Sales Prospecting

Improve Outside Sales Lead Generation Success

When you’re trying to generate leads outside of your territory, things can get a little overwhelming. Not only must you locate those quality leads, but you also need to nurture them along so that they become completed sales.

Fortunately, there are tools and techniques available to make it easier to close the sales leads you’ve generated.

Industry Verticals

To generate more leads, try expanding into vertical markets where you’re more likely to encounter customers who need your solution or product. You can expand your business by categorizing the leads you want to target based on territory and product type so that you know what message to cultivate when you contact them.

Route Optimization

Once leads are categorized, it’s time to figure out your route. This involves planning your day and strategizing the order in which you will visit potential outside sales customers.

With Spotio’s route optimization tools you can put together the ideal schedule to maximize your time in the field. Plan routes based off meeting time, meeting length, and distance in between meetings just to name a few.

You can also optimize the best order in which to visit your leads to ensure you always arrive on time when you meet a lead.

Geocentric Campaigns

As you expand your reach and cultivate stronger vertical marketing strategies, you need to collaborate with your marketers so you can generate a geocentric campaign. Develop a strategy to engage outside sales leads in various locations by tailoring your message in a way that resonates more effectively with the respective audiences at each location.

While working on your outside sales engagement strategy, you’ll want to analyze your sales data regularly using a CRM to reach more potential leads and generate increased outside sales business.

This CRM data will help you locate untapped opportunities. It will also allow you to visually review and locate places where you can sell to similar audiences.

Educate

The best way to capture more outside sales leads is to focus on helping your prospects solve their problems.

A simple way to do this is to answer their questions, resolve their concerns, and educate them about how you can help. Doing so will position you as a reliable and authoritative leader in the industry, and not as a pushy salesman.

You need to be a highly-trained rep who knows every aspect of your company and market, especially when tackling territories and areas where prospects are not yet familiar with what your company can offer them.

These prospects will have even more questions than local prospects because they don’t know if they like you or trust you yet. Answering their questions and becoming the go-to resource for your prospects will help you to develop trust and eventually close the sale.

Establish Relationships

No matter what industry you’re in, it’s important to establish a relationship with your prospects. In a new territory, you’re going to have to work harder to nurture your leads and to prove that you are an authority in your field. You’ll want to show them that they can trust you even though they may not yet know much about you.

Why should they trust you?

Because you’re an industry authority and you are willing to teach everything they need or want to know about who you are and what your product or service you offer. Many buyers need additional information. They might want to compare different options or speak with an attorney or another business partner before they make a decision.

To that end, as a sales rep, you can use Spotio to keep active notes for each of your leads so that you know where they are in the sales pipeline, what questions they have about your company, and what information you can give them each time you reach out to them.

How Can You Improve your Outside Sales Lead Generation?

The way you end calls with your leads is very important. An average rep will only attempt to reach a prospect twice. However, when you break it down in terms of numbers, only 2% of sales are made through the first contact and only 3% more are made through the second contact. Stopping after the second attempt means your chances of making a sale are a measly 5%.

Leads need to be contacted on a regular basis – anywhere between 8 – 12 times over a 10 – 14 days period. Do this, and you will increase your chance of a sale to 90%.

Given that it requires so many attempts to reach and establish connections with your outside sales leads, you need to use an automated sales engagement system to make the most out of your time. Having a good sales cadence means using the correct number of attempts, across different mediums and spaced out appropriately with customized content.

You can use Spotio’s tools to reduce the amount of time you spend creating these contact attempts. You can do things like setting up all reminders and automatic check-ins.

You can also create automated follow-up messages for your email campaigns and to address your lead’s unopened emails.

Referrals are Important

Being in unfamiliar territory with people who don’t necessarily know much about your company or your product doesn’t have to be a waste of time just because one lead doesn’t pan out.

Studies indicate that 91% of people contacted who don’t follow through with a sale would give a referral if prompted. But, only 11% of reps ask for a referral.

Even more striking is the fact that these additional referrals usually result in follow-up appointments 80% of the time. This means that in order to generate more outside sales leads you should ask each of your leads for a referral at some point in the call attempt process, especially if your lead does not pan out.

Conclusion

Generally, outside sales lead generation is now more accessible and manageable than ever. If you utilize careful planning and preparation and you are willing to dedicate your time long-term you can successfully reach more potential leads in less time.

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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.

Your Guide to Salesforce Territory Management

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If you are tracking field sales reps, then you need effective territory management software. By pairing the powerful planning and mapping software of SPOTIO with the flexible Salesforce platform, teams will strategize, scale, and grow business better than ever.

Boost your productivity by customizing your Salesforce instance by territory, and your users will never see irrelevant data again.

Territory Management in the Sales Cloud uses an intuitive user interface that guides your users through company procedures and best practices. Not only that, but managers have a view from above that allows them access to data at a glance.

With Territory Management, geography and hierarchy come together to help your company function as a cohesive unit.

