Sales transformation – Treading the profitable path

Another quarter ends, and you create the sales reports with the hope to see some progress in the sales performance of your team. But unfortunately, history repeats itself, and you get to see the same disappointing sales results yet again.

Are you feeling stuck in the vicious circle of failure?

Well, if the same obsolete ways are being followed, you’ll keep seeing the same old unsatisfactory results.

It is pivotal to embrace transformation and change the old ways if you want to succeed.

Most of the companies globally have considered sales transformation for addressing competitive threats, boosting sales results, and maximizing profitability. They aligned people, processes, strategies, tools, and chose a better approach for accelerating their sales growth.

Sales transformation isn’t an easy path to tread. It requires unwavering determination, adequate resources, and sufficient time. If done right, it can help you seize many lucrative opportunities.

“Sales transformation are daunting but achievable with focus, partnership across the organization (inside and outside sales), and a plan.” – Lisa Redekop, Head of specialist sales enablement, Gartner

Tips for successful sales transformation

Steering the wheel of sales towards transformation can help in reshaping your sales-driven organization and improve your conversion rate. Massive changes need collaborative efforts. Everybody from the sales manager to the top management and different stakeholders needs to contribute towards this change. Build a transformation team that will ensure the effectiveness of this transformation.

Here are a few effective tips for successful sales transformation:

1. Thorough evaluation

Sales transformation is a big step that will consume enough time and efforts. Therefore, you need to be clear with why are you taking this big step? Create a compelling case for the transformation.

Commence by finding out where are you going wrong. Consider all the external and internal factors that are affecting your sales. Dig deeper into each area.

• Find out if you have the people with the right skills to win more sales
• See if you are following the right sales methodology
• Determine the changes you need to make for optimizing your sales process
• Identify the gaps in the performance
• Find out your strengths and weaknesses

2. Create a plan

For the sales transformation to be truly successful, you need to know where you are heading. Create a sales transformation roadmap and set your objectives. Have a clear vision and a pragmatic timeline for ensuring the success of your sales transformation.

Note down your core objectives like –

• You want to improve customer relationship
• Generate more sales
• Acquire new business
• Reduce churn
• Increase the customer lifetime value
• Optimize sales operation

When you know what you want, it is easy to create a path for reaching there. Once you have a list of objectives in front of you, determine the resources needed to fulfill those objectives. Devise a perfect plan for pushing the changes. Ensure you have the financial support to complete the sales transformation journey without any trouble.  

3. Taking responsibility and coaching the team

Without the right leadership, sales transformation isn’t possible. The sales transformation team need to take responsibility and coach the sales reps.

Sales transformation requires a shift of mindset. Sales reps tend to get demotivated after facing constant failures. So, you need to change their behavior and train the sales reps in being more positive to achieve their sales goals.

Transformation needs commitment. The leaders need to be dedicated and focused on the improvements.

• Have a one-to-one meeting with the sales reps and understand where they are facing problems
• Identify their weak areas
• Provide constructive feedback and help them in working out on those issues
• Guide them on taking the new path
• Help them break their old habits. Pinpoint the areas that need to be changed
• Ensure they have in-depth knowledge about the product
• Listen to their recorded calls to see what messages they are conveying to the customers
• Conduct a mock call session and ask them to sell the product to you
• Prepare them to handle difficult situations
• Show them where they are going wrong and what different approach can they take to get positive responses from the clients

4. Break the cold wall between the departments

Every company has a goal. The organization creates different departments to achieve that goal quickly. But unfortunately, most of those departments are working in silos.

This wall between the different teams kill productivity, halts innovation, and affects the company’s revenue. If this is happening in your organization too, then now is the chance to break this wall and unite your team.

It is necessary to align the marketing, sales, finance, and customer support team to fulfill your objectives. All these departments are interconnected. Great things can be achieved if they work together as one unified body. They can not only improve the sales win rate but also offer a better experience to the customers.

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Marketing, sales, finance, and customer support team can easily support each other for being more efficient. For instance, the sales teams can help the marketing team in understanding their buyer persona for targeting the right audience. The customer support team can know what promises the sales teams are making to the customers. With the finance team on their side, the marketing team will be able to offer better discounts to capture the interest of potential customers.

