Your business had a good start and keeps growing. Planning to rest on your laurels? No way — here's when new challenges arise...
- The necessity to adjust to scale in order to keep up with the new opportunities.
- Management issues. What used to be a small team of likeminded professionals, where everything was clear, turned into a huge entity of countless users that are hard to remember by names — to say nothing of control.
- Cutting red tape. Converting the infinite working hours it usually takes to coordinate the simplest of things to productive working time.
There is also an overall perplexity: what is of higher priority — refreshing the sales staff or looking for more investments in development? There is only one thing you know for sure: if you do nothing — your company is destined to slow down in growth rates.
give a second life to the solutions you already have
If you initially used CRM to organize all the company workflow, then fear not the scale changes. You already have the experience and knowledge in adjusting business processes for accounting, staff management, sales and marketing.
You once introduced CRM solutions mainly for sales — to improve the client service. In a year's time your company has grown to include marketing experts and accountants, dozens of customer care agents and even Johnny, the warehouser — and you got everyone working... except the sales reps. Many of them are still stuck to the old school, boasting they can handle it all with a pencil and a notepad. Switching to the innovative is a matter of psychology: for too long, sales have been considered an easy thing to do, if you have a quick tongue and gift of gab.
But as your business grows, the lack of sales force becomes too apparent — and you are off again for the hectic quest of brilliant sales minds, which too often ends in employing rookies in a desperate hope that "they gonna make it". Here is when the sales gurus take the burden of mentoring the young, in addition to the sales plan, which is still upon them. Everyone is suffering — including company sales. The sales technologies are abundant, but there is no time for them at all.
The quest for new sales reps and their consecutive training may take up to several months. You'd better be patient. VERY patient. Whereas CRM can save you a couple of months because of:
- training modules: ready-made scripts and tips;
- access to information: marketing campaigns, statistics;
- monitoring of new employees' potential;
- monitoring client service and live examples of call recordings for new reps.
All these features are designed to jumpstart the adaptation process and make sales stars out of your yesterday's rookies.
how to take your sales to a new level using CRM
It is naturally easier to get the upper hand in sales, when your sales team has high-level expertise and experience. Try to provide for it, using the CRM tools you already have. Focus on quality and strive to increase your sales reps efficiency using the CRM solutions you are already familiar with.
Treat your sales department as an investment, which is bound to pay off. Spare neither trouble nor expense monitoring all the sales chain. Start your assessment from the client's position. Follow the client's path step by step, down your sales funnel. You will immediately see how smoothly the sales process works and where it lacks improvement.
- Check out your website accessibility and navigation. Take a look at your advertising: is it aggressive/attractive/boring?
- Check the waiting time for callbacks and live chat replies.
- Check the quality of consultants' advice. Do your agents really take care of clients' questions and requests or are they only there to get the contact details from customers?
At the end of the day, ask yourself the question: "Would I buy from my sales reps" and try to answer it honestly. Take notes while checking and make a detailed list of improvements that will become your guidance on sales department rebirth.
Now that you brought all the weak points to light and know how to eliminate them, you can get down to work with staff. It could be a meeting or a discussion, a training with live examples from call recordings or live chat. This will reveal individual and overall performance efficiency to help you find better solutions and work out your company sales strategy.
Very often sales fall apart from marketing, which results in:
- isolation from communication and limited access to marketing content;
- loss of time searching for statistics on successful advertising channels.
Meanwhile, the alliance of sales and marketing always guarantees high quality performance, more positive feedback and sales efficiency — due to timely exchange of information.
Most of new sales reps spurred on the desire to start selling, tend to immediately bring down the price and offer big discounts, without even trying to bargain. This is harmful for both company and product, because clients find it suspicious to be touted a good product for a very low price and start thinking it's fake.
Use technologies. Get together all the notes you made before and arrange them as clear content that could be explicitly delivered to your colleagues in CRM: create educational resources, tips and a database of ready-made solutions. You can also create a check list for new sales reps that will save them and their mentors their precious time.
nota bene
- Do not employ random people to your sales team just to cover the gap, when your company is growing.
- Take sales to a new level. Make the most of your CRM.
- Check out your sales funnel efficiency.
- Spend the time to create educational content for new reps.
- Share all important information with your colleagues in CRM — and watch their professional advancement.