Sales Productivity

25 Management Tools for Growing Field Sales Teams

Sales management is one of the most critical roles in a sales organization. Sales managers are tasked to manage the entire sales cycle, ensuring all tools, processes, and of course, people work in unison towards a common sales target.

As deals move through the sales cycle, the manager acts as an air traffic controller with the role of making sure all players have what they need and are where they need to be to hit the target.

There are many sales management and productivity tools on the market, leveraging things like real-time visibility, territory mapping, information, and sales process management capabilities.

In this article, we’ll introduce 25 sales management tools that can help managers be more productive, and better enable reps for success.

But, before we jump into the tools…

What is the Role of the Sales Manager?

Before we dive into the sales management tools, it’s first important to understand the critical job functions and responsibilities of the field sales manager.

People Manager: Motivating, training, conflict resolution etc
Customer Manager: Understanding customer needs and targeting.
Process Manager: Implementing and enforcing effective processes
Performance Manager: Think analytics and team tracking.

Now that we understand the core job responsibilities of the sales manager, let’s take a look at the tools that span each of these categories/ functions – People, Customer, Process, Performance.

Best Tools for Field Sales Managers

#1: Spotio Territory Manager

Functions: People. Performance.

SPOTIO Territory Management allows sales managers to look after their teams more efficiently and accurately while achieving the highest possible contact rate. It allows the creation of territories based on zip codes or a few targeted streets in a specific neighborhood.

Territories can be assigned to individual sales reps, mitigating the need for reps to drive around, seek the perfect neighborhood to knock or business to prospect.

To reap maximum benefits from a territory, it must be worked and reworked. Spotio Territory Manager also provides historical data, equipping sales management with the background and insight to coach their sales team to success.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#2: Sales Cloud by Salesforce

Function: Customer. Process. Performance.

Sales Cloud, built on the Salesforce Platform, is a modern cloud application platform that enables you to run your entire sales process. Sales Cloud helps you connect your customer touchpoints across disparate systems, apps, and departments — giving you a single view of your customer.

With Sales Cloud, Einstein’s artificial intelligence feature automatically captures data, reveals instant insights, and allows managers to proactively coach reps to win with predictive forecasting. With customer privacy prioritized, the platform offers a set of controls to manage the lifecycle of customer data and track preferences and consent of end users.

Four pricing plans are available:

Essentials | $25/month/user
Professional | $75/month/user
Enterprise | $150/month/user
Unlimited | $300/month/user

#3: Process.st

People. Process.

Process Street is a simple and free tool for managers to document their team’s recurring checklists and procedures. Using a drag and drop interface, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, collaborative workflows, and forms to capture structured data, users can quickly create and assign checklist workflows. Managers can track activity from the dashboard and get notified when tasks are done.

Four pricing plans are available:

Free Plan | Free
Business | $12.50/month/user
Business Pro | $25.00/month/user
Enterprise | Contact for Details

#4: Sales Intelligence by SPOTIO

People. Customer. Process.

Spotio’s Sales Intelligence offering, Lead Machine, is a one stop shop for identifying strong leads, managing sales and canvassing territories based on reliable, up-to-date data.

Lead Machine empowers residential sales teams to work more effectively and close more sales by targeting the best leads within a chosen territory.

Taking advantage of lead machine is simple. Draw your desired target area, establish an ideal customer profile (sort by income, square footage, credit capacity of homeowner, etc.), and once your target area and prospects have been identified, simply import those ‘best match’ leads and start selling!

For those going after businesses and corporations, SPOTIO’s integration with Google Places makes it easy for reps to find, filter, and target businesses in their territory. Imagine being able to search all “restaurants” and “retail stores” in an area then route the best path to get there.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#5: Xceleration

People. Performance.

Xceleration is a web-based platform offering the rewards, motivation and know-how necessary to create effective sales incentive programs.

The RewardStation® platform can manage every aspect of a sales recognition program ranging from day-to-day maintenance, comprehensive reporting and analytics to rewards fulfillment. A flexible solution, Xceleration allows users to design recognition solutions and reward options specifically tailored to each unique organization.

For pricing, contact Xceleration.

#6: Hoopla

People. Performance.

Hoopla believes the number one way to engage today’s employees is with transparency and appreciation. Hoopla’s Motivation Platform provides the means to communicate across your entire organization, creating engaged, and motivated individuals and teams.

Using tools like Hoopla TV, Hoopla Mobile, and Hoopla motivation platform, managers can pull data from existing sales applications and post live updates for the organization to see.

Two pricing plans are available:

Silver | $199/month
Gold | $399/month

#7: Brainshark

People. Process.

Brainshark provides a comprehensive platform for sales enablement and readiness including onboarding, product launches, new markets and competitive news.

Its sales training feature allows managers to deliver formal readiness paths for onboarding, provide learning content, and track progress.

It’s content authorizing solutions gives managers the ability to create video-based learning content, add interactivity with quizzes or attachments and ensure content is always up-to-date and accessible.

To learn more including how to access pricing information, go here.

#8: ReferenceEdge

Customer.

ReferenceEdge is a native Salesforce application for managing customer reference/advocate information and automating the reference request workflow.

Users can track who is a reference, for what and how often they may be used and issue and redeem reward points for completed referral activities. Managers can measure program impact through extensive reports and dashboard charts, improve sales & marketing efficiency, shorten the “quote to cash” cycle and win more deals.

Pricing starts at $5 per month.

#9: FirstRain

Customer. Performance.

FirstRain uses data science to transform business decision making, real-time analytics to help managers make timely decisions, and machine learning to help sales leaders make sense of their internal content. Sales organizations can provide their reps with personalized reasons to call, key developments, and sales triggers delivered daily aligned with end-user workflow.

For pricing information, go here.

#10: Factiva

Customer.

Using a global news database of nearly 33,000 premium sources, including licensed publications, influential websites, blogs, images and video, Factiva brings users insight to inform better and faster business decisions through its powerful search, alerting and research capabilities.

74% of Factiva’s premium news sources are not available on the free web and thousands more are available via Factiva on or before the date of publication by the source.

Managers who are looking for a global point of view or to track highly specific news that is tailored to drive business decisions can use Factiva as an aggregate and easy-to-use source.

For pricing information, go here.

#11: Adobe Connect

People. Process.

Adobe Connect allows you to create digital training, webinar, and collaboration experiences. You can create interactive learning experiences that engage users, create compelling micro-sites, manage emails, and measure engagement.

Managers can bring their teams together using virtual rooms that can be customized with content, layouts, branding, and URL.

For pricing information, go here.

#12: Rep Tracking by SPOTIO

People. Customer. Process. Performance.

SPOTIO rep tracking allows managers and leaders to track their sales forces in real-time to ensure sales reps are completing territory assignments. SPOTIO’s location verification tool tags each rep’s location as pins are dropped to show:

Verified – tracks the sales rep within a 300 foot (100 yard) radius of the address of a dropped pins.
Un-Verified – sales rep was not tracked within the 300 foot radius.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#13: Zoomforth

Customer.

Zoomforth is a communication tool that helps sales reps find and leverage personalized content to propel the buyer’s journey forward. It uses an easy-to-access repository and integrated email plugins to help users nurture and sell to an account with the ability to customize sales communications to address each buyer’s unique challenges and goals.

Managers can improve their teams’ productivity by allowing each rep to focus less time on administrative tasks and more time selling.

For more information including pricing, go here.

#14: e-Contracts by SPOTIO

Customer. Process.

SPOTIO e-Contracts gives sales reps immediate access to the files they need when they need them. Users avoid the need to email files back and forth to get contracts signed while gaining the ability to close business on the spot. Reps can also take pictures onsite as well as access needed files on the spot, such as product spec sheets, presentations, etc.

