Are you using Antiquated Sales Strategies?
We are moving in a fast-paced world where time is an important aspect of everything we do and we emphasize moving with equal speed. When we still lag behind with old methods in any fast-moving environment visions can become dim and time is wasted needlessly. For every company, sales team is the most valuable asset. However, without proper management of time, the most talented representatives and most forward-thinking sales managers will always come up short.
The million-dollar question is : What can sales managers do to leverage the time they have to connect with decision-makers within their customer niche?
In the modern landscape of inside sales, representatives are required to do much more than call decisions-makers and make their pitch. They must sift through leads, identify and engage entire buying team, select the best opportunities to work, tailor their presentations for specific opportunity, find the correct marketing materials, and pass along the proper contract paperwork at the right time. Forced to juggle all of these tasks, it’s not surprising that most inside sales reps feel pinched for time. Recent studies show that the average sales rep spends 6.5 hours a week searching for the right content to send to prospects.
In addition, they spend countless hours logging correct information into their CRM, identifying and removing non-buyers from the pipeline, and finding necessary paperwork to complete the deal. Facing this dilemma, sales managers are always searching for ways to give their reps more time to finish work load. Unfortunately, they can’t extend the hours available in the workday (legally, at least) or number of weeks in the quarter. Instead, they must give their reps the tools and training they need to use time more efficiently. Broadly speaking, this is sales enablement, and refers to organizational efforts to provide sales reps with the resources, documents, information and people required to carry out their duty. Typically, this has the ability to align sales, marketing and operations to have the same goals, and priorities and then work together to make the sales process as smooth as possible.
How can a sales manager institute the correct policies, priorities and practices to ensure that his sales reps optimize their time?
Where should he start and how can he measure success? How can he optimize sales, increase efficiency and productivity without wasting time? I’m not saying cold calls are ineffective. Some companies have perfected a system of cold calling and cold prospecting. Yet, this is not the best method, this method is much more difficult and wastes valuable time to produce. For the cold call to be productive, it should establish contact with actual demand for the product or service and which in turn is converted into a customer. And you should not have to manually do all the work yourself. There’s a good way to automate your lead generation and a better and faster way to find more prospects.
The Internet has completely revolutionized the sales and marketing landscape to find leads.
Social networking marketing is a wholly new, but vital portion of internet marketing has taken off in the past couple of decades. Buyers are flocking social media in search of sellers more often than waiting for information about the sellers’ products and services to come to them. Because of this increased focus by prospective customers, companies must revamp their entire marketing and sales strategy. Now more than ever, companies seek to radically align their marketing and sales force by combining efforts to connect to more people, boost brand recognition and drive sales. Many companies are experiencing the shift in revenue volume and saving time by making a few simple changes to leverage social media to generate quality leads and close more sales. Socializing online does not require you to leave the workplace and as a result saves time and can enhance productivity, if done well. If an organization employs these strategies and has the ability to positively impact their public relations then this is sometimes a big advantage. But it is important to follow the trends and understand how to move in the right direction.
Social media is changing rapidly, if you miss out on one month of keeping abreast of the constant flow of new stories, articles, opinion, technologies, news, memes and information, you will fall behind in the game.
This fast-paced movement in social networking also affects the rhythm of business for businesses. In earlier years social media was more for B2C, but now social media is for everyone and B2B are rapidly joining the force. Many social media platforms were seen as a way to connect to families and friends but now businesses are interacting with this network to communicate with customers on a personal level to conduct sales. In fact, many surveys conducted show there is a growing trend for marketers to focus on social media with great success.This type of interaction of buyers and sellers is very advantageous because sellers are able to reach buyers without the intrusion of cold calls and prospecting. Buyers shop at their leisure and sellers delight buyers in a friendly environment. By displaying their goods in a store-like manner on social media, buyers come to sellers without feeling pushed or bamboozled.
Now more than ever, people are using social media and the Internet to shop for goods and services.
For example, trends show that between 2015-2016 Facebook users increased by 220 million and Twitter by 9 million. An increased audience means greater volume of potential customer reach. Hubspot reported that print and outdoor marketing were now considered less effective and that social marketing is one of the more effective marketing tools. In the future, it is expected that more people will be involved in social media. Use of social media is no longer limited to families meeting and exchanging pictures to reduce proximity between one another.
Unfortunately, many businesses are not running on the best fuel if social media is not one an outlet for sales and marketing. Social media is one of the most focused marketing strategy today. For a business to survive, marketing and sales department must continue to adapt with a trend of mobility to be ahead of the competition. A business cannot underestimate value of social media for its success.