Here we’ll take you through a quick look at how territory management can help your business, and show you solutions to empower your teams with even more practical field sales tools.

What is Salesforce Territory Management?

Available in both Classic and Lightning experience, Territory Management enables your company to use your management hierarchies already in place to guide an automated organize data and user roles in the same way that you manage sales territories. This new system of organization can revolutionize the way your teams bring in sales, which allows for even more accurate forecasts.

For a guided tour of how this works, click here.

Salesforce gives you territory modeling, letting you compare performance projections for new assignments and management hierarchies. It also provides management and team leaders a range of other tools to effectively collaborate and close more deals.

Let’s take a closer look…

Enterprise Territory Management Features

You may be familiar with the Territory Management Component that was only available in Classic. Salesforce will phase this feature out in the Summer ‘20 update, so get ahead of the curve and learn about Enterprise Territory Management!

Organize Your Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, and Cases By Territory

Role hierarchies are one of the touchstones of Salesforce, but what about when you can take them a step further? Use territories to guide your profile assignments, and you will make sure that your field reps only have access to what they need when they need it.

Worried about complex accounts? This robust tool allows access to users based on account characteristics, not just geography. This means you can sort accounts under multiple territories. Set up your company structure, and user permissions will fall into place!

Enabling Enterprise Territory Management

Once you’re ready to build out your territory management, simply follow the instructions in Setup under Territory Settings.

If your Salesforce instance already has a role hierarchy in place, great! All you have to do is assign users to territories based on the predetermined structure. If not, no worries! Simply create your hierarchy based on the territories they cover.

What if everyone in your company needs access to a certain set of records? Maybe there are some big projects that reps from multiple territories need access to. This is where org-wide permission sets can come in handy.

Set your rules, and everyone can have access to the same version of information!

Reporting and Forecasting By Territory

Generating leads and closing opportunities is great, but when it comes time to evaluate sales strategies, you’re going to want historical data and powerful forecasting tools.

Enterprise Territory Management comes with plenty of custom report types to accommodate your needs, such as:

– Accounts by Territory
– Territories without Accounts
– Users Not Assigned to Territories
– Territories Per User

With these reporting capabilities, your collaborative forecasting is going to be more accurate than ever. However, with such a dynamic feature, you’ll need to consider how your data will be impacted once you introduce territories. Make sure you test all new functions in the sandbox, and your company will thank you.

How SPOTIO Helps Field Sales Succeed

So you know how to use and enable territory management within Salesforce, but what if you need even more specificity when it comes to sales records on the go?

SPOTIO is specifically designed to keep your field data and CRM working as a synchronized unit.

2-Way integration with Salesforce syncs your information in real-time, allowing reps to leverage the power of historical reporting and enriched lead information no matter where they are.

Assign territories as specifically as you want with SPOTIO, even down to individual territories per sales rep. Enhance your Salesforce Mobile experience by automatically recording every step of your sales rep’s journey to Closed Won.

SPOTIO’s flexible integration boasts complex field-mapping as well as guided next-steps. When you complete an activity or update a pin within SPOTIO, a new task is created in Salesforce, ready for when you get back to the office.

Here are just a few of the powerful features and benefits that you can look forward to when turning to our proven field sales and territory management platform:

– Visual customer mapping for logical routes
– Real-time outside sales tracking
– Real-time performance metrics
– Custom maps of territories and assignments
– Enriched out-of-office notes

Investing in field sales is an investment in the future of your company. The better opportunities and leads are managed, the higher the chances of reaching a good rate and quantity of turnover.

After all, statistics show that sales reps spend just a third of their time selling, and only 65% hit their sales quotas.

No matter how good your reps may be, there is always a need to find better ways to improve sales accountability. Better performance means happier, more productive staff. Re-evaluating and optimizing sales territory management strategy is essential to meeting your core goals and quotas.

With the intuitive integration of SPOTIO’s sales support and Salesforce’s Enterprise Territory Management, your reps and teams will reach an all-new pinnacle of performance.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

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

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SPOTIO, Your Microsoft Streets and Trips Alternative

A few years ago, Microsoft Streets and Trips users discovered their software was no longer supported. The exit of the software created a void for trip planners waiting for a new player to fill in where Microsoft left off.

SPOTIO provides an alternative for Microsoft Streets and Trips that fills that void with all the things Microsoft’s product did well for trip planning and then taking it to a new level of functionality and efficiency powered by the internet.

What Was Streets and Trips?

Before Google Maps or Siri, and before Bing Maps and all the other online navigation helpers, many people who needed to get around in the U.S. used a self-contained, offline navigation software called Streets and Trips by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Streets and Trips was a mapping software designed for people unfamiliar with North America to navigate the U.S., Canada, and Mexico with a variety of services including route-mapping. You bought it on CD-ROM and loaded it into your computers, no internet required.

