Your sales team is the frontline of your business. They’re the reason sales happen, and the first ones who get blamed if they aren’t.
With as much pressure as your sales team faces daily, it’s only fair you equip them correctly. Setting your team up for success is as easy as equipping them with the technology they need to survive in a modern sales environment.
But how do you know which equipment to use?
Analyze your strategy
What does your sales process look like? How many leads are you getting? How many are closing? Chances are you’ve got some subtle leaks in your sales funnel. If something looks off in your data, you should redefine your strategy.
What does your sales team need to accomplish? Give them defined goals so they can show you what they’re made of. If your hiring process is solid and some promising reps are still falling short, they may need sales enablement.
Sales enablement is the act of equipping your sales team with the tools and content they need to sell without friction.
Your customers have questions, concerns and objections. In the old days reps were expected to overcome these hurdles through sheer force of will. Today, customers and reps have different expectations.
Your competitors are using content to educate their customers and track follow-ups. Are you? If customers have to choose between the rep who left educational material behind, and the rep who left a business card with his number scribbled on it – the choice is obvious.
Arm your team
If your team would benefit from sales enablement (and most would), it’s time to look for opportunities to arm your team correctly.
A CRM is the first culprit you should consider for a sales enablement strategy. Is your sales team logging their leads into a CRM that tracks leads, opportunities, and follow-ups? If not, deals are slipping through the cracks.
Optimizing your CRM for your sales process is crucial. Load it with all the material your customers need to make a decision, and encourage your reps to use it religiously.
A Content Sharing Application is another tactic that keeps your team on the same page. Smart sharing applications like Insite give your reps a mobile sales playbook that’s easily accessible and deployable in the field.
All of the internal and customer-facing content your sales team needs is sorted to be as useful as possible. This isn’t always obvious in the moment, or when your rep needs information in the middle of a sales meeting.
Routing & Mapping sales data isn’t easy. Switching from a CRM to a GPS over and over is annoying at best and a definite waste of time (something your sales reps never have enough of).
Badger Maps is an outside sales app that uses your CRM data to give your reps a visual overview of their territory. They can create and optimize multi-stop routes, find leads, track activity and even filter customer lists by category – all in the app.
Field activity is the final piece of the puzzle for the average outside sales team. Once you optimize your sales team’s time by enabling their process you’ll notice more deals close at a faster rate. It’s unavoidable.
Turn Strategy into Tactics
If you’re waiting to fill the holes in your sales process, you’ll keep missing opportunities until you do. The sales game has changed, without a modern approach you’re playing blind.
The good news is that technology makes it easier than ever to be (and stay) competitive. Equip your team with some modern sales enablement tools and watch your process transform into an efficient sales machine.
About the Author: Tim Jernigan is Head of Product Marketing at Badger Maps. Badger is the #1 Sales App in the Apple App Store, which helps Field Salespeople be more successful. Reps use it to optimize schedules and routes, and get more meetings and sales