We discuss:
Successfully and strategically mapping out sales territories requires coordinating countless moving parts. Yes, you’ll need to manage the basic sales assignment process of connecting reps with their regions – but savvy business owners and sales managers recognize that a comprehensive field sales methodology requires far more than just outlining boundaries and choosing the right account executive.
Salesforce Maps (formerly MapAnything) has proven to be a popular choice for sales organizations looking to up their infield selling game. However, businesses across virtually every vertical often realize that the current SF Maps functionality doesn’t quite suit all of their needs.
To best optimize a sales territory campaign, executives must implement a full-scale, robust mapping solution that goes beyond program basics to include other factors such as gathering data sets, managing leads, and measuring performance.
Designed specifically for field sales strategies, Salesforce Maps does what all mapping software should do: help organizations add geographic context to the selling process. The system also automates standard selling situations, such as contact details, new account creation, lead gathering, and various customer service components.
Sure, SF Maps uses functional mapping and productivity optics. However, as B2B field sales team begin to experience the pressure of making sales in highly-competitive markets, they quickly realize that selecting the right territory mapping solution boils down to far more than cool visuals. Before you invest heavily in Salesforce Maps, it’s important to explore some key considerations that could shape your final decision
As a global leader in the CRM space, Salesforce platforms (including SF Maps) are typically reliable options for business owners. However, it’s important to note that just because Salesforce Maps is a good solution, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution for your outside sales team. While business owners may initially explore SF Maps when sourcing digital mapping strategies, many discerning entrepreneurs choose SPOTIO as their final solution.
Leveraging Field Sales To Grow Your Corporate Operations
Both Salesforce Maps and SPOTIO offer a diverse suite of sales automation and geographic technologies. However, Salesforce Maps’ configuration makes it uniquely designed for sales teams trying to sell (or farm) into already existing customers, establishing it as a potential option for businesses looking to sustain their current operations.
SPOTIO, on the other hand, goes head-to-head with SF Maps farming capabilities – and then takes things up a notch. In addition to providing system support when selling into established customers, SPOTIO’s functionality is positioned specifically to help companies prospect (or hunt) and find new business opportunities to grow their corporate reach and revenues.
The SPOTIO field sales solution, much like Salesforce Maps, provides the conventional mapping feature set, including:
SPOTIO’s map visualization technology uses a geographic interface to help users aggregate and analyze complex location data sets. The system offers big-picture intelligence that helps pinpoint new prospects, leads, and revenue-generating opportunities within a designated sales territory.
For reps, this means instant insight on where they have their best chance to maximize closed deals and overall ROI when spending time in the field.
For managers, SPOTIO’s map visualizations help pinpoint where reps are converting deals – and which region’s need a little more focused selling attention.
SPOTIO route mapping offers invaluable insight on how to get to your final destination as quickly and painlessly as possible. Reps and managers can develop and implement customized routes that minimize lost productivity. You’ll use real-time data to help your team lower windshield time and streamline output on every client visit.
Beyond these standard functions, SPOTIO stands out above other solutions like Salesforce Maps as a leading field sales acceleration platform by offering these seven essential hunter features:
Salesforce Maps captures and visualizes stored company data to help sellers understand their current state of affairs with any specific customer.
However, SPOTIO offers extended capabilities that allow users to develop ideal customer profiles. Your sales team can quickly sort live information by over 50 data points to help you pinpoint common traits amongst your very best customers to reference when developing prospect lists.
Salesforce Maps allows users to create territory boundaries. Unfortunately, establishing a sales territory based on sheer mileage alone is not enough to ensure success. It’s vital to develop territories that gives your reps access to a sufficient number of prospects within their district, without feeling overwhelmed, or capped.
SPOTIO goes beyond miles and square footage, allowing users to develop balanced territories based on the estimated number of homes in a region. In just a few minutes, managers can create selling regions that offer your team an equal opportunity for success while out hunting for new business.
SPOTIO’s platform integrates with Google Places to boost the benefits of mapping technology. Again, Salesforce Maps provides sufficient information on current sales customers and activities. However, with its native Google Places integration, sellers can use SPOTIO to designate the very best opportunities within their assigned regions.
For example, companies selling into healthcare organizations can use Google Places to identify other medical practices. From there, SPOTIO takes over, mapping out the best route to optimize efficiencies during the time in the field.
Like everything else in sales, the pipeline activity within your designated sales regions can be cyclical with upward swings and downturns. Salesforce Maps’ somewhat limited technology profile makes it challenging to accurately view pipeline activity within a district.
SPOTIO’s mobile functionality equips users with “notes as you go” field data entry that promotes accurate, thorough pipeline activity tracking that benefits virtually every level of a sales organization.
Busy sales reps appreciate having the ability to quickly zero in on their most urgent potential sales. Additionally, managers and group leaders value using pipeline activity data sets to pinpoint possible deals as well as marketplace momentum, trends, and dips.
Let’s face it: effectively selling often relies on an “if at first you don’t succeed” mentality.
Exceptional sales leaders understand that to truly optimize results within a territory, reps must continuously refine their strategies and increase their overall territory penetration. However, tracking the extensive volume of historical data through Salesforce and other (often more manual methods) can prove a major time waster. SPOTIO’s historical data functionality streamlines accessing past communication and transactions. Reps can quickly refresh on the details of the last appointment, while managers can use the stored insight to help the team better direct (and close) on the next engagement.
SPOTIO Routing technology quickly separates it from Salesforce Maps.
SPOTIO expedites route efficiencies, enabling account reps to best plan out their field days. The system utilizes current data sets to develop courses based on essential factors such as distance, appointment time, meeting length. The system even calculates time needed for both driving and walking. SPOTIO’s agile technology profile instantly calculates all relevant details to craft a map route that gives your account executives the best chance to lower time behind the wheel and increase time in front of your clients.
Unlike Salesforce Maps, SPOTIO prioritizes rep activity and performance. A simple push of a button allows users to determine the exact position of reps in the field, providing a live update every two minutes or whenever an app activity is logged. SPOTIO delivers the information managers need to help reps optimize their time in the field to close deals and grow the business without infringing on staff member’s privacy during off-hours.
SPOTIO integrates directly into your existing CRM. Bolt on the power of SPOTIO’s mapping and field sales acceleration platform to your Salesforce CRM. The system is designed to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and deliver accelerated value and usability.
SPOTIO’s 2-way CRM integration instantly redefines mapping visualization within your sales organization. Once installed, SPOTIO simplifies data intelligence aggregation, allowing users to store, analyze, and sync field information automatically into your existing Salesforce configuration.
Maybe you need more information to determine if SPOTIO is the right field sales solution for your organization. Or, maybe you’re worried that the integration process will hinder efficacy and productivity.
No matter what your questions or concerns, we can help. Contact us today to speak with an onsite SPOTIO specialist to get the information you need. You can also click here for a no-risk product demo to see for yourself what SPOTIO offers to sales organizations pursuing growth, increased revenues, and extended market share.
Whether you’re in sales, marketing or customer service, a CRM is critical to the success of your business. It acts as the internal system of record and single point of truth for the company.
Research by Salesforce shows that CRM applications can help increase sales by up to 29%, sales productivity by up to 34% and sales forecast accuracy by 42%.
A CRM lets you establish and cultivate long-term relationships with your customers so that you can increase revenue, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
But which type of CRM do you need? Which is best for your business?
CRMs make up the largest software category – estimated to reach $35B by 2023 – with thousands of vendors catering to different industries, company sizes and sales team structures.
Across the categories, three main types of CRM emerge:
1. Operational
2. Analytical
3. Collaborative
So it’s important to know which type is best for your business.
In this article, you’ll discover more about each type of CRM, what each one offers, how you can use them in your business, and why they should not be viewed as a silver bullet.
A CRM – short for Customer Relationship Management – is a software solution that helps businesses to capture prospect and customer interactions in a single database.
In 2008, only 12% of businesses used a cloud-based CRM – this figure has now increased to 87%!
Research by Innoppl Technologies showed that 65% of sales reps who adopted a mobile CRM solution hit sales quota. Only 22% of reps using a CRM without the mobile functionality hit the same sales targets.
Teams can use the information in a CRM to send emails, make calls, add notes, schedule appointments, create reports, and manage sales pipelines from the CRM system. Any interactions from the customer are automatically added to their record, so everyone has the latest visibility.
Sales teams can use a CRM to learn more about their prospects and customers, and manage their sales pipeline better. The CRM also helps automate day-to-day tasks, like scheduling follow-up calls at an agreed interval. And managers can track, view, and report on their team’s performance.
| Editor’s note: Different sales team structures – inside vs outside vs channel – have very different needs and should not take the same approach to customer relationship management.
