Problems

Realistically, potential leads want to be told what they said in a slightly different way. Leads that are calling you are doing so for a singular purpose. They want an answer or a solution to their problem and they need to hear what that problem is and how your company is going to solve it. As such, your sales team needs to be focused on nothing more than uncovering these problems and offering solutions.

Teach them to use phrases like:

– I just want to make sure I heard you correctly…
– It sounds to me like your biggest issue is…
– So, you’re having problems with…

Effectively your staff needs to reinforce that these are real problems. They can do so by repeating their problem back to them to solidify in the mind of the client that your company has a solution.

Building a Relationship

Your training also has to focus on building relationships. A sales process needs to function at every step of the sales funnel and it can only do that if from the get-go trust is built with the potential leads. Most people won’t make a decision the first time they talk to one of your representatives but that doesn’t mean that your representative shouldn’t continue to focus on that potential client.

However, they have to continue in the right way. Reps must accurately represent your company and pay attention to the sales funnel. They also need to focus more on cultivating a long-term relationship with a client rather than focusing on the sale and scaring them off early on.

Teaching reps to do this improves your sales process by shifting the goal from a money-focused close to an education-focused relationship.

2. Persistence is Important

But why does this type of long-term thinking matter? Because persistence closes more deals, and here’s the proof:

– 2% of sales are closed with the 1st contact
– 3% of sales are closed with the 2nd contact
– 5% of sales are closed with the 3rd contact
– 10% of sales are closed with the 4th contact
– 80% of sales are closed with the 5th contact or more

This means that reps should think of every new lead as someone they have to follow up with at least five times before a sale happens. It takes persistence to improve the sales process at every step and companies have to teach their representatives to focus on building client relationships so that they can stay motivated during the third, fourth, and even perhaps the fifth point of contact.

Consider that 27% of sales calls are never actually followed up on. That means 27% of calls leak out of your sales funnel which indicates a terrible sales process. Another 80% of sales representatives never reach out more than four times which is incredibly shocking when you consider that 80% of sales are closed at the fifth point of contact. That means the 80% of sales representatives who don’t reach out for a fifth time could theoretically make 80% more sales if they were willing to put in the effort for simply one more phone call.

Teaching this to your staff will improve your sales process across the board.

3. Educate Clients

At each stage of the sales process, your staff needs to focus on education. Every lead needs to be educated. Cold calls, somewhat warm calls, even hot calls that are inbound still require education. Callers want in-depth explanations. Potential leads that your reps meet should receive solution explanations that are good enough to convince them to make a purchase. A brief two minutes phone call, a single email, or one meeting won’t suffice.

So what do you do?

You can create educational resources that can be provided to your leads, including things like:

– Case studies
– Sales letters
– Data sets
– White papers
– Live demonstrations

Most of the time something as simple as this can make or break a deal. But don’t let your sales representatives simply text or email a potential lead telling them that resources were emailed and the lead should call once they have read through the data. This type of outreach at any point in your sales process is incredibly disengaging and passive.

So give reps the tools they need to engage so that they share that information in person or through a live virtual format so that they can go over it. They should make sure the potential leads understand it and address any questions they have, and educate them.

Doing this will help provide the opportunity to answer a lead’s questions and demonstrate the value of your company. It will allow your representatives the opportunity to handle any objectives, show their company expertise, and ultimately establish trust. This does make the process for each sale in your sales pipeline longer but it gives more control and closes more deals in the long term.

Conclusion

Overall, you can improve your sales process if you focus on careful planning, preparation, and give your sales staff the data and the tools they need the focus long term on successes for your company.

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Ultimate Door to Door Sales Guide (with Tips & Scripts)

Key Pillars of the D2D Sales Process
Traits of a Successful Door-to-Door Sales Professional
11 Door-to-Door Sales Tips & Techniques to Crush Sales Quota
Canvassing Techniques
How to Recruit a High-Performing Door to Door Sales Team
3 Door-to-Door Sales Compensation Models
The Ultimate Door-to-Door Sales Toolset

Let’s be honest. There is a stigma around door-to-door sales and that it’s an antiquated way of selling. As the next generation of outside sales reps hit the workforce, the majority are unaware just how powerful door to door selling can be.

We know the reason why D2D prospecting is still relevant: it works. Today, 65% of outside sales reps attain quota, which is 10% higher than inside sales reps.

But, it isn’t for everybody or for every type of business. It takes a certain kind of person and process to make the door-to-door sales engine turn.

So what kind of person an business fit the door to door sales mold? We’ll tell you.

In this article, we’ll go deep into the D2D sales world and answer the following questions:

1. What is door to door sales?
2. How do you become a successful door to door salesman?
3. What is the best process for selling door to door?
4. What tools do reps need to crush their field sales quota?

Door-to-door sales can be a rewarding sales career for the right individuals, and drive the bottom line for businesses in many different industries.

Let’s get started.

What is Door-to-Door Sales?

Door-to-door sales (D2D sales) means that the sales rep is participating in door-to-door prospecting, which indicates a system of direct contact with individuals. Rather than relying on marketing to bring in new customers, the sales rep walks from one place to another, doorway to doorway in the literal sense, engaging prospects in conversation about the features and benefits of their product or service.

D2D canvassing techniques are also used to market, advertise or campaign. In all cases, a door-to-door salesman or saleswoman is attempting to get a person interested or ready to buy their product, service or idea. They are generating demand.