The features were numerous, and included:

– Street-level maps of the U.S. and Canada which included 2.5 million points of interest along the way with easy-to-see icons of what restaurants and hotels are around your destination

– Trip planning functionality for multiple destinations, as well as scenic detours and fuel and rest stop planning

– One-click trip optimization to get the quickest way to your desired destination

– Road type optimization feature, so you choose the way you want to go, e.g., freeways, scenic route, country backroads

– Capacity to add notes, phone numbers, reservation codes to stops

– Offline high-speed planning capability, which some users said was faster than their internet connection

– Drag and Drop utility for rerouting on the fly, no internet connection required

The last version of the software also added customer ratings for businesses. However, you had to be online to see these.

What Happened to Streets and Trips?

As a DOS-Based program in an increasingly Internet-driven world, Microsoft Streets and Trips was discontinued at the end of 2014, with support ending a few months later in 2015. Microsoft sought to migrate Streets and Trips users to Bing Maps, their online mapping system. The move to sunset both Streets and Trips, as well as the business version of the software MapPoint, was part of a broader strategy by CEO Satya Nadella to focus on products that were part of Microsoft’s future rather than its past.

Microsoft purchased the program in 1994 from NextBase, a UK software development team based in a team member’s garage, and developed the program for the next two decades. The European version of the software was called Microsoft AutoRoute, which was also discontinued.

Once Microsoft acquired the program, it commingled NextBase’s route technology with the Encarta World Atlas mapping technology to create earlier programs that were separate, one for mapping and one for route planning that were released on Expedia in the mid to late 1990s.

In 2000, Microsoft evolved away from Expedia and merged the separate programs branding it Microsoft Streets and Trips (although in Europe, the AutoRoute brand remained). Today, the programming behind Streets and Trips and MapPoint were the basis for Bing Maps.

Microsoft Streets and Trips users who miss the software will find that new technology has filled the void and added to the features and benefits enjoyed by its users. SPOTIO’s navigation software does everything that Streets and Trips did, and more.

For example, with our routing utility, SPOTIO offers many of the same tools that Streets and Trips did.

Street level mapping enhanced by Google Places, which integrates directly with SPOTIO and provides detailed business information and map views of surrounding businesses around your destination.

Routes can be calculated for multiple stops, allowing you to pre-plan your trip in great detail before you ever turn the key on your vehicle.

SPOTIO creates efficient routes based on distance from point to point and optimizing it by the shortest path, or by the scheduled stop times and arranging them by meeting durations and calculating arrival times based on start and end times for events.

Captures notes about destinations, including pertinent trip information, which is available with a tap on the pin.

Just like Streets and Trips, you can make changes to your route as you go. However, unlike Streets and Trips, you can use SPOTIO on your Android or iOS mobile devices and change your routes from them. Drop pins on the destinations and tap them later for their exact address or to add information about the stop.

Plus, SPOTIO calculates driving and walking times to your destinations. It’s up to you to figure out which will give you a better option for your day.

SPOTIO also has automatic functions that simplify your planning.

For example, it automatically integrates into your calendar without ever leaving the app. You set the appointment in the SPOTIO calendar, and it goes to your Google or Outlook calendar, too.

Also, SPOTIO automatically calculates your mileage for easy tracking of distance and expenses.

The Power of Google Places Can Maximize Your Trip Enjoyment

SPOTIO’s integration with Google Places is one of the reasons it is the optimal Streets and Trips alternative for 2019. There are over 100 million “places” in Google Places, all with comprehensive points of interest data.

Also, Google Places data updates daily, to the tune of 25 million updates every day. Not only that, the Google Platform has one billion (that’s with a “b”) active users every month, giving the data a scale backed by an infrastructure that has no equal.

In other words, when you use SPOTIO’s trip planning software, you can trust that you have the most up-to-date information about your destination in real-time.

Consider the following comparison of SPOTIO’s user interface compared to Microsoft Streets and Trips.

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

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

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

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Sources:

“History of AutoRoute and Streets and Trips.” www.laptopgpsworld. Web. 29 May 2019. <http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/3562-history-autoroute-streets-trips>.
Jung, Brian. “Microsoft MapPoint vs. Streets & Trips.” Smallbusiness.chron.com. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/microsoft-mappoint-vs-streets-trips-55760.html>.
Smolaks, Max. “Microsoft. Plans to Retire MapPoint Software By The End of The Year.” www.silicon.co.uk. 18 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/microsoft-to-retire-mappoint-149394>.
Protalinski, Emil. “Microsoft will discontinue MapPoint and Streets & Trips on December 31, 2014.” Thenextweb.com. 7 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/07/07/microsoft-will-discontinue-mappoint-streets-trips-december-31-2014/>.
Fried, Ina. “Microsoft Quietly Shutting Down MapPoint in Favor of Bing Maps.” www.vox.com. 11 July 2014. Web. 29 May 2019. <https://www.vox.com/2014/7/11/11628758/microsoft-quietly-shutting-down-mappoint-in-favor-of-bing-maps>.

