The business world is seldom static. While you always hope for periods of growth and expansion, downturns are inevitable. But sticking your head in the sand won’t protect you from slow seasons, low B2B sales, and harsh economic conditions: when times get tough, smart entrepreneurs prepare.
Sales technology has been at the right hand of sales personnel everywhere for years. Its development has pushed products and padded pockets with greater ease and consistency than ever before.
That is exactly why picking the right models for your company is mission-critical. Doing so means your team has the tools they need to thrive. These choices extend to the CRM software your company relies on for its day-to-day operations. Therefore, investing in the right CRM software ensures your sales team has the data insights they need to close more sales – sending profits and efficiency soaring.
The sweeping changes affecting B2B sales strategy didn’t happen overnight. Even before the onset of COVID-19, many B2B buyers had moved toward self-reliance to conduct their own research and share their findings with colleagues. Interaction with a salesperson often only occurs after the modern buyer satisfies their preference for self-discovery.
Nobody likes failing. Just ask any salesperson what their greatest fear on the job is; they’ll usually respond with the fear of rejection. Despite being offered the best prices on the best products, clients will still find a reason to say ‘No.’ It’s not personal, it’s business.
And yet, sales anxiety persists – and it affects everybody no matter where they are on the totem pole. But is sales anxiety the main cause of diminishing sales success?
In a world full of choices, sometimes it’s nice not to have to choose. Local wineries understand this more than most other establishments. With hundreds of wines for guests to choose from, the decision process can seem more tedious than relaxing. How can we fix this?
When combined with superb customer service, recommending wines that fit your guests’ preferences can help to create an enhanced customer experience.
The pandemic changed the way we live, work, and conduct business. This is particularly true for the restaurant industry. While most businesses were forced to close their doors indefinitely, restaurants and other food and beverage establishments were able to survive – thanks to mobile ordering apps. The ability to order food online granted safety and convenience to customers. Though other industries have reopened their doors to resume business as normal, customers still hugely appreciate the benefits of their beloved mobile ordering apps. The best part of it all? Customers and the restaurant industry are far from the only winners. Here are five industries benefitting from the mobile ordering era as we speak.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have helped transform countless field sales agents from transactional order takers into proactive, opportunistic professionals. Despite being revered as a sales tool, CRM systems can also prove incredibly useful in managing supply chain disruptions.
A CRM provides a single hub to organize, store, and access customer contact details, background information, and communication logs. Additionally, it tracks and saves orders, return history, and customer support tickets.
When things are going well, it’s easy to sit back and stay the course. This is especially true with your sales team. Why rock the boat when you’re sailing smooth? Most managers start pushing if their teams haven’t hit their targets or they see more potential. But shouldn’t effective leaders empower their sales teams in both bad times and good?
Of course, they should. Empowering your team is always the right move. Research confirms that empowering employees provides them with a better work environment where they can perform even better.
It seems we’ve traded old pandemic-induced economic blows for new Russo-Ukrainian War-induced supply chain disruptions. Add in mounting global inflation and you’ll get a world faced with higher prices for harder-to-find goods. Chief among those suffering from supply chain disruptions the most are building and hardware distributors and manufacturers.
Surprisingly, what was once a frantic response to the pandemic has shifted into the preferred way of doing business among B2B buyers and sellers. Hybrid selling, propelled by state-of-the-art sales tech, is on track to become the “most dominant sales strategy” by 2024.
With the surge of remote activities, many digital tools reached peak popularity. According to a recent LinkedIn report, most tech tools used today focus on three main points: customer relationship management (42%), visual collaboration and demonstration (41%), and sales intelligence (40%).
Other sales tech tools focusing on sales engagement, sales enablement, and sales coaching also made the list. Working in tandem, they provide sales representatives with the information and tools needed to complete their tasks as remote B2B sales representatives.