Managers are able to track their team’s contract documents in one easy place to boost up close speeds.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#15: Proposify

Customer. Process.

Proposify streamlines the creation of quotes, contracts, and other sales documents. Sales teams can quickly access and collaborate on proposal content while managers oversee activity with roles and permissions, commenting, and tracking through version history.

Proposify notifies sales teams every time the client interacts with the proposal, from opening the email to closing the deal.

Three pricing plans are available:

Tall for Individuals | $25/month
Grande for small businesses | $75/month
Vente for large businesses | $250/month

#16: Slack

People. Process.

Slack helps sales teams work smarter with cross-functional partners. Managers can set up public channels for improved visibility between sales, marketing, product, and support so all groups are working towards the same goals.

Managers can implement Slack to boost morale by announcing deals and congratulating contributors across distributed teams and offices. Posters can share context behind the deal, like challenges and lessons, so everyone can grow together.

Three pricing plans are available. To learn more, go here.

#17: Quickvoice

Process.

Quickvoice is an audio recording solution for desktop or laptop computers. Sales reps and managers can use QuickVoice to record memos, dictations, reminders, ideas, “to do” lists, meetings, phone conferences, interviews, entire lectures or seminars.

Using QuickVoice’s “Message Pallette” users can drag and drop recordings into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other audio supporting programs.

QuickVoice is available for $15.

#18: Lead Management by SPOTIO

Process. Performance.

The process and method of lead management is what drives the success of a sales team. SPOTIO’s Lead Management tool allows users to capture specific details about each prospect. It helps users stay organized, focus on the true needs of prospects, save time, and achieve more sales.

SPOTIO’s Lead Management eliminates the need for sales managers to use multiple tools to collect and track leads. It makes it easy gain access to lead-specific information, and eliminates the risk losing leads between tools.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#19: Skype for Business

People. Process.

Skype helps sales organizations stay connected using instant messaging, video and audio chat capabilities and online meetings with robust collaboration capabilities. Sales managers can use Skype to keep teams connected as well as to stay in touch with their sales teams in various ways. With one click, anyone can join an online meeting from any device. Users can choose to meet right away, or schedule for later. The meeting URL is personalized for each user.

Skype for Business is a feature of Office 365. Three Office 365 business pricing plans are available. For corporate pricing, go here to learn more.

Business | $8.25/month/user
Business Premium | $12.50/month/user
Business Essential | $5/month/user

#20: LinkedIn Sales Navigator

People. Process. Customer.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes social selling easy with sales tools that focus on helping reps find the right prospects to build trusted relationships. Managers can scale their social selling strategies and start putting their sales team’s network to work.

By selecting individuals/organizations you want to go after, Sales Navigator will auto-suggest other similar profile. This is beneficial in that it opens your eyes to organization’s you didn’t know about, helping you grow your potential opportunity pipeline further.

For trial and pricing information, go here.

#21: Gong.io

People. Customer. Performance.

Gong captures sales conversations, phone calls, web conferences, and emails. It then uses AI to uncover patterns and opportunities. Gong picks apart what’s working, what’s not, and how high-performing sales reps communicate. The best talk tracks and habits can be shared across teams.

For more information, including pricing, go here.

#22: ExecVision

People. Customer. Performance.

ExecVision is a conversation intelligence software that was built to empower organizations to coach people efficiently at scale, improving performance and driving revenue. Using AI, managers can understand why some calls go well and others do not. They can audit whether reps are asking the right questions and use insight to manage their teams to success.

For pricing information, go here.

#23: LearnCore

People.

LearnCore is a training, onboarding and coaching software with full eLearning capabilities as well as video role-playing technology. Managers can support their team’s skill development plan and track team performance against required certifications.

LearnCore has three core components:

Learn (consume content)
Test (assess knowledge)
Pitch IQ (practice and improve through video coaching)

Standard and Professional plans exist. To request pricing, go here.

#24: Leaderboards by SPOTIO

Performance. People.

Encourage healthy competition through sales leaderboards and contests to drive the business forward. Sales contests are one of the best ways to drive team engagement and throttle results heading into the end of month / quarter / year. SPOTIO’s communication features encourage sales rep engagement and an open feedback loop with managers.

Managers have a platform to measure field performance against peers and engage with staff while promoting open communication across teams.

SPOTIO plans:

Basic | $29/month/user
Team (5+) | $39/month/user
Business (10+) | $69/month/user
Enterprise (100+) | $129/month/user

#25: Nerdy Data

Customers. Process.

NerdyData is a search engine designed to find the code, tools, and licenses your competitors or your prospects’ competitors are using. This tool is great for sales reps to use when designing a custom marketing package to present to their prospects.

Managers can provide sales teams with accurate list of prospects, target ads via platforms like LinkedIn Matched Audiences, perform market share analysis and see how many clients each competitor has, and identify websites using software without a license.

Two pricing plans are available:

Lead Generation | $50/month/user
Enterprise Research | $120/month/user

To Conclude

Managing a sales organization is not an easy job, but it doesn’t have to be complicated or challenging. By ditching your spreadsheets and implementing proper sales tools, you can more easily focus on your organization’s people, process, performance, and customers, and drive for further success.

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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.

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.

Image Source

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.

Sales Manager Skills Essential for Success

“Sales executives generally agree with the idea that the best salesperson does not necessarily make the best sales manager.” – Harvard Business Review

What skills does a winning sales manager need? After being neglected for decades, essential sales manager skills and training are finally getting some attention.  

Technical Skills

Sales managers usually have 3 audiences:

1. Their sales team,
2. Their customers, and
3. Their company executives.

Sales managers must understand how these audiences are different, what specific information they need and how best to present that information. Technical knowledge of how and where to find the information is just the beginning.

The sales manager skills needed here are:

1. Excellent presentation skills
2. Analysis and CRM skills
3. Market knowledge
4. Product knowledge
5. Excellent communication skills
6. Forecasting and strategy skills

Sales managers need a thorough understanding of the sales pipeline, sales process and correctly placed milestones. For a more thorough discussion of evaluating your sales pipeline and how it affects your sales team, watch Jeff Johnson’s discussion here.

Human Skills

Leadership focuses on the interpersonal relations between a manager and one or more subordinates, with the goal of improving organizational effectiveness.  – Thomas N. Ingram

Sales managers must think in terms of supporting their teams. While setting a good example is important, regular coaching that meets the needs of individual sales reps is most effective. A sales manager must be able to identify and help new or struggling sales reps and be flexible and adaptable in meeting their needs.  

The sales manager will need to have:

1. Willingness to lead
2. Relationship skills, including listening skills
3. Strong communication skills
4. Ability to teach, coach and mentor
5. Ability to inspire and motivate
6. Ability to collaborate
7. Ability to delegate

Conceptual Skills

“You can make more progress by going to work on your weakest area than you can by working on any other task. And the best news is that all sales management skills are learnable.”  – Brian Tracy

Organizational skills affect virtually all levels of the sales. A manager’s business acumen will empower his sales team and keep them headed in the right direction. Sales managers have to combine motivation with accountability. Staying ahead of problems is the best way to prevent them.  

The human element is important here, too. The sales manager’s understanding and insight into customers and the ability to hire and train effective sales reps will affect his company’s future. Efficiency comes into play here, too. Organized sales managers make better use of their team’s time.

