Nobody likes failing. Just ask any salesperson what their greatest fear on the job is; they’ll usually respond with the fear of rejection. Despite being offered the best prices on the best products, clients will still find a reason to say ‘No.’ It’s not personal, it’s business.
And yet, sales anxiety persists – and it affects everybody no matter where they are on the totem pole. But is sales anxiety the main cause of diminishing sales success?
The saying goes that sales tools make the salesperson. Is this true? Without a doubt, they do give sellers an advantage over those who still depend entirely on spreadsheets, charisma, and pitches. However, sales tools and technology alone won’t amount to much.
To make sense of sales tools like business intelligence, analytics, and marketing, agents will need to learn how to use them effectively and efficiently. This is where sales enablement comes into play.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have helped transform countless field sales agents from transactional order takers into proactive, opportunistic professionals. Despite being revered as a sales tool, CRM systems can also prove incredibly useful in managing supply chain disruptions.
A CRM provides a single hub to organize, store, and access customer contact details, background information, and communication logs. Additionally, it tracks and saves orders, return history, and customer support tickets.
When things are going well, it’s easy to sit back and stay the course. This is especially true with your sales team. Why rock the boat when you’re sailing smooth? Most managers start pushing if their teams haven’t hit their targets or they see more potential. But shouldn’t effective leaders empower their sales teams in both bad times and good?
Of course, they should. Empowering your team is always the right move. Research confirms that empowering employees provides them with a better work environment where they can perform even better.
How do you measure sales success? By definition, it’s the confirmation that a prospect allowed a seller to address their needs.
This leads to an even bigger question. How do companies achieve field sales success?
Before the internet leveled the playing field in terms of knowing about products and companies, many salespeople saw field sales success as an individual accomplishment. Sales teams and companies supported that notion, as competition between agents meant bigger revenue for themselves. They stoked the competitive fire by offering awards and incentives for top sellers.
Surprisingly, what was once a frantic response to the pandemic has shifted into the preferred way of doing business among B2B buyers and sellers. Hybrid selling, propelled by state-of-the-art sales tech, is on track to become the “most dominant sales strategy” by 2024.
With the surge of remote activities, many digital tools reached peak popularity. According to a recent LinkedIn report, most tech tools used today focus on three main points: customer relationship management (42%), visual collaboration and demonstration (41%), and sales intelligence (40%).
Other sales tech tools focusing on sales engagement, sales enablement, and sales coaching also made the list. Working in tandem, they provide sales representatives with the information and tools needed to complete their tasks as remote B2B sales representatives.
In the field of B2B sales, digitalization continues to march forward. In particular, field sales representatives made a shift that completely redefined their work. Rather than constantly traveling to meet and manage clients, they now conduct their sales calls via video conferencing. Today’s sales reps are using more cloud-based software to gather and retrieve data, perform sales tasks, and stay connected with the office.
Sales agents will find these tools equally useful in enhancing productivity and automating tasks even if they return to the field. Below are four of the most active sales tech tools used by sales teams today:
CRM tools are some of the most important software for B2B companies to have. The CRM is the repository for every touchpoint your company makes with its customers. Using this data, sales and customer support teams can provide unique customer experiences based on their profiles. The CRM software keeps records of customer purchases, visits, and communication histories.
Meanwhile, sales representatives get a clearer picture of how to deal with their clients based on CRM data. It relays the best times to call clients – including when the times for contract renewal or reordering products roll around. CRM software also helps sales reps avoid mistakes by ensuring the company addresses problems reported by clients.
Demonstrating a product’s features in person is a breeze. For remote sales personnel, a product demonstration is only possible through a video presentation. Sales demonstration or sales presentation software provides the enterprising sales team with a modern way to showcase their product’s features and purposes. The software’s interactive features make presentations pop, to increase customer awareness and engagement.
Clients may already have a vague idea of how the product works. Custom sales presentations that bring it to life may be exactly what buyers need to commit to the sale.
Field sales used to exclusively refer to door-to-door traveling sales reps. Now, field sales also get to enjoy the benefits of digitization. Field sales apps let representatives focus more on sales and less on the field, as they too can converse remotely as well.
Using cloud-based apps, field sales teams can now complete transactions directly from the client’s premises. Agents can also search for critical data, such as current market prices and stock availability, at the touch of a button. Even contracts and quotations can be signed digitally now, eliminating the costly practice of ping-ponging between offices to affix signatures. In addition, these apps also have sales management features. These allow supervisors to track their team members and provide one-on-one coaching services as needed.
Whether engaging with clients in the field or from home, sales reps need to collaborate closely with the rest of their team. Team members must have the time and sales tech tools to achieve their shared business objectives. This is precisely why the popularity of remote sales collaboration tools exploded when the pandemic hit.
The ideal remote collaboration software provides members with the means to share tools and documents while remaining in communication. These communication functions should include video conferencing, chat, and file sharing functions. Simultaneously, collaboration tools should allow all team members to freely access team documents as needed. Furthermore, seamless integration with ERP, CRM, and CX tools also helps sales representatives retrieve important information during client calls.
