Sales Technology Tips For More Effective Selling
Using sales technology helps sales teams improve close rates, synchronize sales systems, and increase productivity. Unfortunately, most sales teams use traditional strategies and tactics like paper contracts, siloed recordkeeping, and in-person interactions.
Here are 8 tips that will help your team use sales technology for more effective selling.
1. Use Sales Technology to Drive Sales Funnel Visibility
Most companies can’t visually see their sales funnels. This makes it difficult to know exactly where your prospects are in the process and whether or not there are any problems—like bottlenecking—occurring in your funnel.
However, with a well-designed CRM, you will be able to see your sales funnel and exactly where each prospect is, eliminating this issue.
2. Take Advantage of Online Sales Education
Continuing the education of your sales reps is essential. That’s why virtual learning can level up your team in this day and age when there is so much information right at your fingertips.
Take advantage of resources like classes, workshops and webinars to take your sales skills to the next level. This is especially useful if your team members need help with specific skills. It’s simple to google educational resources on that subject and forward them on to your teams.
3. Host Your Sales Technologies On the Cloud
The process of virtually hosting your sales technologies and other tools is known as cloud hosting or cloud computing. Hosting your apps this way is cost-effective, secure, and flexible.
Here are some more benefits of using the cloud:
- Real-time client and prospect insights
- Integration with existing platforms
- Easier collaboration with both internal and external contacts
- Mobile access
Hosting your sales technologies on the cloud is clearly beneficial. The most significant benefit is how scalable it is. Since applications hosted on the cloud are virtual, it is easy to move your data to a new server when you inevitably need an upgrade. This is not the case for physical machines that require you to scale within specific parameters that limit overall growth. Since you always want your sales team to have a future-focused mindset, hosting your sales technologies on the cloud is a no-brainer.
4. Use Data-Driven Insights & Customer Facing Tech to Get Ahead
Gone are the days when you could effectively stay up-to-date on sales trends via cluttered spreadsheets or word of mouth. To get the upper hand on your competition in the current sales climate, you must dive headfirst into the data.
When new trends arise with your customers, you need to spot them immediately to take advantage of them and respond proactively. A data-driven sales strategy is simple to create by making good use of your CRM system and your customer-facing platforms like support portals or social media accounts.
When you correctly integrate customer-facing technology into your CRM, your team will have better insights into their customers’ thoughts and you will be armed with a 360-degree view of your sales funnel.
5. Eliminate Silos With Collaborative Sales Technology Tools
Internal communication issues are almost always due to inefficient internal processes.
These inefficient processes create silos within your teams that you must address before they cause significant problems. You can remove silos by implementing collaborative tools that allow you to bring your people together.
Even if members of your sales team are in different places or even countries, they can use collaborative tools to come together digitally. A well-designed CRM allows people who may never have been in the same room to tag-team tasks and create new ideas so that no task or project goes unaddressed.
6. Constantly Refine Your CRM and Its Integrations
When you adopt a new sales technology, such as a CRM, it isn’t just a “one and done” process. To get the max value out of the system, you must take the time to refine and optimize its workflows and processes.
Part of this refining process is looking into CRM integrations that make the jobs of your salespeople easier. There are many integration options that range from simple to complex.
Simple integration examples:
- Adding google calendar support for automatic meeting scheduling
- Adding social media accounts to see how contacts how your clients and prospects interact with your brand
Complex integration examples:
- Integrating a telephony system
- Integrating document automation solutions for creating, sending, and tracking documents like bills and contracts
You must continually assess the needs of your sales reps to make the correct decision on what integrations to add to your CRM system.
7. Optimize Mobile Sales Technologies
The importance of providing mobile sales technologies to reps will increase as remote work becomes the new norm.
To remain competitive, you must provide your sales reps with the mobile usability they need. Instead of spending valuable time taking notes with a pen and paper and transferring them into the CRM later, salespeople should have access to their CRM system no matter where they are. This access means faster lead generation and better communication with prospects, clients, and internal teams.
8. Automate Follow-Up Messaging Via Sales Technology
With the email technology available today, it is no longer good enough to get back to customers and prospects whenever you can. In the current customer experience-focused climate, your prospects and clients expect responses immediately.
Taking too long to answer an email can result in dissatisfied customers and lost sales. As a result, it is essential to automate and personalize your messaging to send follow-ups and reminders to your customers — something that a well-implemented CRM system makes easy.
Conclusion
To keep your sales team productive and efficient in today’s competitive landscape, you must equip them with the tools they need to do their job right and to do it fast.
We recommend you start by optimizing your CRM system with the help of a professional. Speak with our team today to see how we can optimize your sales technologies to get your team selling faster.