For example, a field sales CRM should look, feel and act a lot different than an inside sales CRM. The type of CRM should always match the business model. The risk is lower end-user adoption. In fact, over 90% of companies have a CRM adoption rate less than 40%. And the #1 reason for lack of CRM adoption – manual data entry. |
Marketing teams can use a CRM to target their ideal customer profiles (demographics, location, etc.) when planning campaigns. The CRM also measures the ROI on their marketing activities and campaigns so they can adjust accordingly in the future.
Customer service teams can use a CRM to help maintain and retain existing customers. The CRM database provides insights into a customer’s previous issues and interactions, so they can manage the current situation and plan future customer engagement activities.
A CRM solution allows you to focus on selling and keeping your customers happy.
But there are other benefits, too, like enhancing customer relationships, reducing customer churn rate, increasing sales and revenue, and automating communication and tasks.
Let’s take a look:
Research by Software Advice shows that 74% of users said their CRM system gave them improved access to customer data.
A CRM captures every interaction along the customer journey (prospect to lead to customer) from multiple teams to create a 360 degree view of the customer. Using this information enables you to provide better customer service and communication across all departments.
A CRM reduces the mundane data entry tasks by automatically adding and updating customer records in the database. For example, when a potential customer visits your website or signs up for your mailing list, or when existing customers send an email, their information is automatically loaded into your CRM.
With every piece of customer information in one place, you can ensure everyone across the business is communicating the right message consistently.
A CRM helps to visualize your sales pipelines so you can prioritize which deals to work on. By visualizing the pipeline, managers can create conversion percentage benchmarks and immediately see when deals are falling through the cracks.
Research by Capterra shows that 47% of polled CRM users said their CRM had a significant impact on customer retention.
Using data from the CRM – e.g. user requirements, preferences, buying habits, etc. – you can customize and personalize your products and services to help reduce churn rate.
Insights from a CRM help you identify your most profitable customers and build stronger relationships with them. This inside knowledge increases your sales revenue as you know the optimal time to target repeat business.
With a deep understanding of the ideal customer profile, you can create “lookalike” accounts when prospecting. For example, once you know who your most valuable clients are, and where they are located, you can formulate more targeted marketing and field sales campaigns.
Without a CRM, business functions often work in silos with separate pieces of customer data. A CRM shared across business functions means you can work together to achieve the same goals and objectives.
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Editor’s note: We’ve looked at the core benefits of a CRM solution, but the application and use cases will vary depending on the specific needs of the team using it. In the next section, we’ll cover the 3 main types of CRM tools, and focus in on the sales team use cases for each different type. |
There are three main types of CRM systems:
Let’s take a look:
An Operational CRM is the most common type of CRM and is used in many different industries.
This type of CRM is excellent for handling customer-facing communications and helping businesses manage their day-to-day sales, marketing, and customer service operations.
An Operational CRM can automate your sales process from lead generation to closing sale, as well as managing your sales force. For example:
Scheduling follow-up reminders to contact prospects at agreed intervals.
Tracking a contact and updating their status from prospect to qualified lead once they’ve completed certain actions or met specific criteria.
Reporting on sales team performance.
Field sales example:
SPOTIO’s CRM helps Field Sales Reps build and visualize their pipeline with its lead management module. Reps can filter leads, opportunities, and customers with colorized pins to visualize their pipeline:
Inside sales example:
Salesforce offers a variety of CRM categories, including Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, and Sales Cloud with functionality best suited for larger inside sales teams.
Inside sales reps can use the Sales Cloud CRM to manage contacts, access sales enablement documents, track sales activity – leads, opportunities and closed deals – and take action from any location, on any device.
The CRM allows reps to spend more time selling to the right prospects, and do it with the best data at their fingertips.
| Editor’s note: It’s important to remember that one size does not fit all.
For instance, an early stage inside sales software company should be using a different CRM than an enterprise outside sales team. Similarly, many companies have both outside and inside sales teams. In this situation, it’s better to have one primary CRM and then “bolt-on” a mobile technology built specifically for the needs of the field sales teams. For example, large enterprise sales teams often use Salesforce for its core internal sales activities and then bolt on SPOTIO for its field sales reps, as both tools work together seamlessly. SPOTIO’s native 2-way integration with Salesforce makes it easy for reps to collect data and record notes in the field then sync it back into Salesforce in real-time. See how Salient Medical Solutions bolted SPOTIO’s mobile CRM functionality on top of Salesforce and increased field sales productivity by over 15%. |
An Operational CRM also allows you to automate some of your marketing activities at various stages of the customer funnel. For example:
– Adding and tagging new email subscribers to your CRM automatically.
– Initiating a welcome email campaign whenever a new prospect enters the system.
– Identifying existing leads in your CRM for your next marketing campaign.
HubSpot allows you to automate your email campaigns using targeted workflows, and then personalize your emails for each recipient using specific details from your CRM:
– Stores and organizes contact and lead information
– Streamlines daily business operations
– Automates some sales and marketing activities
You should consider an operational CRM if:
– You have a linear sales process
– You are a sales and marketing led business (new business focused)
– You lean towards workflow automation and prefer software to perform redundant administrative tasks
An Analytical CRM gathers, stores, and analyzes information about your customers. This typically includes customer data, marketing data, sales data, and service data.
Here’s how each of them dovetails together.
Customer data includes general details like location, age, gender, marital status, and income bracket. The more data you gather, the clearer picture you create; e.g. What does this person want? What are their buying habits? These reports help you plan your marketing campaigns.
The SPOTIO Lead Machine is a great time-saver when you want to generate qualified leads in a chosen territory. Using up-to-date customer profile data you can find prospects who are ready to buy in three quick steps:
1. Select your target area
2. Create your ideal customer profile (e.g. income, credit capacity, age of home, eco friendly, square footage, etc.)
3. Import your leads and start selling
Marketing data lets you measure the success of your campaigns. For example, you can generate reports to discover which leads convert the best and which campaigns yield the highest ROI.
Sales data, along with marketing and customer data, help you plan new campaigns, assign sales territories and track rep performance. Reports can help identify sales trends and patterns. So, for example, you can understand:
– Which products are your Top Sellers
– Which products sell least in Winter
– Which products sell most in Florida
– Which reps sell the most
– Which territories should be assigned to different reps
Service data helps with three core areas:
1. Customer service
2. Customer satisfaction
3. Employee performance
Your staff has access to data in the CRM which includes buying habits and past purchases, so when they’re dealing with a customer, they can quickly check for up-sell or cross-sell opportunities.
An analytical CRM system allows you to capture and address customer satisfaction issues early on. For example, if customers complain about the same thing; e.g. a software bug, you’ll be able to see the pattern and issue a quick fix to stop any further escalation.
As well as tracking customer complaints, an analytical CRM can also track how your employees are handling those complaints, plus other customer interactions in general. These reports help identify areas for improvement in performance reviews.
For example, SPOTIO gives managers a clear view of how the top sales reps are performing and also where leads are falling off in the sales process:
Historical data shows exactly what happened with every prospect up to the point of the last contact. The background knowledge saved within SPOTIO prepares the sales reps for their next customer meeting and helps sales managers coach their team to success:
– Gathers, stores, and analyzes customer information from multiple teams.
– Helps organizations to plan sales and marketing campaigns.
– Tracks key performance indicators set by the business.
You should consider an analytical CRM if:
– You have account management driven sales process
– You have a finance led management style
– Your end-users are data driven and value metrics
A Collaborative CRM – sometimes called a Strategic CRM – enables an organization to collect, organize, and share customer information across multiple teams. For example, sales and purchase history, customer service contact, marketing preferences, and technical support interaction.
When teams collaborate and share customer information, they can maximize profitability, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
There are two significant parts to a Collaborative CRM:
– Interaction management
– Channel management
Interaction management allows you to record and analyze every interaction a customer has with your company. Monitoring interactions helps you identify issues that an individual or groups of customers may be experiencing.
Channel management allows you to record the preferred method of communication for each of your customers. Some customers prefer text messages, others prefer a phone call, and some might prefer email. Either way, it’s better to contact your customers using their preferred method, so you get a positive response.
For example:
Imagine your company sells a mobile app. A Collaborative CRM would allow multiple teams to resolve issues reported by customers.
The customer service team can get an overall view to see how many customers are experiencing the same problem with your app.
If it’s a widespread problem, they can alert the technical support team and request a quick fix to alleviate the situation. Then, when the fix is ready, the customer service team can contact each customer using their preferred communication channel to advise them of the next steps.
