Is Sales Acceleration for you?

Unlike the various marketing techniques that businesses follow, the end goal of sales is pretty direct – generating a lead and closing the deal. While making cold calls, sending out emails and visiting prospects make up an important part of the sales strategy, a sales rep needs the right set of sales productivity tools from the start as well.

If you’re setting up a sales team for the first time or re-organizing it, then a news sales hire must have access to sales tools, that aren’t just affordable but also fit for all businesses sizes and teams, from Day 1:

1. Assistant.to/Calendly

A calendar plays a huge role in the daily routine of a sale rep. From scheduling sales calls and meetings or fixing appointments to engage more prospects, a sales rep is on his toes throughout the day. Both the apps assist in reducing the flipping back-and-forth of emails.

While Calendly allows the prospects to pick time frames that actually work best with them, it can also be used to connect multiple calendars to a single account. Assistant.to prevents “double-bookings” and automatically converts the time zones between the reps and prospects.

2. aText

This app expands the text by creating keyboard shortcuts for fragments of information (such as address, signature, URLs, etc.) that are repeated numerous times in the emails during the day. It is a time saving tool that accelerates typing speed on mobile by replacing those abbreviations with actual words.

Apart from this, a sales rep can insert formatted text and images with the help of aText and automatically capitalize new sentences. The tool can also be used to insert the current day, date and time in any format the prospect may prefer. It certainly simplifies the process of emailing via mobile devices.

3. Salesforce.com

Apt for smaller teams, SalesforceIQ prepares CRM solutions instantly, as soon as it is connected with Gmail or Exchanges account. It helps the reps prioritize the interactions with the prospects and keeps the on-going deals updated by archiving the emails exchanged, meetings held and phone calls placed. This, in turn, lets the reps focus on their selling.

On the other hand, Salesforce.com offers CRM solutions to mid size and large scale companies. Sales reps can also get Salesforce1 on their phones for accessing customer data from anywhere and everywhere – making them more productive, even on the go.

4. ToutApp

This tool lets sales reps collect valuable insights quickly via personalized emails and tracking – which further aids in simplifying the scheduling processes. Since scheduling appointments with prospects is an important part of the sales process, this tool’s integrated sales intelligence to track prospects makes it a lot easier for the rep.

5. Join.me

Appropriate for arranging informal and formal meetings or presentations, Join.me offers web conferencing solutions to sales teams. The rep can use the tool to meet the prospective client from anywhere and through any device. Other notable features of the tool include personal meeting links, one-click scheduling and the ability to record meetings.

6. Ecquire/Ebsta

These tools help the sales reps in searching, updating and adding new information to the CRM without breaking the workflow. Ecquire, in particular, lets them access the web from anywhere, since it is a workflow productivity tool.

Data entry is a tedious and a time-consuming process. Using Ebsta here makes more time for the sales reps by archiving received and sent emails properly, filling missing contact details though a multitude of social and professional profiles.

7. DocSend/HelloSign

During sales, document exchanging between parties is very common. To handle the documents better, a sales rep can use DocSend to track, optimize and control the business documents sent. In addition to this, the tool also provides actionable document insights for the rep’s perusal.

On the other hand, HelloSign makes signing the papers a lot easier with online signatures and completely eliminates the process of printing, signing and scanning the documents manually.

8. Charlie App

This tool offers quick insights to the sales reps about the prospects they are about to meet or approach. Charlie App scans through its vast resource base and sends a one-pager on whoever the sales reps are scheduled to meet next. This eradicates the need to execute a manual search on the prospect to understand who he is and what he needs, better.

9. Grammarly Extension

There’s nothing better than a well-written and error-free email copy. Sales reps are always multitasking and this tool is an absolute boon for them. Grammarly does a quick check on the emails looking for grammatical errors, ensuring readability and scanning spelling mistakes before they are sent out.

And of course..

10. Phone!

Mobile phones offer a great degree of flexibility in terms of connecting with the prospects and emailing them whenever the need be. With Mobile CRM on the rise, it has become even easier to access updated data, thus making the mobile phone the most powerful tool of them all for sales reps.

The above-mentioned list just includes some of the tools we use in our team to increase sales productivity. While there are a lot others available in the market, these are certainly good to start with.

