The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

As salespeople, we are trained to ask questions that uncover the needs of our prospects and then create a tailored solution based on the products we have to sell.

We present a solution and then explain why the products we recommend make sense. However, as a result of today’s complicated world of marketing, there is a need to evolve and improve because there is a key piece we often forget — consumer behavior.

The goal of any discovery meeting is to truly learn about the needs of a prospect or client.

So why doesn’t it happen on every discovery call?

Why do some meetings end without a clear understanding of the business results the account wants to achieve?

A Customer Relationship Manager, also known as a CRM, can be a powerful tool. It can help to streamline your sales process and provide benefits to complete sales teams.

Here are five ways using a CRM efficiently can help improve your sales process.

Implementing the right sales performance measures is crucial for success.

While there is little doubt in the minds of sales leaders that measurement is important to drive results with their salespeople, I often find the focus is too wide or shifts based on any change.

In other words, tracking everything doesn’t help you to see what is truly impactful, and improvement in performance only comes when you measure the same performance measures over time.

Have you ever met with a prospect for the first time and felt like the entire conversation was like pulling teeth?

Maybe they took a couple of calls or answered some urgent emails while you were waiting to ask your next question. Maybe you couldn’t meet in person, and you could sense they were distracted and not focused during the little time you had. 

In these situations, it's common to leave the appointment with little to no valuable information, no follow-up direction, and when you look at your notes it feels like a waste of your valuable time.

Not all first meetings go well, but you can prevent the train wreck first appointment with better pre-planning.

As a sales manager, imagine how much better your life would be if you were consistently able to:

• Forecast with better accuracy
• Improve the sales performance of your team

These elements are important, and delivering one or the other is not an option. When you have a healthy sales pipeline that is regularly monitored, both can be easy to achieve.

Training.

It is usually something that we undergo when we begin a new position or new company, but the best sales organizations, like the best sports teams, are constantly training all of their people.

Simply put, well-trained salespeople drive more revenue. 

Training should be seen as an essential ongoing investment designed to develop and help each of your salespeople grow. As you develop and invest in your people, their skills improve and ultimately drive results for the organization. It is the foundation created by effective employee training that drives performance of your team.

Conflict between sales and marketing is nothing new. The most common scenario is that marketing teams complain about a lack of timely follow-up with their hard-earned leads or them not being closed properly, and sales is often unhappy with the quality of leads they get from marketing. These two teams

Marketing teams can track the online behaviors of leads to help warm up what would otherwise be a cold call. At the same time, data and insight from your sales team can help marketing improve how they recognize leads that will most likely convert and identify the most efficient communication channels.

Bringing sales and marketing together is paramount to the growth of your company.

Over the past several months, I've increasingly heard from salespeople and sales leaders that business has slowed. Deals are taking longer to close, and accounts are hesitant to make long-term decisions. With this shift, and the need to drive more revenue, the focus on acquiring new business has increased.

While new business development is crucial for growth, many forget the importance of retaining the business they have worked so hard to acquire and develop! Getting new accounts in the door will add revenue, but it will have less of an impact if you are simply replacing dollars from existing accounts – think of trying to fill a leaky bucket.

As a Senior Consultant with The Center for Sales Strategy, I’ve reviewed a lot of proposals from salespeople over the years.

As I analyze the ideas sellers plan to present to clients, I often push them to make their proposals stronger by asking, “Where’s the plan to achieve the desired business results? How can you make it easier to buy?”

These prompts often create the awareness that we need to do a little more fishing. So, grab a fishing pole and have a seat on the dock. Today we are taking a virtual fishing trip!