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7 Step Guide to Building a Profitable Sales Territory Plan (with Examples)

Sales organizations are more challenged than ever with a connected world, complex offerings, and what seems like an endless world of prospects. Without a strong sales territory plan, sales teams may feel all over the place, and as a result may not be producing the best results for your customers or your organization.

If you’re looking to maximize sales productivity and the value that your sales team brings to customers, it may be time to review and enhance your sales territory plan. Good sales territory planning provides a framework to measure sales potential, set goals, and focus your team’s sales efforts for maximum success. It provides your sales team the guidance to properly identify and understand customers and prospects, assess and measure value, and support customers in a way that leads to loyalty.

What is sales territory planning?

Territory planning is a way to clearly define customer segmentation within your sales team, establish goals, and track progress within each segment. Historically, most territories were broken down by geography, but in today’s connected world, sales territories can also be divided in many ways, including industry, go-to-market strategy, sales potential, referral source, or product type.

With a clearly defined territory, sales teams can work strategically to address the needs of their assigned market. A strong sales territory plan allows you to:

Ensure your sales team’s efforts are focused on the who, what, when, where and why that offer the strongest return on investment.

Align salespeople to the regions, segments, and/or verticals best suited for their background and expertise.

Partner intelligently across company teams to drive corporate objectives.

Optimize customer experience by aligning accounts with sales teams that understand their unique challenges and opportunities.

Set the stage for strong long-term customer and market relationships.

Benefits of sales territory planning

If you’re doubting the value of a strong sales territory plan, consider these inarguable benefits:

More time spent selling

A strong territory plan allows organizations to maximize their sales momentum by aligning the right sales teams to the right opportunities. Studies by industry analysts consistently show a decline in sales productivity due to factors such as extensive traveling, the need to learn and understand new segments, and administrative overhead. With a clear sales territory plan based on geography and sector, salespeople can spend less time traveling and preparing for customer engagements, and more time working directly with customers.

Better customer service

By aligning your salespeople to a set of accounts that aligns to their background, expertise, and geography, they are better able to understand customer needs and build solutions that align. With consistent territories, salespeople can build long-term relationships, leading to higher customer loyalty and repeat business.

Balanced workloads

Workload is measured in time and effort required to adequately manage all accounts in a given territory. A strong territory plan compares workloads and designs territories so that each salesperson is at full capacity, maximizing their potential. To maximize rep production, you need to do some due diligence when it comes to assigning balanced territories.

When segmenting territories, some factors to consider:

Is the workload equally divvied up between each member of the team?
Does the territory design provide equal compensation opportunities?
Is there a good mix of existing and new accounts per territory?
Does the territory route allow easy travel time management?

Once you’re able to answer the questions above, it’s time to consider:

1 | Revenue Source

Current Customers. Where are your best customers and prospects located? Geographic and industry-based clusters are the most common focus because it’s easier to get new customers in an area with existing customers. Historical sales data will become your new best friend as it’s the best predictor of future success. A sales tracking software will give you a complete history of this data.

Inbound Leads. When inbound leads convert, focus on the demographics such as geography, industry and size. Then, build a strategy to divide them as evenly as possible across your sales force. The focus needs to be on revenue generated from inbound leads as opposed to volume of leads.

Outbound Prospecting. Sales territory design for outbound efforts begins by first laying out the territories to work, then overlaying them with prospecting territories according to how you’re allocating salespeople. For example, you assign two sales reps to each state (two territories) and one canvasser (one prospecting territory).

2 | Rank Your Team

Create a scorecard and evaluate your sales reps to identify who your top, middle, and low level performers are.

How much is their quota?
Do they consistently achieve this number?
How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
How many viable prospects are located within their territory?

3 | Rank Your Territories

Most Profitable (Least Risky). Evaluate which of your territories are most successful and double down on what’s already working.

Most Growth. If you’re more focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, focus on territories that haven’t been worked yet. It’s likely to take longer to become profitable, but will generate greater growth over time.

Learning / New Markets. To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable, send a canvasser into this territory to accomplish a specific task. This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

4 | Track and Measure Metrics

Sales metrics are invaluable in understanding the success of every sales team within the company, and entire sales department as a whole. They help you to spot trends and determine efficiencies, and inefficiencies, within the company.

With sales enablement platforms like SPOTIO, you can easily pull results for:

Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, etc.
The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales
This data gives you the information you need in order to assign balanced workloads across your sales team.

Actionable Data and Insight

With the help of territory management technology, sales territory data helps you accurately evaluate sales performance. This information helps you design effective sales compensation plans and ensure your sales teams are performing at their maximum potential.

Clarify ownership in complex organizations

In organizations with large and complex sales teams, roles and responsibilities are often tangled. With effective sales territory planning, territories are made clear from the get-go, ensuring that salespeople are clear about their target audience and not creating confusion for the team or the customer.

