Eliminate Unnecessary Steps to Simplify the Sales Process
Businesses are advised to eliminate manual work and other unnecessary tasks from the sales process. No salesperson is paid for crafting fancy, animated presentations; filling files with background information on potential customers; writing proposals; or entering data in their company’s CRM system for hours. Salespeople need to sell!
Instead of squandering precious time on insignificant activities, step back and reevaluate the specific responsibilities of your sales team. This includes training, prospecting, reporting, and quoting and providing solutions to support this. For instance, invest in new technology or procedures that help streamline sales operations because this will substantially increase the amount of time your staff is able to spend on the more valuable responsibilities that close sales.
Facilitate the Proposal Phase
The most important component of the sales process is the proposal phase but all too often businesses tend to overwhelm their sales team at this vital stage. For example, managers will instruct their sales staff to constantly update spreadsheets, stock keeping units (SKUs), extensive price lists, as well as follow intricate configuration formulas in order to determine the needs of their customers. As a result, productivity is compromised and errors are more prevalent. Not to mention, offerings are scarcely maximized. If businesses are looking to enhance speed when it comes to the sales process, one of the most effective approaches is to equip your sales team with a strong configure-price-quote process (CPQ). This will allow your employees to professionally, swiftly, and informatively reply to customers and prospective customers whenever the topic of cost arises. Consequently, your company will increase its reliability, conversion rates, and profitability.
Minimizing Customer Communications Mistakes
It’s never ideal to go back on your word, especially in sales. Explaining to a prospective customer the quote you provided is no longer valid not only depletes loyalty and trust of your organization, it generally costs you the sale as well. Research has shown these errors are typically traced back to manual tasks. In fact, 65% of organizations cite human error as the main cause of data problems, according to Experian QAS. To avoid quote blunders, businesses need to implement automated CPQ solutions to ensure the quote being generated is accurate.