Furthermore, this information can be shared with the marketing team so they can tailor messages in the future.
The integrated e-Contract functionality in SPOTIO gives sales reps immediate access to office files and documents. Instead of emailing documents back and forth, customers can sign contracts on the spot:
Reps can also take pictures onsite as well as access files, such as product spec sheets, presentations, etc.
– Collects, organizes, and shares customer data across multiple teams
– Improves the overall customer experience with unified messaging
– Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty
You should consider a collaborative CRM if:
– You have multiple stakeholders and departments moving in and out of the platform
– You have multiple locations or have a digitally driven company culture where most communication occurs online
– Your comfortable with customer data being easily accessible by most in the company
So, what type of CRM does your business need?
Here’s a quick recap:
An Operational CRM is excellent for handling customer-facing communications as it helps businesses manage their daily sales, marketing, and customer service operations.
An Analytical CRM is best for getting an overall picture of your sales, marketing, and service performance as it gathers, stores, and analyzes customer information from multiple teams.
A Collaborative CRM is best for connecting multiple teams and improving customer loyalty, as it gives a 360-degree view of the customer journey from prospect to customer support.
All that said, a CRM is not a silver bullet. Rather it is a foundational cornerstone of your sales tech-stack, and companies that are achieving the most success – whether operational, analytical or collaborative – recognize this.
A CRM will only take your sales, marketing and customer support so far, and oftentimes you’ll need to purchase additional software to integrate with a CRM as your team evolves and business grows.
Outside sales teams looking for an all-in-one CRM solution that accommodates operational, analytical and collaborative use cases should try a demo of Spotio’s field sales CRM today!
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
The success of your sales team depends on the strength of your reps.
But finding the right reps (and retaining them) is easier said than done. Training Industry Magazine estimates that it takes an eye-watering 381 days to train a new sales rep to perform at the same level as a tenured sales rep.
And even when they’re fully trained, the average tenure of a sales rep is a mere 2.5 years.
Combine all that with the fact that the average cost of replacing a sales rep is $115,000, and the thought of losing reps becomes a little scary (not to mention, leaving a large hole in your company’s pocket.)
But there is a way you can lessen the financial blow to your company. By improving your sales onboarding processes, you can improve your sales rep retention stats and speed up their ramp time.
Let’s take a deeper dive into sales onboarding, and look at the eight steps your company can use to accelerate your onboarding process. What is Sales Onboarding?
Before we can talk about improving the onboarding process, we need to understand exactly what we’re talking about.
Sales onboarding is the process companies go through to welcome new sales reps into their organization and train them on new skills, company knowledge and behaviors.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies are failing miserably with their sales onboarding processes. A 2018 Sales Management Association study found 62% of companies believe they are ineffective at onboarding new sales reps.
It’s important to dissect this stat and look at how effective onboarding can impact a business.
Employees are 60% more likely to remain with an organization for three years or longer when a standardized onboarding process is used. Get your onboarding processes wrong, and it’ll cost you big time in rehiring and retraining sales reps.
But why is onboarding so essential for retaining reps?
Well, it’s their first taste of the company, and they want to know that the job they’re about to commit to is worth it. If you can’t get your onboarding processes right, it’ll be harder for reps to find their place in the sales team, and it’s unlikely to fill them with confidence about the company.
The longer it takes to get your reps up to selling speed, the more money you’re investing into an employee that’s not making any sales.
A lot of companies are stuck in an old-school approach when it comes to onboarding sales hires. They make their new sales reps attend lengthy meetings and shadow other reps for weeks (or months) at a time without letting them make so much as a sales call.
With a solid onboarding process in place, your reps will be able to start generating sales sooner, which will cut their training costs at the same time.
The most significant benefit of having a watertight sales onboarding process lies in the sales results.
One Sales Enablement Optimization Study found companies that used onboarding for the training services and taught their new reps best practices were able to boost their win rates by 14%. By streamlining your training at the onboarding stage, you can not only get reps selling more, but you can get them selling faster.
Now you know why you need an effective onboarding process, let’s look at how to implement it in your own company.
First things first – make a list of everything you need from the rep to perform at the top of their game.
There isn’t a set list of competencies you should outline as this step will depend on the goals of your sales team. Some companies will value negotiation and selling techniques, while sales teams with outside reps might include things like in-person conversational and closing skills.
Whatever you decide your company’s core competencies are, make sure they’re made up of suggestions from senior sales managers and reps. After all, they’re the ones on the ground selling, so they’ll know better than anyone what skills are needed to make new hires as productive as possible.
Next, standardize your processes.
Even if you plan your ramp time for new hires to be short, without a process, it’s unlikely the whole thing will go smoothly. Mapping out and standardizing your processes will mean your new hires will know what’s in store for them in their first weeks and months at your company.
A standardized process will bring your new rep up to speed on aspects of your company like:
Company culture
Detailed sales processes and cycles
Products and offerings
Buyer personas
The company’s history
Team structures
Sales playbooks
Standard project lengths
Gong recommends giving new hires access to an entire activity map of a sales cycle, so they’re able to see how a deal is closed, end-to-end:
Using a CRM can help at this stage, especially if you’re hiring at scale. As you’re likely to have a ton of documents outlining your processes, personas, and product offerings, using a CRM like SPOTIO can help keep everything organized and on track.
For example, in the SPOTIO dashboard, you can create a pipeline to store all of your onboarding paperwork and guide new hires through their onboarding without a ton of manual effort from sales managers.
And even if your senior sales managers are out on the field, they can check in with new hires with the team chat feature to make sure they’re staying on track.
We’re talking about documenting your onboarding processes, as well as keeping track of how well reps are doing in their training.
Likely, your sales reps won’t be able to retain every single piece of information you throw at them during the onboarding phase. A study by Sales Performance International found about 50% of the content in sales training is forgotten within five weeks, and less than 10% of it will be remembered in a year.
So documenting everything, and making processes available to your new hires so they can revert back to, is crucial to successful onboarding.
It always helps to have some resources and reference guides that they can use to refresh their memory on the fly. You can also include helpful tips and tricks like phone scripts and templates so the rep can familiarize themselves with what your typical sales process looks like.
SPOTIO CRM can double up as an onboarding kanban to keep your processes organized
If you’re using a CRM for your sales onboarding, you can tie-in feedback to each process so your new hire can take a look at what they did well, and what they need to improve on. Giving your new hires feedback is crucial—more than 60% of sales reps leave their jobs if their managers are poor coaches. So help them be the best they can be from the moment they start at your company.
Pre-boarding can be a controversial topic. You’re essentially making content available to your new reps before they’ve started at your company.
But hear us out.
Making onboarding materials available to your new sales reps is a great opportunity for them to familiarize themselves with the company, and what their new role is going to be all about. Sales reps might take it upon themselves to look through the documents and immerse themselves in the companies practices, particularly if it means it will get them selling faster.
Pre-boarding can also help your new hires to find their way around your sales software, which will help to speed up their ramp time. After all, the quicker they’re able to start selling, the faster they’re able to start earning commission.
Starting any new job is tough, but you can help to ease the pain by giving your sales reps a clear plan of what their first three months with the company is going to look like.
Assigning new reps with a 30-60-90 day sales plan helps sales managers determine their approach to learning the business, ability to create and track measurable goals, and willingness to hold themselves accountable.
Sales Enablement Manager Brian Goth recommends creating a detailed plan that’s broken down into processes, products, tools, and industry.
The ultimate goal of having such a detailed plan in place? To get sales reps selling quicker and bringing money into the company faster. In a example from Gong, reps can add up to $60k in extra revenue if you can get them selling in their second month instead of their fourth.
Pro-tip: Make sure you don’t just “set and forget” your 30-60-90 day plan. As a rule of thumb, have a senior sales manager review it every 3-6 months to pinpoint what worked, and what needs to improve to make the next onboard even more successful.
As Ryan Robinson points out on Close.io, the learning never stops when it comes to sales training techniques.
And giving your reps ongoing training pays off. After all, high-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training than their low-performing counterparts. As we highlighted in a recent blog post, a trustworthy rep closes more sales, and they have a certain set of traits:
– They ask the right questions and get to the heart of a prospect’s problem
– They provide insight that allows prospects to understand their problem fully
– They leave their prospects feeling clear about what to do and what to focus on
– They use terms like “certainly” and “absolutely” to inspire confidence
Without ongoing training, it’s hard for new reps to achieve these key traits.
Make sure you’re giving your sales reps proper, personalized training when they’re first hired. This means making sure they know how your company’s products work, how they can solve a prospect’s problem, and they understand the sales process your team follows.