Therefore, during the sales transformation, keep the alignment of these different departments in the forefront.

• For aligning the three teams, you must understand the gaps between the different departments
• Determine the core processes of the teams and how can they be aligned with different departments
• Create a baseline across interacting areas
• Bring every department on a single platform and maintain transparency between them

5. Optimizing sales operations and focusing on better customer experience

Most of the times, the sales reps fail because they give little or no attention to the customer experience. Sales reps are just focused on fulfilling their sales targets.

What they don’t understand is that without providing utmost satisfaction to the prospects, they cannot achieve their sales targets. Customers who can see benefits will willingly purchase the product. Customers don’t mind spending if they get value for their money spent.

7 out of 10 U.S. customers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service. (information source)

Now that you have thought about sales transformation, you need to consider reshaping your sales operations and customer experience. No matter whether you have the best-in-class product, it’s of no value if customers don’t find it beneficial.

• Keep the customers at the center of your sales
• Build a sales process that focuses on overcoming the prospect’s business problems
• Concentrate on the experience you are providing to your customers
• The good experience encourages positive word of mouth
• Instead of being a seller, try to be a consultant and help them
• A consultative approach will help in winning the customer’s trust and confidence
• Focus on helping the customers visualize what are they getting out of this deal

A moderate increase in Customer Experience generates an average revenue increase of $823 million over three years for a company with $1 billion in annual revenues.

6. Get the right sales apps

Why work hard when technology can ease your work. Sales transformation is the best chance to implement effective sales technologies that can improve your efficiency and increase your conversion rate. Convene the entire sales transformation team and analyze your business needs. Find out which sales apps will you require for addressing your business needs and maximizing your profits.

Here are a few popular sales apps that most of the sales professionals in the industry use:

1. CRM software – Salesmate CRM

Salesmate is a cloud-based CRM designed to address modern business and sales challenges. Its easy to use interface assists sales professionals in converting leads into paying customers. Salesmate CRM’s self-explanatory dashboard and automated workflows help save time at all the stages of their sales cycle. This feature-rich sales app can be used from any device.

Using Salesmate CRM, sales professionals can

• Create detailed reports to garner vital sales insights
• Save all their contact information in a centralized repository
• Streamline their sales process and anticipate the revenue they will make in the coming months
• Get the number of 80+ countries and make as well as receive calls from within this intuitive CRM
• Add your product to the deal and calculate the best discount price for making more profits

2. Proposal creation – Proposify

Proposify is a proposal app that helps you in creating professional, interactive, and compelling sales proposals for your sales. This intuitive app simplifies the cumbersome process of creating sales proposals.

• Proposify gives you access to a wide spectrum of compelling templates to deliver sales proposals in minutes
• Through its digital signature, you can get faster sign-off
• It allows you to track your proposals to find out if the prospects have opened and read your proposals
• You can easily embed rich media content (like videos, HTML% content) to make your proposals more appealing
• Proposify can integrate with most of the popular apps that you are already using like Stripe, Basecamp, and Harvest

3. Route planner for sales – Badger Map

Badger Map is a sales mapping and routing app that helps you in making the most out of your field visit. You can easily visualize the location of your customers on a map and find the fastest route to reach them.

• Using this intuitive app, you can find the customers in the nearby location in case someone cancels the meeting
• It even allows you to check in with customers and add notes about the appointments
• Badger Map automatically optimizes schedules and routes for getting more meetings
• With the help of this smart app, you can plan your sales routes in advance for focusing on selling
• You can select the account for the day and conveniently create routes with just a swap

For finding out more tools check out the blog “30 BEST APPS FOR SALES REPS TO BOOST SALES IN 2019.

Conclusion

Sales transformation can have a positive impact on your business and improve your bottom line, provided you do it right. Everyone needs to play their role in ensuring a successful transformation.

Optimize your processes and provide the right training to the sales team. Give rewards and incentives for motivating. Sales reps tend to perform better when their efforts are recognized and appreciated.

Keep yourself updated with the new sales trends. Conduct in-depth research, explore new sales strategies and use the right technologies. Salesmate CRM can indeed be of great help in this transformation. This advanced customer relationship management tool can support your efforts and help you in boosting your revenue growth. Try Salesmate CRM for free to see how it can help you in sales transformation.