Resilience to change and turnover

Organizational changes such as personnel loss, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and relocations inevitably effect customers and internal teams. With a strong territory management plan, change is easier to manage. A well-documented sales territory plan allows new team members to ramp up quickly and avoid confusion regarding roles and responsibilities.

Team cohesion and morale

Strong territory planning optimizes the role of the team. By assigning complimentary teams to each territory, you create and environment which allows team members to benefit from each other’s strengths, share workload, and also avoid conflict that arises from unclear territories and boundaries.

7-Step plan to write a successful sales territory business plan

The next logical question is, where do you start? In this section, we’ll provide an overview of each planning step, along with key questions and suggestions. Depending on your offering, industry, company size, or various other factors, you may use some or all these steps when building your territory plan.

Checklist of Commons Business Goals

1. Analyze your business goals and objectives

The first step to drafting a solid sales territory plan is bringing clarity to your company’s landscape, defining organizational goals, and evaluating industry trends. This is a basic step to ground you and your team on what you’re trying to accomplish with your sales territory plan. As you go through the subsequent process, you should continually refer back to this data to maintain a pulse on whether your plan accomplishes what you’ve set out to do.

To get the juices flowing, start by answering these key questions:

1. What is your organization’s most current vision, mission, and north star objective?
2. What are the key trends in your industry or market?
3. What pain do your offerings solve for customers?
4. What are your sales goals, in numbers?
5. What is your conversion rate? Based on this how many prospects should you have in your funnel at any given time to ensure that you’re meeting your sales goals?
6. Are there specific products/services that you are selling more than others? Why?

2. Analyze your prospects and customers

The next step is looking deep into your customer base. In addition to understanding their businesses, challenges, and unique traits, it’s important to identify what makes them unique and what sets them apart from each other. Key questions to ask yourself include:

1. Who are your most profitable and lucrative prospects and customers defined by industry, region, product, etc.?
2. What do these customers have in common?
3. Which of your prospects or customers offers the most profound growth opportunities for your company?
4. What are your customers buying today and what does this tell you about their challenges and opportunities?
5. Are their industries you serve with success? Are their industries that you’ve had less success with?
6. When customers and prospects object, what is the biggest reason why?

3. Determine your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers that fit your ideal customer profile. Traditionally, organizations use data including industry, location, size, and revenue to begin mapping their TAM. While this is still important, technology and tooling makes it easier than ever to identify prospects within your TAM that may not be so obvious. Using traditional and modern sources, even tools like social media, look for company and industry look-a-likes that may be a suitable candidate for your offering.

Once an ideal customer profile is solidified, the next step is to figure out how large the market opportunity is that fits the description. You may use a matrix to include a range of large and small markets which present large or small opportunities.

While estimating the size of your market used to be a struggle of guesswork and complicated calculations, there are now tools available to businesses to automate the TAM discovery process.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

A simple way to evaluate your position in the market is to perform a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis. Since we all have blind spots, a SWOT analysis is best performed with the help of a broader team, including other company leadership, as well as members or your sales management and sales rep teams.

o What Strengths will you build upon?

o Which Weaknesses do you need to mitigate?

o Which Opportunities in your marketplace are you suited to take advantage of?

o What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against?

In doing this analysis, you will start to see patterns that indicate areas of your business that require more or less attention for various reasons. For example, a strength that’s also a large opportunity may need a dedicated territory. On the other hand, an area that aligns to a serious competitive threat may require special attention to protect your company’s place in the industry. The SWOT characteristics you identify will not always be related to revenue or geography. They may be related to more obscure things like training needs of your sales team, gaps in systems and tools, or even gaps in your products themselves. Doing this analysis will help you be aware of other ways to think about your business and territories.

5. Determine and Document Sales Territories

Based on the work you perform in the sections above, you should have an idea of how to divide your sales territories. It’s important to document these clearly, outlining details of each territory including things like:

Geographic Boundaries
Industry or Segment Boundaries (including any overlap and how that is addressed).
Revenue Boundaries
Product Boundaries
Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization.

6. Devise an Action Plan

Similar to the SWOT analysis, devising an action plan is a group exercise that should include various stakeholders in the company, specifically the leaders of each of your identified territories. Just as well, the action plan should be built to be nimble. In a world where market opportunities change every day, the sales territory plan should be built to follow, ensuring that your action plan keeps up with changing opportunities and threats. Gone are the days of an annual territory and action planning session. It’s important that change management is built into the framework to ensure your teams are not caught off guard with changes.

Within each category, you should answer the following questions:

What is the territory’s quota?

What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?

What is the territory’s closed business YTD?

What is the territory’s gap?

How much pipeline do I have today?

What is the territory’s pipeline gap?

What are my goals for the year?

In addition to the overall territory, you will need to spend time looking at top accounts and where they fit in your territory plan. List top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile). For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

Next, create an opportunity map and make sure opportunity plans are thorough. What’s the compelling event? Why now? What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer? What’s the mutual success plan?

Finally, close out with strategies to build your sales funnel.

