How can you increase sales effectiveness? Sales is a difficult job. If you don’t believe it, try it sometime. Try sitting at that desk, knowing that the actions you take, the decisions you make, could mean the difference between a nice, comfortable income and minimum wage for the month. That the way you approach the person on the other end of that phone line—or sitting right across from you—could spell the difference between a happy, satisfied customer or someone that goes away or hangs up disappointed and annoyed.
The longer you sit there, the more it might also occur to you that your sales effectiveness has a considerable impact on your company’s bottom line. In fact, that bottom line is largely dependent on the actions of you and your fellow sales team. No pressure.
If you do try it—and we highly recommend you do, even if only for a day—you will discover that sales effectiveness takes an incredible amount of on-the-ground creativity, far more than most average corporate positions.
Distraction or Help?
Much of the time a great sales rep is promoted to the job of sales manager. Why is that? It is because you then have a manager who has been in their shoes, understands the beat, and can speak the language of salespeople. Managers who have never sold and haven’t lived within that reality are often not appreciated by salespeople—simply because such managers often have no idea what they’re asking for when they post a quota, set a policy or issue an order.
Management, for a salesperson, can either be a help or a hindrance. If a manager or executive is constantly making unreal demands, it only serves as a distraction to a salesperson’s job. It’s just one more thing the salesperson has to “put up with” and brush aside in order to sell.
On other hand, if a manager truly appreciates the job salespeople are doing, and appreciates their abilities, and takes the time to talk with salespeople and get their input, the outcome is exactly the opposite. This incredibly unique and valuable employee is actually going to book more meetings, find more opportunities, get more closes, and ultimately increase the company’s bottom line.
Executives can even go one step further and find out what salespeople are hearing from the customers about the company’s product or service. How valuable is that kind of information? Your salespeople are the front lines of communication with customers. Throughout each and every day, they are receiving data that, if relayed on the proper channels, could vastly aid development of future versions or products.
The Right Tools for Sales Effectiveness
Similarly, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can also be a help or a hindrance to a salesperson. A CRM tool that is difficult to navigate, hard to understand, or is complex means more time trying to locate prospects, enter data or make reports instead of selling. In other words, it can be yet another distraction to sales effectiveness.
What about an easy CRM sales solution that actually assists salespeople in doing their jobs? One that is incredibly easy to use, is intuitive, and naturally flows the way the sales process for that company flows? One could even go so far as to utilize a CRM tool that is fun for the sales staff to work with.
If a CRM tool makes it easy to isolate potential leads, quickly discover the next action that should be taken with a sale, contains all necessary information for the salesperson to work with, and requires a minimal amount of time for interaction with the system between sales—it would be one more major distraction off of the salesperson’s plate. You’ve freed salespeople up to literally create their futures—and that of your company.
Value Them
Your salespeople are a unique treasure. Want them to do their jobs better? Sell more? Create more income for the company? Value and assist them, with helpful management and the right tools. Those are the keys to sales effectiveness.
