The 12 Days of Salesforce for 2024 (Day Five: Your Sales Process)
TL;DR: Here is my list of things you should be considering as you reboot your business for 2024, focusing on Salesforce generally and your Sales Process specifically.
Here’s the first post in this series, which includes background and how you can save $150k/year: https://medium.com/@kmcafeesf/the-12-days-of-salesforce-for-2024-day-one-dd8051e0adee
Day Five (of Twelve): Sales Process Optimization
What you should consider: Analyze and optimize the sales process, leveraging Salesforce automation tools to improve lead-to-opportunity conversion rates.
What you should evaluate: Estimate the improvement in conversion rates and the potential increase in revenue. Consider the time saved through streamlined processes.
Annualized cost savings (est. based on 30 users): $18,000.
How I would approach Day Five and your Sales Process:
ABS. Always Be Selling. Okay, so that’s not quite right, but it’s close. We really are all selling all the time.
Information
There are two main threads that I like to focus on. The first thread is to make sure your Sales teams have the most and best information about each prospect they speak with (and maybe even especially existing customers). The more they understand about the customers’ relationship with you, the better.
What I mean is, sure, the product(s) they own. But what about how many support cases they’ve logged? And how many in-person or virtual events they’ve attended? Do they RSVP and then not show? Do they then view the recordings? Maybe they’re shy?
But seriously, that data is important. I’ve written quite a bit on how aggregating that data changes the game, but maybe today’s the day you’ll read it? ;-)
Efficiency and Accuracy
The other main thread is efficiency and accuracy. Essentially, how much screentime do your reps need to do their jobs, and are the apps they rely on correct? Some actual keyboard work is unavoidable, but there are likely opportunities to improve along the way. As I’ve mentioned before, open questions or a ride-along with a sales rep might enlighten you.
Does your Sales team run their meetings from Salesforce directly? Like from a dashboard or report or both? Or perhaps you have some advanced analytics like Wave (I’m going to keep calling it that, because I can) that allow the team to see everything together?
That should be your goal. There is some give-and-take there, such as the app has to be accurate for the app to be accurate. Meaning everyone needs to be “encouraged” and “reinforced” to put the best data they in the app for everyone’s benefit. That can be a tough sell, but in today’s market it is absolutely possible.
That’s where efficiency comes in. If reps can quickly and easily add information, or — even better — have their data updated by simply doing the tasks they normally do (think email logging), then you’ll win.
There is a lot to explore here, so go get started!
This is a part of the 12 Days of Salesforce for 2024 series. Here are links to the other initiatives you should consider, and as always, please reach out to me if you’d like some counsel or my approach via my team at Rule Six Consulting LLC.
Day One: Automation of Repetitive Tasks
Day Two: Data Cleanup & Deduplication
Day Three: Analytics & Reporting
Day Six: User Training & Adoption
Day Seven: Mobile Optimization
Day Eight: Artifical Intelligence
Day Nine: Communities and Portals
Day Eleven: Security & Compliance
Day Twelve (Hooray!): Improvement Cycles & Feedback
I appreciate you spending some time thinking about these topics with me, and I welcome feedback and additions.
