Sales professionals only spend around 30% actually selling according to a 2022 LinkedIn survey, with the majority of time spent on administration and other non-selling activities.
However, with an increased need to spend more time on research prior to engaging, the volume of data to be analysed and the need to guide and manage lead progression and task completion, how can modern day sellers address all this additional load and spend more time actually engaging with prospects and customers.
The application of the right digital technologies and solutions is a route to achieving better use of time, but it’s not simply technology for technology sake, it needs to be targeted as to where it can achieve the most value.
Managing work tasks and relationships
Salespeople who own multiple prospects and customers have their hands full when it comes to managing and completing actions and assessing status, yet alone when they have to go through multiple systems and emails to find the relevant details.
Being able to do this efficiently with prompts, potential next steps and relevant content can have a significant impact on the amount of time engaging by reducing non-sales time.
The right sales solution can provide significant help in being able to display all the information and activities from multiple sources in one place. This can give a complete picture of the customer status and provide directed actions via tools such as AI and sequencing, which can then be adjusted rather than being created from scratch. By providing sequence paths in advance based on previous knowledge and experience, coupled with AI learnings, salespeople can be guided to next steps and actions.
An example could be if the last contact is over 2 months old, follow up reminders can be generated - all in one place. Not only that, but by being able to sync directly with email and meeting applications, some activities can be directly planned and activated without leaving the sales solution. This can also happen in reverse where a user can trigger and create actions in the main solution without leaving the email application.
By creating potential customer journeys in advance enables the sales solution to guide and direct the salesperson through the next steps and activities across multiple accounts or contacts, trigger next actions or responses and in many cases create suggested content which the salesperson then has to amend.
You can find out more about the benefits of the right sales solution through our real customer success story. We supported Watson-Marlow with implementing a CRM platform across 650 users, giving sales teams easy access to customer records and the ability to send quotes immediately from their phones.
View the full case study below.
Pipeline management
Being able to see and manage all pipeline opportunities in a single dashboard helps reduce the time spent deciding where to prioritise and focus.
The ability of solutions to create lead scores based on key criteria gives the opportunity to assign a value to each prospect and give an overall heatmap on any future opportunities.
Integrating business process flows into the appropriate sales solution provides valuable guidance and ensures a consistent approach from initial steps to final closure. This can be further enhanced by leveraging AI tools to generate suggested steps based on prospect activities and interactions.
By doing this, in addition to using dashboards that provide relationship analytics and health insights salespeople can efficiently assess the current status of all leads and opportunities. With the help of suggestions, they can also prioritise their efforts in the most effective manner.
All in one place
Multiple sources and solutions only make the task of tracking down relevant prospect information even more complex. By having the right sales solution in place, all the information can be readily surfaced in real-time in one place - preventing lots of detective work. Applying sequencing logic together with AI suggested actions and suggested content can also be generated in one place, again having a significant impact on time spent in preparation for engaging with a customer or prospect.
This blog surfaces some of the ways that the administration time or non-selling time can be significantly reduced by using the right digital sales solution, enabling salespeople to spend more time on what they do best. Most of this type of functionality is standard and requires easily navigable approaches to set-up without the need for technical experts.
By having the information readily to hand together with metrics and suggested next steps, enables to salesperson to focus on activities that add value to the sales process and ultimately opportunity closure.
If you would like to learn more, take a look at our customer experience and engagement page by clicking here.