Category: Sales Enablement

5 Sales Management Systems to Keep Your SaaS Sales Team on the Same Page

Posted on by hiredna

Successfully coordinating a SaaS sales team is easier said than done. 

Your salespeople may be working on different projects, using different software and apps, or interacting with leads at different stages of the sales funnel. And with a growing number of salespeople working remotely, it’s become more challenging than ever. 

If left unchecked, this can take a serious toll on your productivity and conversions. In fact, “97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project.”

A surefire way to keep your SaaS team on the same page is by using a sales management system. Here are five of the best. 

1. HubSpot CRM

For years HubSpot has been the gold standard for sales and marketing software. They offer a wide range of solutions, and the HubSpot CRM is the go-to platform for many SaaS sales teams.

It gives sales leaders a bird’s eye view of your team’s pipeline in real-time, including:

  • Overall sales activity
  • Team productivity
  • Individual rep performance

That way they know how close your team is, collectively and individually, to meeting quotas and any areas that need to be addressed.

And it helps salespeople stay organized where they can:

  • Quickly add new contacts to your database
  • Keep track of deadlines
  • Automatically track sales calls, emails, and meetings
  • Share notes 

Every single person on your sales team is in the loop at all times with HubSpot CRM, and you can drastically reduce time wasting activities for maximum productivity. 

2. VanillaSoft

Like HubSpot, VanillaSoft offers a robust suite of products. But the one we’re interested in here is their lead management platform.

“VanillaSoft makes lead management simple with a full complement of solutions to boost productivity, including lead prioritization, email nurturing campaigns, logical branch scripting, call-activity dashboard, and flexible data management.”

One of the most notable features is their real-time inside sales insights, which lets sales leaders monitor team performance, analyze call activity, and track ROI. With it, they can also keep watch of all sales activity in real-time through a call-activity dashboard. 

Besides that, VanillaSoft automatically captures data like call history, emails sent, positive contacts, payment history, and more so you see exactly what’s happened from the moment someone becomes a lead until they make a purchase.

 

3. Pipedrive

Among the numerous features of this sales CRM and pipeline management platform is the ability to track every aspect of communications, including calls, emails, and contact history. This enables your SaaS sales team to stay synced up with another and maintain full visibility of what has transpired in real-time.

Pipedrive also offers a visual history where you can look up a particular contact to see when interactions took place and the last conversations a rep had before following up. That way team members are in a better position to provide timely, relevant offers and have more meaningful interactions with leads. 

There’s a calendar button where you can choose how far back you want to go on the timeline. You can, for example, go back 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months.

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And reps can also add a quick note so other team members will know what’s happened for more engaging future interactions. 

4. Freshworks CRM

This is an incredibly adaptive sales management system that places an emphasis on tracking custom sales activities. As Freshworks CRM puts it, “start tracking sales activities and identify the ones that increase conversions with powerful reports. Get all the insights that you need to streamline your process and start closing deals faster than ever.”

For starters, you can add things like sales events and meetings to identify what’s leading to more quality interactions with leads, which in turn, allows you to steadily improve your team’s performance. 

Next, you can conveniently record and track sales activities, including call logs and notes so team members can see them at a glance. Freshworks CRM allows you to set up notification alerts such as email opens, upcoming tasks, and event reminders so quality leads don’t slip through your fingers. On top of that, you can use it to create silky smooth workflows that automatically creates tasks whenever a new lead enters the sales funnel.

5. Monday.com

Primarily known as a high-level project management tool, Monday.com also has a CRM solution that works perfectly as a sales management system. One of the main reasons users love it is because of how visual it is. Monday.com offers a robust interface featuring powerful charts and graphs where sales leaders can monitor sales team activity, see how deals are coming along, and check the progress of individual reps. 

As for salespeople, they can stay on top of all lead interactions, including emails, phone calls, and meetings. They can share relevant documents with other team members from a single, ultra-organized communication dashboard. 