After all, it is critical to not only fill gaps in the sales processes but also be more productive as a sale professional. And the one effective way to ensure this is to be equipped with the right resources.

Early morning pipeline update meeting, followed by 2 hours of prospecting time. Half a dozen discovery calls. And then three custom demos. That’s a day in a life of a fancy SaaS product sales guy.

Yes, as busy SaaS sales rep does as many as three custom demos in a day!

Many tools have evidently made the life of SaaS sales guy easy, or so you would think. I’m talking about the range of web-conference options to screen sharing tools like Join.Me, Google Hangouts or Uber-conference, if not good old GoToMeeting. The time freed up from traveling to meet the customer is now occupied by doubly packed web-meetings.

The customers have become even more demanding too. After the ‘discovery’ call, most clients usually request for a demo. So much so that “the product demo” has earned the much-coveted place as a critical sales process stage. From the early 90s to mid-2000s, a pre-sales guy would accompany the sales rep to that much-awaited product-demo meeting. Now the sales rep is expected to run a demo by himself, as many as 3 to 4 times a day.

In fact, the number of custom demos scheduled seems to be the ’new’ KPI set by many sales managers. However know this – Not every SaaS prospect deserves a custom demo before buying.

So when should you be engaging your prospect (and yourself) in a demo?

Let me qualify this. In the first place, any request to ‘get to know your product’ by your prospect should be at best answered with one master email template with standard links to your product videos on YouTube. If these do not exist, at least, 1 PowerPoint with screenshots that you have very meticulously labelled one Friday afternoon. So in that sense, if you agree to engage a prospect in a demo, it should really be a CUSTOM demo.

On an average, a custom demo takes 3 to 8 hours of preparation time, including deep dive discovery session, and if yours is an enterprise solution, account for an equal amount of sales engineers’ time.

What should you bear in mind before you promise your prospect a custom demo?

Here are the golden rules before you engage in a custom demo.

1. Ascertain the right team that needs to be seeing the demo. If the executive director who is also the decision maker, is not part of this custom demo, doing anything beyond a standard demo will only slow your sales cycle.

2. The evaluation criteria must be known and confirmed before scheduling a personalized demo. Win the confidence of your coach at the client side. Ask him/her to be transparent about the “evaluation criteria”.  And if you are a sales manager, you should equip your rep with valid questions to uncover evaluation criteria. Example: How will you judge us as the solution provider? What are the decision points that make up your decision after our demo?

3. You should have done a trial close or an attempted close. What this means is, unless the customer is aware of pricing (and other factors) that follow at the end of the sales cycle, it is not worth doing a custom demo. Make sure the prospect is aware of pricing first. If you are going to invest anything beyond 30 mins discovery call, you need to know if it will bear results. Engaging a trial-close tactic is a good indication of customer seriousness before the demo.

4. Establish the exact number of licenses (or deal size) before agreeing for a demo. Would you put 8 man-hours creating a custom demo for one user deal? In SaaS demos, unless the scale of implementation is known, it does not make sense to do a custom demo.

5. Top 2-3 key pain points must be identified in your discovery call. If it is just a commonly known pain that your typical buyer persona faces, then a standard demo should suffice. Think about a custom demo only if the customer has reflected on and articulated the unique pain he/she faces. If the prospect goes on to give you a quantifiable impact on business caused by inefficiencies, it is the right cue to plan your demo flow.

So we’ve laid the rules for setting the stage for a custom demo. Know that product demos have become a misnomer these days. Here is why:

→ Many sales reps mention “scheduling a discovery call with a custom demo” in the same breath. It is not an elaborate discovery call that your prospect joyfully agreed to. Unfortunately, you cannot kill two birds with one stone. Engage in the discovery call first. Assess their business needs and pain. Give your custom demo a flow that speaks to your prospects problems and you’ve got a winning custom demo.

→ It is not a chance to flaunt features and functionality of your product. The custom demo is always about the prospect and their critical business problems. (In fact, how those can realistically be solved with your product).

→ It does not build prospect’s “awareness” on their problem. To do that, use standard video presentations from your YouTube channel or blog articles, or if you do not have your marketing team supporting you, create a canned demo and record it to be distributed at your discretion.