Key Pillars of the D2D Sales Process

Prospecting: The search for new customers is called prospecting. Prospects are essential to your sales funnel because you have to have new customers coming in to grow. Finding them is a crucial part of your sales process.

Qualifying: Qualifying means you have identified a need your prospect has that matches one of the features or benefits you offer. Qualifying prospects is to establish Pain (enough pain to buy), Budget (money to buy) and Decision (authority to buy). It requires a door-to-door salesman (or woman) to ask lot of open-ended questions and listen and respond to their answers.

Pitching: When you make an offer and describe the benefits to your qualified prospect, it is called pitching. Knowing the lead’s needs is essential to your success. You provide a solution to their pain points and explain how your product makes their lives or jobs easier.

Closing: Closing is when you ask the potential customer to buy your product or service. There are numerous ways to ask for business, and finding the one that works best for you and each qualified prospect is a vital skill for successful door-to-door sales.

Follow-up: After the sale, the door-to-door salesperson should establish contact to ensure the customer received what they ordered, felt satisfied, and received answers to any questions they might have. This is called follow-up. It is essential to establishing a relationship with your new customer, and the gateway to future opportunities with the customer, should their needs change.

Cost of Door-to-Door Lead Gen

There are two types of leads in any organization:

1. Inbound leads: Any potential customers that you have as a result of marketing efforts (leads that find you through marketing material).

2. Outbound leads: Any potential customer that you have as a result of you contacting them (lead that you find).

How a sales rep handles an inbound lead is different than how he or she would handle an outbound lead. Whether a lead is inbound or outbound indicates where the lead is in the selling cycle.

Inbound leads are likely past information seeking. They are now determining who has the highest quality product or service for the best value. A sales rep would want to concentrate on building a relationship with an inbound lead.

Outbound leads are likely not information seeking. They were not planning on purchasing your product or service and might not have even been aware that your product or service existed. A sales rep would want to have a comprehensive and systematic follow-up process with outbound leads that establishes need and then follows up with solutions to the need that have benefits for the prospect.

If you handle all leads the same way, you miss the opportunity to help the lead from wherever they are in their buying process. This system leads to lost sales, which in turn drives up your cost per lead.

Many lead management software systems allow you to create a custom field to indicate which type of lead the sales rep has so they can prepare appropriately.

Traits of a Successful Door-to-Door Sales Professional

Like all sales professions, specific traits will help a door-to-door sales person achieve success. We have identified a few core skills and personality traits that most successful professionals share:

1. They know their product inside and out. To share the appropriate features and benefits, or even to establish need, the sales rep must have mastered product knowledge.
2. They provide value to the customer with their expertise. Customers are more educated than ever before with the resources available to them online. If the sales rep only tells them what they already know, they are not providing any value. HubSpot recommends that D2D sales professionals educate the prospect on what they can’t discover on their own, and thereby add value to the future customer’s experience in the sales process.

3. They build rapport with people they just met. The most successful sales professional in D2D sales (and otherwise) are people that have excellent emotional intelligence and are skillful in the art of finding connections with other people. Some people have these skills naturally and don’t have to think about it; others have to research a prospect to find common ground. However they do it, the ability to build rapport is a critical skillset in the D2D profession.

4. They understand how to ask questions that qualify prospects. The best ask questions that reveal pain points the prospect feels. By using open-ended questions to gather information and using close-ended probes to establish needs, they uncover how their product or service can help solve the prospect’s problems or answer their needs.

5. They are expert listeners. Once they ask questions, they let the prospect answer and actively listen. If you’re always talking, you are not hearing what the potential customer is saying that will get you closer to yes.

6. They are excellent at WIFM. Communicating the benefits a prospect will enjoy after their purchase is essential to getting to a yes. WIFM stands for, “What’s In It For Me?” The ability to provide the appropriate benefit of your product or service to answer the needs uncovered in the questioning and listening phase is crucial.

7. They know how to establish expectations for the call. It’s vital for the sales rep to help the prospect feel comfortable with the interaction. The most successful salespeople explain to the prospect what will happen next. InsightSquared.com suggest creating a Buyer-Seller Agreement, which is a verbal agreement that outlines what will happen next in the call. This makes the lead more comfortable.

8. They outline the purchasing process well. Honesty is key to building trust. Sales reps that explain what the prospect will experience before, during, and after the sale will be successful at establishing that trust—if they tell prospects the truth. HubSpot warns sales professionals not to play fast and loose with the features and benefits, or the possibility of adding a feature or benefit unless they know for a fact they can. If they are unable or unwilling to follow through, it damages the trust and ruins the relationship (and potential for future sales) with the customer.

9. They are strategic about prospecting and manage their time well. Smart prospecting can help establish a better lead stockpile. Whether that means calling on current customers and looking for referrals or reviving lost opportunities, InsightSquared.com suggests the most successful D2D sales reps are strategic in their efforts. Also, the most successful in D2D sales manage their time well, meaning they focus their efforts on the most likely candidates and recognize when a deal isn’t going anywhere.

10. They have a few ways to close. Knowing how and when to close is a critical skill for all sales reps, especially in the D2D sales environment. Not all customers are the same, and neither are your prospects. When you are presenting and handling objections, you should also be thinking of how you will ask for the order. For a few different options for closes, please click here.

11 Door-to-Door Sales Tips & Techniques to Crush Sales Quota

Master the product.

Why is this important?