And they can use their mobile devices to track deals whenever and from wherever they happen to be. Monday.com even offers an offline mode when the internet isn’t available. This gives your SaaS sales team a 360 degree view of your pipeline and should eliminate costly communication gaps. 

Ensuring Seamless Collaboration 

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep the communication flowing with your SaaS sales team. From the point someone officially becomes a lead and enters your funnel to the moment they pull the trigger and buy, all of your reps need to be on the same page. 

Otherwise, the lead experience and ultimately your conversions will suffer. In fact, 86% of team members say a lack of collaboration and ineffective communication is the main reason for project failures. 

Using one of the five sales management systems listed here should keep everyone in the loop and the conversions coming. 

Looking to build a stronger, more talented sales team? Learn how HireDNA can help you source top talent using intelligent matching and science-based assessments. 

How Mastering Follow-Ups Can Help Your Sales Team Beat 92% of the Competition

Posted on by hiredna

Only 2% of deals are closed during the first sales meeting. And the prospects that buy are almost always the ones that have done significant research, know exactly what they’re looking for, and feel completely confident in the brand they’re dealing with. 

The remaining 98% just “aren’t there yet” and still require nurturing and trust-building before they’re fully on board. However, many sales reps sell themselves short by giving up too early, with nearly half (44%) giving up after the first “no.”

Here’s how mastering follow-ups can lead to a spike in conversions and create a massive competitive advantage. 

Most Sales Reps Give Up Far Too Early

As we just mentioned, 44% of reps give up after the first no. And that number steadily drops with each no after that, with:

  • 22% giving up after the second no
  • 14% giving up after the third no
  • 12% giving up after the fourth no
  • 8% giving up after five nos or more

Here’s a graph that breaks this data down visually. 

So, when it’s all said and done, 92% of sales reps give up after four rejections. 

And That’s Great News

This lack of persistence among most sales reps is a good thing for your company because most of your competitors lack the tenacity to close deals. 

To quantify things, you can theoretically beat:

  • 44% of your competitors by following-up twice with a lead
  • 66% by following-up three times
  • 80% by following-up four times

And get this. By following-up five times, you can beat 92% of the competition. It just boils down to having perseverance and incorporating strong lead nurturing into your brand’s framework. 

Having the Right Sales Mindset

This begins by first understanding the psychology of leads, and then taking the necessary steps to build rapport and trust with them until they’re ready to buy. 

Author and entrepreneur Robert Clay summarizes it well by saying, “People and companies who don’t follow-up, who do nothing to build up that trust and relationship, cannot succeed. People need to be sure they’re making the right decision before they commit to a purchase.”

Clay also points out that 63% of leads that request information from you won’t buy for at least three months, and it will take another 20% of leads more than a year to buy. So, this is definitely something your company needs to keep in mind when approaching sales. 

The bottom line is that no matter how great your product or service is and how amazing your reps are, the vast majority of leads just aren’t ready to make a purchase right off the bat. But by having the right sales mindset and mastering follow-ups, you can position your team to outperform more than 9 out of 10 competitors — something that can often be achieved with three key strategies. 

1. Make Sure Your Reps Know Your Product Inside and Out

Here’s a sobering stat. “58% of buyers report that sales reps aren’t able effectively to answer their questions.” What’s even more startling is that “more than 40% of reps, themselves, don’t feel like they have the right information before making a sales call.”

This may sound like 101 level stuff here, but this data shows that a simple lack of preparedness is a big reason why many deals are lost. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that your reps know your product inside out and out, as well as the specific context they’re dealing with during lead interactions. For example, a sales rep might want to point out certain product features to one lead and different features to another based on the lead’s industry, needs, pain points, and so on. 

That right there can have a dramatic impact. 