Essential sales manager skills needed are:

1. Excellent negotiation skills
2. Business acumen
3. Organizational skills & strategic planning abilities
4. Staffing, recruiting & hiring talented sales reps
5. Reviews & performance management
6. Ability to achieve sales targets
7. Client relation skills

Conclusion

Sales managers have to navigate a fundamental change in role, from individual success to success through others. They need a depth and breadth of knowledge about their product, company and sales process combined with the ability to motivate and train their sales team members.

Managers and teams that have received integrated enablement training have posted impressive gains, up to 12.9%, according to the 2017 CSO Insights Sales Manager Training report. In short, highly skilled sales managers result in highly effective sales teams.

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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.

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References:

2017 CSO Insights:  Sales Manager Training:  Overwhelmed and Underdeveloped
From Selling to Sales Management:  A Developmental Model
Key Skills of An Effective Sales Manager

 

 

Six Ways To Cold Call Your Way Into Selling Success

Think that, in today’s digital world, the business cold call is dead? Guess again. Like all classic selling tools, the cold call has had to undergo some significant changes to keep up in today’s corporate world where many professional relationships are forged and sustained via text, email, and tweet.

However, when done consistently and properly, cold calls can prove a formidable force in your field marketing strategy.

Does the mere thought of launching a cold call campaign invoke mild to moderate panic? You’re not alone.

Most account executives would prefer to test the selling waters using a more virtual interactive approach. Fortunately, it is possible to get over your aversion to dialing your way to a sale.

Don’t go into the cold call process cold; know a few proven tips before you hit the phones to help increase the odds of a meaningful client engagement that keeps the sales process moving forward and lands you more face-to-face appointments.

#1 | Know Your Audience

Recent statistics show that 42% of sales reps feel they do not have the right information before making a sales call, making preparation key to success. Do your research before your call.

First and foremost, know your product. After that, know who you’re calling, their business, and how what you’re offering addresses a pain point or resolves a problem for them.

#2 | Opening Is Key

It’s common in sales; sometimes we’re so focused on the close, that we overlook the importance of the open. First impressions count and can make or break the call before it ever really begins. Don’t wing it; prepare an opening statement to keep you focused.

Forget about asking questions like “Did I catch you at a good time?” or “Do you a moment to chat?” Instead, be ready to greet, introduce yourself, mention something specific about the prospect (pain point, industry news, etc.), touch on the benefits of your products, and transition into the conversation from there.

#3 | Prepare A Script

Yes, really. Your script doesn’t have to be anything rigid or formal; all you really need is a simple outline of benefits, possible objections, and potential responses. Not having a cold calling script increases the odds of leaving out key information or (gasp!) babbling. Use it as a reference throughout the call to keep you focused.

#4 | Ditch The Premature Pitch

Many sales reps, in an effort to get the call over as soon as possible, race to the pitch. Take your time. Be confident. Let the dialogue unfurl naturally, using a “talk less, listen more” approach so you can gain insight into what your prospect wants and needs before launching into your sales pitch.

#5 | Take Control Of The Call

Successfully keeping the conversation on track and moving forward requires a careful balancing act where you challenge your prospect without coming on too strong. If you find the interaction running off-road, gently, but assertively, guide your prospect to keep the call moving forward toward a sales.

#6 | Don’t Give Up To Soon

Effective cold calling is generally never a “one and done” initiative. Don’t quit if the first call was unsuccessful. Recognize that you’ll likely have to call the same prospect several times before feeling a little tangible sales momentum. The good news? Every engagement with the same person allows you a chance to build on your existing rapport with the prospect, making each subsequent call feel a little less cold.

What’s your go-to tip for a successful cold call? Tell us all about it in the comments section below!

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation 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.

Metrics Your Field Sales Ops Teams Should Be Tracking

Key Sections:

1. Choosing the Right Metrics
2. Process & Procedure Metrics
3. How to Make Metrics Matter

On the surface, selling seems simple. Your sales team just needs to talk to prospects about their problems and your solutions. However, as a sales manager you know it’s not actually so cut and dry.

There’s a little more management and organization that goes into having an effective and efficient field sales team. That’s where the sales operations team comes in.
While your sales is focused on direct customer interaction, your sales operations team must keep the sales machine moving forward. If outside sales reps are your boots on the ground, the sales operations team are your eyes in the sky.

Choosing the Right Metrics

Part of the job of your sales operations team is to track and communicate metrics. These sales operations metrics should keep tabs on the entire sales process, starting all the way back at employee hiring and training.

Sales Team Metrics

Training

Keep track of how many training sessions the sales team attends each month. After all, they’re your product experts and need to be up to date on the latest product updates. Then, check back throughout the year to find the percent still applying training six months out.

Training is a worthwhile investment, granted it’s being implemented. For an outside sales rep in the field, it’s easy to forget what was taught in product training. Providing field sales reps with a digital version of spec sheets and marketing slicks to view on their mobile device will go a long towards training retention.

Continuous training gives 50% higher net sales per employee.

Don’t forget to monitor the portion of reps following the sales process from the handbook. Continuously reviewing best practices makes the entire team work as a consistent and powerful sales machine.

Employee Retention

Keeping track of your turnover and hire rates helps your team prepare for the future. The average turnover rate for sales reps is around 25%, but you should aim for closer to 10%. Some turnover is natural, but losing top talent or large portions of your team each year will keep you from reaching quota.

Keeping track of the percentage that accepts employment offers will also give insight into how attractive your company is to an outsider.  

Relationship with CRM

The sales operations team are the pilots of the CRM. Their first task is to make sure sales rep actually use the tools available since only around 40% of businesses have a strong CRM adoption rate. Record the average time spent selling vs. on overhead tasks.

Having sales reps document the percentage of time spent on manual data entry can also reveal inefficiencies in daily tasks. Complex and unintuitive mobile functionality of heavy hitters, like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, make it difficult for outside sales reps to input data in the field.

CRM adoption will skyrocket if your team of reps has access to a CRM that is easy and efficient to use while out and about.

Process & Procedure Metrics

Achieving and surpassing sales goals starts with the team’s everyday tasks, but management will also want to see results.

Win Rate

This is a non-negotiable metric. If you don’t know what percentage of leads turn into a sale and what the average deal is worth (customer acquisition cost), then forecasting will be impossible. The type of sales quota you choose for your team may vary, but it needs to exist in your reporting in some manner.

The RAIN Group Center for Sales Research found that the 33%, but this metric will obviously vary across team, company, and industry.

47% is a starting benchmark to measure yourself on. To calculate the win rate:

Total Number of Sales Closed / Total Amount of Opportunities = Opportunity Win Rate

Once you’ve calculated your current win rate, it’s important to track your average win rate over time. Perhaps your goal is to create a team of elite performers that the RAIN Group’s research found represented 7% of sales teams. These “best of the best” sales reps consistently pull win rates in excess of 70%.

Average Sales Price

Another metric needed to understand sales process effectiveness is the average sales price or deal value. Want to take your awareness even further? Calculate the average sales price by lead source, shown in the table below. When you know not only your average deal size, but also where your most profitable leads come from, your sales team can focus efforts on the most lucrative leads.  

Seeing the value per lead by source also shows weak areas where the sales process needs improvement.

Sales Cycle

In addition to knowing how successful your sales team’s efforts are, you need to understand what goes into selling and how long it takes. This will vary based on your company and sales strategy. For example, the sales cycle for consultative selling is more involved than transactional selling.

A typical sales cycle of 15 days will tell a very different forecasting story than a six-month sales cycle. Starting with an understanding of how long a typical sale takes, keep track of which promotions reduce the sales cycle the most. Offering a deal to leads at a certain stage of the sales cycle or setting up a contest between sales reps can give sales a boost.

In addition to understanding the sales cycle from a company level, new outside sales reps should also have a 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan. This type of onboarding guide keeps new hires focused and learning everything they need to know within their first months on the job.  