You can even go one step further and track how much training a rep is receiving and how knowledgeable they are about the offering, and set up reminders for your sales managers to make sure they’re nurturing new reps.
Pro-tip: Once your new reps are getting settled, you can build a sales leaderboard in SPOTIO to encourage some healthy competition and drive the business forward.
There’s a reason that new sales reps shadow top-performers—it’s one of the best ways for them to learn how processes work, and what’s expected of them.
Pairing your new hires up with top-performing sales reps is one of the best ways to cut their ramp time, and show them the company’s standards on interacting with customers and closing deals.
Having new hires shadow your company’s top performers can also:
Light a competitive spark: By nature, sales reps are competitive (I mean, we’ve even built a leaderboard for it!). Having your new reps see how the best people in the company perform can engage them in the sales process and ignite their competitive streak to want to be a top-performer themselves
Help them see their future prospects: Room to grow in a company is important. If a new hire is able to see professional growth opportunities within your top-performers, this can help boost their interest in their role
Promote teamwork: The best teams work together. Pairing up your top-performers with new reps can create a “mentor” bond that will open up the opportunity to work together down the line, and share sales tips and tricks once the new rep settles in
Be warned: not all top-performers have time to nurture new sales reps, so it’s important to spread the responsibility around. Don’t have your top-performers constantly being shadowed by new hires. Instead, try pairing up reps with top-performers on a rotational basis, and only assign top-performers who you think will be a good match, personality-wise, to the new hire.
Once you’ve assigned a top-performer, get them involved in the new hire’s onboarding process as soon as possible. This will ease the responsibility on the team’s sales manager to keep their onboarding process on track. Plus, it will give the rep mentoring them a sense of ownership in their onboarding as well.
Finally, make sure you track your new rep’s performance using KPIs.
Even if they’re settling in well and they’re completed the onboarding process, it’s important to track ramp metrics like:
How long it took to fulfill their quota
How many leads in their funnel/demos booked
How many deals they closed
How long it took to close their first deal
Tracking your rep’s performance is essential for a bunch of different reasons. Firstly, it can give you an overall picture of their selling abilities in their early stages. But it can also help you to see how effective your onboarding process was, and what you should be doing to improve it.
To get a larger picture, track whether the rep is hitting their KPIs at the right time and if their training mentor believes they are competent. For outside sales reps, it’s also essential to take a look at how they’re planning territories, and if they’re sticking to their sales routes. 
Using SPOTIO, sales managers can build custom reports for each new hire in real-time to get a clear picture of their conversions and benchmarks. Tracking a rep’s performance using solid data can give you a better idea of how many sales they’re bringing in, and if they’re earning their spot on your sales team.
Bringing new sales reps into your team without a process is hard.
Without a process, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to train and nurture a rep in an efficient way. Not to mention it’ll look sloppy on your part, and during the onboarding phase, new hires are also sizing up your company to make sure it’s a good fit for their career goals.
The cost of replacing a sales rep averages at $115,000 and new hires are 60% more likely to stick around if a business has a standardized onboarding process in place. Refining and perfecting your sales process makes sense—for your employee retention rates and your bottom line.
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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.
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…
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Is your team still mapping sales territories in Google Maps?
Three in ten businesses are still assigning sales territories geographically because it’s “the way things are done.” But using Google Maps to plot and plan sales territories is an old school approach. The territories have to be created manually, and it leaves a lot of room for error.
What does that mean for your business? Well, it can lead to missed prospecting opportunities, and more importantly, lost revenue.
To optimize your sales mapping process, you need to include details like prospect demographics, existing customer data and have clear boundaries. Otherwise, your sales reps will be door-knocking the same houses, crossing into each other’s territories, and ultimately—wasting their time.
Let’s dive into why using a free tool like Google Maps to do your sales territory mapping could actually be costing you money, and why you should start mapping territories in a smarter way.
Sometimes, the best things in life aren’t free. And when it comes to sales territory mapping, using a free tool like Google Maps to plan your sales prospecting can cost you money in the long run.
It’s not that Google Maps is totally useless. In fact, our territory mapping software relies on it for geographical data. But if you’re using Google Maps as a standalone mapping solution, you’ll run into several costly limitations.
It’s a typical Tuesday morning, and your sales reps are out canvassing neighborhoods you’ve assigned them on Google Maps.
But, how many homes are they supposed to hit in that area?
If you’re using Google Maps, you’ll have no idea. The fact is, you could assign two reps to the exact same geographically sized area in Google Maps, but there is no way to know the actual number of homes you’ve assigned to each rep.
Unless you manually input every home in each sales territory, it’s impossible to know how many homes are in each one. [Image source]
One area might have 50 houses, and the other might have 500.
This is a recipe for disaster when it comes to making sure territories are fairly balanced. If a rep is constantly given areas with fewer homes than other reps, not only will they be closing fewer sales, but they might not be too happy about their commissions at the end of the month, either.
Talk about flying blind.
Google Maps gives you the tools to assign territories. But it doesn’t give you any information about existing customers inside the area.
This is a problem for two reasons.
Firstly, your sales reps could be door-knocking current customers and trying to sell to them. This is a bad look and makes the rep (and your company) look unprofessional. Secondly, it rules out any chances of reps using existing customers for referrals when they’re targeting a territory—because they’ve got no idea where the existing customers are located, and as a result, cannot customize their script.
An article by Alexander Group found the best and highest performing territories are those that have been ‘optimized’ for sales reps.
So, the more a territory has been scrutinized into fitting your company’s target persona, the more chance reps have at closing clients. Using Google Maps, it’s almost impossible for reps to have this data on hand, and it makes even less sense to send them to an area without knowing the profile of the prospects they are trying to close.
Does the area fit your company’s target persona? Are there businesses or homes in the area that are already customers of yours? Can the prospects in the area afford your product, or more importantly… do they even want it?
You won’t be able to answer these questions if you’re using Google Maps to assign territories, and your reps will be essentially selling blind.
Plotting routes in Google Maps isn’t just time-consuming—it’s limiting. You can only plot a single route at a time.
For a sales rep, this is very restrictive. They must plot a single route and complete it, and then map out another plan. This adds up to a lot of extra admin time for your sales reps. A study by Salesforce found sales reps spend a whopping 64% of their time doing non-selling tasks like admin and service tasks.
But restricting the number of routes a rep can map out not only takes up a big chunk of their time, it makes it easier for prospects to slip through the cracks. If they’re rushing to manually map out routes, they might miss potential prospects in the area.
Here are 5 ways using a sales territory management app can supercharge your sales efforts.
To start selling smarter, you need data.
Using a sales tracking app, you can build sales territories using prospect data you’ve already got on file. When your sales reps are out in the field, they’ll be able to see every prospect and customer’s geographic location.
This can save them valuable time if they’re out selling and a new lead enters your company’s sales pipeline. Because SPOTIO helps build a rep’s selling route, it can automatically adjust their route if the new prospect is in the area, so they don’t fall through the cracks.
For reps out in the field, using existing customers as examples can be a powerful tool in their sales toolkit.
Picture this. Your rep is canvassing a street, and they can see on their app that the prospect’s neighbor is an existing customer of your company. This will give your outside rep the ammunition to open their pitch with something like, “You know John Smith next door? He actually hired us last month and was very impressed with the work we did. In fact, seven of your neighbors in the area have trusted us to work on their home.”
See how that ice breaker completely changes the tone of the conversation?
But having powerful data like this can also help supercharge your rep’s referral process, too. Your customers can provide your reps with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads– referrals. They just have to ask.
In fact, 86% of buyers want to be able to ask in-person questions before making a purchase, and a further 90% of all buying decisions are based on recommendations. So if a rep is out selling in the field and getting referrals at the same time, they can kill two birds with one stone.
Making sure that sales reps have enough doors to knock is essential to their performance and the amount of commission they can make.
But it’s also essential to maintain a balance in your sales rep’s workloads. Using a sales territory mapping app can help assign a fair number of homes to a territory in a more accurate way.
For example, using SPOTIO you can create fair, balanced territories for your reps in less than 10 minutes. Let’s say you want to assign each rep 300 houses to target for the week. Using SPOTIO, all you have to do is start drawing out an area, and the software will tell you the estimated number of homes in that territory.
Once you reach the amount of houses you want each rep to target, all that’s left is to assign the territory so they can start selling.
Distributing territories by city or zip code is one of the easiest methods because it’s black and white.
There’s no grey area, and it minimizes the risk of sales reps crossing into each other’s territories. But there’s a catch. Assigning territories by city or zipcode can lead to unbalanced territories, and one rep having higher amounts of prospects than another.