Excellent product knowledge is paramount to your success. After all, you can’t sell what you don’t understand.

Actionable Tip:

Focus in your training on how to explain the features and benefits to someone who knows nothing about your product. Ask a friend or family member to listen to a demonstration. Then ask what questions they have or if they have feedback on your presentation.

Prospect smarter.

Why is this important?

Qualified prospects are the best prospects that will lead to more revenue for your company’s (and your) bottom line. By finding the fastest ways to identify qualified prospects, you shorten the selling cycle and close more sales. Additionally, by having a solid lead qualification process in place, you can sell with confidence knowing you’re not wasting valuable time pitching to an opportunity that’s a poor fit.

Actionable Tip:

Asking your satisfied customers for referrals is a fantastic way to get qualified prospects. Not only will a satisfied customer want to help you, but they are also likely to refer you to someone they know needs your product or service because they don’t want to irritate their contacts with a pointless sales call. This tactic might also work with people you are working with currently or recently interacted with, even if the outcome is still uncertain or was not a sale.

Find the pain.

Why is this important?

When the pain of change is less than the pain of the status quo, prospects will invest in solutions. Sometimes a prospect might have become accustomed to a pain point in their current situation; bringing it to the fore and reigniting its effects can help move a prospect forward in the sales cycle.

Actionable Tip:

Asking questions about common issues your product or service solves (and you know are prevalent in your prospect’s experience) is a way to uncover the pain. Asking how those challenges affect something that is important to the prospect, like their productivity, their time resources, or their profits, will get them to think about the importance of resolving the issue.

Employing the Sandler Selling method here would be ideal because this technique is built around selling to a prospects pain points.

Watch for body language.

Why is this important?

People communicate with far more than their words. Recognizing and understanding the visual cues that people give you can tell you a lot about what they think of your product or service—even if their words say something else.

Actionable Tip:

Entrepreneur.com recommends knowing your pitch so well that you can give it while simultaneously assessing the signals your prospect is giving you. Reading facial expression, body position, and even breathing patterns can give you information about whether you cold-call is giving you the cold shoulder or warming up to your suggestions.

93% of people’s judgment of others are based on non-verbal inputs like sales body language.

For the 5 body language mistakes that may cost you the sale, click here.

Pitch perfect.

Why is this important?

People form impressions of you fast. Some experts estimate that you make an impression that lasts in only 10 seconds. So, you need to communicate what you are selling and your best information, quickly.

Actionable Tip:

The perfect pitch is comprised of four parts: introduction, questions, present, and close. In other words, you should have mastered the four parts of the pitch before you even stepped out of your car. First, introduce yourself and your product while making eye contact and smiling. Then, ask questions to qualify the prospect, preferably with open-ended probes that get the prospect to do the talking. Present your product with the pertinent information first and keeping it short. Finally, ask for the business.

Realize the “no” faster.

Why is this important?

D2D sales is a numbers game, which makes time a vital resource for you. There is a lot of rejection involved. Some people are upfront about it, but many people are too polite. Polite people will let you pitch even when they have no intention of buying, which only takes up time you could be spending with someone who is interested. It’s better to get the no over with than to waste their time (and yours) being nice.

Actionable Tip:

Entrepreneur.com. says that you should make people comfortable saying no. In other words, give them an out if they are just being polite.

Example: “If at any point you feel the product I’m selling is of no value to you, please don’t hesitate to tell me so. You won’t hurt my feelings and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.”

If you have a product with you, you could show it, presenting it to them as a solution to their problem. Then you could ask them if they think your product is something that might help them or not. Not only will it allow them to politely decline earlier in the sales call, but it might also encourage them to look more closely at what you are offering rather than secretly plotting their escape from your pitch (politely, of course).

Craft a sales script.

Why is this important?

Knowing what you are going to say and what you need to find out will help a lot when you are making cold calls. In addition, it will help you seem eloquent and knowledgeable, which are important traits in a d2d sales success. Furthermore, it will help you stay on track and calm in a sales call that you are trying to move forward.

Actionable Tip:

Ensure that you take notes about your calls as you work. Over time, you can learn what qualified leads had in common. The script should include basic details, like the introduction and the pitch, but it should also have questions you use to qualify leads. By putting together a script you use as a road map, you can navigate the sales call and quickly eliminate those calls that are not going to buy while finding the best possibilities for a sale.

Learn how to handle objections.

Why is this important?

Objections are the reasons prospects have for not buying your product. In a D2D sales situation, these reasons might also be a way to put off a yes. It is your job to determine if the objection is really a no or just an obstacle to your next yes.

Actionable Tip:

Use the LAER model. LAER is an objection-handling concept created by Carew International (a leading provider of sales training, leadership development and customer service programs). LAER stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore and Respond. In other words, pay attention to their objection, accept that you understand it can be a problem, ask them why they feel they way they do, then reply to their feelings with empathy and an explanation that might convince them otherwise.

Focus on process.

Why is this important?

Sales is all about results. However, if you only focus on getting results, you are setting yourself up for a difficult journey. Many things about d2d sales success are not in your control. Your best bet to be successful anyway is to maximize the benefits of working on the things you can control. Things like your attitude and your responses are within your control. Promotions and territories you work are not. Keep working through the process rather than the getting the sale will bring you the results you need.

Actionable Tip:

Influencive.com suggests that focusing on what you can control is the best way to work your process. Concentrate on working efficiently, introducing yourself clearly, delivering effective presentations, and handling objections well will help you get the results you want.