Pipeline Forecast

With your win rates in hand, it’s time to turn to the sales pipeline. Count the total open and closed sales by team and individual each quarter. Measure the corresponding value of sales by quarter, as well. If you aren’t able to accurately forecast it will be nearly impossible to manage your sales team.

Outreach Effectiveness

Are the sales scripts and processes your reps are following returning results? Track engagement rates for each team member.  Your CRM should provide the conversion rate for engagement tactics. Another useful metric for monitoring outside sales rep activity is a measure of “touch counts.”

Seeing whether or not a sales rep is following up the appropriate amount of times helps you keep the team accountable.

Lead Response Time

Prompt communication can make or break a sale. Keep track of average response time, and the percentage of responses sent within the desired timeframe. Lead efficiency can also be uncovered through the percent of qualified leads.

How to Make Metrics Matter

Data is important, but it isn’t enough to dump a bunch of numbers and KPIs into a report for upper management. Without a succinct analysis, numbers don’t matter.

By tracking sales operations metrics over time, you’ll be able to create a quarterly story for both your team and your superiors. Compare this quarter’s metrics to past performance, and use the difference to convey weak points and strong suits.

Is the sales cycle becoming more or less efficient? Are hiring and retention efforts continuing to work and are team members using your CRM to its fullest potential?

Metrics including the number of sales reps you have, average deal size, and win rate come together in a forecast to determine if you’re set up for realistic success. You’ll then need to combine your goals for the upcoming quarter with any limitations, such as a hiring budget, to prioritize improvements.

Creating a short narrative based on the changes you see will help you convey the current state to those around you, as well as organize your strategy for improvement in the coming quarter.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation 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.

You Have A CRM – So What?

Running a sales organization requires equipping your team with the tools and resources they will need in order to be successful. For many business owners, this means implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system. At its core, a CRM offers an electronic platform to store all manner of client (both current and potential) information to help unearth leads, pinpoint new selling opportunities, and arm your staff with the information needed to optimize every client engagement. Sounds great, right?

Yes and no.

Theoretically, the concept of long-term, easily accessible data sets on relevant companies, contacts, and communication offered by a CRM system can help organizations build, sustain, and grow their client base. However, many executives realize too late that implementing a CRM platform alone only offers a static and partial solution to achieving their overall corporate goals and vision.

Recognize The Biggest Flaws In Your CRM System

Whether you’re struggling with an existing application that isn’t meeting your expectations or considering launching a new system throughout your organization, it’s critical to recognize some of the most significant shortcomings in the CRM design. Understanding some of the reasons why your CRM is failing can help you create a customized integration best suited for your specific business needs or improve final results with your current process.

Some of the most common CRM flaws include:

Data Silos

Yes, in many ways CRMs help to centralize key data sets, instantly eliminating information silos within the sales team and other departments. However, a CRM integration can often create new silos between specific internal functions and even other branch locations that utilize different technology processes to manage operations.

Lack of Real-Time Data

Today’s business enterprises are digitally connected on a global scale, making access to live data a mission-critical component in any client transaction. Unfortunately, most CRMs require manual data entry from sales, which means that retrieved intelligence could (and often does) have a relevancy shelf life that won’t get updated again until someone on the team manually adjusts the information.

Limited Visualization Tools

Most CRMs offer some type of reporting, metric analysis, and dashboard capabilities. However, oftentimes account executives have a limited range of visualization resources made available to them.

Inconvenient Mobile Functionality

CRM technology, developed long before the internet, was initially designed for data entry on computers and workstations. Today’s on-the-go, field sales reps frequently find the mobile functionality of their systems non-intuitive and frustrating, prompting them to wait until they return to the office to enter in relevant details, or most commonly, skip entering field notes all together. This time-lapse can compromise data integrity as sales reps forget vital details of their client engagement – or forget about logging the interaction altogether.

Having a CRM is imperative, but a CRM alone is not enough. Like Thanksgiving dinner, you need more than just the turkey; side dishes are required to make it a meal.

Unleash CRM Potential With Sales Performance Software

The best way to minimize performance gaps and optimize ROI with your existing CRM platform is to augment the system with a sales performance management software solution. A well-designed sales performance tool will fully-integrate with your current CRM, exponentially improving overall functionality and user experience.

Enhancing your CRM with sales management technology expands reporting capabilities, instantly empowering your team with deep-dive data mining for big-picture, live business intelligence that can be displayed using dynamic reporting visualizations.

Additionally, sales performance innovation streamlines mobile data management to encourage your infield reps to log client contact details in real time to maintain the highest standards of data integrity, ultimately helping your team to better identify leads and maximize opportunity to close with every client interaction.

Want to hear more about using sales performance management technology to unleash the power of your existing CRM? Contact us today!

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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.

The Complete Guide to Sales Territory Mapping

There’s a lot of strategy and leg-work that goes into proper sales territory mapping. This is a crucial part in setting your team up for success.

It can be a tedious process, but it’s necessary to ensure your team is canvassing the right area and not just going in blindly.

What is a Sales Territory Map?

A sales territory map is a plan of attack for your sales reps. Mapping gives you the ability to designate areas and assign specific territories to each rep. With Territory mapping software, cut territories that meet your criteria and allocate across your sales team. Not only does mapping out territories mean you only targeting prospects that are viable contenders to make a purchase, it keeps reps from overlapping and poaching each other’s sales.

Benefits of a Clearly Defined Sales Territory Map

Cut territories. Map out territories and assign to  reps.
Territory hierarchy. Create hierarchies so everyone on the team knows exactly where to go.
Real-time visibility. Managers and reps can work together to ensure every territory is fully covered.
Stay organized. Easily edit, manage and delete territories as reps move around.

The Old School Approach to Sales Territory Mapping

One of the reasons this process has been such a pain for so long is because of how it’s been done.

Using the “highlighter and Google Maps” method leaves a ton of room for error and confusion. You have no way to determine how many homes you’re assigning to each rep, how many customers you have in each territory you assign, or the demographics for the homeowners you should be targeting.

Not to mention once you send the team out with their printed maps you rarely ever get them back therefore have no historical idea where you’ve worked or haven’t worked.

Using highlighters and maps leaves a lot of room for dispute between sales reps.

Consider this situation:

1. They’ll knock outside of the territory you assigned them claiming they weren’t sure where it ended.
2. Then, the rep who is assigned to that territory will get upset about the sale another rep made in their territory.

Who do you give the sale to; the rep who closed the deal or the rep whose territory that sale is assigned to?

Turning what should be a celebration into a dramatic debacle.

4 Ways to Map Sales Territories

To save time, be more efficient, eliminate confusion and increase performance, create and assign territories for your team using the following strategies:

1. Target Market Demographics
2. Current Customers in Each Territory
3. Evenly Distributed by Number of Homes
4. Evenly Distributed by City / Zip

1. Target Market Demographics

One of the most effective strategies for creating territories is to gather the demographics of your target market before sending your team out to knock doors.

This will eliminate the amount of time your reps spend in the field knocking aimlessly. You shouldn’t want your reps making attempts on homes you know either won’t close, or have a low possibility of closing.

Using a tool like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine will help you to identify key territories, target qualified customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP), and ensure that your team is knocking doors that have real buying potential.

You’ll also have the ability to track the progress of each of these leads in your funnel through the app. This will prevent leads that you’ve spent money on from slipping through the cracks and increase the return on your investment.

Obviously you have to be able to identify your target market in order to purchase any type of leads. Some criteria are more important than others, like homeowners vs. renters, credit score, home market value and median home income.