Because cities or zip codes vary in the number of houses, you may need to give two cities to a single rep, while one city might need three reps. Using SPOTIO to assign these territories can eliminate all this guesswork. SPOTIO can help to ensure you distribute the number of houses for each rep to work evenly by the city or zip code.
SPOTIO’s native integration with Google Places makes it easier for reps to find the best prospects in their territories.
Let’s say your target prospects are restaurant owners. Using Google Places, sales reps can pull up every restaurant in the area, and then SPOTIO will automatically plan out the best route for them.
And because Google Maps is constantly staying up to date with businesses’ information, your reps won’t be wasting time in the field chasing down leads with outdated addresses.
Integrating Google Places into your rep’s sales plans can make sure the prospect information they’re using is up to date.
Google Maps is a great tool to help find a restaurant if you’re out walking the streets. But if you’re trying to use it for sales territory mapping, it’s another story.
For sales reps to be successful in the field, they need more than just a map with boundary lines on it. They need existing customer information, demographic data, and smarter sales routes.
Planning sales territories in Google Maps may be free, but it’s also very limiting. When you add up the cost of lost prospects and the extra admin time spent manually planning routes, ask yourself… what’s free mapping software actually costing your business in the long run?
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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.
Outfit pressed and hair coiffed, it’s time to set out into the field to meet with prospective clients. Being the face of the product/service makes the role of an outside salesperson an important one. This face-to-face interaction is what sets outside sales apart from their inside selling counterparts.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll talk you through everything you need to know about the world that is Outside Sales.
What is Outside Sales?
Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales
What Does an Outside Sales Rep Do?
Most Important Skills for Outside Sales Reps
Average Outside Sales Rep Salaries
How to Hire Top Performing Outside Sales Professionals
Outside Sales Interview Question
6-Step Guide to Building a Winning Outside Sales Strategy
Inside and Outside Sales Teams Can Work Together
Outside Sales Training Resources
Outside Sales Tools
Investopia defines outside sales as “the sale of products or services by sales personnel who go out into the field to meet with prospective customers. Outside sales professionals tend to work autonomously outside a formal office and formal team environment. They travel to meet customers face-to-face, as well as to maintain relationships with existing customers.”
Outside means exactly that… outside. An outside salesperson is spending the majority of his or her time out in the elements meeting people in person.
How does outside sales compare with inside sales? The ultimate objective is the same… to close the deal, of course. However, the way it is done between the two have some significant differences.
When looking at outside sales, you’re working autonomously most of the time. The area around you is your “office” – in that you meet with people all over the place – and you spend quite a bit of time driving around in your car.
With inside sales, you are more likely to be in a team environment in an office setting working set hours, depending on the industry you are in. You will likely make many more contacts with prospects in customers in a day since you are not spending any time driving around to an appointment.
It is important to note that while inside sales is being adopted more and more, outside sales is still a big driver in achieving sales quotas. A top performing sales strategy will include elements of both inside and outside sales strategy.
A day in the life of a sales rep can be broken up in the following ways:
According to a poll done by Hubspot.com, when salespeople were asked what they struggle with the most, 42% said it was prospecting. It doesn’t matter how good you are at selling, if you have nobody to talk to, that skill won’t matter.
Below, we will discuss various methods and tools one can use to aide in sales prospecting success.
– LinkedIn.com
– LimeLeads.com
– Mattermark.com
– SPOTIO’s Lead Machine
– VoilaNorbert.com
– Emailhunter.com
– Sellhack.com
Sales territory mapping. How many people that are a prospect for your product live or operate a business in a given area? How close together are they? How many of them are near an existing customer that you could introduce yourself to in case your appointment cancels or ends sooner than you thought? This is where sales territory mapping comes in.
As I mentioned before, spending too much time in your car zig-zagging across town all day will minimize the efficiency of the time you spend out in the field. Knowing where to go, with minimal travel between engagements, is a great way to maximize your time and energy during that day.
Customer mapping. Where are all your customers located? Is it a concentrated area or is it spread out all over the place? Where are they in relation to prospects you’d like to meet? When you take the time to do this, it is a very enlightening thing. You may find out that you haven’t penetrated a desired market nearly as much as you would like to. Maybe you’ll see that you are into an area more than you would like to be, and there are more profitable markets to pursue. Knowing your footprint from past deals, and how it relates to where you would like to go is a vital part of managing your existing business as you seek to grow it. 
With field sales software tools (such as SPOTIO), this process is automated. The whole premise of SPOTIO is to drop pins on properties located on a map so that you have a physical representation of a desired territory. It’s much easier to actually see on a map exactly where a desired property is located rather than staring at unorganized data on a spreadsheet or even a handwritten list. Having this level or organization at your fingertips is one of the main benefits of using field sales software.
Appointment setting. Okay, so you have the names. Now it’s time to set appointments with them. One of the most important skills a salesperson can invest time in would be what to say, whether it be in person or on the phone, I’m a firm believer in scripting. Why? Because using a well thought out script will eliminate a robotic, bumpy, and awkward presentation that lacks a connection to the prospect.
Here is an example call script:
Sales presentation. Data shows 75% of sales presentations leave prospects feeling like the salesperson just didn’t get it. Obviously, this will have a negative impact on your chances of closing that deal. We want the prospect to not only feel that we “got it”, but that we are the answer to their situation. What are some things that can be done to make this a better part of your overall process? The article referenced above gives some great tips.
Make sure the presentation comes after a thorough discovery. It’s self-defeating to make a pitch when you haven’t gotten the answers to all the pertinent questions in order to MAKE that pitch to begin with. It’s possible that you are either the perfect answer to the problem the prospect has, or that you are the last solution they need to look at – this will be determined when you ask the right questions to determine if a presentation is even warranted.
Only present solutions to your prospect’s challenges. How annoying is it when someone presents a recommendation that doesn’t meet the challenges at hand? Stick to the issues at hand and focus on solving them. 
Don’t present “one last thing.” Focus on the issues at hand directly, and handle them.
Use case studies. Many presentations can be dry, so using real-life situations where you solved the same struggle(s) that the current prospect is facing will go a long way to build your credibility in the room.
The 60-second rule. Don’t dominate the conversation. In order to maximize your chances of closing the deal, it needs to be an interactive presentation. Never talk for more than 60 seconds without an interruption. Ask for questions, etc. Pull them in.
Use feedback loops. This is how you solve the 60-second rule. Asking “Does that make sense?” or “Are we on the same page?” will prompt responses that will keep the prospect engaged.
If you lose them, stop. When/if you feel like you’re starting to lose your prospect, there is nothing wrong with just stopping and mentioning that to them, backing up and seeing where you missed it and fixing that to move forward. 
Keep it as short as possible. Getting off track will cost more sales than it will land. Stick to the points at hand. If you do anything other than present a solution to the problems that the prospect has, you’re going to lose them more often.
Clear and scheduled next steps. One-call closes are pretty old-school anymore. Most of the time, there are going to be next steps before you can close the deal. Make sure they are clearly defined, and most importantly SCHEDULED so that nothing is lost due to ambiguity here.
Lead management. How do you keep track of all the prospects that you have? At any given time, your “sales funnel” can range from hundreds of leads to thousands. When someone says “call me in a month” or anything else that isn’t leading to a sale right now, how do you store them? What do you do to make sure you don’t forget to call that client again in a month? There is a saying that “not all leads are created equal”, and it is very true. Due to the many categories that leads can fall into, it’s very important for a salesperson to organize his or her leads in a way so that you are spending your time appropriately with the right leads at the right time(s).
The process and method of lead management is what drives the success of a sales team. Capturing specific details about each prospect quickly and efficiently, and then being able to use this data to increase productivity and sales is the goal of SPOTIO’s lead management software.
Sales reporting, or as I like to call it, keeping score. There are so many activities that salespeople engage in, and most of them are important. How do you know if you’re effective enough at what you do? What are the most important metrics to keep track of so that you can keep everything else in line? Here are some of the most vital metrics you should be privy to:
– Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
– Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
– Team performance and best time and day to knock
– Number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales
Sales Dashboards provide real-time insights that identify exactly where each individual team member needs assistance in your sales process. You will be able to spot train reps on the areas where they need the most assistance to be successful.
If you are thinking about Outside Sales as a career path, it’s probably a good idea to assess yourself and see if you possess the skills that employers are looking for. I’m certain that employers will debate heavily as to what the most important skills are, so this isn’t an all-inclusive list. However, I doubt that many would doubt that any of the following skills would be very useful, if not vital.
