Resa Gooding is a partner in a Hubspot certified agency and they mostly help companies, especially startups, in Israel. As one of the top three agencies in Israel, they primarily work with startups and other traditional companies such as agriculture and manufacturing. They are helping them understand the value of CRM and how to effectively apply it to their companies.
Challenges salespeople face
The most common problem in the sales force is the lack of training given to the sales team. This lack of experience causes inefficiency as the companies throw their sales reps in deep waters and expect them to swim.
Many companies are so focused on the technology or the product they’re producing, they don’t spend adequate time sharing the value and benefits of their product with the sales force. An untrained team ends up spending more time on the administrative tasks instead of selling. They need to be given the information and the tools to effectively sit down with a new prospect.
If management fails to offer the sales team a way to stay accountable to the workday activities, management can mistakenly think their team isn’t working. There has to be a system in place so the sales team can report their activities and successes. Having this in place also gives management a tangible way of seeing the work their team is doing. For example, how many calls they’ve made in the workday.
Resa set up marketing campaigns for her clients but began to see that if salespeople didn’t know how to work with the prospects that came from the marketing, the efforts were in vain. She saw that to make marketing effective, the salespeople needed to be able to summarize conversations properly and sales reps needed to reduce their time spent on administrative efforts. They needed to be equipped to spend their time selling. Resa aims to give salespeople the time to study their product, set up appointments, and communicate with prospects effectively, instead of spending their time doing administrative tasks.
Ensure that your sales teams are having the time to sell
Sales reps need training in order to be successful and reach their goals. Sales processes they can follow have to be set up so their efforts can be checked by management. This promotes accountability. There are three tools that can be used to ensure that sales teams are getting more time to sell their company’s products.
Connect your email inbox to your CRM software
You can use HubSpot, SalesForce, or other similar CRM software. At the end of the day, what matters is that your sales team is more efficient in their work. The first thing you can do is connect your email inbox to the CRM software you’re using.
This is efficiency at its best. Using this software allows your manager to see the emails exchanged between you and prospects or customers. Enabling the manager to view this communication directly eliminates the need to summarize conversations at a later time. Leave that to your CRM.
Both marketing and sales today can be measured through this software. Managers and the sales team no longer have to meet each time reports need to be made. All aspects of the sales process can be viewed as needed and everything is measurable.
Earlier salespeople, like the ones who sold door-to-door, had to write down all their data or write a report about their sales day. Today, the salesperson just needs to connect to their email inbox on the CRM platform and reports are immediate.
Using CRM increases the sales reps’ available time up to 21% compared to doing the reports manually.
For example, when you attend a conference, typically you have to wait until you get home to input information manually. You can potentially delay communicating with the contacts you made at the conference up to a whole week. This is valuable time wasted in a world where transactions can happen so quickly.
When you are using CRM software, you are able to reach out immediately by asking for their email and starting a conversation while still at the conference. This is a huge advantage to setting up CRM software and free up so much time in the sales process.
Connect your Calendly to your email communications
The second way to ensure your sales teams are getting the time to sell is to connect your Calendly to your email communications. This is an efficient way of setting up a meeting with prospects and clients. Hubspot has an amazing tool that can help salespeople connect with speed. It’s suggested that you also embed three specific times a client can meet with you. It’s more efficient when they don’t have to work as hard to figure out a time or date you’re available. It cuts down on the emails that have to be exchanged to firm a meeting which also saves valuable time.
Use templates effectively
Templates are ways to streamline the time it takes to write and send an email while it makes communication customizable. This can be set up in HubSpot once your inbox is created and by simply clicking a button, it will copy all the text and bring it straight to your HubSpot. You can then change the information and content to make it more personalized and unique to your prospect or client.
Resa has observed that this feature is especially helpful for salespeople who may not be strong in written communication. This is where the marketing team can be especially helpful. Marketing can set-up the templates for salespeople to use.
After emails are sent, the software can then track when it’s opened by the recipient. Having this information helps salespeople become more efficient about timing and targeting the callback or follow up. It’s much easier to build a rapport with someone who has already shown initial interest. The recipient won’t get any notifications that you’ve seen them open the email. It’s just a helpful tool for you to time the response.
These three tools help make your sales team more efficient as it reduces their time on administrative tasks. Using Hubspot also allows access to reports summarizing all the activity as well.
HubSpot is free so businesses can check it out and test it in their own sales systems. This is a good platform for startups that don’t have the budget to invest in programs and software.
Many startup companies that Resa has helped have seen positive results when they use her three suggestions for saving time.
“How To Ensure Your Sales Teams Actually Have Time To Sell” episode resources
You can message Resa via her LinkedIn account. You can also check out her website: www.cacaomedia.co.
For more sales information and questions, you can also catch up with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.
This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077.
This podcast is also brought to you in part by Reveal the Revenue Intelligence podcast. It’s about utilizing data to make business decisions instead of just guessing your way through major sales decisions. Visit gong.io for their podcast.
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