The more information you have about your current customers, the better. It will allow you to understand where you’re having the most success and help you to identify higher quality potential customers with a greater chance of buying.

Another tool you can check out is a website called City Data.  Scroll down and choose your state and then you’ll have access to hundreds of segmentation options.

To learn how to best use this site download our free ebook below:


2. Current Customers by Territory

Your current customers are extremely valuable to your business, and not just because they purchased your product or service.

Your customers can provide you with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads – referrals. You just have to ask.

Start by generating a list of all of your current customers. If you use a sales tracking app like SPOTIO, it’s simple to upload this list into your account, or you can simply sort the pins in your account by the status you created to signify a closed-won deal.

If you’re not using a sales tracking app, you’ll have to map these addresses by hand individually. It will be a much longer process, but well worth it.

Once you’re able to see all of your customers on a map, draw out territories for your reps to work based on these locations.

There are two strategies to this approach:

1. The first is to evenly distribute the number of customers in each territory for your sales reps.
2. The other option if your customers are more spread out is to assign a couple smaller territories to each rep, but still distribute them as evenly as possible.

The goal by doing this is to use your current customers as references when pitching a new prospect. You can also have your team visit satisfied customers to ask for referrals.

3. Evenly Distributed by Number of Homes

Making sure that sales reps have enough doors to knock is essential to their performance and production.

Without a sales territory mapping software, you can spend hours on this process. A sales territory mapping software significantly simplifies this process, saving you many hours and ensuring greater accuracy.

Create and assign territories based on the number of houses you want each rep to work at one time.

Start this process by determining the number of houses you want each rep on your team to have. As you start drawing out an area in SPOTIO, the app will tell you the estimated number of homes in that territory. You can always adjust it if there’s too many or note enough.

Using a territory mapping software will allow you to create even territories for your entire team in less than 10 minutes. If you choose 500 as the total number of homes you want to be in each territory, you just need to be close to that number. It’s not important for it to be exact; 475 or 525 is close enough.

If you want to guesstimate the number of houses in a sales territory consider that on ¼ acre lots which are common you will get 1,000 houses in a 1 mile by 1mile areas.

Territory Size Estimations for Sales Territory Mapping

4. Distributed by City or Zip Code

Creating territories by city or zip code is a little bit trickier because of the size of the area. Even if every city was the exact same size, the number of homes wouldn’t be.

There’s a variety of factors in play when creating territories by city or zip code. The demographics in each city can vary dramatically and will influence the number of potential customers for a rep to visit.

Distributing territories by city or zip code is one of the easiest methods because it’s black and white; there’s no grey area.

You tell a rep, “This is your city or zip code, and if you get a lead or sale outside of your territory, it’s going to the rep that territory belongs to.” Creating territories this way eliminates a lot of the conflict and guesswork for sales reps.

Because cities or zip codes vary in the number of houses, you may need to assign two or three to a rep.

These territories will have a ton of homes to work. They’re not going to be quick to work through and shouldn’t be changed frequently like smaller territories may be. Using a territory mapping software will help you to ensure you distribute the number of houses for each rep to work evenly by the city or zip code.

Bonus: Here’s a free Zip Code map you can use to slice and dice your marketplace by zip codes if you want to create your sales territories this way.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in the Territory Mapping Phase

Here is a short list of issues and errors managers can implement, which will improve their effectiveness in territory mapping:

Mistake #1:  Using limited data – and using the wrong territory management tool.

If you don’t know your client and, or account data, you can’t accurately know how well the sales rep is doing let alone make improvements. You also want to refrain from making continuous changes to sales territories, as it will negatively impact client engagement. However, you will want the ability to make modifications in the territories occasionally. Key here, find the ‘BEST’ CRM tool to aid you in this process.

Mistake #2: Leaving your sales team out of the picture.

In order to be effective in territory mapping, you NEED to involve your sales reps and teams. Taking into account the experience of your sales reps/teams will help to motivate them. This will encourage you to have the right reps in the right territories and make sure that the business is in their prospective territory. By doing so, you will ensure you have a plan in place that your sales reps/teams can embrace, and get behind.

Mistake # 3:  Getting overwhelmed with spreadsheets.

If you want to ‘win’ in sales performance and motivate your reps/teams, you MUST incorporate the right tools and applications to help you manage and evaluate your reps/teams. This will give your reps/teams the visibility into their targets, schedules, and the ability to align the right reps with the right accounts/products, which will minimize the sales assignment process and increase sales.

In defining a sales territory and determine if the territory mapping is efficient, you need to make sure of a few things:

Make sure the product that’s being sold in the territory is in demand, in the right market, and that there is the adequate transport facilities. You also need to know your competition! If sales are being made on a consistent basis and sales goals are being met, you’ve got the right territory mapping in place!

EXAMPLES of how to determine territory workload:

Workload (#) = [Current accounts (#) * Average time to service an active account (#)] + [Prospects (#) * Time spent trying to convert a prospect into an active account (#)]

The sales potential in a territory can be determined as follows:

Sales potential ($) = Number of possible accounts (#) x Buying power ($)

There is no ‘one size’ fits all when it comes to territory mapping. The most popular territories are done via geographical lines, and doing so will prevent companies from leveraging and optimizing revenue.

The round-robin method is best if going after a targeted market. Geographic distribution is best if you have boots on the ground. With the new advancements that technology is providing via account-based marketing, the best method is obviously going to be scattered among the states aiding in the new territory of adding a time-zone territory as well. So, as you can see, you really need to know your product, competition, market and sales reps to determine the best territory option for your organization.

Highest performing territories – sales by client, new contacts, opportunity-to-win rates, average deal size?

The best and highest performing territories are those that have been ‘optimized’ as read in this article from Alexander Group. Basically, if you’re not ‘optimizing’, you’re throwing caution to the wind and losing revenue while helping your sales reps underperform. Here are 5 things to consider when ‘optimizing’ your territories:

1. Define the most important targets.
2. Weigh each target accurately.
3. Calibrate your index.
4. Review your results.
5. Make changes to the territories based on those results.

As stated, you can have great products and great sales reps BUT if you don’t ‘optimize’ your sales rep’s territories, you’re losing revenue and not utilizing your best sales reps.

What to Do Next

At this point you’ve either already been creating sales territories for your team or you haven’t.  If you have, congrats! You’re one of the organized ones. Feel free to modify your approach based on the information above and if you have anything to add feel free to chime in.

If you don’t currently use sales territories for your team don’t fret.  It’s not too late!

Check out these other blog posts to learn more about Territory Management

Below you will find great information on territory management and how you can set your team up for success by utilizing the best practices associated with it.  Feel free to check it out and if you have any input let us know.

Stop Guessing: The Truth about Territory Management

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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.

 

18 Experts Share Top Sales Enablement Best Practices

The B2B landscape has changed...a lot.

The traditional sales process used to look something like this:

1. Marketing would hand leads over to the sales team
2. The sales team would try to close the deal

The two departments operated in silos. And, while this simplistic “us vs them” mentality used to work, it doesn’t anymore.

Today, there are an average of 5.4 stakeholders involved in the purchase process. Consumers are more educated, and sales cycles longer.

The growing complexity of the B2B sales environment has blurred the lines between sales and marketing. It has become harder to ensure reps are having the right types of conversations with prospects, while being equipped with the right tools and content to drive deals through each stage of the pipeline.

The stats reflect this:

Content: Only 35% of salespeople think marketing knows what content they need
Communication: ⅓ of marketing and sales teams don’t talk regularly
Accessibility: 88% of sales professionals are unable to utilize critical sales material on their smartphones

The disconnect is evident. But, the opportunity is clear. Organizations implementing sales enablement best practices see big bottom line results, such as:

– 99% overall team attainment of sales quota
– 32% higher team sales quota attainment
– 4% year over year growth in average deal size

But, with so many moving pieces – content, communication, tools, processes – where do you start?