I know this sounds obvious, but this is a big one. Have you ever asked a salesperson a question on a product and they didn’t know the answer? Annoying, wasn’t it? You must be a subject matter expert when it comes to whatever you are selling. You need to be able to answer any questions that come your way, and in a confident manner. If you aren’t confident in the answer you are giving, then your prospect may have a hard time being confident in you.
Do your research. In other words, know who you are dealing with. When you make your approach and have those initial contacts, being able to talk about their company shows that you are a professional that is truly interested in their business. It will also help you avoid making a contact with a prospect/company that is not a good fit.
Know your metrics. It’s hard to ever know if you’re hitting an objective if you don’t know what it takes to get there.
The person that is planned spends less time doing unproductive activities and also has contingencies in place to make the unplanned situation productive anyway.
When someone opens a door you knock on, or a decision maker in a business takes a minute to shake your hand, you have a very short period to win another several minutes with that person. Your smile, the handshake, what you say, how you say it; all these things have a major impact on whether you can hope to turn this prospect into a client.
You must have the ability to “shake it off”, don’t take it personally, and move on to the next one with the same smile on your face as before. If you’re down, the person interacting with you will sense that.
Any individual you meet with will fall into one of 3 categories: they will right now, they will buy later, or they will never buy. Your job is to figure out which one they are
and do it as soon as possible. The sooner you can figure out what kind of person you are dealing with, the sooner you can either take them to the next step or move on to the next prospect.
This is the process of asking very deep, meaningful questions to determine if you are able to meet the challenge(s) your prospect if facing, and how to do so.
This is where you are putting all the information you gathered together and forming the solution to your prospect’s need(s) and asking for her business.
Most objections at the forefront aren’t the real objection, but a “smokescreen.” Being skilled at answering objections is vital to keeping a valid sale alive.
The range of salaries for outside sales is all over the board. If you look at it as more of a “big picture”, with all industries included, you will see a range of $31,000 to a little over $92,000. That range includes salary, bonus, profit sharing, and commission. As you can imagine, the numbers will vary quite a bit from industry to industry.
The average life insurance agent makes $34,229 per year. The average automobile salesperson makes $38,801.Pharmaceutical salespeople average just short of $70,000. Monster.com gives a list of sales jobs that are the highest paying… from Consulting Sales ($120k – $150k base salaries plus commissions to Digital Media Sales ($170k – $180k base salaries plus commissions), they list the higher end of this spectrum.
Some people have chosen their path in sales strictly because of the highest earnings potential. Others have gone with what they are passionate about and that drives them to be a top performer and blow past the average for his or her field.
Plain and simple, hiring the right people is hard. And expensive. It costs as much as 1.5–2.0 times of the employee’s annual salary to replace them and takes an average of 4 months to hire their replacement. This makes having a bulletproof hiring strategy absolutely essential. So, how do you go about finding, hiring, and retaining your ideal candidates?
Personally, I believe that a lot of thought should go into this document that is taken for granted a lot of times. Remember, you want to attract the best possible fit for that job. So, this job description should describe that person. How do you do that? What skills would that person have? What would be his/her responsibilities? What kind of experience and qualifications would he or she have?
New business development
Customer relations
Account management
Attending trade shows to create new leads and contact existing clients
Keep on top of industry trends to ID opportunities for the company to grow
Collaborate with the management team to improve marketing techniques and grow the company’s presence in the existing and desired markets
Familiarity with a CRM
“X” amount of years’ experience
Proven track record of exceeding sales quotas
Industry-relevant certifications
Sales awards
College education
Be very specific about who your company is, what it does, and why. It’s hard for a salesperson to sell something if they don’t believe in it. If you’re worried that being specific might scare away a superstar, think of it like this: chances are that he or she wouldn’t have been a superstar with you. Remember, you want the right person to come to you. That means you won’t have to interview 20 people to hire the “perfect” one… maybe you can cut that down to 3-5. Think of how much time and energy you just saved yourself or your HR team in interviewing people that aren’t the right fit from the start?
Okay, you have figured out the profile of who you want to hire. You have created an amazing job description that has gotten some dynamite applicants to contact you for an interview. What kind of questions should you ask to sift through the pool of great candidates and find “the one”? If you focus on 3 main areas – personality, skills, and performance – you can do that very well. Some examples might be:
1. Personality Questions 
What drives you to succeed?
What are you looking forward to in this role?
What would you like to achieve in the next 3-5 years?
In an ideal world, how would you collaborate with your team members?
How do you prefer to work with your sales manager?
-What is your optimal sales environment?
-How do you see yourself fitting with our company and this team?
Would you rather call or email prospects? Why?
How do you deal with rejection?
What is your closing percentage?
How do you get around the gatekeeper when you make a call on a prospect?
When do you decide to walk away from a prospect?
Does social media play a role in your sales process? If so, how?
How do you stay up-to-date with industry trends? What specific resources do you reference?
What is your negotiation style?
Tell me about a time when you were in a competition to win a prospect’s business that you ultimately won. What caused that to happen?
Tell me about a time when you were dealing with a very hard-to-convince prospect that you won over. How did you do that?
When you lose a deal, what is the most common reason why?
Tell me about a time that you didn’t hit your performance objective. What caused you to fail and what did you do to make sure it didn’t happen again?
Tell me about the achievement you are most proud of in your career thus far.
What is the length of your current sales cycle?How often do you beat your quota?
Any company that has a sales division wants that wing of their corporation to thrive. After all, they are responsible for selling the products that they make to the marketplace, right? So, how do you build a sales division that doesn’t just “win”, but will thrive? Here are what I think are 6 steps that will help in this area.
1. Identify the team that you need.
Outside vs. inside team – Do you need an outside sales team? Inside sales team? Both?
Build a profile of the people you want in each role that you’re looking for.
2. Customize your recruiting process – and make it repeatable.
Build the job description.
Identify sourcing tools.
Who does what part of your process?
What does the interview look like?
3. Make sure the sales managers are the right ones.
Build profiles.
An outside sales manager will have different characteristics than an inside sales manager. Using the same person for both isn’t going to always be the best option available.
– Can they lead people?
– If they were successful as a salesperson, can he/she clone themselves? MUST be able to train people.
4. Get with the times. In other words, modernize your sales process and tools as much as you can. Many companies will cut corners here, and cite costs as the reason. This approach is narrow minded due to the costs on the back end. What productivity is lost when the salespeople are spending more time in the office doing things they shouldn’t have to do because their tools are out of date instead of being out there doing what they do best – selling?
CRM system.
Tracking software.
Assign proper sales territories.
Planning and organization software.
Enable mobile updates.
Personalized dashboards.
5. Make sure that your Marketing department is aligned with your sales department.
Qualify leads with inbound marketing.
Create lead nurturing campaigns.
Track leads through the sales cycle.
Create a multi-tiered incentive structure.
Research shows that a multi-tiered incentive plan will drive production.
Use the salespeople to help develop it.
Make sure to include a way to motivate the ones that fall behind.
In my experience with an organization that uses both inside and outside sales teams, it has been an “us vs. them” mentality. And most of the time, that mentality starts from the top. If the executive team doesn’t respect and see the need to work together to be mutually beneficial, then it isn’t likely that the sales teams themselves will either. So, it starts there; make sure the executive team is in alignment so they can model that behavior to their respective teams and spearhead efforts in working together.
Visibility is also a key. The entire team needs to know what the other members of the team are doing. Communication plays a big role here. Are the marketing people actively developing leads in one of the field salesperson’s territory? He or she should know about it. Is that salesperson following up with those leads in a timely fashion? The marketing people should know about that. There are systems in place that can help everyone see that, and with the proper accountability in place, this can make things very transparent to everyone involved.
Ultimately, utilizing this approach will end up causing your entire sales team to build a strong relationship among each other, just like they do, hopefully, with their prospects and clients.
Any true professional should continually be a student of their field; finding ways to get better at what she does. The sales profession is no different. Phone skills, general prospecting skills, fact-finding, closing technique, asking for referrals, marketing as a whole, client retention… these are all areas that a salesperson should continue to get better.
The following are some resources to help develop those skills:
There are literally hundreds of other places to seek out sales training in any area, whether it be based on a certain part of the sales process, or even based on industry.
Every salesperson is interested in being more productive. And, so should each company. There are many tools out there that will help make various parts of the job easier… from mapping to CRMs, sales tracking and everything else. Here are some resources to take a look at for various sales tools:
1. Spotio has various software tracking tools (sales territory mapping, sales tracking, lead management, field sales, territory management, canvassing, customer mapping, sales rep tracking, and outside sales tracking) that will keep tabs on all the different things that you would want to keep an eye on, making key data and metrics available to you with a click rather than someone having to keep track of it all on their own.