In the field of B2B sales, digitalization continues to march forward. In particular, field sales representatives made a shift that completely redefined their work. Rather than constantly traveling to meet and manage clients, they now conduct their sales calls via video conferencing. Today’s sales reps are using more cloud-based software to gather and retrieve data, perform sales tasks, and stay connected with the office.
Sales agents will find these tools equally useful in enhancing productivity and automating tasks even if they return to the field. Below are four of the most active sales tech tools used by sales teams today:
CRM tools are some of the most important software for B2B companies to have. The CRM is the repository for every touchpoint your company makes with its customers. Using this data, sales and customer support teams can provide unique customer experiences based on their profiles. The CRM software keeps records of customer purchases, visits, and communication histories.
Meanwhile, sales representatives get a clearer picture of how to deal with their clients based on CRM data. It relays the best times to call clients – including when the times for contract renewal or reordering products roll around. CRM software also helps sales reps avoid mistakes by ensuring the company addresses problems reported by clients.
Demonstrating a product’s features in person is a breeze. For remote sales personnel, a product demonstration is only possible through a video presentation. Sales demonstration or sales presentation software provides the enterprising sales team with a modern way to showcase their product’s features and purposes. The software’s interactive features make presentations pop, to increase customer awareness and engagement.
Clients may already have a vague idea of how the product works. Custom sales presentations that bring it to life may be exactly what buyers need to commit to the sale.
Field sales used to exclusively refer to door-to-door traveling sales reps. Now, field sales also get to enjoy the benefits of digitization. Field sales apps let representatives focus more on sales and less on the field, as they too can converse remotely as well.
Using cloud-based apps, field sales teams can now complete transactions directly from the client’s premises. Agents can also search for critical data, such as current market prices and stock availability, at the touch of a button. Even contracts and quotations can be signed digitally now, eliminating the costly practice of ping-ponging between offices to affix signatures. In addition, these apps also have sales management features. These allow supervisors to track their team members and provide one-on-one coaching services as needed.
Whether engaging with clients in the field or from home, sales reps need to collaborate closely with the rest of their team. Team members must have the time and sales tech tools to achieve their shared business objectives. This is precisely why the popularity of remote sales collaboration tools exploded when the pandemic hit.
The ideal remote collaboration software provides members with the means to share tools and documents while remaining in communication. These communication functions should include video conferencing, chat, and file sharing functions. Simultaneously, collaboration tools should allow all team members to freely access team documents as needed. Furthermore, seamless integration with ERP, CRM, and CX tools also helps sales representatives retrieve important information during client calls.
Sales tech tools are here to stay. This means that having the right sales software can be the difference between closing the deal and losing clients. Skynamo is cloud-based software that contains all the sales tech features your field sales team needs to succeed – wherever they are. It features real-time reporting and automated sales analysis so sales are finalized and made accessible on the spot. It also features a smart team management module that lets managers view team activities. This allows company leaders to intervene when needed.
Skynamo even streamlines CRM and contact management to equip field teams with customer profiles, purchase histories, and other pertinent sales information. It also allows for live order capturing, which lets sales reps finalize transactions at the drop of a hat. Long gone are the days of racing back and forth to gather updated pricing and availability, signatures, or paperwork!
Does streamlining your sales team and business appeal to you? Drop us a line! Tell us about your company’s needs and we’ll arrange a free demonstration for you to experience the power of Skynamo live.
Quality diminishes over time. This is especially true for databases containing customer data. That may sound like a problem for another day, but the truth is, the data decay that will impede your entire organisation is happening as we speak. This is why B2B businesses should invest in top-tier CRM software. In doing so, they protect the data they expended precious resources to acquire while protecting the most important part of any business — their customers.
Companies usually task their sales team members with targets they need to meet by the end of a term. These quotas can go up or down depending on the previous period’s performance and current market conditions. When leads fail to prepare their sales team with clear strategies to acquire new clients, those quotas rarely get met. In contrast, a well-equipped team that understands the market won’t just hit their targets – they’ll exceed them.