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Sales Management, four key steps to a high performing sales team
As implementers of CRM systems we get to see what is good practice in sales management. We also get to hear what works and what doesn't when it comes to managing a sales team.
Whilst there is no 'magic bullet', high performing sales teams often share 4 key areas. We have seen this pattern again and again, and here offer suggestions as to how these areas can be implemented by any organisation, regardless of it's size, to assist in managing the sales process, and increasing productivity.
The four areas of sales management covered in this data sheet are:
- Prioritising & controlling sales opportunities
- Calendar management
- Effective management of contacts and communications
- Sales / pipeline reporting
Prioritising Sales Opportunities
Knowing when to prioritise an opportunity can be the difference between winning and losing a sale. For a small business owner getting it right can make all the difference. For a Sales Manager/Director of a larger organisation, having the tools to analyse opportunities can drive the effectiveness of your sales team. By implementing a method of tracking sales opportunities through a CRM application, either through graphical representation or on screen forecasts, everyone has the ability to see what opportunities need to be focussed on at any point in time to ensure your team is prioritising opportunities at precisely the right time.
Calendar Management
A key part of winning a sale is about making sure activities are completed at the right time, especially if there are timeframes outside your control, such as tenders and Requests for Information. If a tender document's deadline is missed, or if staff have not contributed to it in enough time to put it all together, then the opportunity is as good as lost.
Having a company wide calendar will enable your sales team to co ordinate and share activities, so that everything can still happen at the right time, even if people are off sick or called away for any reason. Message alerts and on screen reminders prompt staff to carry out tasks at particular times, and through a centralised calendar, arranging appointments to include others can easily be achieved to speed up the administrative part of a sales process. This, along with automating common tasks, can significantly reduce the amount of human error involved within the process, leading to an easily tangible return on the investment of time and money that implementing such systems may require.
Managing Contacts and Communications
Every salesman has a way of managing contact information, the trouble is, for many it is held in their head! This is great for the sales person, not so great for other people in the organisation that might have the need to contact that person! This leads to organisations operating with disjointed views of the contact's information. Giving all employees that have customer contact access to a central store of information allows them to see all communications and sales opportunities present themselves through the form of cross selling and up-selling. Centralising contact records (including email addresses) allows this information to flow throughout the organisation, giving an overall picture of the individual at the touch of a button. This will often have a dramatically positive effect on increased customer experience and repeat sales!
Sales / Pipeline Reporting
The process of extracting information from systems, cleaning it, tidying it up, and then finally analysing it to see what sales you have closed/or are expected to close, can be a long winded and time consuming task, one which often takes your sales team away from actually selling! Storing all sales information in a central system reduces this time consuming and laborious exercise and, with the right system, reports can be produced at the touch of a button. A central sales system also helps to ensure that the correct data is recorded (you get out what you put in), which enables you to produce standardised reports across the organisation, allowing you to compare like with like.