Know your numbers, and track everything.

Why is this important?

Just like your process is crucial to your success, understanding your areas of opportunity are also. It is essential to record your activity and results, so you can identify these areas. The sooner you address a problem in your sales process, the quicker you will get the results you need. However, if you don’t know what’s wrong, it will likely just get worse.

Actionable Tip:

Influencive.com says that keeping a record of daily activity that includes how many calls you had, people you talked to, demos you performed, and units you sold. Then analyze your results. For example, if you didn’t talk to enough decision makers, you probably called on them at the wrong time. If you didn’t sell a lot, maybe your demo needs work. Once you identify what the trouble is, you can fix it.

Always follow up.

Why is this important?

In D2D sales, you just met the person. They likely need time to make a decision. You should follow-up later now that they know you, so you can establish a relationship and move the sales process forward to a win-win conclusion.

Actionable Tip:

Marketingwit.com advises door-to-door sales professionals to set aside time to canvass and then time to return for call backs. Keep an appointment app or book available so you can organize and optimize your call back schedule by neighborhood or business type. Also, whenever possible gather information like an email address so you can send a note and add them to any automatic follow-up software you might employ as well.

Within SPOTIO’s suite of sales enablement tools, our appointment setting feature is a great way to organize and manage the follow-up process. From the field, capture lead notes, input prospect’s contact details, view, set, and manage appointments. The best part? All this information will automatically sync back into SPOTIO, eliminating the task of having to re-enter field notes at the end of the day.

Canvassing Techniques

Canvassing is a skill as much as it is an activity. There are many things that the best door-to-door salesmen and women can do to improve their results.

Technique Tip #1: Gather prospect data for the follow up process.

First, sales reps should see canvassing as a time to meet potential customers, uncover needs, present products and make sales. However, they can also collect lead data for their follow-up process.

The follow-up process is key because many prospects might be highly qualified for your product or service, but not ready to buy right now. If you have their contact information, you can stay in touch in case things change later.

Most people are do not want to give you their email address for fear of getting spammed. However, if you offer them something for free that they can use, they might be more willing to give you the information. A free eBook for example that has industry insight or helpful advice for homeowners might be worth it to a prospect to surrender their email to you.

With that email, you can systemize and automate an email campaign that stays in contact with the prospect. If the potential customer’s circumstances change and he or she wants your products and service, your prospect will have an easy way to get in touch with you.

Technique Tip #2: Schedule an Appointment

During the initial conversation, the sales rep should have a feel for where the prospect is in the buying process. If they sense that more time is needed, they should switch gears to set an appointment rather than making a sale.

Selling an appointment is important to increase the likelihood that the appointment is kept. Polite prospects might make an appointment just to give the D2D sales professional a win at the moment only to cancel it later.

When the rep explains the benefits to the prospect for attending the appointment, the prospect will be more likely to keep the appointment. This technique will allow your sales reps to do more presentations, which has potential for more sales.

There are three critical steps to scheduling an appointment that will stick:

1. Present at least three benefits to the prospect for attending the meeting.
2. Ask for the appointment at a specific time and confirm the date and time with the prospect.
3. Give the prospect an appointment reminder card and ask them to write down the date and time.

Technique Tip #3: Be ready for what happens next.

Whether the answer is yes or no, you need to be prepared for what you want next. Bungle this moment and you could lose the whole prospect.

If the answer is yes, then you should be ready with the sales agreement or appointment scheduler, depending on the type of yes you are handling.

If the answer is no, then you should have a fall back request. For example, Citrus-Connect.co recommends leaving collateral with a request to forward it to another contact that might be in need of your product or service.

The important thing here is to have a positive interaction with the prospect to keep the door open for follow-up later. You might not have a yes today, but that does not mean you could not have one in the future.

Technique Tip #4: Be organized in your efforts.

It is a significant advantage to your success if you have planned ahead and optimized your canvassing efforts. Software programs can help you plot a route and map out a territory you are targeting with your canvassing efforts.

SPOTIO has a Route Planning function to help you create the path for your canvassing route. When you have an efficient route, you get more out of your day and more chances for results.

Technique Tip #5: Always leave behind collateral.

Leaving behind a brochure, card, or door hanger is an excellent way to build awareness about your presence and brand. They not only alert the prospect that you were there, but it might get them thinking about your product or service.

Always leave the collateral before you knock on the door. That way if the prospect answers the door, they will have a reminder of your visit after you are gone. If the prospect isn’t home, then he or she will know you were there.

When you follow up, the collateral might help introduce you and your product. It creates a great opener for you when you meet a prospect for the first time or come back for a call back appointment.

How to Recruit a High-Performing Door-to-Door Sales Team

Recruiting the right people for the job is a significant concern when you rely on canvassing for lead generation for your organization. If you hire the right people, it’s smooth sailing. If you do not, it can mean rough waters are ahead for your canvassing efforts.

One of the first things you should do when hiring a D2D sales team is to know who your ideal candidate is. What traits are you looking for and what kind of skill sets do you require?

You should also decide early if you want experienced D2D sales professionals or candidates that are new it. Experienced canvassers can get right to work and start delivering leads, but they might have a style of some bad habits that you do not want. New canvassers might be slower to start and get results, but you have the opportunity to train them exactly how you want them to do it.

