The 7 Steps to Transforming Sales
When you made the choice to enter the high-stakes world of sales, it took guts. Competition is the name of the game in this arena, and to the victors go the rewards of survival and growth. Now that you’re leading your own team, you know better than ever the challenges that stand between you and the industry’s top performers.
If you want to break away from the pack by increasing win rates and galvanizing more of your reps to meet their quotas, you need the right tools and techniques backing you up. In this article we’ll show you how you can achieve these goals through a process we call the sales transformation pyramid (STP). We’ll be covering the seven steps that can take you from the base of the pyramid to the top of the sales world. It’s going to take time and commitment, but when you’re finished you’ll have the tools on hand to compete with the very best of the best, no matter the size of your business. Here’s how.
1. Optimize sales processes. Work up a detailed list of every stage in your sales process, and include the names and positions of everyone in your company who should be involved at each stage. Gain a clear understanding of which tasks each person performs, taking special note when you discover any overlaps or inconsistencies. These are the areas you’ll focus on first as you redesign yoursales process.
2. Harness technology. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can support sales process workflows, data analysis, and mobility to streamline activities for sales reps and management alike. Meet with everyone involved in the sales process, share the results of your optimization research with them, and work together to discover which of these solutions could help improve performance.
3. Prioritize sales rep efficiency. As you implement your new solution, it’s important that your representatives understand the benefits of using it. Provide the training they need to effectively use the new communication and automation tools. Once reps know how much time and effort they can save, they’ll be much more likely to use the tools you’ve given them.
4. Enhance sales rep effectiveness. Once your representatives have implemented the basics and can spend more time selling, show them how their new tools can make them more productive anywhere and anytime. Teach them how to use analytics to improve prospecting efforts and to customize assets and products to suit individual clients. By adopting these practices, representatives could shorten their selling cycles while also increasing deal sizes and profit margins.
5. Orchestrate team effectiveness. Use your CRM solution to automate the implementation of your existing best practices. Now that they’re all proficient with the same tools, your representatives will find it easier to collaborate and communicate. Managers will have greater insight into each deal as it moves forward, including insights from analytics that highlight which representatives most need help aid right away.
6. Improve company effectiveness. At this stage, your newly reorganized sales team should be humming along well enough to start lending its synergistic aid to other departments. By sharing real-time access to your sales information and customer profiles, you can give the folks in marketing and service a clearer picture of the people they’re contacting, potentially resulting in improved lead qualification and more repeat business for your team as well.
7. Inspire ecosystem effectiveness. The final benefits of the STP process are reached when other departments begin sharing their real-time data with you. Collaboration with marketing can lead to better-qualified leads and more accurate forecasts. Data from the service department can give you a clearer picture of a customer’s needs and budget. Together, you can gain enough insight to customize each customer’s experience to such a degree that your larger, less-nimble competitors won’t be able to keep up.
If you’re interested in learning more about the sales transformation pyramid, download our e-book, Supercharging Your Sales Team. If you’re ready to explore how CRM tools can help you accelerate sales and nurture customer relationships, visit Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online web page.
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