Sales tech tools are here to stay. This means that having the right sales software can be the difference between closing the deal and losing clients. Skynamo is cloud-based software that contains all the sales tech features your field sales team needs to succeed – wherever they are. It features real-time reporting and automated sales analysis so sales are finalized and made accessible on the spot. It also features a smart team management module that lets managers view team activities. This allows company leaders to intervene when needed.
Skynamo even streamlines CRM and contact management to equip field teams with customer profiles, purchase histories, and other pertinent sales information. It also allows for live order capturing, which lets sales reps finalize transactions at the drop of a hat. Long gone are the days of racing back and forth to gather updated pricing and availability, signatures, or paperwork!
Does streamlining your sales team and business appeal to you? Drop us a line! Tell us about your company’s needs and we’ll arrange a free demonstration for you to experience the power of Skynamo live.
Quality diminishes over time. This is especially true for databases containing customer data. That may sound like a problem for another day, but the truth is, the data decay that will impede your entire organisation is happening as we speak. This is why B2B businesses should invest in top-tier CRM software. In doing so, they protect the data they expended precious resources to acquire while protecting the most important part of any business — their customers.
Mental health challenges have reached a new global high with 42% of adults worldwide saying they feel a lot of worry, 41% reporting being stressed and 28% experiencing unhappiness
Burnout is also on the rise, with 49% of people suffering from these symptoms at work. Hybrid working is adding to people’s stress by increasing a sense of isolation, with the fear and uncertainty of the modern world making us ever more anxious.
Businesses across all sectors leverage digital tools and platforms to grow. This is because more and more customers are flocking to the digital space every day. Better yet, they’re doing so with the intent to engage with brands that can effectively and efficiently alleviate their pain points.
Companies usually task their sales team members with targets they need to meet by the end of a term. These quotas can go up or down depending on the previous period’s performance and current market conditions. When leads fail to prepare their sales team with clear strategies to acquire new clients, those quotas rarely get met. In contrast, a well-equipped team that understands the market won’t just hit their targets – they’ll exceed them.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently forecast that growth of the global economy will slow to 3.2% this year, down from 6.1% in 2021, and to an even lower 2.9% in 2023.
Information is power. Nowhere is this more apparent than in measuring the success of your sales team. Many companies leverage sales data to analyze their past performance and predict their future success. Meanwhile, other firms specialize in gathering customer insights to create highly customized campaigns and programs.
Companies used to depend entirely on the merits of their product or their sales representatives’ social skills to find success. These companies are now using data to learn more about their customers and how the market behaves.
Before, many companies had to depend on their sales representatives’ ability to sell products to customers based on their intuition. However, this method is a bit unreliable, as it depends largely on the salesperson’s skill and “gut instinct” instead of addressing each individual buyer’s specific needs.
In contrast, data-driven sales take other factors into consideration before reps engage with a client. This includes present market and economic conditions, competitor activity, and even buyer sentiments. This helps sales teams make more targeted approaches to selling instead of devoting time to prospects that are obviously a bad fit or not interested.
With a more efficient approach to sales, companies can now focus their resources on more qualified prospects instead of spreading themselves thin. Eventually, this more disciplined approach leads to higher rates of closing and a better spend-to-revenue ratio.
Data insights are the end product of analyzing sales information based on specific criteria.
For instance:
In short, data insights help increase sales efficiency by allowing salespeople to focus their resources on more qualified prospects instead of having to blindly convince leads who may or may not decide to purchase.
By collecting and compiling sales data from customers, your sales team can build a better, more accurate picture of your clients. Sellers can find more common ground by learning more about a client’s purchase histories, motivations and core beliefs.
Some modern sales CRM apps might even tell you which customers are the most loyal and which customers are the most profitable. If your sales CRM software is really up to snuff, it may show sales managers and decision-makers which customers are at risk of moving to your competition. This will allow sales teams to deploy tactics to keep customers on board.
With a better understanding of the client comes more personalized campaigns and customer programs. This includes highlighting benefits, implementing promotions, and applying incentives that are more likely to elicit a positive response from your clients. Using sales data can give your company an edge when it comes to meeting your clients’ wants and needs. And when your buyers are more responsive, closing the sale becomes much easier. But you need access to integrated, real-time sales data first for this to become feasible.
A better understanding of the client also means knowing if they are open to supplemental offers such as additional upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Having reliable sales data can help indicate if a client is more likely to respond to additional offers apart from their original purchase.
Sales data is a powerful tool that can help your sales team turn into a more productive revenue generator. Consolidating and analyzing your customer information to get the right insights can go a long way in closing deals with them.
While many sales teams are still using spreadsheets, paper, manual processes, and non-communicative apps, getting accurate sales data is a time-consuming challenge.
To successfully harness the power of your customer database, you’ll need reliable software to process all of the information for your team.
Skynamo is a leading field sales CRM platform that automates sales reports and produces sales and customer insights at the touch of a button.
Skynamo helps gather, store, and analyze customer data, which eventually turns into valuable insights. The software helps identify which prospects are more open and ready to listen to your latest pitch. At the same time, Skynamo also helps identify customers that are in danger of leaving you for a new supplier.
How can Skynamo help you today? Please visit us so we can learn more about how we can help your specific business. Share your contact information and we’ll be very happy to arrange a free demonstration.