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3 Tips for Improving Your Close Rate on Leads
Avoid the Traps of Traditional Contact Management Software by Focusing on Best Practices for Small Business Software Users
Many sales professionals are forced into traditional contact management clouds like Salesforce.com, Netsuite and Oracle, because they work in large corporations who have many levels of management and IT who need to approve every system used by an employee. The upside is that these products provide executives and management with exactly what they are looking for, statistics to tell the board, data to manage their employees with and a clear gage of who is performing best and who is performing worst. The downside is that all of this focus on reporting creates a constant aggravation within the sales force about how much data input they have to perform not at all related to working a customer or opportunity from lead to close. Every world class sales professional has a different style, or different philosophy of how to work their accounts, but any successful sales pro knows one thing, they need to work fast, work hard and have the data at their fingertips that let them respond and close. This article will give you three key features you need if you want to use anything from a business card file, your phone, local database like Bento and Filemaker, or a customer database cloud like Performance Desk to organize and track your sales pipeline.
Tip One - Have a clear priority to opportunities and customers every day. Sort your cards or files in a way where you will clearly know what customer needs the most attention and what time of day they need to get it. If you're a nationwide rep that means working your customers east to west coast, but in most cases it will mean looking at which opportunities are closest to close on your pipeline and focusing your efforts appropriately.
Tip Two – Have a clear methodology for every call and stick to it. Some products like Performeance Desk ven provide a categorized sales worksheet that will help guide your notes into a clear report and remind you to stay on track to work smart and close faster. In the case of Performance Desk for example you can sort your notes in to friendly info that help build rapport, understand customer need, notate customer objections, probe for customer pain and most importantly close more sales and grow your business.
Tip Three – Focus on sales not reporting on your progress. If you are in a small company or work for yourself in San Jose or Seattle, the last thing you need is to pay a fortune for software whose main purpose is to report your progress and projections to the head office in New York. Most of the suppliers of online CRM and sales management products have placed all of their effort into satisfying the needs of enterprise size customers because that is their bread and butter.
The complexity and features that deliver complex analytics that help a vice president of sales decide who performs the best have nothing to do with the features that each salesperson needs to track and close an opportunity. Often sales professionals are forced to work their sales on pad and paper then spend valuable time transferring that data into the complex system after the fact rather than focusing on the next opportunity and getting those dollars in the door.
About the Author
Brent Silveria is the co-founder and President of Resilient Labs, Inc. Brent believes that usability is the key behind any successful software.
Brent has a long track record of expertise in providing design and product marketing experience with large companies and start-ups specializing in growing new businesses and entering emerging markets.
Combined with a solid background in sales management and business, he has worked with companies such as Roxio®, PBS®, The Grammy Awards®, Warner Bros. Animation®, Apple Computer®, and more.
Brent has spoken around the world on the subjects of home entertainment and productivity software. http://www.performancedesk.com
Miniature Japanese bento, sushi etc; made completely out of paper