This is how your company can adapt to connect to this growing pool of customers:
Your company’s sales process begins in marketing. This is where the leads that will ultimately become customers are generated, and where their first interactions with your company takes place. The effectiveness and efficiency of your sales process is heavily influenced by the way your marketing team functions. Because of this, it is important for sales leaders to understand how marketing departments in their companies operate and what they can do to make the work of sales reps easier.
A good start is an active repertoire of sharing relevant, tasty and engaging articles to nurture a committed following of your brand.
Setting aside an hour a day to look into the interactions and feedback on social media, finding out what your target market is handing out to your niche, and what your niche is interested in (measured by their number of “likes”), provides great value in exploring what platform to use and how to create an effective approach to your branding. As you reach out to your prospects, they get to know, like and trust you. And you will be more productive by understanding the needs and behavior of your niche and will get a closer view on the impact of your product. This will help you to plan your business growth implementation better and augment your revenue.
Because social media is an easy accessible way to study your market, consider how you will be able to get to know your customer by following and tracking where they go and how they will follow you in return. For example, as an Architect, you wouldn’t go to a bridal shop to find customers, you would probably go to a builders’ convention. The same concept applies with social media, you go where the customers are and where you’ll have the opportunity to find the most customers. Get acquainted with the venue and the technology your prospects are comfortable with and active on, especially when deciding how to communicate. For example, some prospects may prefer a phone call, while others may prefer to keep communications on a messaging platform until the final transaction. Your goal should always be to simplify everything for them, meet them where they are at.
Another important element to examine will be the inter-department communication within your company.
Many companies are experiencing issues within their sales and marketing teams. I often find faulty communication between Marketing department and Sales department regarding passing off leads. Marketing complains of lack of follow-up and Sales complains that the leads are not good leads, so they can’t close them. I’m not sure if this is happening overtly or quietly in your company, but this is present because everybody believes they are doing all they can do within their given roles. The best way to deal with this is set a procedure that keeps both departments in sync. More importantly, when using social media as a venue for finding leads you will notice that these leads are easier to convert into customers. Prospects from social platforms are readily building a relationship with your brand and find it appealing. This way Marketing could be trained on what to do to find the leads and hand off to Sales to close leads that Marketing already have built a relationship with your brand. Both teams should be trained on how to handle every situation and scenario that can occur. For example, marketing may initially answer a question on social media, qualify the sales and then notify Sales that the person is a potential customer, and so on. Then Sales can take over the conversation through the sales funnel to close without wasting quality time. This will increase your company workforce productivity and scale revenue.
Equally critical is to remember that after you have created social media momentum, a plan should be devised to maintain it over time.
Effectively developing a social networking presence is not as hard as it looks. Social media is not rocket science. Whenever you’re scrolling through social networking, get real. You might also re-post or re-tweet different people’s content, and provide them a shout-out. There’s an amazing quantity of content on the Internet. Employing the most suitable hashtags, keywords and descriptions also increases the campaign so people may discover your videos utilizing the tags. One of the most instantaneous communication mode is to participate in a group in your specific industry or one which you need to enter.
While there are a number of social networking platforms to pick from, my advice is to begin with one and get excellent at it.
You must also know your audience. For example, what’s proper for a “single” audience may not be relevant for a “married”, or whatever appeal to a “younger” audience may not work for an “older” audience. Likewise, utilizing humor for a specific audience may be necessary or being formal may be better for another. You must know how to mold your voice and strategies towards your ideal customers. If you can’t handle social media to execute a thriving social networking marketing campaign, then find an expert or outsource it. The entire point of social media is to advertise you, build your brand by showcasing your nature with a human touch. In today’s world, this is extremely important for business survival. An image is really worth a thousand words and thousands of people are on Instagram or Facebook daily looking for photographic inspiration, a video or ways to improve their lives. They are on Pinterest trying to find quick access to gold mine information. A fantastic write-up on Facebook or Twitter has the largest potential to entice people organically, and they are going to stay around much longer to keep getting more.
Consequently, as your company advertising and marketing campaign get underway, you need extensive monitoring to recognize any current or future gaps.
Marketing is crucial to any business and is one of the most essential part of any business strategy. It is affordable communication at its best since its effectiveness means money. And a communication medium is always the vital organ with the lifeblood of your business. Research and analytics are essential to a successful advertising campaign. In the modern market, businesses cannot expect to do well while dismissing social media as a means to acquiring good exposure to possible customers, together with having the ability to boost their company brand. Social networking tools gives you access to millions of individuals. A lot of time wasted promoting your company the old way is a costly endeavor. Save time and money and drastically increase revenue by automating your sales and marketing.