2. Anticipate Objections

We’ve already established that more often than not, a lead won’t be ready to commit to a purchase right away — and that’s fine. But reps should never be caught off guard with sales objections. Rather, they should have rapid fire responses on standby, both for their initial interactions, as well as with their follow-ups. 

Fortunately, sales objections are fairly predictable regardless of the industry. Here’s a list of the seven most common ones, according to Bryan Gonzalez of HubSpot. 

Developing effective counters for each of these will create a ton of leverage and ensure your reps respond appropriately no matter what leads throw at them. 

3. Create Ongoing Communication

Lastly, you need to keep the communication going, so that you keep your foot on the gas pedal with your lead nurturing efforts. This is what creates “top of mind awareness,” where your company stays on a lead’s radar, greatly increasing the chances of making a sale in the long run. 

The key to maintaining communication is to A) use a variety of different channels to account for the communication preferences of each lead and B) keep reaching out to leads tactfully without creating friction. 

Research has found there are five main communication channels that people prefer to use:

  1. Phone
  2. Email
  3. Live chat
  4. Online knowledge base
  5. Click to call

So, these are the ideal channels for continuing outreach during follow-ups. Some others to consider include texting and social media.  

Creating More Tenacious Sales Reps

As we’ve learned, tenacity is a critical part of winning at sales. 

That’s not to say that a rep should become hyper-aggressive where they absolutely won’t take no for an answer, to the point that it creates serious friction and potentially harms your brand reputation. 

But mastering follow-ups and optimizing your team’s approach using the strategies above should put you far ahead of your competitors and close more deals. 

Want to build a better sales team and attract top-tier talent? Learn how HireDNA can help, using powerful recruiting technology and science-based sales assessments. 

Empower Your Sales Team Through Sales Enablement

Posted on by hiredna

Sales enablement. It isn’t a new concept. The idea that businesses need to empower theirsales team by ensuring they have the right tools to lead effective conversations with customers hasbeen around for years. But sales enablement has become the latest buzz word, as companies look for ways to optimize their sales and revenue. Here’s why sales enablement really is what your sales team needs to succeed.   

What exactly is sales enablement?

Forrester defines sales enablement as “a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.”  

That’s quite a mouthful. Let’s put it another way. Sales enablement empowers your sales team with resources and tools to excel. Your team uses these resources and tools to target optimal customers and close high-value sales.

Empowering your sales team through sales enablement requires focusing on four key areas:

  • corporate alignment
  • data and analysis
  • content optimization
  • technology

Get on the same page: corporate alignment

What happens when direction and focus are unclear? Typically, customers tend to fall through the cracks and/or processes fall apart entirely. That’s why companies need strategic goals and objectives communicated across all lines of business. Lead requirements, revenue goals and core objectives should be developed and implemented through all teams, including the sales team. Why? Ongoing communication and visibility create transparency and remove silos between product, marketing and sales. This empowers the sales team to have more meaningful conversations with prospective customers because they are armed with purpose and a consistent message.

Shrink the wide world of data and analysis

Companies can collect vast amounts of data and information on prospective and current customers. This can be good, but it’s crucial not to overwhelm your sales team with the irrelevant. Data should be analyzed and parsed into standardized sales reports that the sales team can actually use. Reports providing quality leads based on specific customer attributes enable the sales team to focus on clients that are of value to the business. 

Collateral counts: optimize content

According to the CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, marketing creates only 39 percent of content used to engage with prospects. This is a problem because if marketing isn’t creating the content, who is? Often, it’s the sales team, and the result is less than desirable. As the report shares, only high-quality content (ranked “meets or exceeds expectations”) can improve quota and revenue generation so that it is above average (59.3 percent).

To optimize content, a content assessment should be completed that involves resources from product, marketing and sales. Content gaps should be addressed and redundancies removed. Additionally, to truly optimize content and empower your sales team there needs to be taxonomy and a content management framework in place to easily search and find relevant information. 