We recommend at least three and as many as five ideal candidate profiles for your recruiting. While it will require a time commitment on the front end of a couple of hours, it will save you even more time in pointless screenings and interviews later.

You can find canvassing candidates online. Craigslist is a great resource for finding able-bodied candidates that fit one of your profiles. Another option is SearchTempest, a site that is a classified ad search engine. Other sites could be Indeed, Jobs.com, and social media sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook.

One employer used to recruit sports teams for canvassing. He would post signs around schools that offered to train high-school aged kids how to participate in door-to-door sales to raise money for travel. More options could be to recruit at community colleges or using yard signs.

Job Description

Your job description should reach out to the right candidates with the right benefits for the candidates. A generic job description will only yield generic candidates. An example could be:

Another example could be:

We have a great sales organization that will teach you everything you need to know about sales. We seek two new candidates for our team. We want to invest in you, so you can produce for us.

We have sales reps that consistently make over $750 per week.

But some make even more. Could you be one them?

If you want to bring an open mind and a positive attitude to us, we will give you all the tools you need to join and thrive on our experienced and successful team. Best of all, you don’t have to know what to do because we will show you.

If you want a job, then don’t call us. But if you want a career in sales with room to advance, give us a call today.

Interview Questions You Must Ask Your Door-to-Door Sales Professionals

Once you have the proper candidates responding to your ads, it is time for you to screen for the best of the bunch. Asking proper questions will qualify your candidates, much like they will do with their prospects. The crucial bit to remember is that you are trying to suss out those candidates that fit your profile of the ideal d2d salesman or woman.

Some examples of great questions could be:

– What do you do for fun?
– What motivates you and why?
– Where have you worked before and what did you like best and least about it?
– What programs do you like to watch on TV and why?
– Would you please describe for me a typical day for you on your last job?
– Can you please share an example of when you convinced someone to do something they were not interested in doing at the time?
– How do you set goals and hold yourself accountable to them?
– What do you want to be doing a year from now? Three? Five?
– Who was your best boss so far and what did you learn from him or her?
– What is the best thing you ever learned in a work training session that you still use today?
– How do you deal with rejection?
– How do you celebrate success?

3 Door-to-Door Sales Compensation Models

Many commission structure options exist for door-to-door to sales reps. All of them share the idea that when you hit your targets, you make more money.

From Commission-only to gross margin to tiered commission, how you earn is a vital part of the job you should understand.

Here are a few of the most common compensation models with pros and cons for each:

Commission Only

What it is: This compensation model does not have a salary. The earnings of the D2D sales professional are variable and dependent upon their ability to close. It is typically a 1099 arrangement, meaning that the sales reps are independent contractors.

Pros: This payment system is best for people that are self-motivated and eager to sell; these people can see sales as a career rather than just a job.

Cons: It can be tougher for people without as much experience as it can take some time to earn enough salary in the beginning; it can lead to high turnover and a negative company culture.

Gross Margin

What it is: While it may or may not have a base salary, a gross margin commission structure pays the D2D sales rep on the amount of profit a sale generates. For example, if the deal is for $1,000, but the cost associated with the sale are $300, then the rep earns commission on $1,000 minus $300, or $700 gross margin. Many organizations that employ this structure believe that all sales should be profitable for the company, and therefore pay less on those sales that have lower margin associated with them.

Pros: The sales rep earns more on sales with higher margins, so they concentrate on higher sales amounts, which will result in more commission.

Cons: Since the sales rep cannot control the costs associated with the order, they can get frustrated by lower commissions than they were expecting, which can result in more turnover.

Tiered Commission

What it is: When a company uses the tiered-commission style of compensation, they pay more commission on sales that occur after a certain level. For example, the sales rep might earn 5% commission on all sales up to $10,000 in a given period, but then earn an additional 3% on any sales over that amount for a total of 8% commission.

Pros: This commission structure benefits those sales reps who have already met their quotas to never stop closing. (In other systems, sales reps might sandbag orders to the following month once they hit their goal, which isn’t best for the company.)

Cons: Sales reps who aren’t going to get much higher than their goal one month might hold orders to the following month to maximize the commission amount they earn by blowing out the next quota (which also isn’t the best thing for the company).

We developed a dedicated resource to dive deeper into the subject.

Popular Door-to-Door Sales Industries

Many industries employ a door-to-door sales force. The breadth of the door-to-door sales industry spans a number of niches. Some of the most prominent include the following:

Solar Energy

The residential rooftop solar sales are part of the Solar Energy industry where homeowners agree to have solar panels installed to harness the energy of the sun.

Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because it is a consultative sales process for a complicated product that works best in a one-on-one, in-home consultation.

Roofing

Roofing is a traditional industry for door-to-door sales where the sales rep is presenting the features and benefits of a new roof to homeowners.

Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because the sales rep has access to the homeowner, the decision-maker and roofs need replacing from time to time.

Home Improvement

Home improvement D2D sales professionals demonstrate how homeowners can upgrade or maintain their homes.

Door-to-door sales works well in the industry because the sales rep is talking to the people who will make the decision with nearly every contact; they know which leads are viable within minutes.

Alarm/Security

Alarms and security systems that protect a homeowners property are another industry with a history of D2D canvassing efforts.

Alarms and security systems are a homeowner-focused target, so contacting homeowners is key to its success.

Telecomm

Telecommunications services has been successful in canvassing efforts because it is a product always in demand, and can be switched from a current provider, no matter what door opens.

