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Behind the Scenes: Sales Process, Operations and Technology

2/13/2018

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by Dan Hersh

President, Engaged Prospect

In last month’s blog, we discussed effective strategies for job design and role responsibilities in sales. Better hiring, easier training and more productive employees is one benefit of putting people in the right places within your organization. Not only is effective design good for your company’s revenue, but it’s also critical to providing really good customer (and prospect) service.
​​Now that the responsibilities are in-line, let's look at ways to most effectively manage the day-to-day. And, we'll identify key investment areas to increase efficiency and sales.

A missing piece in many sales organizations is an effective back-end process and proper workflow. Just like in manufacturing or product development, it’s important to ensure maximum activity, focus and quality throughout the sales cycle. Here are some ways to ensure you’re making the most out of your sales and marketing investment to grow business and acquire new customers.

Sales Process, Operations and Technology

Process: Best practices
  • Lead management - It’s been said that it takes an average of 7 attempts to convert a lead into a customer, yet the common salesperson only contacts a lead twice. An effective lead management process can double or triple your current marketing return on investment. Lead strategy includes determining the correct calling frequency and time, how quickly you call an inquiry upon receiving it, when you leave voicemails / send emails, and how you properly sort through your uncontacted leads to continue to generate new conversations and potential business. Incorporating marketing automation into your lead management strategy will help your sales team strategically target the right prospects, at the right time. We’ll discuss this below.​​

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Metrics... The Four Areas You Have to Focus on With Your Inside Sales Team

2/21/2017

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To measure is to Know
EP Huddle #52

Metrics. Every business leader, investor and board member wants to know about metrics. How do we look year-over-year? How are we trending towards the goals? What does the new product forecast look like?

We've seen numerous companies (small and large) struggle when it comes to defining and reporting on various sets of data, including some extremely key metrics that demonstrate the success (or failure) of business development. Sure, the number one key indicator of a successful sales initiative is revenue. But, there are many factors that can help forecast revenue, find deficiencies and help define key business initiatives.

Here are four areas your inside sales team and leaders need to focus on.
  1. Outbound activity. These metrics will help to understand how hard your team is trying, and will also help indicate if there's an issue with your sales process. Often times, sales leaders think the team is lazy, when in actuality, another activity is preventing your sales people from spending the entire day focused on talking to prospects/customers. Keep an eye on outbound calls each day. Number of calls, conversations and talk time each day/week are important. Your salesperson needs enough outbound activity to get the right number of chances to talk to prospects. Figure only 7-10% of calls will lead to a conversation with a decision maker. How many times does your sales team target a contact before giving up? Studies show most people give up on a single prospect after 2 attempts. Engaged Prospect has a 9-Touch process that all but ensures prospecting success.
  2. Conversion metrics. These metrics help your team understand the effectiveness of each activity. It doesn't matter if your sales rep can make 100 calls per day. If she can't have a successful conversation with a prospect, there's a training opportunity. Conversion metrics help you understand how to become more efficient and produce better outcomes with the same volume of outbound activity. How many calls led to conversations? How many conversations led to positive next steps? Of those, how many opportunities were qualified? Of your opportunity pipeline, how many of those lead to a presentation, proposal and closed deal? 
  3. Customer metrics. These metrics help you understand your target market. Every company has a "sweet spot" of customers. It's surprising how many companies don't know their true sweet spot. Analyzing customer metrics will not only help you understand the right prospects to spend time targeting, but you'll also be able to effectively craft marketing messages to speak to that target market's challenges and needs. What is your average deal size? Are you more profitable with some accounts than with other? How can you lower the cost of customer acquisition?
  4. Quota assignment. Coming up with an achievable, yet motivating quota is important. You need to drive your team to be successful, yet you need to establish attainable goals. Too many businesses randomly pick a number based on last year's results and a growth goal. Territory data, renewal opportunities and state of the sales territory should play a large role in assigning an agreed upon quota. And, remember that on average, less than 1/3 of all qualified opportunities will close. This means your pipeline generation needs to be 3x-4x the value of sales you need to achieve your company's yearly revenue goal.

As a team:
How well do you track each of the above metrics? Talk with your salespeople to determine how well they know each of these categories on their own. Talk with whoever is responsible for the CRM to determine how you can get better reports and actively manage each data set on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.

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Six Technologies Your Inside Sales Team Needs to Hit Targets, Beat Your Competitors and Increase Production

2/20/2017

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EP Huddle #51
Sales team
Inside sales is the most productive and cost-effective manner for selling in business-to-business. The cost of customer acquisition is typically lower than utilizing a field sales team, and the coverage and personalized communication far exceeds a marketing only approach. If your business needs conversations with prospects to close deals, then inside sales is probably one department you must have.

Here are six technology solutions that your inside sales team must have in order to have the most effective and cost-efficient process.

  1. Having a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) is critical. There are many options to choose from and most likely you've heard of many of them, or even used some of them. Some CRM systems are customized for specific industries. CRMs have Having a CRM keeps your contacts organized and provides reporting and forecasting abilities for leadership. Pricing varies based on features, capabilities and number of contacts in the database.
  2. Marketing automation tools help companies build awareness and spark interest. Build your marketing outreach strategy around this concept and automate as much as possible. Marketing automation will help expand outreach beyond the specific contacts your sales team is calling on to begin to lay the groundwork for conversations in the future. In addition, you can segment messages based on industry, company type, decision maker titles, etc. This technology will allow your sales, account management and customer service teams the ability to communicate with a large audience in a personalized way, without spending valuable selling time.
  3. Telephone automation tools will help your sales reps be more productive. These tools accelerate outbound activity by helping to make more phone calls in a shorter amount of time. Salespeople need to have as many conversations as possible throughout the day. Telephone automation helps while providing data to help define various sales strategies (call connect rates, conversion rates, talk time, best time of day to call, etc.).
  4. Conversation acceleration software acts in a similar way to marketing automation, except that these tools try to drive conversations, schedule appointments and stay top-of-mind. This is a great way to automate the one, two, three.... five personal emails your salesperson will send to an uncontacted prospect over the course of a few weeks, allowing your team to focus on selling, not typing.
  5. Call recording and coaching tools allow your sales trainer and manager to listen to calls with a salesperson and provide real time feedback to help develop the rep.
  6. Web tools such as GoToWebinar, Skype, WebEx, etc. are important in inside sales to help drive face-to-face meetings (virtually). They are also helpful to share your screen and showcase software or another piece of content in an online presentation. Read More

Uncertain of any of these technologies? Want to learn more about how your company can have access to all of these tools? Contact us below to discuss.

As a team:
How can you leverage technology to have higher efficiency? Where do your salespeople spend time other than talking to customers? And, would leveraging technology help to increase the number of conversations each day? The answer is probably yes. If so, develop a plan (and a budget) to increase your sales technology to enable your team to produce better results and spend more time in front of prospects.

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