To help surface the answer, we reached out to 18 experts from leading sales organizations and training programs such as Sandler, and asked the following question:

List your top 3 sales enablement best practices for 2019?

While we recommend looking through each of the expert responses as they have unique takeaways, we compiled the five most popular best practices below.

 

Top 5 Sales Enablement Best Practices (Based on Expert Response)

We read through all the responses and compiled a shortlist of the top 5 sales enablement best practices to apply in your organization. For more information on each best practice, please read through the expert responses below this section.

 

#1. “Institutionalize” high-performer activities

Identify the best practices of your top sellers and “institutionalize” them for the rest of the team to leverage at relevant points in the sales cycle.

 

#2. Give reps quick access to content

According to the American Marketing Association, 90% of content goes unused by sales teams. The leading cause: sales reps simply cannot find it.

Experts recommend adopting a sales enablement software that is:

Flexible: recommends content based on performance and different sales event triggers informed by your marketing automation platform. This keeps sales conversations aligned with the different stages in the buyer journey.
Organized: acts as an easy-to-use repository for all content and sales tools.
Integrated: connects with other tools to automate and streamline the sales process.

 

#3. Provide continual training

According to research, 87% of new skills are lost within a month of sales training.

Successful sales organizations provide ongoing training and communication across their content, tools and workflows so that reps know exactly what will be most effective throughout the entire sales cycle.

 

#4. Align content with the buyer journey

95% of buyers buy from someone who gave them content at each stage of the buying process.

Align a) your selling processes and b) content strategy to the customer’s conversion path in order to drive meaningful customer engagement.

 

#5. Streamline with technology

This might seem like an obvious one, but a study by CSO Insights found that 60% of sales organizations report a longer sales cycle due to a lack of proper tools.

The right technology stack can fuel sales efforts because they help with forecasting, goal-setting, training and more. In order to maintain alignment, try to leverage the same technology as the marketing team, where possible.

 

18 Experts Reveal Top Sales Enablement Best Practices

Ok:

That’s a quick recap of the most popular sales enablement best practices. Now its time to dive deeper and see how the experts are applying the different best practices to achieve success in their organizations.

Gavin Harris

Apptega | Vice President of Sales and Operations

1. We have created a value model using DecisionLink that allows us to easily align the value of Apptega to our customer’s unique requirements. Using the platform, we are able to quickly deliver high quality documents that help our champions internally position the financial benefits of moving forward with Apptega.

2. We leverage hyper-personalized and professional quality video outreach for prospecting to new customers and prospects. Leveraging the Cyranoapp.io platform, we can easily engage our executives to participate in packaged outreach efforts to their peers in prospective companies.

3. We continually try to provide value, sharing blog posts and other relevant pieces of content that provide value at every touchpoint throughout the sales cycle.

Colleen Francis

1. Use your best to coach the rest. Identify the best practices of top sellers and “institutionalize” them for the rest of the team to leverage.

2. Create small bites of “just in time” skill development tailored specifically to active deals in the pipeline. Serve these up to sellers in your CRM based on sales stage, deal size, competition and product set.

3. Following every win, get the seller record a quick video documenting the top three things they did to successfully close the deal. Use these videos for real time training served up in your CRM based on when the training will be most effective. For example, trigger the questioning skills training video once the deal reaches the qualify stage.

John Barrows

1. Find a way to tie content to revenue. Determine which content types reps are watching/learning that drives the best results, and share them with everyone else.

2. Interview your best reps and ask them to walk you through their most recent and best sale, starting with qualification and going through each stage of the sales process. Cut up the content, tag it by stage, and put it into a repository where reps can go view what good/great looks like.

3. Invest in a tool that provides “just in time” learning for reps when they need it, instead of training them in-person once and expecting them to remember what to do months later.

Nate Bishop

TextUs | VP of Voice Solutions

My top 3 sales enablement best practices include:

1. Training/coaching,

2. Embracing technology,

3. Industry knowledge.

Everything is always progressing and we need adapt to the ever changing environment. To keep our team at the forefront of industry knowledge we leverage a variety of training and coaching solutions. It is important that we have a finger on the industry pulse, and upcoming trends.

Through weekly coaching we equip our team with a tool set to deliver deep industry insights to our customers and future customers. We’re continuously evaluating new technologies to improve our sales processes and operations to enable our team to focus on having meaningful conversations.

Steve Richard

ExecVision | Founder

1. First define your call types (cold call, lead follow up call, discovery call, demo, closing call, etc.). Then define the 7-10 key ‘behaviors’ that your sales reps should exhibit by call type.

2. Create coaching plans to follow that the reps are moving toward mastery on those key behaviors. Coaching plans need to be a series of coaching interventions over a period of time in order to beat the ‘forgetting curve.’ Google “forgetting curve” if you don’t know what that it. You need to move people from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent.

3. Run a call of the month contest to make learning fun. Celebrate catching examples of what great calls sound like in the wild. Build your library of best calls to ramp the next generation of reps in half the time.

Bob Apollo

Inflexion Point | Founder

1. Sales enablement is a team effort. You need to actively involve your top sales performers in developing the program. Learn what it is that makes them successful and work out how to equip and enable their colleagues to emulate their success.

2. Package your sales enablement materials into easy-to-find, easy-to-consume, bite-sized chunks that are accessible anywhere. Proactively serve up the materials that are most likely to be useful to the sales person in their current situation.

3. Carefully analyse what is and isn’t used, and look for correlations between the use of specific sales enablement tools and subsequent sales success. Do more of what works, and stop doing what doesn’t.

Tamara Schenk

CSO Insights | Research Director

1. Formalize your sales enablement approach: Align your enablement strategy to the organization’s strategic initiatives. Create a sales enablement charter (business plan) and achieve up to 2-digit win rate improvements.

2. Focus on the customer: Align a) your selling processes and b) your enablement services to the customer’s path to drive effective customer engagement. Those who do, see better win rates.

3. Sales coaching remains a critical gap when it comes to adoption and reinforcement. Mature enablement functions develop sales managers as top sales coaches to improve win rates.

Daniel Disney

The Daily Sales | Founder

1. Utilize all the tools your customers are using. This could include the phone, social media, email, video, networking, post etc. If your customers are using it then you have an opportunity to leverage it to reach them.

2. Don’t fear technology, use it! A lot of salespeople are scared AI will take away their jobs, but the best salespeople are learning how to use it to enhance their jobs. Look at what tools are available, try them, practice and master them.

3. Start learning how to use video. Video is a huge part of the content world right now and is a fast growing platform for sales conversations. It’s also difficult to get comfortable with so now is the time to start practicing and getting past those initial challenges.

Craig Klein

1. Organize leads and prospects by source & disposition/outcome.

2. Ensure all leads (even the cold/dead ones) are getting automated emails from you regularly.

3. Call leads that engage with your emails quickly (within 4 hours).

Chad Burmeister

BDR.ai | CEO

1. Add more virtual BDRs – Until your quota carrying reps are completely booked up, add more virtual BDRs!

2. Remove low value work – Every quarter did into what your SDRs, BDRs, and AEs are doing. Then optimize their daily work so that they focus less on low value work, and more on higher value work (it’s good for them, it’s good for your company).

3. Look at Saleshood – Elay Cohen and their team is amazing. Great solution that will change how you train your sales team!