Like the other industries mentioned, the homeowners are the decision makers and are easy to qualify quickly and accurately.

The Ultimate Door-to-Door Sales Toolset

The door-to-door sales reps’ sales stack you use is a crucial part of success in this type of sales. Both sales reps and managers need the right set of tools to succeed in d2d sales.

Reps

Tool #1 Route Planner

Route planner gives you route efficiency, so you are in the best possible area to talk to people about your product or service. Also, the mileage tracking feature helps you stay on top of your expenses.

Having a strategic approach to canvassing will boost your productivity, allowing you to concentrate on areas that are more likely to have a need that fits with your product or service’s features and benefits.

Tool #2 Lead Machine

Lead management software allows you to capture the potential customers’ data and any other specific details pertinent to the sales cycle quickly and easily.
This information is crucial to your follow-up efforts for both productivity and closing sales.

Tool #3 Appointment Setting

You need technology that makes it easy to schedule appointments as canvassing efforts are all about scheduling demonstration opportunities. Our Appointment Setting features make it easy to see your schedule, as well as any other team members.

Having a calendar feature built-in to your technology allows you to lock the appointment down in the moment.

Managers’ Sales Stack

Tool #1 Territory Management

Territory management software allows you to determine strategic territories for your sales reps to cover.

A strategic territory maximizes your team’s contact rate and allows the sales reps to spend more time talking with potential customers.

Tool #2 Sales Leaderboards

Sales Leaderboard tools track the success for your reps on a variety of metrics that measure performance against their peers.

Sales leaderboards encourage healthy competition between reps and boost engagement in contests and other metrics you use to motivate team members.

Tool #3 Rep Tracking

Rep tracking tools allow you to ensure that your reps are where they say they are in real-time. While it can help verify reports, it also can help pinpoint data about the area and its potential for your company.

When managers can track their rep’s activities, they can improve efficiency and ensure that the activities their sales reps engage in are the types that lead to more success.

Costly Door-to-door Marketing Mistakes

Canvassing has things that work and things that don’t. Learn from other people’s experiences and help yourself by avoiding these 7 common mistakes made by canvassing programs that have come before yours:

Not having a lead management software in place: If you don’t track every attempt to measure your success rate, the cost of canvassing won’t make sense with today’s competitive landscape.

Not having processes in place to track follow ups: Not following up costs you. You lose all the investment in your canvassing efforts when qualified leads slip through the cracks.

Not having training and on-boarding processes in place: You must invest in your sales reps, so they can produce new opportunities for you as quickly as possible. Having an efficiency when you bring in a new D2D sales professional helps you get to productivity faster.

Not training sales reps to work inbound vs outbound leads: The leads have different motivations. Ignoring that could mean mishandling a potential sale—and losing them to the competition.

Not having a process to follow up by phone and email: There are a number of reasons why a prospect might not be interested on the first attempt. By following up later, you miss out on opportunities whose circumstances have changed.

Not having email drip and lead nurturing campaigns: When you neglect to implement an automated lead development campaign, you miss out on collecting data and reduce the numbers of potential buyers you could contact.

Not collecting homeowner information at the door: It is crucial to get the information for any potential follow-up. It is never a complete no when you have an email address.

Ready. Set. Sell.

And there you have it. Everything you need to know about door-to-door sales to be successful at doing it, managing it, and implementing it.

Door-to-door sales is an excellent way to develop new leads and it’s vital for you to approach it with talent, strategy, and the right tools.

Door-to-door sales isn’t for everybody or for every type of business. But if you have the right combination of opportunity and talent, you can use it to take your business development efforts to a new level, with opportunities knocking on your door for a change.

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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.

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%.

IMAGE SOURCE

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.

Examples of SMART Goals for Sales Reps to Dominate 2019 [with TEMPLATE] (Part 1)

This is the first installment of ‘The Crush 2019’ Series. To help crush your quota this year, keep an eye out for Parts II and III. Part II focuses on dress tips to increase your earnings, and Part III offers examples of sales pitches with proven success that you can use to help craft your own.

Part II: Salesman Dress Tips
Part III: Sales Pitch Examples To Become A Quota Crusher

There are three tools that you’ll need in order to crush 2019:
1. Goals
2. Appearance
3. Dialogue

Finding Examples of SMART Goals for Sales Reps and Attempting to Set Goals Doesn’t Really Matter

Type “goal setting” into Google and hit enter. (Go ahead and try it… Seriously.)

My 0.61 second search yielded over 49 million results! You can easily become overwhelmed with the ungodly number of articles promising the most effective method of setting goals. With everyone searching for the “secret formula,” you’d think it would be out there, but the problem is most are searching for the wrong thing.

It’s not the goal setting aspect that matters.

The ‘Earth-Shattering’ Reveal

“To make something of yourself you must have goals,” said in that preachy father-like voice. We’ve heard it over and over from parents, teachers, media, motivational speakers, coaches, our favorite movies, and the list goes on. We’re bombarded with it until it’s become part of our being, so much so that millions of articles have been written about it, over 49 million to be exact.

We know how to set goals but often fail to recognize and understand how to actually achieve the goals we create for ourselves. Enter S.M.A.R.T. Goals – the best method to not only set goals, but make sure there’s a plan in place to reach our desired result.