In addition to being responsive to external factors, action plans should be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure your plan isn’t going stale unintentionally.

7. Track Performance and Stay Adaptable

Once you’ve devised and implemented your territory plan, it’s important to regularly measure success in each territory and adapt as needed. Metric reviews should happen on a regular, defined cadence such as monthly or quarterly, and should be automated using sales performance tools to avoid making this a manual, costly, and easily avoided overhead. Measures you put in place will vary based on your unique company situation, but some important measures include:

Gross Sales

The most obvious measurement of sales success, gross sales is the sum of all sales that a territory carries out during a defined time frame. Gross sales is a useful metric because it shows the ability of sales professionals to make sales, regardless of what the profit margin is on those sales.

Gross Profit

This is the difference between the selling price for a product and the price the business paid to develop the solution. This measurement is important for businesses that want to encourage their sales forces to focus on high profit margins rather than just sales.

Total Unit Sales

The aggregated number of product units sold within a particular territory, regardless of price, profit or commission. This method of measurement is useful when a company mainly sells a single type of product.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of leads or appointments that result in a sale of some kind. Sales forces with a high sales turnover number are operating at a high level of performance.

Total Commissions

This is the amount of money the sales representatives for the territory in question take home as personal income. Although this measurement does not directly correlate to the competitiveness or degree of success of the business itself, it is effective to use as a means of motivating members of the sales force to achieve higher numbers.

Return Customers

A sign of true development and sustainable growth in a sales territory is the tendency of buyers in that territory to come back and buy again. For this reason, one important measurement to make is the amount of revenue or profit coming from clients who have bought before. This amount may be expressed as a gross number or as a percentage of gross sales, gross profits or commissions.

With each review, it’s pertinent to ask your leadership whether the data being measures indicates the need for an adjustment to your territory plans. If you’re proactively monitoring and adjusting, you will maintain a plan that keeps you relevant with your customers and industry.

5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow for the Rest of 2018

Managing a sales territory is a skill that needs constant development. Moreover, you should adjust and adapt to changes in your area. With summer underway, you have half a year left to grow your business. Propeller suggests four sales territory management best practices for you to implement this week.

1. Using a call rotation schedule to keep in touch with accounts. During the strategy phase, you and your team determined how often to call on each account based on their needs. Also, note whether it is a phone call or an in-person meeting. Put these in a CRM or a calendar to keep your schedule on track.

2. Note the seasonal account trends. Another essential part of managing sales territories you addressed when building strategy was to determine which accounts were the seasonal business. It’s an excellent idea to check in before the season arrives and reconnect, so you are in touch when the account is ready to buy.

3. Keep the focus on the long-term, account-based goals. New business is fantastic; however, it should not distract from the goals set for the targeted account-based marketing goals you set. Teaching the team to balance new business development with account management is a vital skill for any salesperson.

4. Explore new ways to divide the leads. Many sales territory plans are set up by geography, and the leads from that area go to that sales territory rep. However, not every sales territory plan needs to be geographical; the location of the lead is not always the best way to go. In cases where your sales reps do not have in-person meetings, you can try dividing new leads based on account type (i.e., verticals) or the referral source. Some people divide leads based on the product in which the lead is interested or by the size of the account.

5. Look for cross-selling opportunities. Analyze the products that an account buys and look for natural partner-products or services, i.e., the “Would you like fries with that?” strategy. Many times, customers might not realize that you offer the full suite of products and services and can make their lives easier by ordering from one supplier.

Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories

Like any job, when you are planning sales territories, you need to have the right tools. The right tools will help you plan, build, and execute a sales territory plan. There is a multitude of options available. Here are three essentials you need to set yourself up for success, improve productivity and close the best deals.

CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a how your company keeps track of its customer information and history. Many CRM applications also offer data analysis to help companies with customer retention and account growth. CRM compile data from several sources, including live chat, social media, and email correspondence, among others. CRM is a significant source for successful sales territory planning.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheets are data organizers in a tab form that takes data entered in cells and leverages that into different calculations and values, including simple math as well as complex financial and statistical figures. When you have data from various sources, such as a CRM and online sources as an example, you can assemble all the data available in a spreadsheet for quick access and comprehensive analysis.

GPS: Geo Productivity Software (GPS) are software applications that combine standard geolocation and route optimization functions with CRM data to help salespeople address their most relevant and profitable account first. Moreover, the features help salespeople optimize their selling time with customers instead of traveling to and from customers. Some of the more sophisticated systems incorporate traffic and weather in the optimization of the scheduling.

5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

Measuring your progress toward your goal is a crucial part of managing sales. By looking at specific parts of your process, you can determine what is working on your behalf and, perhaps more importantly, what is not. Here are five questions you should ask to validate a sales territory business plan courtesy of Steve Andersen, President and founder of Performance Methods Incorporated (PMI).

1. Is your growth of strategic customer relationships on target? It is critical that the customers you focus on provide new sales opportunities and growth, so ensure you picked the correct ones.