2. Sales Hacker provided a list in February of this year of over 160 sales tools that I found to be very comprehensive, covering 11 different areas:
Account-based Sales & Marketing
Analytics
Communication / Conferencing
Content Sharing & Management
Contract Lifecycle Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
Email Management
Lead Generation, Productivity, Prospecting
Performance Management
Sales & Market Intelligence
Search Engine Optimization
3. LinkedIn is primarily meant to be used as a networking site. Today, salespeople use this as a way to expand their footprint, develop leads, and ultimately create new sales. Can be a very effective networking and recruiting tool. It is also a great tool to do some research on a prospect before you contact them.
4. Profit Story is a tool that will help you calculate margins on proposals pretty easily. It is driven by profit-based metrics.
5. CamCard lets you take a picture of a business card and automatically saves the information to your contacts. Knowing that business people – especially outside salespeople – tend to collect many business cards, this is especially useful.
6. Doc Scan lets you snap a picture on your smartphone of important documents and generates a PDF for you.
7. DocuSign is an e-signature service that allows you to get the signature no matter where you are.
8. Dragon is a note taking app that will transcribe what you say into notes if you would rather not use the texting method to do so.
Outside sales is a very broad topic, and it’s impossible to cover everything in one article. However, the objective of this piece was to draw some attention to some key areas that will raise or lower the bottom line results in your organization and team.
From getting you sales team organized to equipping them with the tools to make them as pro productive as possible; all of these things require due diligence to ensure you are “stacking the deck” in your favor. Best of luck in your endeavors!
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
Building a strong sales process is the lifeblood of any business.
Sales tactics are the techniques managers and reps use to achieve lofty sales goals. They not only help close deals, but fill your pipeline with a steady stream of qualified prospects and opportunities.
Today, there are countless sales tactics at your disposal.
To help you succeed, we’ve compiled 23 proven sales tactics that work across any industry or vertical.
But first, let’s take a look at why you need these tactics.
The buyer’s journey has changed.
And that’s mostly down to the Internet.
Buyers now have a wealth of information readily available, and that puts them in control of the purchasing decision as they can use digital channels at all stages of their buying journey.
Previously, the buying process was linear. The typical stages were Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Buyers moved along in an orderly fashion through the sales funnel:
Now, it’s more of an iterative process where buyers circle back to look at all the options and confer with other decision makers:
All these extended activities mean the buyer’s journey is longer.
The availability of online content also means buyers are more educated and informed about their options than ever before. According to a study by Accenture:
– 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research at some point in the buying process.
As a result, buyers are quite happy to conduct initial research online and only connect with a sales rep later on in their journey to confirm their findings.
According to Gartner, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. And when they’re comparing multiple suppliers‚ they spend only 5% or 6% of their time with each sales rep.
Furthermore, the buyer’s journey has become more complicated because there is more than one person involved in the decision:
– The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers.
Each person reports back to the group with several solutions to consider. And to make things more complicated, there are more technologies and products on the market.
This is why it’s more important than ever for sales teams to be equipped with the best sales tactics so they can efficiently and effectively navigate the complexity of a modern buyer journey.
The following sales tactics can work for sales teams in every industry, across each stage of the sales cycle:
– Prospect
– Engage
– Close
– Follow Up
Let’s start with prospecting…
Prospecting is the process of searching for and identifying potential new customers for a business. It involves cold-calling as well as reaching out to nurture leads that have gone cold.
More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%):
But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you can ignore it. The most successful salespeople are those who block time off for prospecting. Setting aside dedicated time in your calendar each day results in more conversations and better win rates.
To have any success with prospecting, you need to understand who your ideal customer is. Unfortunately:
– At least 50% of your prospects are not a good fit for what you sell.
It’s pointless chasing prospects that are a bad fit from the start. So make sure your prospects fit your ideal customer profile by verifying these key areas:
– Where are they located?
– What industry/niche are they in?
– Are they the right-sized company?
– What are they struggling with?
– How will your product or service solve their problem?
– How will they measure results?
– Discover who makes the buying decisions?
– How many people are involved in the decision-making process?
– How long do they take to make a decision?
– Which events or triggers lead them to buy (or not buy) your type of products or services.
If you’re going to succeed with a prospect, you need to know what competition you’re up against. It could be one or more similar vendors, or it might be an internal team. Research their history to see what vendors they used previously and find out if they’re likely to buy from you.
Sales territory mapping lets you create and assign specific territories to each rep, whether they’re working on inside or outside sales. With territory mapping software like SPOTIO, you can:
– Define regions that meet your ideal customer criteria.
– Allocate them across your sales team to avoid any overlapping and poaching.
Not all leads are created equal. The net result is sales reps wasting their valuable time on worthless leads:
– 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers before taking them through the full sales process.
– 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.
Ensure your sales team is only “working” the most qualified prospects (SQLs) to save time, energy, and money – and boost conversion rates.
These next set of sales tactics are all designed to help you engage your prospects.
Ring DNA defines sales scripts as a “prescribed set of talking points” that telemarketers and sales reps use when speaking to prospects.
Telemarketers tend to stick to a rigid script that forks in different directions according to the prospect’s responses.
But for sales, a script should act as a ‘crib sheet’ and prepare you with the best questions and lines to ask.
Scripts can be used in different scenarios such as cold calling, leaving a voicemail, and writing emails. But whatever the situation, HubSpot recommends following this framework:
1. Identify a product or service to focus on
2. Hone in on your target audience
3. Develop your benefits
4. Link your benefits to pain points
5. Ask questions about those pain points:
a. How do you feel about the amount of time it currently takes you to fill open positions?
b. How many sales opportunities do you lose each month due to poor lead tracking and follow up? How much lost revenue would you say that equates to each month?
6. Don’t talk too much
7. Always close for something
Salespeople love to talk – mainly about themselves and their company – when they’d be better off listening to their prospect’s needs. That’s why there’s often a disconnect, and sales reps fail to engage buyers:
The Sandler Pain Funnel is a method of asking open-ended, needs-based questions to uncover the prospects pain:
The pain questions start broad; e.g. “What are some things you would like to change about your current system/provider/product line?” and then move to more specific questions; e.g. “How long has that been a problem?” and “How much do you think that cost you?”
By asking open-ended questions and listening to your prospect’s answers, you can get to the root of what they actually need.
How long do you wait before contacting new prospects?
Velocify research found that timing is critical if you want to increase your chances of conversion:
– Placing a phone call to a new prospect within a minute of lead generation can increase your likelihood of conversion by nearly 400%.
While research by Lead Response Management found that the first 5 minutes are critical:
You are 100x more likely to successfully contact a lead if you respond within 5 minutes and 21x more likely to qualify that lead.
There aren’t many salespeople who like cold calling. However, there are a few tactics you can use to warm up your prospects.
– Talk about the prospect and listen to what they have to say.
– Balance the conversation with useful information you possess; e.g. pricing, special offers, etc.
– Consider the technique of trend, solution, and proof.
For example:
Mention a pertinent industry trend:
“The biggest challenge will be in three years when fossil fuel resources are low…”
Suggest a few possible solutions or recommendations:
“Our clients are preparing for this by upgrading their engineering systems to be more self-sufficient.”
Prove you can do it:
“We’ve done this for several manufacturing companies including [client name], and they’ve seen excellent results, which is why I’m calling you.”
It’s not often that a sales rep connects with a prospect the first time.
Research from TOPO found it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer. And only 23.9% of sales emails are opened.
That’s why it’s essential to use more than one channel to follow up and engage with your prospects. In the same way that buyers use digital channels to research and select vendors, sales teams can use technology to reach prospects.
For instance, an HBR study found that 40% of sales people that regularly use LinkedIn indicated they have successfully generated revenue from the social network.
What’s your reaction when you check the caller display on incoming calls?
If the number is blocked or toll-free, then you probably feel suspicious and are reluctant to take the call.
Contrast that to a local number. How do you feel now? I bet you’re more inclined to pick up and answer.
Research by Software Advice shows that people are nearly four times more likely to answer calls from local numbers:
That’s why you should apply the same logic when you dial potential buyers.
With the wealth of digital channels available, is there still a place for outside sales teams?
– Out of the 5.7 million professional salespeople in the U.S., approximately 47.2% are inside sales professionals, and 52.8% are outside sales reps.
Plus, there are a couple more factors to consider:
– Companies who have a majority of outside sales reps have a 30.2% higher close rate than companies who have a majority of inside sales reps.
– Deals worked by outside sales teams tended to be 130.2% bigger on average than those worked by inside sales teams.
