Technology and innovation must work in favor of your sales processes. There is no point in using multiple software and contracting sales tools if they are not serving the greater purpose of increasing your sales results.
If current solutions are making your sales routine too complex or slow, time has come to pay attention and consider urgent changes to your partners and processes.
Understanding that technology needs to be an ally of your sales team and that innovative sales tools must deliver expressive results is the reason we wrote this post. Look at some critical sales management issues and how automation can solve them.
Can technology hinder your sales process?
If used poorly, yes, it can. ERP, SAP, CRM and other acronyms and tools control the sales processes and routine in the information technology age. However, to be truly strategic solutions that increase sales results, they need to be used with a structured approach by companies of all sizes and segments.
The main point of criticism on the use of technology in sales is the fact that fully automated processes and digital communication itself get in the way of one-to-one relationships that are so important in a commercial approach.
While innovative sales processes bring more agility and expand sales opportunities geographically, we must keep in mind that we will always talk and sell to people who have their specific pain points and desires. Therefore, a personalized service is essential to close more sales deals.
Innovation to address unproductive sales teams
Multiple factors may be compromising the performance of your sales team. We highlight some of these, where technology plays a key role in tackling issues and delivering agile, low-cost solutions.
Communication with customers
Being far from customers and barely interacting with them are attitudes that result in poor proximity, which means low trust levels and reduced chances of the prospect buying from your company.
Sales automation platforms, such as Pipedrive CRM, can make communication with customers easier, by creating triggers so that the salesperson doesn’t miss calls, scheduling meetings, e-mail returns, etc. The key advantage is that all this information is recorded in one place, providing the salesperson a quick history of interactions with the prospect and making it easier to guide the lead in the sales funnel.
Bureaucratization of the sales process
A bureaucratic sales process is usually a slow sales process. When the salesperson spends too much time filling out information or trying to comply with a series of rules that interfere instead of helping their sales routine, it is time to think about tools that make the process less bureaucratic.
This is where technology plays a substantial role: Pipedrive, for example, allows tracking the stage of every deal in a simple and intuitive way, which saves time when comparing to salespeople who still use spreadsheets or do not have such tools.
Performance monitoring: where I am and where I want to be
For salespeople to improve their sales performance, first, they need to understand their current performance. It may seem obvious and simple but in the daily routine of companies this information is not always clear to the salesperson. And technology helps giving this vision of the salesperson performance over a period of time.
Pipedrive provides reports that show where the salesperson is losing business, how many activities were scheduled and completed, in addition to those that showed the best conversion rates, closed and lost sales deals, as well as conversion rate at all stages of the sales funnel. This information drives the salesperson’s actions, consequently, leads to increased productivity.
To help their sales force, managers need to provide the team with an adequate infrastructure, offering efficient tools for daily activities. Technology plays a key role in the productivity of salespeople as it delivers better agility and intelligence based on statistics about their performance. With the right software, your sales team will have a strategic approach and focus on the best business opportunities.
Do you want more tips on high performance in sales? Check out our content.
