Whether you are the owner, sales manager, VP of sales, or sales or marketing executive, you want to:
- Grow business revenue and profits.
- Meet the needs of your customers.
- Build a great reputation for quality products and service
Make item #3 above your highest priority and you will likely achieve items #2 and #1!
To build a great reputation, you and your team hold the cards. Your product, service, and team are solid and you and your team “know” your product inside and out. You start building quality at the front-end, at the marketing and sales stages when you acquire the right or “ideal” customer. You manage your relationships (clients and prospects) using your CRM to stay ahead, beat deadlines, and enhance your reputation by having notes, tasks, quotes, and emails at your fingertips. a
As a solopreneur or owner of a small company, you wear many hats and only have so much time for marketing and sales. In a company with dedicated marketing and sales teams, getting everyone rowing in the same direction is the key. In each case, answers to several questions will help you manage your team and processes.
What referral sources have I not touched in the past 30 days?
If you are a specialist who relies on referrals, building relationships with those professionals who supply a steady stream of clients is strategic and makes it easier to obtain clients. Perhaps, you are an attorney specializing in intellectual property or estate planning. Often allied professionals are your focus for new business as they are the conduit to the end consumer.
Touching these individuals consistently with relevant content will build their confidence in you. The math is compelling: Build 10 referral relationships that produce 10 referrals per year at $2,500 per client is $250,000 per year, hopefully, every year. Whether your salespeople knock on doors, email, text, or call depends upon what you sell. So does the frequency of contact.
As the person in charge of sales, don’t you want to know which referrers have not been touched in the past 30, 60, or 90 days. A robust CRM will tell you which referrer, client, or prospect has not been touched over your designated time frame.
What lead sources produce the most business for my company?
Results count when setting marketing priorities and making investments of time and money to join membership groups and build digital marketing campaigns. When managing sales personnel, who goes to which event at what membership group or networking organization needs to be organized and focused. As the owner or sales manager, you need to know the results by marketing action and by the salesperson.
Imagine seeing (1) Sales by lead source by sales rep and, (2) New contacts by lead source by sales rep with the click of a button. Build your revenue by investing in your most effective and fastest growing lead sources. Explore new ones too as budgets permit us to stay fresh and top of mind. Know which salesperson and which marketing investments are worth making in the future. Let your CRM track key indicators (i.e., new contacts) and actual results.
At what stage are prospects leaving my sales funnel?
What happened to all my prospects? Prospects may drop out of your sales funnel at any of the 4 phases of a prospect’s lifecycle: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. The question is why? Perhaps they were not really qualified, and they were a waste of time. Or a sales rep turned them off. There can be many reasons and your answers lie with the data in your CRM.
In a robust CRM, the sales funnel can have as many stages as you want. It may take up to 12 touches to close a sale and each touch can be a stage. It is up to you. The sales funnel can send curated, personalized messaging, segmented by the recipient as a stage starts or ends. Track your engagement with prospects as they move through their buying process, and you will see where prospects fall out and why.
Summary
Most of us believe that building your reputation is our #1 priority as it leads to long-term client loyalty and company profitability. There are a lot of roles that are played to build and maintain our relationships. Our focus is the initial stage when you or your salesperson meet a new contact. Your marketing and sales team often are the initial contacts and the relationship builders.
As the owner or sales manager, you have invested your time, staff time, and money in a range of marketing and sales efforts. Measuring the key that drives results is easily accomplished in a good CRM. There are many ways to support your marketing and sales efforts with a good CRM such as contact segmentation, automation of repetitive manual tasks, and task management. Centralize your records and retrieve what you need to know when you need to know it.
Your sales team wants to help you grow your business. By helping them build their referral base, join effective networking groups, and establish their prospects in the sales funnel, you are sure to see growth. A CRM is essential to help your sales team do their job and to help you make better business decisions. If you are not using a CRM, contact us to schedule a demo of X2CRM, and see how X2 can be configured to your business goals and how it will help your team to sell more with less effort.
