You’ve determined the steps of your sales process. You’re familiar with the average prospect’s journey from an email address in your CRM to a paying client. You’ve taught your salespeople the key steps to move prospects through the stages.
But how do you know whether all that is effective? What factors should you consider? And, if it’s not working as well as you’d want, how can you improve the process?
Sales effectiveness is a concept that includes all of these aspects. That’s why this article will discuss what sales effectiveness entails, how to measure it, and steps you can take to improve your sales process.
Let’s get started!
What Is the Importance of Defining a Sales Process?
A sales process is a series of steps your sales rep follows in order to turn a potential customer into a buyer. A defined sales process provides structure and responsibility to your operations, which leads to shorter sales cycles and a greater win rate.
One survey claims that B2B organizations that developed a sales process had 18% greater revenue growth than those that did not. But the advantages of devising a sales process reach well beyond the financial line of your organization. Here are the top eight benefits of developing a uniform sales process.
“One survey claims that B2B organizations that developed a sales process had 18% greater revenue growth than those that did not.”
Simple Steps Your Sales Reps Can Follow
When your sales professionals know exactly what to do in each phase of the sales process, it gives them an edge over reps who rely on a hunch. You can lose even the most promising prospects if there are no clear stages and landmarks that direct sellers from generating leads to presenting to closing the deal.
Quicker New Staff Onboarding
Once a novice salesperson understands the basic steps in an organization’s sales process, they can quickly catch up. That also relieves the sales manager of some of the workload. Because the whole sales team adheres to the same strategy, older staff members are able to pass on their experience and knowledge to new employees who are just starting out.
Ability to Enhance Sales Techniques
A defined sales process guarantees that your team’s efforts are directed toward a common goal — earning the highest income. Without it, the team members simply win or lose deals, and it’s difficult to determine whether their methods are giving results or not.
Revenue and Sales Predictability
A solid sales process increases the consistency with which sales teams win deals. Knowing your success rate lets you predict how many deals you’ll close out of a particular amount of leads. It also enables managers to set reasonable objectives.
Recognizing Qualified Leads Equals Higher Lifetime Value
Your sales staff could better screen out waste leads and recognize customers who are most likely to make a purchase if you have a well-honed sales process. Focusing your efforts on the best prospects can shorten sales cycles, decrease wasted effort on possibilities that won’t pay off, and boost lifetime client value.
Better Communication Between Your Teams
When your sales staff speaks a language no one else understands, the interaction between departments can be challenging. And since they need to collaborate with sales enablement and marketing teams, you might have an issue in your company.
But if your teams use defined sales process stages and terminology, it will improve business communication and minimize inter-departmental misunderstandings. Moreover, it allows your customer support, account management, sales, and marketing teams to provide the right help at the right moment.
Better Sense of Your Team’s Performance
A defined sales process increases the number of data points available for measurement, allowing for a more precise analysis of critical indicators and sales objectives. Basically, sales procedures not only assist managers in understanding what sales teams are doing but also show the effect of such actions.
An Improved Overall Client Experience
A clear sales procedure assures that sellers do not proceed with the transaction unless the client is ready. By adapting the sales process, sales teams can also build the groundwork for a pleasant customer experience before closing the deal. They can change the process to match how a company’s target consumers go through the purchase and ensure that each stage forges trust and gives value.
How Can Sales Efficiency Be Improved?
Invest a Significant Amount of Time, Energy, and Resources in Training
Your team’s ability to make the most of their interactions with prospects depends on their skills and preparation. Naturally, it benefits you to ensure that they are qualified and well-prepared. That’s why your sales reps should understand your product or service, the sales process, and the preferred approach to customer acquisition.
Improve the Infrastructure for Opportunity Management
In many regards, opportunity management is the process of determining sales efficacy. It is a practice of identifying and managing sales opportunities as they travel through your pipeline — contacts who have entered your sales cycle with a proven interest and capacity to do business with you.
Investing time, effort, and money in opportunity management helps you understand your potential clients better and prioritize your contacts based on their business potential. It also assists you in selecting the perfect strategy to approach them based on their level of interest and the stage of their connection with your firm. At the same time, opportunity management reveals faults in your sales procedures, allowing you to improve how you communicate with potential consumers.
Make Use of a Solid Sales Process
Considering what we discussed above, this one may seem apparent, but it is still worth revisiting. Salespeople require a structure to operate by — in short, a sales process. That means your sales reps must have a basic concept of how you want them to move prospects through the pipeline. For this reason, you must provide them with knowledge of how they should operate at whatever phases they are in charge of, from prospecting to closing.
How to Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team?
A sales metric is data that shows the success of individual sales representatives, sales teams, or even the entire firm. Metrics, also known as key performance indicators (KPIs), are used by sales teams to determine how close they are to their goals. You can also use them to uncover top-performing employees and identify weak areas.
KPIs can also help businesses prepare for the impacts of market changes or plan for future growth. Here are some of the most common metrics for measuring sales effectiveness across your company.
- Total Revenue
- Average Revenue Per Customer/Product/Account
- Market Penetration
- Percentage of Revenue from Existing vs. New Customers
- Win Rate
- Annual Growth
- Lifetime Value of a Customer (LVT)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Quota Attainment
- Pipeline Coverage
- Sales Expense Ratio
Selecting the Right Metrics to Follow
However, the challenge is to decide on the right metrics to use. Wins are the most commonly utilized metric in sales jobs and sectors. Companies usually measure finalized sales and rep output against quota monthly, which is not surprising.
However, a completed sale is a result and a lagging indication. That is why the salesman or sales manager cannot leverage it to influence future outcomes.
So, here are a few simple tips to help you choose metrics that are suitable for your sales goals.
Define Company-Wide and Team-Specific Objectives
Before you can select sales KPIs, you must first identify key goals. Companies often have one main goal and one or two secondary objectives that give context and support for the primary goal.
Determine Specific Steps That Will Assist You in Achieving Each Goal
Specify what individual or team actions are needed to make your goals a reality. Then, you can choose KPIs that motivate action and track your progress toward your revenue objective.
Pick the Optimum Method for Measuring Progress for Each Action
Opt for a metric that gives you the best insight into your progress for each goal and action. KPIs should be something you can track daily or monthly and use to make smart business decisions.
What Is the Sales Management Process?
It is the process of forming a sales team, coordinating operations, and implementing sales strategies that help a company meet or exceed its objectives. A sales management plan is essential if you want your company to earn any income. Aside from allowing your firm to meet its sales goals, a sales management system helps you to keep in tune with your industry as it evolves. Altogether, it could very well mean the difference between survival and thriving in an increasingly competitive market.
How to Evaluate Sales Productivity?
The final outcome of sales efficiency and effectiveness is sales productivity. Productivity increases naturally when sales efficiency and sales effectiveness are improved. Metrics for monitoring your team’s or an individual sales rep’s productivity might include “revenue per rep” or “percentage of reps above quota.”
Because sales leaders sometimes overlook critical measures for gauging productivity, it might be best to use AI and automate processes to make life easier for busy managers and VPs. DYL platform gives you a single view of your whole sales organization’s productivity levels.
Final Thoughts
Top-performing firms are continually measuring and optimizing their processes. Sales leaders can use tools like DYL to drill down and identify which aspects and behaviors affect sales performance at each stage of the process and encourage the proper behaviors, skills and actions. This method of assessing and optimizing may be measured against overall effectiveness over time to understand better how your efforts affect your bottom line.
