As a business owner or VP of Sales, what are the best ways to stay on top of your sales team and pipeline without micromanaging? An effective sales team means:
- You don’t have to make all the sales.
- You have to lead.
- You have to provide tools to make the salesperson’s job easier.
Effective sales teams produce more sales, use consistent sales processes, and are supported by robust CRMs.
RJs Distributors
Roberta and Robert Jamison own a hair product distributorship. In 10 years, the company has grown to 30 employees, of which 15 are in sales. Roberta is the Sales VP and has 3 managers with 5 members per team.
“For their first 3 years, they had no systems.
“We were like a minor league ballclub – Scrappy, good, but not polished,” said Robert.
In year 4, Roberta took over sales and hired 4 salespeople.
“We just sent them out on the road, and they sent in the orders,” said Roberta.
She added, “We had to learn how to manage salespeople and what tools salespeople needed to excel.”
It was Scary!
In the beginning, Roberta called her salespeople every day. She and Robert had invested in salaries and needed to see a payoff. How long would it take?
Sales meetings were twice a week, boring, and hated. Roberta asked her team for help.
Marketing Actions
They agreed to:
- Assign geographic areas for retail store sales.
- Create a “Touch A Customer” campaign with customer appreciation gifts.
- Create a “Touch A Prospect” campaign with promotional discounts.
- Set up a prospect tracking method.
After advice from specialists, they chose X2CRM to build consistent sales processes and automate manual salesperson’s tasks. It was up and running 30 days later.
CRMs Make it POSSIBLE!
The team listed areas to automate:
- Sales funnel – Click a button to change prospect status and send prospect emails, and salesperson reminders.
- Standard emails – Click a button to send personalized, repetitive emails.
- Customer campaigns with gifts based on sales volume.
- Segmented campaign lists based on geographic and sales volume criteria.
X2CRM was a winner. Salespeople no longer spent time on boring, manual tasks and were free to focus on their best clients and prospects.
CRMs are Serious and Fun Because…
By year 7, RJs had 2 sales managers and 8 reps divided across geographic regions.
CRMs are serious because:
- They make the lives of salespeople and bosses easy.
- They speed communications between salespeople, bosses, prospects, and clients.
- Onboarding or replacing a salesperson is easier when the history is available.
The sales funnel made it fun. “Everyone knows what is going on,” the team said. “I no longer bug everyone for updates,” said Roberta.
RJs Makes the Majors!
Today, RJs covers the East Coast. With 3 teams and 15 in sales, X2CRM produces revenue, tracks customers and prospects, and reaches its audiences.
“Our team consists of great salespeople, warehouse staff, and administrators and they all use our CRM – Without it, we’d be back in the minors,” said Roberta.
Let’s Play in the Majors