Matt Sykes

Salescadence | Founder

1. Shift from Managing Time to Measuring it. Effective Sales Enablers are ruthless with their time, they place real value on it, they never give it away for free and only exchange it for something in return.

Tip: Divide your ‘To Do’ list up into ‘Unpaid Admin’ tasks and ‘Paid Revenue’ tasks and spend a minimum of 70% of your day on activities which you can directly or indirectly assign an invoice to.

2. Develop Your Personal Brand. You are who Google says you are and in today’s social market place, it’s possible to position yourself as the ‘go-to’ sales person in your industry.

Tip: Sharpen up your LinkedIn profile and always produce and publish content that’s helpful and of interest to your target market. Providing consistent, valuable information creates a ‘known, liked and trusted’ status.

3. Invest in Your Personal Development. The world of Sales is ever-changing and Ultra High Performers don’t wait for their employer to send them on a training course, they take responsibility for their own success.

Tip: Listening to one of the many sales podcasts available on your daily commute will keep you up to date on the latest trends and on what’s new in the world of Sales Training.

Mike Kunkle

SPASIGMA | Vice President, Sales Enablement Services

Let me start by saying that the next best move for any given sales enablement function is highly contextual, based on how they and their sales force are operating today, and where they both want to be (what they want to achieve) over the next quarter or six months. With that disclaimed, here are the practices I’m hoping we see more of in 2019.

1. Shift to a buyer-oriented selling system
I believe one of the best possible practices is to foster a buyer-orientation across the business. A buyer-orientation means changing the mindset, language and behaviors of the leadership team and employees to an outside-in, other-focused, buyer-centric orientation.This orientation changes language, such as shifting from “quota crushers” to “customer problem solvers,” or from “overcoming objections” to “resolving buyer concerns,” and more. It means understanding your buyer personas and their COIN-OP (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Objectives, and Priorities) and shifting your prospecting approaches from product-centric to problem/solution centric.

In opportunity management, it means a focus on meeting each decision maker’s buying process exit criteria, or things that each buyer needs to see, hear, feel, understand and believe in each stage of their buyers’ journey, to feel comfortable moving forward to the next stage with you. To learn more, I have a (free) recorded webinar on Sales & Marketing Management Magazine’s SMMConnect channel.

2. Get a sales enablement charter in place
Have you seen the number of sales enablement definitions in the market? Every sales analyst has one, the Sales Enablement Society has one, the Association for Talent Development’s Sales Enablement Community of Practice has one, and I think your grandmother might have one at this point.

I’m hoping we see more consensus this year about enablement being not just marketing-related or readiness and training related, or technology-related, but that it continues to evolve to a cross-functional discipline including marketing/messaging/content, training/readiness/ongoing development, and technology and tools, at a minimum, with possibly an expansion toward sales selection.

I recommend that you review these various current definitions and get a solid understanding of all aspects of sales enablement, and then develop a charter that clearly delineates what sales enablement aspects your function will address, who you will partner with cross-functionally, the outcomes you will support, and how you will work together to achieve them.

As the old saying goes, “you can’t hit a target you don’t see.” A charter fosters alignment and sets clear expectations, ensuring clarity and focus and increasing your chance of success.

3. Evolve toward performance consulting and systems thinking
Once you have the building block of sales enablement in place (see this SlideShare for the building blocks) you can begin to evolve to a consulting practice that identifies and solves problems to improve sales performance. I believe this is the highest and best use of sales enablement and is where I believe and hope the profession is heading.

Performance consulting is a systematic and holistic approach to improve workplace performance and achieve business goals.

Performance consulting:

– Is grounded in analytics, diagnostics, and root cause analysis
– Considers of a broad array of organizational and individual factors that influence human performance
– Includes selection, design, and development of the most appropriate solution to solve the identified performance problem
– Implements initiatives using proven-effective practices for the selected intervention and change practices including communication, follow-through, measurement, analysis, evaluation, and adjustment to ensure results are achieved.I believe this is a natural evolution for sales enablement and that we will see the more advanced in the profession moving toward performance consulting and holistic systems thinking in 2019.

4. [Bonus] Create more effective learning systems
I’m going to offer a bonus fourth practice. I see more organizations trying to train more effectively and get a return on their training investment, and I believe this trend will continue in 2019.I believe we’ll see more organizations favoring bite-sized courses (microlearning that targets one or two key learning objectives at a time, but often strung together into a larger curriculum, as needed).

I believe video will continue to rise in popularity, as well, delivered in these online courses, with reinforcement, crowdsourced best practice sharing, and the use of job aids/performance support and workflow performance support.

Finally, I believe we’ll see continued growing focus on enabling managers to diagnose performance issues to target their time with reps, and coach reps to mastery, whether through virtual/video coaching, team coaching, or one-one-one field coaching. This will include not just coaching in general, but also enabling, empowering and engaging managers in sales onboarding and other ongoing training, as part of the learning system, to coach their reps to mastery with any key skills and competencies that are taught.

Brian Sullivan

Sandler | Vice President, Sandler Enterprise Selling

To share three 2019 best practices, I’ll start with the definition of the term – “procedures shown by experience to produce optimal results”.1. First, meet with each new major account at the start of the business relationship to identify the account’s five most important success factors. These become the substance for client satisfaction, not boilerplate factors your organization uses to survey all accounts.

2. Second, convert your major account “quarterly business reviews” to “quarterly value reviews” focused on the value you’ve delivered in the previous quarter and the value you are expected to deliver in the upcoming time frame. This totally different perspective, while focused completely on client value, also breeds new business opportunities.

3. And last, understand that account retention is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s not what you get. It’s what you do. Honestly assess your organization’s performance regarding the reasons that major accounts stay or go – their critical retention factors. But beyond simply assessing your performance, build accountable action items in each area to improve the relationships and actively increase account retention.So, three best practices to help, by definition, produce optimal 2019 results.

Irene Becker

Just Coach It | Chief Success Officer

Sales enablement becomes very important as an organization grows past a sales team of 50 representatives. Smaller teams should, however, have a system in place that creates ownership and accountability for sales and revenue growth. Each sales representative, each marketing collateral or initiative is critical to the customer experience, and the customer experience is the hot button for sales success.

1. Make the customer experience a vital part of your ecosystem.

The customer experience is a vital part of sales the sales journey. Now, more than ever before the conversations/interactions/touchpoints (face to face or virtual) you have with prospects and customers need to be delivered in the right way, at the right time and include using the right technology as a lever for sales enablement.

Sales and marketing teams must work together to provide the right incentives, channels and solutions that develop a strong customer management ecosystem that can be monitored; an ecosystem that will also identify any gaps in the customer experience that need to be addressed and how they will be addressed.

2. Coach and train with an emotionally intelligent edge.

Develop sticky coaching and training that helps people upskill, improve and also retain what they have learned. Xerox notes that 87% of sales training content is forgotten within one month of the training, we need to develop coaching and training programs that are tools, are aligned for maximum engagement and results.

Emotional intelligence, the ability to understand your emotions, manage your emotions and understand the emotions of others is critical to every aspect of the customer journey and sales cycle. Giving your teams training and coaching is emotionally intelligent is critical to sales results and to preparing your people to be the best they can be under stress and also when dealing with different peoples and situations.

3. Leverage marketing content and technology.

It is important to use marketing content in whitepapers, videos, blogs and all social/digital media to support every stage of the sales cycle. Develop systems that create transparency and report between the marketing and sales department so that new materials can be created with the input of those who are at the front line

There are many excellent digital sales tools and apps. Choosing the right technology and be a big help in goal-setting, training and more. The need to map the customer journey and to deliver the right message in the right format and at the right time is critical and technology can be a very important tool/resource.