Big Goals Invite Big Obstacles

It’s no secret that accountability produces results. Whether you’re a manager setting the quota for your team or a sales rep who won’t stop working 15 hours a day to get that beautiful new BMW that’s been on your mind, holding yourself accountable is the driving force that allows you to reach beyond your current disposition and realize your maximum potential.

To say that you’re going to encounter a few bumps in the road along the way is an understatement. Whether you’re setting sales goals or personal goals, the path to success is not void of obstacles.

The people who push on and persevere when everyone else so eagerly gives up are the people with the biggest goals. When you have small goals, every challenge proves more difficult and every obstacle seems larger.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals Stands For:

Specific               clear and unambiguous telling exactly what is expected
Measurable            concrete criteria for measuring progress toward goal attainment
Attainable         challenging and high reaching but ultimately can be achieved
Relevant             is in alignment with the individual, team and goal
Time Related              a committed deadline

SMART Goals Examples

SPECIFIC: More than just setting a goal to increase door knocks, a SMART goal would be to increase door knocks by 10 per day.

MEASURABLE: Have a concrete number to achieve. For example, increase sales by 17% by the end of the next quarter.

ATTAINABLE: Don’t set a goal that is not possible to reach. For example, increase door knocks by 10 per day is doable. Increasing by 500 is just unrealistic.

RELEVANT: If it doesn’t fit with the mission of the company as a whole, you may want to find a new goal to set.

TIMELY: There needs to be a due date on the objective. Increasing door knocks by ‘X’ amount by ‘X’ date is how you set a SMART sales goal.

Setting goals is crucial to success. Why? Because they hold you accountable, keep you motivated, and give you a way to measure success. There are some specific guidelines when setting goals to adhere to in order to make them attainable. By following the SMART guidelines you’ll create goals for your team or yourself that will increase the likelihood of you hitting them, which is the ultimate goal, right?

Questions to Get You Started & Set Objectives:

– What am I hoping to achieve?
– Where?
– How?
– When?
– With whom?
– Are there any limitations?
– What is the result of achieving this goal? What happens if I fall short?

Statistic Brain conducted a study of more than 4,000 individuals and found that very few people achieve their goals – what a shocker.

By “few people,” they mean only 8% of the study’s participants achieved their New Year’s goal in 2015. Additionally:

75% made it through their first week
71% made it past two weeks
64% made it past one month
46% made it past six months

To simplify this… Let’s assume all 325 million people in America set a New Year’s goal for 2019.

With an 8% success rate, a mere 26 million people would actually achieve their goal, leaving almost 299 million people whose goals would go unfulfilled.

Well That’s Sad, So What Gives?

Each goal that you create for yourself is important and needs to be accompanied by an action plan. This is your new harpoon to achieve results. The objective of goal setting isn’t to simply sit back and hope it becomes a reality, it’s to complete the necessary steps to see it through to fruition.

Half the battle is taking the time to write your goals, and the other half is putting them into action.

Unfortunately, the halfway point is where most sales reps stop.

Food For Thought: A goal that isn’t written is just a thought; a goal without action is just a written dream that soon vanishes.

Get into Action with these Examples of SMART Goals for Sales Reps

If you want this to be the best year of your life, follow these 5 steps to get started immediately and quit putting it off:

#1 | Write a list of your goals

#2 | Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to achieve this?” Then write all actions to be taken

#3 | Establish a measurement for success to identify how and when you’re successful for each action step, in addition to the overall goal

#4 | Create a time frame to complete each action step

#5 | Identify resources and individuals that will help you complete your actions

Once you’ve completed this plan, dedicate time in your schedule to complete the actions you’ve identified. Commit to waking up 30 minutes earlier or taking a shorter lunch so that you have more time to work each of your action steps. Whatever it takes!

SMART Goals For Door to Door Sales Reps [EXAMPLE]

As a sales professional your goals are likely income related. Whatever your number is, you can achieve more by clearly defining it. The last thing you want to do is wait until September to realize you’ve only earned $40,000 of your $100,000 goal. This would make it astronomically more difficult to achieve, so you need to be more specific.

For the reps selling a product with a short sales cycle, where the decision from a prospect is almost immediate in terms of whether they’re going to buy or not, break your larger goal down into smaller, more specific weekly goals. $100,000 per year is roughly $2,000 per week, so this would be a good weekly income target.

There are instructions on each sales goal template that provide a clear understanding of the sales activities that need to be completed on a weekly basis in order to hit your income goal.

Goal #1 = $2,000 Per Week In Income

If I told you to go make $2,000 this week, would you know where to start and what to do? While earning $2,000 per week is specific and measurable, it’s not necessarily attainable.

Instead, let’s set another sales goal – Goal #2. This is something you’re 100% certain can be attained. This needs to be something you can control each and every day. Don’t wander around with that helpless feeling of not knowing exactly what you need to do to hit your target. The point is to be able to wake up every day and know exactly what needs to be done.

There’s 4 must-know door to door sales metrics, but out of the hundreds of KPI’s in the sales universe, there’s one that you can control every day, without question – Attempts.

Attempts is the number of doors you knock, calls you make and emails you send each day.

It may rain, you might get sick, your car could break down or you could head out fabulous Cabo on vacation for a week, but in the grand scheme of things, you control the number of sales attempts you make.

Goal #2 = “X” Number Of Attempts

Your SMART Goals

Now that we have narrowed it down to goals that are SMARTer, it’s time to get started.