2. Are you adding to and advancing the opportunities in your pipeline? Systems build excellent account management, and every salesperson should have a system for developing and moving accounts through their pipeline.

3. What is your close rate on targeted opportunities? Close rates are the number of sales you get divided by the presentations you made. For example, if you close three deals for every eight presentations you make, your closing rate (or closing ratio) is 38%. The higher your close rate on targeted opportunities, then the more valid your sales territory business plan is.

4. How accurate is the sales forecast? The ability to correctly predict the sales your territory will produce is a vital skill for managing a sales territory.

5. Do you have the right resources deployed to help your team? Managing resources is significant in the overall strategy of a sales team. The right resources along with the right motivating activity can be the key to success in a sales territory business plan. Ensure you have both deployed appropriately.

Sales territories tells salespeople where they can do business. Proper sales territory planning by you and your team can help them take care of business. Work with your team in a collaborative way to help them target the right accounts that give them best results and you have built a foundation for success that benefits the salesperson’s, the company’s and your bottom-line.

And who doesn’t want that?

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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.

Expert Insight on How To Connect With More Prospects via LinkedIn Messaging

Problems Connecting

Are you having trouble connecting with your prospects with LinkedIn messaging? Are you unsure of how to reach out to new connections, or reconnect with previous connections? You are not alone. Many people are told that their business can thrive with the help of social networking and utilizing LinkedIn in particular, but without specific replicable steps for how to create those personalized, professional messages individuals can feel lost.

Conversation Starters on LinkedIn

So how can you apply similar tactics as a sales manager or sales rep to your connections with LinkedIn messenger? It’s all about crafting the right conversation. Thankfully, LinkedIn offers what are called conversation starters that have proven rather effective for the last two years.

Conversation starters are scripts that can be used to help start off your private message. You shouldn’t rely on standard messages when you send something directly to a potential customer because chances are they know them as well as you do. Rather than use the generic, use conversation starters as a guide. From those scripts, personalize the message based on whatever knowledge you have as the sales rep about the person you are targeting.

When you compose a new message in LinkedIn for your selected recipient, you select the light bulb icon, which will show you different options that are available for conversation starters. These starters are particularly beneficial when you are trying to reconnect with someone whom you haven’t communicated with in quite some time. You can kick-start an effective message in a personalized fashion with minimal effort.

Personalizing Messages

As the sales manager or sales rep you can also monitor your notifications area for any special occasions that would help you initiate a private message. People like to receive acknowledgement for events varying from a birthday to a professional achievement. LinkedIn helps you to recognize special occasions for all of your connections. This creates an opportunity to communicate with people for specific occasions. If you see in your notifications area that someone has a birthday, someone is celebrating a milestone in their career, or someone has taken on a new position, use that time to initiate a conversation. In fact, when you click on that special occasion under the notifications, LinkedIn will open a new message to that contact and it will typically offer a customized starter for the message such as, “congratulations on your new position”.

From there, of course, you can add your personal message after that starter. When doing so, it is important to make an offer to which the contact can respond. For example if you want to send a message of congratulations to another sales rep you know, you can use the brief starter provided for you by LinkedIn, and then follow it up with a more personalized message such as:

“Congratulations on your new position. How are things going? Since we last spoke I’ve been working on a new presentation for managers who want to increase the performance of their sales team. Would it be helpful if I send you a copy? If so, forward me the best email to use.”

Prompting a response by way of answering a question is a very effective way to encourage engagement with your prospective client.

Moving to Your Company Platform

One of the most important things you can do to establish a meaningful connection is to veer the conversation away from LinkedIn after you have started it and target that towards your company. This could be moving the potential client to email marketing campaigns, nurturing campaigns, a landing page, or some other call to action. You want to create your LinkedIn messages based on your end goals.

Developing scripts that you can use regularly. Your scripts shouldn’t be content that is simply copied and pasted like a mail list, in which every contact gets the same information. Instead, this should function more as a framework that guides your writing.

1. Say two things about that person and then one thing about yourself.
2. Ask permission to move the conversation to another platform.

Consider this example:

Hi ________,

I noticed that you are (job title) at (Company Name). I hope this new role is going well.

I help businesses just like yours improve their sales record. In fact I recently delivered a brand name project for an organization very similar to yours.

I would love to send you ______. Is (email address) the best email to use?

Regards,

(Your Name)

Using this script will allow you a jumping-off point to customize for every connection you have. Consider this customized option:

Hi John,

I noticed you are the new manager for Small Town Advertising. I hope your new role is working out well.

I help businesses like yours to improve their sales numbers.

We recently delivered a project at another bank similar to yours, in nearby Albany.

I’d love to send you the free Leak-Free Sales Funnel checklist. Is john@smalltownadvertising the best email to use?

For many of your connections you will have to exchange more than one message like this before that connection gets comfortable moving away from LinkedIn. To that end, you can develop a handful of scripts to help you follow up in situations where it is required.

