Maximizing Sales with Your Existing Sales Team

Utilize technology to automate sales processes and improve your sales team’s efficiency.

Building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint. In TANK New Media’s weekly podcast, Manufacturing Growth, Krista Ankenman and team tackle growth challenges. In this episode, Krista talks with David Appleby from HubSpot about technology that supports sales and strategies that utilize existing sales teams.

Maximize Sales and Get the Most Out of Your Existing Sales Team

For many companies, the first action that pops into mind to help increase sales and boost revenue is to throw more sales representatives on the team. Some leaders think that if they hire more sales reps, the number of sales will increase. In other words, they believe that if they add X more people to the sales team, then X more deals will be closed.

But this is an out-of-date mentality. Technology has evolved to the point where we can do a lot more and get a lot more out of existing sales reps. With the improved technology available today, reps are spending less time than ever doing manual data entry, sending email follow-ups, etc. The majority of that work can be automated.

So, forget about adding more people to the team — it’s not the right solution. Instead, make some tweaks to your current sales processes and shift to technology that will allow your salespeople to do more selling — and your profit margins will grow.

Sales Volume (amount) Vs. Sales Velocity (speed)

Sales volume is how much revenue your sales team is generating. Unfortunately, in this equation, rarely are people looking at how much money they’re spending to increase their revenue. Nobody’s looking at how many people are being hired to increase sales and get that bottom line number trending up into the right.

Sales velocity, on the other hand, is focused on how fast deals are closed. It’s about shortening the sales cycle — because if you can shorten the cycle, you can get more dollars from each sales rep, which allows you to do a lot more with what you already have. This is the most effective and efficient way of increasing your margin.

To improve sales velocity, you need to train your salespeople to move a deal through the pipeline faster by using technology to digitize and automate processes. By doing these two things, your profit margin will grow, and the need for a Sales Admin — or more sales reps — will be virtually eliminated.

Improving Sales Velocity Doesn’t Mean More Work

Sales teams immediately think they are going to have to do MORE work to close more deals, especially if there’s not a Sales Admin to handle the data entry and phone calls. They incorrectly think that they’ll have to enter more data, log every email, and all the other tasks that take away from vital sales hours.

Here’s the thing: utilizing sales technology like HubSpot (alternatively, Aritic PinPoint, SendinBlue, ONTRAPORT, or Infusionsoft) can help eliminate the need for admin work altogether and can help sales reps work more efficiently. Using the example of HubSpot, their sales tool can be set up to pull sales data automatically from emails and put it the CRM, calls can get automatically logged and transcribed, and quotes can be automatically generated. All that time adds up! Plus, the time wasted in switching gears — going from one task to another — takes away from valuable sales time, too.

Manufacturers understand the costs associated with switching, whether switching lines, fixing equipment, or changing products. It’s that downtime that everyone hates. The concept is very similar with sales teams. They’re wasting time switching gears. When productivity time is wasted, it’s money down the drain.

Moving to Digital

Another benefit of automated sales technology is that paperwork can be significantly reduced. There are still many manufacturing companies creating all of their proposals and quotes in Word documents where there’s so much room for manual error, not to mention all the time and effort that goes into producing each one of those pieces. From there, those pieces need to be printed out, signed, scanned, and returned. There’s so much time lost in this process from beginning to end. That’s not where your salespeople should be spending their time. They should be selling, not handling administrative tasks. And that’s where the right technology makes all the difference. The right sales platform can automate digital proposal creation, track document actions, and allow decision-makers to sign electronically—all while keeping each piece organized and together for easy access.

And for those using one-sheeters or decks, those can be digitized, too. Make them digital, send them out via email, and then using sales tools, track when those emails are opened. When’s the best time to talk to someone? Right after they’ve read your email and opened the attachments. With the right tools, you can see which pages of your document they spent most of their time reading. Now you can center your conversation on what they’re most interested in, and you can pull together additional resources that will be helpful, relevant, and timely. This process can really shorten your sales cycle.

Digital Doesn’t Replace Processes

It’s essential to have a reliable sales process in place. For instance, if a new lead comes in that fits specific criteria or comes from a particular lead source, having a predetermined sequence of actions in place will put you light years ahead. A sequence may consist of five automatic but personalized emails followed by two phone calls over the course of three weeks — or whatever cadence works for your industry and your team.

Having processes defined, written out, and implemented through software/technology can lead to closing deals faster. Setting up your system to track your leads as they move through the sales pipeline is a surefire way to stay on top of each one, making sure no one is left behind or forgotten.

If you’re looking for a great CRM and sales tools to get started, HubSpot is worth investigating. It’s great for people who are starting their own small businesses and working at startups. As those companies grow, HubSpot can scale to fit their needs. In addition to the technological capabilities mentioned earlier, other key features to consider for your sales team include:

• Sequencing tools
• Sales acceleration tools
• Sales enablement tools
• Meetings links
• Sales chatbot
• Email workflows
• Digital contracts
• Sales dashboard
• Forecasting

Summary

While there is much more covered in the correlating podcast episode, here’s a quick summary.

To maximize your sales, help your sales team increase velocity by:

• Nailing down your sales processes, documenting them, and making sure everyone on the team understands them
• Implementing a CRM then teaching your sales team how to use it to its fullest extent
• Capitalizing on technology that will help your team become more efficient
• Understanding tools like forecasting and dashboards to follow and understand the numbers

To learn more about increasing your sales velocity with your current team, listen to the podcast episode, Hone Performance: Maximizing Sales with Your Existing Sales Team.

If your manufacturing company needs help creating sales processes, setting up a CRM, or implementing sales enablement tools that can lead to more closed sales and business growth, TANK New Media would love to help.