Goal #1: Sales Attempts Each Week
Goal #2: Income Earned Each Week

By focusing on these two areas you’re going to force yourself, or your team, to take the necessary steps to reach your sales goals. Creating a goal for sales attempts provides insight into your pipeline.

The number of attempts you or your team makes each week is great to track and measure because it’s a controllable. It’s also exceptionally beneficial if you understand how important your sales process is in door to door sales, specifically as it relates to follow ups. One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is not following up, regardless of the reasoning.

The truth is that your sales fortune is in the follow up because 48% of salespeople won’t even make a single follow up attempt. With 80% of sales requiring at least 5 follow ups after the initial meeting, you’re losing out on an absurdly ridiculous number of deals by not reaching back out.

HubSpot found that 44% of sales reps have an 80% chance of not closing the sale, since they’ll only make one follow up attempt when most require a minimum of five.

The income goal will have you focused on pushing potential customers through the pipeline quicker, having leads come out the other end as sales and income. Don’t put too much emphasis on one over the other because:

Greater Emphasis On Income = Not filling up your pipeline

Greater Emphasis On Attempts = Not driving your pipeline

Monitor KPI’s with a Sales Activity Tracker

To validate, monitor and achieve sales goals, you need to understand what is takes in order to achieve them. KPI’s are your eyes and ears to ensure you’re reaching targets.

Utilizing an activity tracker that’s tied into your sales software is a great way to coach your team and show reps the activities they need to accomplish in order to be successful.

However, any time a reps hears the word “tracking”, they automatically assume you’re “big brothering” them.

This is not always the case.

Tracking your desired KPI’s through activity tracking shows you the volume of each activity (contact attempts, pipeline velocity, opportunities, etc.) that needs to be attained in order to reach goals.

It’s not micromanagement, it’s providing actionable insight so reps can exceed their quota.

Result for Reps: more closes. Results for Managers: growth in revenue.

Using SMART Goals as a Sales Manager

A great exercise is to sit down with your team at the beginning of the year to walk them through this exercise. They might not even know their goals. Help them create their goals, track them and hold them accountable.

There’s no better way to have a happy sales team than when they are crushing their goals.

A similar exercise can tell you how many sales reps you need to hit YOUR goal.

The accountability starts now!

Quick Tip: Use SPOTIO’s in app chat and leaderboard to help hold your team accountable to completing their action steps and SMART goals by sending motivation messages.

Once you have completed this plan, dedicate time in your schedule to do the actions that you identified. Commit to waking up 30 minutes earlier, grabbing a cup of coffee and taking action toward your goals, or consider taking a shorter lunch to work on your action steps. Whatever it takes! Take these examples of smart goals for sales reps tips and begin your domination 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.

Sales Performance

CRM Types

What is a CRM?

Who Uses a CRM?

The Core Benefits of a CRM

Enhance customer relationships

Reduce data entry

Improve communication

Visualize pipelines

Reduce churn rate

Increase revenue

Collaboration

3 Main Types of a CRM

#1 – Operational CRM

Sales automation

Marketing automation

Key Features

#2 – Analytical CRM

Customer service

Customer satisfaction

Employee performance

Key Features

#3 – Collaborative CRM

Key Features

Accelerate Your Pipeline With Customer Relationship Management

3 reasons you need to nail your onboarding process

1. Better retention rates

2. Less ramp time

3. Greater sales results

8 Best Practices for Effectively Onboarding New Sales Reps

#1: Outline core competencies

#2: Map out a standard process

#3: Document everything

#4: Use pre-boarding

#5: Instill focus with a 30-60-90 day plan

#6: Provide ongoing training

#7: Show reps how “top-performers” do it

#8: Track rep performance

Start refining your sales onboarding process

4 Costly Limitations of Assigning Sales Territories with Google Maps

Problem #1 – No idea how many homes are assigned to reps

Problem #2 – No idea how many existing customers you have in each territory

Problem #3. No demographic information on the homeowners/businesses you should be targeting

Problem #4. No ability to plot multiple routes at a time

How to Map Sales Territories Faster and More Efficiently with SPOTIO

1. Map Territories With Demographic Data

2. Pinpoint Existing Customers & Get Referrals

3. Assign Territories By Number of Homes

4. Use City & Zipcode to Eliminate Grey Areas

5. Use Google Places Data to Find, Filter & Target Businesses

Final Thoughts

Sales Pipeline Basics

Pipelines Are Not The Funnel or Forecast

Buyer’s Journey Through a Sales Pipeline

Makings of a Good Pipeline

Improving Your Sales Pipeline

Table of Contents

What is Outside Sales?

Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales

What Does an Outside Sales Rep Do?

Prospecting For Leads

Tools that you can use to aid in prospecting:

Build a targeted prospect list:

Search for emails:

Most Important Skills for Outside Sales Reps

Sales Metrics You Need To Know To Improve Sales Performance

Contact Rate: the number of decision makers (DM’s) a rep speaks with.

Lead Rate: the number of leads generated from conversations.

Close Rate: the number of closed-won opportunities from the number of leads.

Average Revenue per Sale: the average amount of revenue a rep generates for each sale made.

Rate of Follow-up Contact: number of opportunities with at least 1 follow-up activity recorded.

Be organized – all the way through.

The first impression.

Handling rejection.

Know when to move on.

Qualifying the prospect.

Close the deal.

Answering objections.

Average Outside Sales Salary

How to Hire Top-Performing Outside Sales Professionals