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
Skynamo recently caught up with Keegan Hall, Head of Marketing and Product at Ethitech, to hear how winning the Skynamo-sponsored sales event has impacted their national team.
Every entrepreneur is familiar with the hectic process of setting up a new business. Problems seem to leap out from any and every angle, whether it’s a spotty supplier, hardware malfunctions, or unsuitable staff.
Planning for the future of your business once you are no longer at the helm may be one of the last things on your to-do list, but it shouldn’t be. All businesses will experience a transition at some point, and making sure that you have a system in place for business succession helps to ensure longevity and stability even when you are gone.
As consumers have become more and more comfortable with online shopping, there has been an undeniable digital transformation in field sales. With the change in interface, digital expectations have changed, and today customers demand an online experience that mimics their past face-to-face shopping interactions.
So, you’ve accomplished the seemingly insurmountable task of launching your business. Through the days and nights of hard, relentless work you have likely encountered the issue that all business owners and entrepreneurs encounter – how do you balance the needs of both your business and your family?
Investing in readymade sales force automation (SFA) could seem unnecessary if you have the available in-house tech knowledge and only need to make small tweaks to existing systems. But if you want to do something complex or specialized, buying a readymade solution might make more sense in the long run.
Effective communication, or the lack thereof, plays a crucial role in sales team synergy. Our past surveys have shown us that too many businesses still struggle with getting this right. Here we highlight the two frictions that contribute to ineffective communication and how businesses are overcoming them.
One of the biggest challenges of running a small to medium enterprise in 2021 is the ongoing digital transformation of field sales hastened by the demands of the pandemic.
This digital transformation requires promoting your products/services across various digital channels to reach your target consumers.