Quyen Chang

Financialforce | Senior Director, Head of Global Enablement

As an enablement professional, it is important to remember the following:

1. Focus on sales playbook – content and assets for everyone to be successful.
– Make sure to have feedback from product, marketing, sales contributors
– Confirm that the playbook outlines the sales process and content to help throughout each sales stage

2. Focus on productive technology for those in the field to do their job: Salesforce, Saleshood, Outreach, Zoom.

3. Focus on the people: how often are you working on continued enablement programs for managers, individual contributors and the collaboration with pre and post sales teams.

Mike Schultz

RAIN Group | President

1. First, never stop training. Sales training is about changing behavior. This can’t be done in a 2- or 3-day training event and isn’t about one program or another. Sales enablement leaders need to provide ongoing training across a variety of sales skills in order to build a top performing sales team.

2. Second, they need to provide sales coaching. An effective coach can be the most significant factor in a seller’s success. They motivate sellers, help them build goal and action plans, advise sellers to win deals, and hold sellers accountable. Unfortunately, too many sales coaches either don’t do these things or they don’t do them well and sales performance suffers.

3. Lastly, building off of sales coaching, sales enablement should help sellers become extremely productive. Forty-three percent of sellers at Top Performing Sales Organizations have the skills to manage their time and day effectively, but only 26 percent of The Rest do. Running Extreme Productivity training and Challenges is a major priority for RAIN Group clients around the globe in 2019.

Michael D. Decker

Medallion Retail | Vice President, Marketing Strategy & Business Development

As a B2B Marketer and Sales pro looking to deliver road tested SQL’s, I employ valuable and consistent content marketing in the form of a weekly blog that simultaneously raises existing prospect awareness and new prospect accessibility on Search.The fun then begins in discerning client perceived “needs” from Vendor provided “solutions” that truly grasp and differentiate.

A great sales team delivers unexpected solutions that go far beyond expectations. This is what’s necessary today as digital solutions evolve at record breaking pace.

A great sales person leverages the advantages of seeing the forest from the trees.

1. See your Clients real competition.

2. Understand the gap.

3. Leverage your product and services to fill it with a tangible and custom solution — seeing is believing.

Germain Brion

Chargebee | Vice President of Sales

1. We are scaling heavily in 2019. Our biggest enablement pain is to streamline onboarding as we 3x team size. This means we hired someone to “own” onboarding and the LMS roll-out.

2. The second best practice is to “trust the team,” they can be experts in very niche areas of their trade; by giving them space to share learnings and shine, we encourage a culture of growth and learning and source great ideas.

3. Finally, we are now doing regular marketing check-ins to ensure the Sales Team has relevant collateral throughout the year.

What Sales Enablement Best Practices Will You Implement in 2019?

There you have it – 18 experts shared the top sales enablement practices to implement in 2019.

Which ones are going to use? Any others you’d add?

Let us know in the comments below.

Hottest B2B Sales Trends in 2019

Guest post by Scott Miraglia

2019 is another year in an era that is seeing rapid-fire advancements in technology. That means there are more channels than ever before in which to appeal to potential customers. It’s an exciting time, but one with an undercurrent of anxiety. For example, according to a LinkedIn survey of B2B sales challenges in 2019, respondents cited such things as pipeline consistency and having more meaningful interactions with customers as their prime worries.

These are all valid concerns. What’s interesting is that trends we’re seeing right now are poised to alleviate this stress and solve many of these issues in one fell swoop—provided sales teams leverage these trends wisely and effectively. Below we list how.

AI and big data benefit sales

This first trend gets right to the heart of the 800-pound digital gorilla in the room: big data. This is much more than a simple buzz term or fleeting trend—it’s the overarching theme of information accumulation in today’s world. Human beings generate a staggering 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, and, needless to say, your typical sales team can’t manage that data and extract crucial insights from it on their own.

This is where artificial intelligence enters the picture. With advances in machine learning over the past few years we’ve seen AI go from being a sci-fi pipe dream to a real-world component of many sales and marketing solutions. There are AI-powered tools that can help sales and marketing teams do everything from schedule meetings (X.ai) to ad retargeting (Shoelace) to workflow automation (Troops) to A/B testing and website personalization (Convertize) to… well, you get the idea.

But AI powered big data solutions also help B2B sales teams in three fundamental ways:

1. Generating new leads
2. Allowing for the creation of personalized marketing campaigns
3. Guiding product pricing

To the first point, AI is facilitating lead generation because no longer do individuals have to sift through market research statistics, survey forms, email lists, and social media info for actionable insight into customer profiles. With so much new data coming in every day, AI shoulders the burden by dealing with many mundane tasks, which frees up salespeople to better develop initiatives to reach their target audience and generate leads.

AI can then further sift through these massive data lakes to glean insight into market price points, which will help companies set product prices. But AI trends further benefit sales teams to the point we’re now seeing it become an extension of the team. More on this below.

AI becomes a virtual sales department

2019 is poised to become the year when artificial intelligence evolves from being a handy tool to a bonafide sales team in its own right. Enter AI and, specifically, chatbots. This is a global market that’s ascending like a rocket, as chatbots are expected to be a 1.2 billion-dollar industry by 2025. Indeed, chatbots have been around for a couple years, but the reason they’re becoming integral to the sales strategy now is simple: people finally trust AI.

According to Forbes, a majority of both baby boomers and millennials actually approve of the customer service provided by chatbots. These little virtual assistants can answer most questions instantly, and, most crucially, they operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week without a break.

The only question left is, are chatbots as helpful for B2B sales teams as they are in the consumer-facing world? Can they handle more nuanced and technical queries put forth by companies in the fields of information technology, software, manufacturing, and others? The answer is yes.

All chatbots use machine-learning algorithms to fuel their interactions, thus the more a chatbot interacts with a customer—in any field—the more effective it gets. Any small, medium, or large-sized B2B business with a solid CRM data-management tool in place might only need a few months to implement a customer-service-ready chatbot.

CRM goes 360

Above we mentioned how even a basic chatbot can handle complex customer interactions when it has access to well-managed CRM data. That’s where AI enters the picture yet again. Just like machine learning is powering chatbots, it’s also powering advanced CRM solutions as well, helping companies of all sizes to manage data that humans simply aren’t capable of.

But while sales teams now have a welcome assist from the aforementioned AI, the onus is still on people to turn all this data they accumulate into something useful. In other words, how deeply salespeople look into CRM data is going to determine how effective their strategies really are. How to do this involves going beyond sales forecasting and tracking interactions. It means gaining a single 360° view of customers across all channels. Doing so yields many advantages, such as:

– The ability to improve customer interaction and build better relationships
– More accurate customer segmentation
– The knowledge to provide better customer service based on buying habits

This is particularly vital for B2B operations, whose sales cycles are notoriously long. In the enterprise-facing world, it takes time to build a relationship with prospects and move them down the sales funnel. Being well-armed with comprehensive knowledge of a prospect’s interests and behaviors, as well as what channels they are using and when, puts your sales department in prime position to achieve the three goals listed above.

Conclusion

The most crucial lesson to take away from the points listed above is that of integration. These trends are facilitating the success of sales teams in today’s world—but only if the CRM in question is properly integrated. There’s an alarming report by Forbes that states many companies have data spread out across a whopping 35-different info-gathering systems. Not so surprisingly, these companies are unhappy with the results. The only way to solve the problem is to fully integrate your CRM, and let AI do the heavy lifting where it concerns big data.

Scott Miraglia

Scott is the CEO of Elevation Marketing. Scott is dedicated to helping his talented teams develop unique and effective integrated marketing programs that help employees realize their full potential while serving up impressive business wins for clients.

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