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Using Advanced Sales Tools that Work
Jim Romano
DataForceCRM
Increase Sales & Profits with Sales Tools that Work
Using Advanced Technology to Communicate and Collaborate with Direct and In-
Direct Sales Teams by automating sales lead routing and tracking, sales
pipeline and forecast reporting.
Summary
This paper gives your company a rock solid lead and opportunity management
architecture and lead management, opportunity management strategy. This paper
is for any business that needs to generate leads track sales opportunities to
create new buness and increase profits. The sales system described here is
suitable for for small and medium business and enterprises which are using a
multi mode selling approach which consists of inside and outside salespeople
and indirect salespeople. This guide tells you how to boost communication
with your salesteams and by doing so, cut sales cycles and increase new
business wins.
This system makes sure all leads and opportunities that are passed to remote
salespeople and sales channels are followed up promptly, worked efficiently
and reported back to your sales business accurately. This system, if deployed
as suggested, will exponentially increase sales lead qualification and
closing efficiency and will return exponential dollars spent on this
investment.
Sales Deals are Lost to Bad Communication with Direct and Indirect Sales Teams
Good sales channel communication will differentiate your business. Effective
communication will streamline sales cycles, cut time and waste from the
selling process. Increased effectiveness will win market share and will
increase profits. In many cases, competitive sales teams use your
distribution partners. This is the nature of distribution sales. The
strongest distributor mindshare, built by being easy to work with, will get
your products in front of more buyers more often.
Communication and collaboration with channel partners, as done today in most
companies, is slow and time consuming. Sales companies use email, phone and
even fax to route leads and to gather sales information. This information is
often not gathered and if collected is dated and inaccurate. Extranets, or a
web portal which forces the in-direct sales person to sign in to report, can
cause pain with the vendors because of the time it takes to adopt and use the
tool.
Use Advanced Sales Technology to Collaborate with Sales Partners
On the surface, passing and following up on sales information with sales
channels is simple. Lead and opportunity data is passed to the correct
salesperson and all a sales person has to do is apply sales methods to move
the sales lead through a sales cycle. Companies have been doing this for
generations and many are still doing this data transfer the exact same way
they did years ago; fax, email, phone.
It is progressive and logical for a business to seek out better and more
efficient ways to communicate sales data to and from sales channels. The
internet and advanced sales software now give us an elegant solution. The
solution is fast to set up, easy to use for all parties and the return on
investment is easy to figure. The return on investment, based on closed new
business deals, can be measured in the 1000% range. This return on your
investment is increased by cutting waste from the sales process, by cutting
time from your sales cycles, and by winning deals that were not won before.
This is done by deploying simple, powerful and affordable web based lead
management applications.
Maximize Sales Lead Closure Rates to Build New Account Base
Leads are expensive. Possibly as high as 150 USD per sale lead. Money is
wasted, and opportunity is lost when the sales lead routing and closing
process is broken. A bad lead management process adds time to the sales cycle
and opens the prospect door to your competitors to set prospect expectations.
How to Route Sales Leads to the Right Salesperson
So the lead is passed to the distributor, now what? Getting updates manually
are time consuming and inefficient. Perhaps the lead goes to quote, where in
many cases your resources are expended to do this quote, and it just stalls
in its tracks, no feed back and no order. Is the sales person working the
lead to your satisfaction? The biggest hole in sales is when professional
follow up is needed to move a lukewarm prospect to hot. All sales people can
close the hot lead. Not many have the patience to professionally manage a
longer sales cycle of nurturing, informing, and positioning the prospect for
when the timing is right to buy.
Improve the Sales Process to Increase Sales Close Rates
Simple, affordable online technology can cut waste and dramatically boost
sales efficiency. The complete sales cycle, from lead inception to lead
revenue can be automated by using solid sales force automation technology.
This is done using web services, or online sales tools like DataForceCRM,
that can route, and track sales leads and report sales data.
DataForce starts a communication series with your salesperson. This is a
closed loop lead monitoring system that uses code on the server and smart
email notification of lead status. This notification is routed to the
correct salesperson quickly. The lead can be go through an approval or review
process and then passed. This is based on your workflow.
The lead can be auto assigned using the web and routed to the proper sales
resource. Business rules can be embedded that route the lead first to a
regional sales person at the the sales company. This direct sales resource
can quickly evaluate the lead detail and decide to work it personally or pass
it on to a partner using the dealer management right in the lead detail. All
necessary activity to move the lead to a qualified state or rejected is
captured; all history, activity and sales efforts at the direct and the sales
channel resource are captured. Now management can plan and employ strategies
to boost sales based on real data.
