Everything you do – from the methods you use and the time you spend prospecting to the service you provide potential and existing customers to the way you track your activity – determines how large and accurate your forecast is. Which means there’s a lot of room for error and mistakes that can lead to a poor showing and missed quota at the end of your quarter. In the infographic below, you’ll see some of the most glaring inefficiencies in today’s sales organizations, as well as gain some insight into constantly changing customer buying habits. Sales managers and sales reps alike will need to work hard and train better in order to combat some of these trends.

Quick Tips to Create Better Sales Behavior

Sales Managers

  • Implement a Sales Process: One of my sources for this infographic, The Tas Group, also found that only 50 percent of sales reps have a good sales playbook or sales process in place. It’s up to you to map out an effective sales roadmap and train your team to follow it, so they don’t waste valuable hours chasing immaterial deals or unqualified prospects.
  • Give Your Team the Best Tools: Often sales reps have innaccurate pipeline forecasts because they aren’t tracking activity correctly or they have trouble understanding their data. Provide your reps with the right mobile tools, including mobile dashboards and analytics, so they can report and review accurate numbers wherever they are.
  • Serve Your Current Customers: Most sales organizations spend much more money targeting new customers while allowing existing customers to leave for competing products. Don’t forget the 80/20 rule and make excellent customer service (even after the deal is done) a core principal of your sales culture. This eBook details exactly how you can improve your customer service strategy.

Sales Reps

  • Prospect Smarter: What I mean by that is to spend time where your prospects spend it and reach them on that medium. So if your prospects are on LinkedIn and Twitter, it might be easier to get their attention on these mediums vs eight cold calls over the course of a week. While excellent prospecting will take up your time and provide you with leads that are more like to be qualified, it’s important to remember that the more facetime you get with prospects the more likely you are to close a deal. So prospect more smartly and you’ll have better qualified leads and more time to interact with them.
  • Get to Know Your Customers: One of the biggest problems sales people have today is understanding their customer’s problems. Instead of pitching your product, really take some time to listen to the issues they face. Then you’ll be able to guide them to a solution that best fits their needs, and you’ll be seen as an expert in the process.
  • Improve Your Lead Qualification: It’s easy to weed out leads are very obviously never going to buy – what’s more difficult is saying goodbye to the leads who make empyt commitments and string you a long. Learn how to spot these and move from them quickly so you have more time and energy to pursue prospects that will actually purchase.

Having more data to understand your sales activity and customer behavior will help you overcome these common hurdles. Learn you can drive every sales with real data by downloading our eBook below.


// Originally published at www.blog.roambi.com

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