Businesses and consumers alike have had to weather several shocks over the past two years. In this article, I advise how businesses can make 2022 a year for rebuilding and taking advantage of new opportunities.
Creating sales success is easy when the data is captured and interpreted smartly. Monitoring analytics closely allows sales teams to refine their strategies and target key areas. In fact, in a recent survey of more than 1,000 sales organizations around the world, McKinsey found that 53% of those that are “high performing” describe themselves as prolific and effective users of analytics.
There have been a series of seismic business shifts over the past couple of years, but one area has endured: Sales Trends. That said, the need for creativity and resourcefulness is becoming increasingly important for sales and marketing teams to be successful as a new year beckons.
COVID-19 has ruthlessly exposed many of the long-standing vulnerabilities in global supply chain systems, prompting some companies to radically rethink their business models and processes.
Every entrepreneur’s dream goal is to develop a revolutionary product and strong brand to attract and provide value to customers. However, in order to do so, you need to establish and follow the key ways to actually measure your business’s success.
It is absolutely essential that every sales manager in your business is a competent decision-maker. In sales, where every decision can directly affect your business’s bottom line, you need to make rational decisions. One misstep can have catastrophic ramifications for your business, such as loss of sales leads or key clients.
It’s already fairly common knowledge that poor mental health among field sales professionals can greatly affect your business. Sales reps and managers are not robots; they have their own inner struggles and private lives that affect their wellbeing and performance. This goes for your staff, and for you as well!
Employee well-being should be the top priority of any business. Focused, driven, and happy sales reps are integral to every organization’s success. They’re the ones responsible for driving conversions and developing long-term customer relationships. Also, they play a crucial role in providing other departments with actionable insights about potential and existing customers.
Choosing the wrong software can be incredibly frustrating and end up slowing you down if it’s cumbersome, complex, difficult to use and not fit-for-purpose. If you’ve decided to buy, then here are seven key features we believe makes for the ‘right’ sales software for B2B product sales:
Skilled B2B field sales reps are the driving force behind every successful B2B organization. Irrespective of your industry and target audience, professional sales reps are essential to driving conversions.
Organisations need to be serious about creativity if they want to drive sustainable business success across global markets.
It’s often forgotten that business is a creative pursuit. Every business, be it a technology giant such as Microsoft, or a tiny corner store serving one community, stems from a single idea. An idea that’s born from creative intent, but can be lost in deadlines, bottom lines and lines of business. Success today is still defined by return on investment (ROI) and numbers, but it’s strengthened by the organisation’s ability to build a culture of creativity. In the era of the always-on business, customer and employee, this is as invaluable as ROI.
Following the report of the first slowdown of sales growth recorded by the Skynamo Industry Thermometer in August 2021, the results for September have indicated very little movement month-on-month.
The Skynamo Industry Thermometer is a free-to-access resource that benchmarks industry sales activity and sector health on a monthly basis. It reports average order values and volumes from approximately 1000 South African manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors across 26 industries using the Skynamo field sales app.
Zane van Rooyen, Product Marketing Manager at Skynamo says that the company’s Industry Thermometer recorded the first slowdown in August 2021 following encouraging signs of sales growth heading towards pre-pandemic figures since January 2021. “The results for September are almost a carbon copy of those recorded in August with minimal movement, positive or negative, across all our tracked industries,” he says.
With this in mind, van Rooyen points out that it’s hard to ascertain what this plateau means in terms of the momentum of steady growth witnessed since the beginning of the year. “It could mean that local businesses have reached a peak in volumes or that the pressure on global supply chains is placing significant risk on companies. It could also simply be a reflection of the calm before the festive season storm.”
On a positive note, he highlights that the data is clearly showing that the Building & Hardware as well as the Food & Beverage industries are still vastly leading the race when it comes to order values and volumes with order revenue. “These are up by 100% and 400% respectively year-on-year.”
“As the world slowly opens up, with measurements set in place for businesses to operate and people to live alongside the virus, the results of the fourth quarter of 2021 will be a tell-tale sign of what to expect in 2022,” concludes van Rooyen.
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About Skynamo
Established in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2012, Skynamo is the leading field sales technology provider with close to 10,000 users at nearly 1,000 companies across a wide range of industries in Southern Africa, Australasia, the UK, Europe and the US. Skynamo’s field sales mobile app and cloud-based management platform are used by manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors with sales teams in the field, selling products to an existing base of customers. Skynamo integrates with a wide range of ERP and accounting software to improve order accuracy and fulfilment. Skynamo was named Sage ISV Partner of the Year for 2019 (Africa & the Middle East) and an Acumatica Certified Application and Customer Verified Application. Skynamo received $30million in funding from US based software investment firm Five Elms Capital in 2020 and forms part of the Stellenbosch-based Alphawave group of software and electronics companies, with more than 100 employees in South Africa, the UK and the US.
A related article also appeared in:
IT Online on Oct 20, 2021
Construction World on Oct 20, 2021
Engineering News on Oct 21, 2021
Startup Africa on Oct 21, 2021
Retail Brief Africa on Oct 21, 2021