Technology talks

Enablement technology is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must have” for businesses wanting to empower their sales team. Companies can have established goals, standardized reporting and optimized content; however, if the sales team is unable to access it, then their sales efforts are impeded.

Sales enablement technologies automate processes that allow sales teams to sell better and faster. They let your sales force stay aligned with marketing and business goals, identify valuable prospects, access and search relevant content, upsell and cross-sell products and trigger automatic customer communications. Most importantly, sales enablement tools help streamline workflows and remove unnecessary tasks so the sales team can focus on creating revenue.

Maybe by now you’re assessing your organization’s ability to empower your sales team. Want to know how you’re faring? Revecent can complete an analysis of your sales enablement capabilities and identify areas for improving and accelerating sales. Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.  

Revecent experts recruit, train, equip and manage high-performance sales teams to accelerate revenue growth. We work with technology, manufacturing and professional service organizations. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization’s sales team exceed expectations.

3 Tips To Improve Your Sales And Marketing Alignment

Posted on by hiredna

Winning a national championship is one of the hardest feats to achieve in sports. Countless things have to go right, and the margins for error are small.

The North Carolina Tar Heels won the 2017 title, but it wasn’t because of their talent alone. Sure, you need talent to win, but teamwork is a critical piece to the puzzle.

Sales and marketing traditionally operate in silos, but data shows this is counterproductive to increasing the bottom line. According to Hubspot, companies that aligned their sales and marketing efforts generated 208% higher revenue.

Here are 3 tips to improve the relationship between your sales and marketing teams to accelerate revenue growth.

Clear Communication

Everyone has a role on the team, but it’s imperative that everyone knows how they work together.

In basketball, the point guard’s role is to facilitate the offense, the shooting guard actively looks for opportunities to score, and the forwards do everything in between.

When it comes to establishing a relationship between sales and marketing, it’s critical that everyone understands where they fit in the overall process. 

When there is uncertainty about what everyone is responsible for, it opens the door for finger pointing. Marketing will blame sales for not working the leads they provide, and sales counters by blaming marketing for not giving them better quality leads. By having a shared goal, it allows you to work backward and define the metrics that each side is accountable for.

Marketing should provide the intelligence to sales so they can be effective at engaging leads and closing deals. Each side should make the other more effective. 

Leverage Analysis And Apply It To Your Game Plan

The difference between mediocre coaches and those that consistently win championships lies in their ability to adjust.

Tools and technology such as CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) have empowered sales and marketing professionals to be more efficient. When used correctly, your CRM is a central repository where all your marketing and sales data lives. 

Marketing needs data to know what their target audience cares about so that they can create content that is valuable and relatable. Sales need data like customer behavior, content your prospects download, level of engagement, market research, etc. to contextualize your leads. Those insights enable sales reps to be more strategic in their approach.

Continuous feedback between both departments needs to happen regularly to ensure the data collected is being applied to your overall strategy. If the criteria Marketing is using to qualify leads (MQL) is weak, Sales needs to relay this information so both teams can make the proper adjustments.

Implementing your sales process into your CRM will enable you to monitor how and when leads are contacted. If you notice there is a trend where your sales team is having difficulty converting leads, you can use real insights from your analysis instead of hearsay to refine your strategy.

Timing is everything

The way a coach approaches a game at the start of the season will be dramatically different than in March once the NCAA Tournament begins.

The same is true in sales. If someone in sales calls a lead that requested information with a closing pitch, the risk of losing that lead is high because both parties are at different places in the sales/buying process. 

Sales and marketing must have a consensus on the specifics of the buyer’s journey. Many organizations struggle with leads slipping through the cracks during the marketing to sales hand-off process. Close the loop by defining lead assignments, lead routing, qualification criteria, and response times. 

Your approach for how you guide your prospects through your buyer journey is vital to shortening the sales cycle and closing more deals. 

In today’s buyer-driven environment, successful companies figure out how to best align and integrate sales and marketing, creating a cohesive team to drive profits.