Depending on your industry, it’s worth considering using both inside and outside sales teams to complement your strategy.
Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to ensure the best use of company resources. Strategic sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base – whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship.
The old-fashioned way of creating and assigning territories involved drawing outlines on physical maps by hand. But SPOTIO’s Territory Manager software enables managers to create custom maps of different territories and assign them strategically to sales reps.
For instance, managers can assign their top performing reps to the most important territories and customer accounts. Plus, having a clear picture of the territory assignments avoids any redundancy in sales activity.
Sales enablement materials come in various formats, including:
– Blog posts
– Whitepapers
– Case studies
– Email templates
– Sales scripts
– Presentation slides
– Product info sheets
– Competitor/Product comparisons
– Social media messages
– Customer testimonials
– Video content – demo or how to
– Printed brochures
However, the content created for sales enablement is different from content created for content marketing purposes.
According to Seismic, content created to attract leads and convert them into prospects is content for marketing purposes, while content created for the conversion and closing stages of the sales funnel is classified as sales enablement content.
That’s not to say salespeople should ignore the marketing content. When marketing and sales are aligned, high-quality educational content can be used to address potential customer questions at each stage of the buyer journey.
It’s a case of using the right content, at the right time.
If you want to be successful, you need to be consistent. Set aside time each day for specific sales activities like prospecting, following-up, and nurturing to build relationships with your potential buyers.
Salespeople who leave everything to the last moment and try to cram in last-minute calls in the hope of clinching a deal fall short of their targets.
When it’s time to close the deal you’ve been working on, try these sales tactics.
Sometimes you’re in that situation where you believe you’ve done everything right and your potential customer is ready to buy. Only for them to raise more questions like: “What can you do for me?” and “Can you cut me a special deal?”
At this stage, the best thing you can do is let the prospect sell themselves. How? – By asking questions to take control of the conversation.
Instead of trying to convince your prospect, get your prospect to tell you what they want and why your product or service is the right one for them.
Sooner or later, you’re going to get a “No.” But what do you do when your prospect raises an objection.
First, be prepared for objections. You should expect them, and you should be ready to handle them when they come. Think of objections as an excellent opportunity to close the deal.
Second, prepare some answers. Depending on your industry and product/service, you’ll know some of the objections you’re likely to face.
Here are 10 examples of sales objections and how to overcome them.
Before you even pick up the phone to make a call or visit an office to make a presentation, remember you’re dealing with a real person. It’s imperative to do your homework and understand the individual you’re pitching.
Research the prospect on LinkedIn, check out their work history and where they fit in at their current organization. Check other social media channels to see where their out-of-work interests lie.
When you know these details, you can customize your pitch to meet their requirements.
As ClickTime’s head of sales, Bill Mooney says: “That means positioning your solution not just how you see it working for your prospect’s business, but in a way that solves the problem they personally care about most too.”
If you want to be successful in sales, realize that you’re selling to people, not companies.
The ABC for salespeople is Always Be Closing. It’s the make-or-break moment in the sales process. But which closing technique should you use.
Here are three for starters:
If you have a good relationship with your prospect, then you can use the Assumptive Close method. The technique is based on them trusting you. So as you walk through their requirements, list the items they want on the order form, and then, when the time is right, present it to them to sign.
The Ben Franklin closing technique is especially useful with prospects who aren’t sure or have trouble making decisions. It’s so-called because the Founding Father was fond of making a list of Pros and Cons, and then going with the longest list.
You can use this technique when a prospect is sitting on the fence. Just make sure your list of Pros is longer.
The Puppy Dog Close plays on the idea that folks who take a puppy home for a few days are unlikely to return it because they simply adore it.
In other words, let your prospect have a “free trial” or “test drive” of your product knowing they’ll fall in love with it and agree to buy it.
| BONUS RESOURCE: 16 Sales Closing Techniques Reps Should Add to Their Arsenal (with Examples) |
A referral is a sales lead that comes from a customer. And they’re the best leads you can get.
According to the Wharton School of Business, a referred customer has a 16% higher lifetime value than a non-referred customer.
But when and how should you ask for them?
There’s a right and wrong time to ask your customer for a referral. Many salespeople jump straight in after closing a deal.
But think about it.
You’ve just gained a customer, but you haven’t delivered the product or service yet.
Therefore hang fire on the request until you have proven you can deliver. Either stay in touch with the customer and check they’re happy with the service. Or, as Geoffrey James recommends, ask for the “right to ask.”
Both of these options give your new customer the chance to consider the most applicable referrals based on your sales and service.
If you make it super easy for your customers to refer you to someone else, they’ll likely do it quicker and more often.
One way to make it easy for them is to create an introduction email template that they can forward on your behalf.
Here’s an example from HubSpot:
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You should always be on the lookout for an opportunity to ask for a referral. For instance, when a customer praises you in an email, posts an update about your product or service on social media, or makes a LinkedIn recommendation, then strike while the iron’s hot and ask them for a referral!
Once a customer refers you, remember to thank them. Give them a call or send a note expressing your gratitude, and chances are they’ll refer you to more prospects.
The buyer’s journey has changed. The sales cycle takes longer as buyers take more time to research products and services before contacting a sales rep.
The question is: are you ready? By using these proven sales tactics, you’ll be able to close more deals and get more prospects.
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity.
Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.
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.
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.
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.
One of the reasons this process has been such a pain for so long is because of how it’s been done.
Territory mapping with Google Maps and a highlighter 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.
Note: the same issues occur with other legacy solutions like Streets and Trips and MapPoint.
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
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. This is one of main features that is causing many field sales reps to switch from the competition.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Here is a short list of issues and errors managers can implement, which will improve their effectiveness in territory mapping:
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.
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.
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 (#) x Average time to service an active account (#)] + [Prospects (#) x 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.
Science is finally backing up what you’ve always known: a picture is worth a thousand words. According to an MIT study, 90 percent of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. An Aberdeen Group study revealed that managers using visual data tools are 28 percent more likely to be able to find the information they need to make informed decisions.
With all this talk about the value of visual data, it’s no surprise that visual management tools are especially helpful for sales leaders. One of these useful tools is sales territory mapping software, which provides a simple, easy-to-consume way for sales leaders to visualize geographical areas and ensure:
– Territories are a manageable size for reps
– There is no overlap between reps
– Sales leaders and managers are thoughtfully and strategically assigning the top performers.
If you adopt the best sales territory planning solution, your organization will experience the following benefits.
If one territory has too many leads, some leads will fall through the cracks. The result of this unbalance is lost sales. Sales territory mapping software helps you ensure territories are correctly balanced and each territory reaches its full potential.
The temptation to expand to new territories is only natural. But it’s extremely likely that your team hasn’t covered all potential leads within their existing sales territories. With territory management tools like SPOTIO, you can use insights about your territories to reveal and locate new leads in your existing territories.
Without territory mapping software, sales leaders often have to spend hours and hours creating sales maps. Solutions like SPOTIO make it easier to categorize things like:
– Areas or regions with high or low potential
– Areas or regions with a high volume
– Areas or regions with high quality leads
These features make it easy to map territories quickly while providing a simple-to-use interface for the reps in each territory. Everyone wins.
Sales territory mapping solutions make mapping territories an intelligent process, using important data-points to help sales leaders place their reps strategically.
With integrated key insights like sales performance, geographical history, total revenue earned and leads converted, sales leaders can use SPOTIO to place people where they can make the most impact.
Whether this is about placing high performers where they’re needed most, or placing average performers in an environment that allows them to reach their potential, you can use a better understanding of your team’s strengths and opportunities to adjust you mapping strategy.
Without an effective and comprehensive system, territory mapping and sales route planning tend to be two separate activities. By using a smart solution, you can combine these two important and interconnected activities to ensure you make the best use of your salesforce’s valuable time, ensuring that you cover you sales territory map thoroughly.
Sales route planning is adjustable on the fly. When new leads arise, the app helps users adjust their route and plan efficiently.
A dynamic sales territory solution makes it easy to measure and compare performance across multiple territories. Using smart features like those offered by SPOTIO, you can quickly see which territories landed the most accounts, where the highest value clients are located and more. This gives you strong visual data to understand where to invest as well as how sales reps are performing by region.
When sales territories are uneven and unfairly distributed, morale takes a hit. Whether a territory is too small and lacks enough potential to enable success, or the territory is too big, causing a sales rep or team to be overworked, a poorly balanced territory can kill your morale. With the data you gather from smart sales territory mapping solutions, you can closely monitor the level of work required to support each territory and allocate your sales team accordingly.
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!
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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