Salespeople thrive in the now. To them, time is money, and in the highly competitive markets today, being fast, efficient, and flexible can make the difference in whether a not a sale is closed. Salespeople, who are well equipped, and have optimized sales strategies, win. Those who are forced to use outdated methods and technology are at a disadvantage in the modern marketplace.
There’s not a single salesperson in the world that wants to make a habit of losing sales, but there are some surefire ways to cripple sales teams in today’s marketplace. The companies that slow their sales teams down with inefficient processes, incorrect information, and hardwired applications, make everyone suffer.
The Best Practices for Horrible Sales
In this article we’ll take a look at the ways companies can ensure their salespeople are slow, inefficient, unproductive, and closing less sales. If your company is committing one of these sins, it’s time to reevaluate how you do business.
1. Keep Data as Muddled as Possible
Salespeople thrive on data, not just on the products and services they’re attempting to sell, but of the clients they’re attempting to sell to as well.
In the U.S. adaption of “The Office,” there’s an iconic scene where Michael Scott is competing against his second-in-command, Dwight Schrute. Michael is attempting to steal clients from Dunder Mifflin to his own paper company, and he’s contacting all his old sales. Dwight, in an attempt to stop Michael from stealing clients takes Michael’s rolodex, of which he has information on all his clients written on the back of their rolodex card.
Bursting into the office, interrupting Michael’s pitch to a certain client, Dwight mentions something very offensive to the client. Michael simply sits, satisfied that Dwight, an accomplished salesperson in his own right, just made a fatal error.
The information Dwight thought would help him, ended up hurting him because he didn’t understand Michael’s twisted system of note keeping. The note on the client was written in green, which Michael explains “green means go – as in go ahead and don’t mention it.”
For salespeople, having out-of-date information is death to their relationships with their clients. The data in your CRM needs to be updated with the most current information, and it needs to be accurate. Otherwise, you’re hurting your sales team.
2. The Data in the Office Stays in the Office
Face it; salespeople don’t interface with clients from their desk. Clients, especially large, lucrative clients, aren’t going to come into the salesperson’s office to be sold to. They need to go to the client.
Even if your information in your CRM system is accurate and up-to-date, it doesn’t help the salesperson when they’re sitting across from their client in a restaurant or on the golf course. They need to be ready to access client history, prior issues, requests, and most-common needs in order to say the right thing at the right time to close a sale.
Too many old-school CRM systems are relegated to the on-premise workstations, forcing salespeople to pause the sales process until a later time and date so they can run more numbers, or check on other data back at the office.
Smart companies are mobilizing their CRM systems into the cloud. This is why Salesforce has become such a massive company. Companies realize their salespeople need access to their data in crunch time in the field, not only when they’re behind their desk.
If you want to make sure salespeople extend sales cycles and slow the rate of closing down, refuse to offer them mobile apps to access their CRM from their tablet or smartphone. This way, they can spend more time per client solving mundane issues, running numbers, and chasing answers rather than closing sales.
3. Have No System of Testing and Improvement
The wonder of modern technology is the ability to test, measure, and learn from sheer numbers. Mobile apps can measure the effectiveness of a number of variables in order to track the most efficient, productive processes and mark the times sales fall through.
Having a system like this in place allows sales managers to not only track results, but test new processes and procedures against themselves to find winning strategies based on data. This allows them to test, strategize, and over time, optimize their sales process with a proven strategy built on scientific data.
Without implementing modern mobile technology into the sales process, companies are blind as to what happens, and why customers close on one strategy but not another. Over time, there is no empirical data to give your salespeople the most successful strategy and process to win. This will ensure your sales stay at the slow rate you desire.
4. Fail to Qualify Leads
This item is so simple and elementary few companies still make this mistake. But it’s still worth mentioning. With the advent of lead generation online, companies can receive a death of leads where before they had access to only a handful. Unless you have unlimited funds to staff salesmen, spending time with leads is not near as beneficial as spending time with the right leads.
If you want to slow down sales, make your salespeople wade through piles of unqualified leads in the hopes they will stumble upon someone who’s ready to buy. Another way to accomplish this is hand off leads directly to sales without supplying them with any information. That way, when they approach a lead, they have no idea what they need, what their pain points are, and why they are considering your company’s solution.
Conclusion
Having sales teams limp through un-optimized strategies year after year is a sure recipe for disaster business-wise. However, going in the opposite direction can boost the performance of sales, shorten sales cycles, and improve the rate of closings for any sales team.
With the advancements in mobile technology over the last few years, salespeople have a more powerful CRM tool in their pocket than has ever been available. Companies have discovered they can bypass mistakes like we’ve listed in this article through the development of a single app.
Apps give salespeople an easy, automated way to score and qualify leads, allowing them to prioritize their time. They go a long way to making sure all data in the CRM systems are up-to-date and mistake-free. And they allow salespeople, and their mangers, access all-important information and data while on the road, away from the office. And last, but not least, they give managers the ability to test, measure, learn and employ adjustments so they can optimize their strategies. These benefits go a long way to improving the performance of your sales teams.