Accurate and Real-Time Reporting will Drive Sales with Accurate Sales Data
This work is easily view by sales management and marketing can quickly create
lead efficiency reports. These summary reports are easily generated and show
lead to opportunity, lead to close and also time frames from stage to stage.
The lead is color coded, green is new, red is delayed, blue is accepted by
partner. This makes lead review simple. Sales management can review 100s of
leads in seconds and understand what is new, what is delayed, what is working
according to plan and what has been accepted by remote salespeople. This
sales force automation is very powerful. This eliminates the waste in manual
follow-ups and manual administration.
If and when the direct sales person decides to route the lead to the right
distributor all he does is click in the opportunity detail and assign to the
distributor of his choice. This kicks off a series of events that assign and
engage the distributor into a closed feed back loop using the web to route,
require actions on a set time frame and get updates from the distributor. All
updates are visually monitored by manufacturer sales and sales anagement
using color codes. For example; the manufacturer channels director only has
to look at a lead report and see a lead has changed to a bright blue color
signifying it has been assigned to distribution AND the distributor has
accepted the lead and is working it.
Now all other required actions are also automated; qualification,
presentation, quote creation. All sales stages that are right for your sales
cycle are tracked and reported to boost the success factor. What if the
dealer is good at getting the lead to quote but stalls at this stage? Sales
management can see this; the lead record in the lead/opty list turns red.
With a glance sales management can see bottlenecks. This bottleneck may be
caused by moving to quote too fast before the prospect is ready or caused by
poor follow up. The important key is that this data is now actionable.
True Sales Force Automation with Advanced Online Sales Software
Online Sales Software has worked with our customers on lead assignment and
tracking problems and has developed a specific solution. This solution speeds
the sales lead routing and tracking process. This solution is configured and
delivered in less than one week. This online sales software solution fits all
selling models; manufacturers to insurance, and is fits all products that are
being sold.
The sales channel partners are not forced to sign into a foreign sales tool.
There are no expensive logins and no expensive training and support costs
accrued. All in-direct sales collaboration is done using a simple email form
which notifies the in-direct sales person and prompts for sales dates from
the in-direct sales resource. This tool, called LeadNET, will notifiy
salespeople of new leads and will "call home" to the sales database on pre-
set time frames. Near real-time sales data is now shared including lead and
opportunity history, pipeline data and granular sales forecasts. This will
drive efficiencies throughout the sales channel. More sales leads will close.
A Success Story: Sales Up over 30 % using Advanced Online Sales Software
Solution
ITW: Loveshaw of South Canaan, Pennsylvania sells capital equipment through
over 400 dealers in the US and non US territories. Previously, all sales data
was gathered using emails and phone calls. Many deals fell through the cracks
due to no visibility. Loveshaw deployed DataForceCRM last year and they now
import all trade show leads directly into the sales software system. Leads
are routed to regional sales managers based on the state where the lead
contact resides. If there is more than one regional sales manager in the
state, for example in the state that HQ is located, then the tool will also
look at zip code for correct routing. The RSM now quickly evaluates the lead
in an Opportunity Detail. This detail shows company/contact, lead source,
description and even notes if applicable. The RSM just works the deal or with
one mouse click sends to one of 400 distributors of his choice. This mouse
click has started a closed loop chain reaction of immediately notifying the
distributor of the lead and asks him to update on a required, timely basis.
Real-time Sales Tracking with True Sales Force Automation
The lead/opportunity sends out a "call home" message on a pre-set time frame.
The alert is simply checked off by the correct salesperson in this LeadNET
email. This simple click and send of the email updates the sales database.
The lead/opty record database is color coded. Lead color codes are used for
fast checks of lead progress. The lead turns a bright red if not touched. The
lead can then be reassigned to another sales resource or sales management can
query the salesman. Sales stages are updated from lead to opportunity, to
quote, win, lose or draw all using LeadNET. The distributor clicks in this
email and the sales database is updated. The lead report, the sales pipeline
and the sales forecast is updated.
Real Sales Data will Drive Sales Strategy
Business executives can view the efficiency of the trade show marketing spend
as well as the effectiveness of each of their 400 plus distributors. This
solution has cut sales cycles, eliminated waste from the sales cycle and has
made all ITW: Loveshaw leads 100 % accountable. The end result was a 30%
increase in sales in the first full year of using our online sales software.
http://www.dataforcecrm.com offers powerful, fully functional CRM which is distributed without licensing fees.
Article submitted Friday, July 11, 2008
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