Customer Growth
“Growth.”
“We want to grow.”
“We want to increase our sales, break into new markets and improve our bottom line.”
These statements may sound familiar to you because at the beginning of a new year you have probably used one of these or something very similar to define your business goals.
And in this pursuit of growth, it is often our knee-jerk reaction to increase our sales teams to achieve our goals.
More salespeople mean more sales, right?
The truth is that it may not be as simple as that. Yes, more feet on the ground may result in more sales, but could you achieve the same result with the team you already have?
Have you fully leveraged the potential of your human capital?
And if not, how does one get the best results out of one’s sales team?
In many cases, the answer does not lie in motivational speakers or the same outmoded “trust fall” exercises that most salespeople have probably sat through a dozen times in the past, but rather in removing unnecessary administrative roadblocks that stand between your sales staff and their sales target.
It is estimated that only 37% of a salesperson’s time is spent selling, with the rest of their time being devoted to admin and reporting.
Apart from that, the world is changing in a way that consumers don’t need or want to be sold to in the traditional sense. This makes the traditional cold call a lot more difficult to succeed with but also makes building relationships with consumers by adding value to their buying experience, so it is much more fruitful.
Are you providing your sales team with the tools they need to be able to turn their customers into brand advocates?
Can they quickly identify solid prospects and recognize buying triggers?
Will your sales team benefit from the mountains of customer trends and data that gets collected in your organization every day?
If you are answering “no” to these questions, it may be time to start looking at systems that can bring your sales team into the 21st century.
Implementing good CRM software, such as Maximizer, is a good first step in this journey.
CRM systems allow you to collect and organize customer data in such a way that they allow your sales team to get a complete 360-degree view of all the collected information related to their customers.
This allows them to make more informed decisions about how and when to approach their prospects.
Salespeople can then be released from the endless duplications involved in reporting their movements, activities and outcomes, as well as sales progress because reports are being created for them as they make updates to their deals and customers every day.
Systems such as Maximizer will also go a long way towards helping your team manage their time more effectively with tools such as tasks and automatic record-keeping.
It is likely that once you have introduced a CRM system, you will find that the small conveniences and minutes saved will add up to hours of extra selling time and giant leaps forward in productivity.
As the adage goes, “it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality”
