The most challenging task in business is selling. Everyone in your company should be selling, as they are an ambassador for the company, no matter where they are. This is very evident in today's social media world, where employees need to heed what they post on a public web site.
When we talk with CEO of a company, we tell them that they must be selling all the time, or they are just overhead. The head of a company must constantly sell to customers, partners, suppliers, bankers, investors and employees.
Today's companies need a tool to track their successes, failures and interactions within organization. Creating a process with a sales tool will increase your success, plus improve the efficiency of your sales force. This article describes a series of steps to take as you evaluate different sales tools.
Selling is perceived to be difficult. Selling is just a process that you establish, follow and track. Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth, has shown that everyday people create wildly successful companies with processes. One of the most important processes in sales is the follow up. Follow up should occur any time you and your customer interact. An interaction happens when you are either listening to them, or reaching out to touch them. Success comes from making sure that the right information flows to your customer at the right time.
Your customers go through a buying cycle. This buying process may vary, but the primary steps are need, information gathering and desire. Throughout the whole buying decision process, emotions direct the customer. People buy with their heart and then justify the decision using the gray matter between their ears. Therefore, all information that flows to your prospects and customers must guide their emotions at that particular point in time. Follow up is critical at each step. Good Sales tracing system will be valuable for your sales force in helping you achieve this critical process.
As you provide information to potential buyers, you must focus on them. You need to please their requirements and wants. The sales cycle will focus on your customer and their buying cycle. You must identify their process, and find the steps your customer goes through. Then get the right information and right people involved to please your customer. It is not easy to keep track and get the right correspondent to your customers at all time. Different customers possess different buying process. You need to have an efficient tracking system to aid your sales operation to keep up performance.
Most of us provide more than one product to a customer, as we can usually sell ancillary products and on-going services. Every customer should be looked upon as a future referral. The result is that we must focus on all customers for the long haul.
From the owner's or boss' point of view, critical indicators to track include sales increases, number of customers, sales efficiency, and sales per customer (or better yet, profit per customer). Sales managers want metrics to measure their sales force efficiency - calls per day, close ratio, new calls, etc. Your customer only has so much money to spend, and you want as large a share of his wallet as possible. An effective sales reporting system should be put into place to track these vital indicators, plus others that you deem important.
Increased efficiencies for sales people usually mean more sales per day or week. The more that you can automate the tasks of the sales force, the more time they spent pleasing the customer, and more time in front of them. All sales tools must be easy to update from any wireless devices. Sales people want efficiency in their lives and they will spend as little time as possible entering data.
Part of the tracking process is capturing information about the customer. Customer information includes customer dynamics, demographics, history of interactions between your companies, customer needs, buying habits and how often the customer is touched. Touching a customer or prospect includes face-to-face discussions, phone calls, emails, ordinary mail, your website, blog postings, tweets, and other information your customer can find out about you. Do you know what your customer is posting on their blogs, websites or in tweets?
In conclusion of this part 1, you need to know buying cycle of your prospects and organize your tasks properly to response with right action in the right time. You need to know how to gather customer information properly in order to help they solve problem. A good sales tracking system will be like your magic wand in helping you do these jobs. I will discuss more about how to take into next step in order to seal the deal in Part 2 of this article.
Article Source: Kenny Blog
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