As a business, your main goal is to turn a profit. In order to do that, you must sell the product or service that you offer. Selling is what keeps your business alive. And the faster you can sell, the better it is for your business. But how do you create a faster turn-around in sales?
Process is the key! Not just the ‘having a process’ but figuring out the ‘right process’; the process that is best for YOUR particular business. The right process will help increase the speed of making a sale, which, in turn, will help you reach your business goals. Just keep in mind that speed should never come at the cost of quality. It is more about improving the efficiency of you sales process. When we say fast, we don’t withstand quality, but we talk about an efficient process).
Here are three important steps that would move your sales from slow burning to high octane speed.
1. Standardize your sales process.
According to a research by Vantage Point Performance and Sales Management Association, an 18% difference in revenue growth was seen in companies who have a defined sales process compared to those with none in place.
Have you ‘defined’ your sales process? As the sales process is generally a series of repeatable steps, having even just a basic standard process would be beneficial in your day-to-day business and can help improve efficiency.
Standardizing your sales process can give you more control over your business. Implementing even a simple set of policies and procedures, reference guides, forms and templates will make it easier to manage your sales team and help to increase productivity.
Standards give structure to your sales activities and enables greater accountability within your team, resulting in higher customer conversion rate and a quicker sales cycle.
Secondly, as sales standards act as guides for your sales team, you may find they need less guidance and oversight from management and are able to work more independently. A standardized sales process will also make training new staff much easier.
Your sales process should be aligned with your target customer’s buying characteristics. You want to develop a sales process that follows buying patterns of your customer. Using a generic sales process is not always effective as it may not nurture leads and provide the customer service experience your clients expect. Take the time to closely examine the steps involved in making a sale and build a process around that; Define your team’s unique sales process and don’t be trapped in the pitfalls of generics.
A standard sales process makes it easier for your business to thrive. It is not just about making sales faster, but more importantly, improving overall efficiency. Speaking of efficiency, let’s move on to Step 2.
2. Automate your sales processes.
Things just aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with customer demand. Work just keeps piling up and existing customers are getting irritated, and perspective customers are buying elsewhere. You keep hiring people but still you can’t seem to keep up with your ever-growing customer demands.
Here’s where technology comes to the rescue with Automation. As your sales processes are mostly time consuming repetitive tasks automation can really make your process FASTER. Have you heard about CRM, ERM, or CMS? These are the most widely use systems and platforms that utilize automation to help speed up work processes, including sales. Automation can drastically improve efficiency, making your sales process FASTER.
Before jumping into automation, you need to first identify where in the sales process automation is needed. Auditing your sales processes is a good place to start. Determine which tasks are done repeatedly, what part of the process takes the most time, identify bottlenecks, and so on. Now you can objectively determine where automation is most needed. You can prioritize repetitive sales tasks, such as making calls and sending e-mails to clients, data entry and filing, sending quotations and converting them to purchase orders, generating reports and updates, and the like. There’s a lot in the sales process that can be automated, but again this can vary depending on your business process needs and goals.
The point is, by investing in a software option that automates your systems and processes, you will see a huge increase in efficiency and productivity, which will also increase speed. That said,
Sales is all about building relationships and a human-to-human interaction is essential. Who’d want to talk to a computer after all? Which leads us to our 3rd Step.
3. Let your people do their jobs
Always remember that your staff are the center of the process, of your sales goals, of your business. Enabling them to do their jobs, setting-up a trusting work environment, rewarding for work done right, and celebrating accomplished goals are all essential to creating motivated and dedicated workers.
Motivated people will work FASTER and no matter what sales process you have in place and what you automate, there is no substitute for hard working, dedicated staff.
Take away
Yes, standardization can make your sales process FAST, automation can make it even FASTER, but it is the people that make it FASTEST.
Don’t let technology intimidate you. Invest some time into exploring the many options that exist on the market and chose one that will fit best with your existing sales process. Find the right fit for your business. Look for a business solution that can automate your standard process and maximize your sales force. This will help your business grow.
Now, are you ready to make your sales process faster? Do you have some ideas or techniques to speed up your sales process we didn’t cover? We would love to hear from you!
SnapSuite is a Toronto based software company that helps businesses in the B2B industrial and skilled trade industries increase their operational efficiency using simple to use software tools.
Call us at 647-494-8011 to learn more about how we can help your business.
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