For example, one week after writing the first email to your connection, mentioned above, you might follow up with this message on LinkedIn:

Hi ____,

I hope you are doing well. I thought I would check in to see if you found (content) helpful.

I am currently delivering a project addressing Authority as a Blog Writer. If this is something that might be helpful to your business, I’d love to talk with you about it.

I can call you at any of the following times next week:

[date and time]
[date and time]
[date and time]

Let me know what works for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

(Your name)

Getting the Most You Can Out of LinkedIn

Overall using LinkedIn can really help your company to connect with more prospects. But it isn’t enough just to use the tool. You have to know how to use the tool effectively. You need to know how to craft more specific and concise messages based on the prospects you are targeting. Decision makers are inundated with sales messages on a daily basis.

To rise above the noise you must stand out by narrowing your focus, getting specific, and showing value by illustrating how you can uniquely solve your prospect’s problem.

Take Action Now!

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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.

Six Ways To Cold Call Your Way Into Selling Success

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

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

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

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

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

#1 | Know Your Audience

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

Do your research before the call.

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

#2 | Opening Is Key

It’s common in sales; sometimes we’re so focused on the close, that we overlook the importance of the open.

First impressions count and can make or break the call before it ever really begins. Don’t wing it; prepare an opening statement to keep you focused.

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

#3 | Prepare A Script

Yes, really.

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

#4 | Ditch The Premature Pitch

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

#5 | Take Control Of The Call

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

#6 | Don’t Give Up To Soon

Effective cold calling is generally never a “one and done” initiative. Don’t quit if the first call was unsuccessful. Recognize that you’ll likely have to call the same prospect several times before feeling a little tangible sales momentum.

The good news? Every engagement with the same person allows you a chance to build on your existing rapport with the prospect, making each subsequent call feel a little less cold.

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

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

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

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

How to Train Outside Sales Reps to Build Trust With Prospects

Your company may sell a fantastic product or service, but the truth is that people buy from sales reps they like and trust. In business like in life, relationships are key.

So how important is trust in the sales process? 79% of business buyers say that it’s crucial for a sales rep also to be a trusted advisor. Salespeople need to add real value to a prospect’s business during the process, not just blindly sell a product.

What Makes an Outside Sales Rep Trustworthy?

While it’s easy enough to track how much training a rep is receiving and how knowledgeable they are about the offering, trust is more abstract. After all, it’s a feeling. While the customer/sales rep relationship will feel different to each potential customer, there are some telltale signs of a sales rep that will inspire trustworthiness.

A trustworthy sales rep…

– Ask essential questions that get to the heart of a prospect’s problem
– Provides insight that allows prospects to understand their problem fully
– Leaves prospects feeling clear about what to do and what to focus on
– Uses terms that inspire confidence, such as “certainly” and “absolutely”

An untrustworthy sales rep…

– Talks more than they listen
– Focused on their knowledge and the product’s stats, as opposed to customer need
– Doesn’t offer a solution that will solve prospect pain(s)
– Is unclear, so prospects are not sure how to move forward successfully

How to Train Sales Reps To Build Trust

Training is an essential (and ongoing) aspect of your sales team’s success. After all, high-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training than their low-performing counterparts. The art of building and maintaining relationships is a skill your sales reps will have to perfect over time, but there are ways to get them started on the right foot.

Start from the inside

Being a helpful and trustworthy sales rep starts within the company. Open communication, respect, and teamwork within your organization set the gold standard for reps to live by. Managers should regularly check in with sales reps and be open to feedback, and reward integrity.

Set big sales goals

A trustworthy sales rep is an effective sales rep, and an effective sales rep meets quota. Setting big goals for your team, and rewarding those who hit them using trust, will inspire the team to put their best foot forward.

Focus on consistent communication

A key component in building and maintaining any relationship is regular communication. Your sales team should set up automatic reminders to follow up with prospects at all stages of the buying cycle. Making a buyer feel as though they matter enough for a sales rep to continually give them attention will build trust.

Encourage an interest in a prospect’s personal life

No, this doesn’t mean a sales rep should cyber-stalk every prospect. However, setting up an easy way for your sales rep to note details and stories from their meetings makes future small talk more tailored. If a potential client mentions that their kid has a big soccer tournament coming up, a sales rep can ask how it went the next time they talk to build rapport.

Make time for practice

When it comes to building trust with prospects, there’s no substitution for good ‘ol fashion practice. However, you may not want to use real-life customers for training purposes. Mock sales meetings within your team give managers insight into a sales rep’s current communication style. Are they asking useful questions? Are they giving the other person room to talk? Are they wrapping up the call with a clear and concise plan?

Another way to continually build your team’s trust-building skills is to provide them with a list of mock customer scenarios. Using the information about the customer and their problems, is the sales rep able to prescribe a personalized solution?

Want to learn more about setting your sales team up for success. Check out our guide to creating a sales playbook to achieve consistent results.

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

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

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