In the case where the Executive decision maker is shielded, I highly recommend using the custom demo as a bait to get his/ her interview and engagement in the deal.

How do you run a custom demo? That is an exact science to pique your customers’ interest. I shall delve into that shortly.

In conclusion, a custom demo is a prized opportunity that your customer must win. However, a well equipped sales rep can only lead to this point with smart discovery questions and managing expectations. To ensure success in your demo presentations, always begin with end in mind. Knowing where you will land in your sales cycle after the demo is a must. Always get something in return for your time invested in running a custom demo.

Irrespective of how many skilled sales reps businesses bring on board, achieving the optimum productivity is still a challenge for many.

Optimizing sales productivity is an important aspect that businesses need to focus on. After all, the efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of the Salesforce has a direct impact on the revenue the business generates over time. And this task of optimizing productivity is often assigned to sales managers.

A sales manager is not just responsible for offering sales coaching and productivity hacks to the team, but also laying down an effective productivity plan. And here are 5 things that the plan ‘must have’:

1. Sales Cadence

This is the frequency or sequence with which a sales manager meets with his or her team. It is essential to monitor individual and group progress as well as analyze the effectiveness of the current tactics used. A pre-defined and rigorously implemented cadence is a critical aspect of successful sales management.

Therefore, a sales manager must divide his  meeting cadence into 2-3 categories – depending upon the level of hierarchy of the team member he is addressing and the size of task in hand. This helps address issues at all levels and not use a ‘fit for all’ approach for better sales execution.

The meetings should ideally be conducted every week to instill and maintain a regular rhythm among the representatives, so that their work is structured and no time is wasted in executing the team’s overall plans.

Don’t just run a General Sales Meeting, segment them instead based on purpose.

A sales meeting should be broken down into the following categories for effectiveness: pipeline update meeting, master forecast meeting and learning/sharing meeting.

• Pipeline update meeting is all about driving accuracy of pipeline. With a recommended bi-weekly cadence, this meeting should make sure your sales team is running on solid ground; i.e. all data around pipeline update is accurately updated in this meeting. This includes opportunity stages, value, close dates, next action and commits.
• The master forecast meeting discusses about what the reps will be selling in a particular timeframe, to whom, with what confidence level and why. The sales manager should drive clarity on each forecasted deal with – “Why buy from us? Why buy now?” analysis. Separating forecast meeting from pipeline update meeting is critical to drive behaviors and tactical thinking on driving higher close rates within near future.
• The sharing & learning meeting includes discussing the challenges the reps faced in achieving their goals, the lessons they learnt on the go and the methods they used to overcome the challenges. Sharing sessions are best run by peers, for their peers.

2. Convert the art of sales to science

Every team definitely has a group of sales reps who always deliver outstanding results. But apart from just giving them a pat on the back, the sales managers must try to figure out “how do they do it”.

Identify their way of selling, tools used and tactics applied, a sales manager can improve the effectiveness of the team and also provide more hacks to the over-performers to boost their morale for achieving even better results.

A sales productivity plan must include codifying the performances of exceptional sales reps, developing metric-driven behaviors and then creating strategies that further improve results.

In short, the key is to quantify, codify and establish metrics around sales – a process that converts sales from just an art to science.

3. Coaching

Every sales plan – no matter how in-depth and elaborate it is, is a failure if the sales manager hasn’t invested time in coaching his team. There are absolutely no tactics or hacks that can ever work when the team has no clue about the industry.

A sales manager possesses a lot more knowledge and experience than most of his sales team member. To ensure that this knowledge is put to good use for as effective results, the manager needs to provides sales coaching to his team with a model called, GROW.

This model can be communicated individually or to a team with the use of various tools such as Slack that help in organizing team conversations through open channels – for a project, topic or anything.

4. Collaboration

It is important for sales managers and the team to understand that they are working towards the same business goal. Even though there is competition between sales reps, a team collaboration is an absolute must to identify the best practices, means and markets to achieve goals.

Using team-wide collaboration mechanism tools like Slack, Salesforce Chatter or Yammer, is a great way to keep everyone in the loop of what’s happening in the team, the plans ahead and for notifying them of the sudden changes that might come with business model shifts. These tools also help instill the feeling of ‘working together’ even when each of the reps are executing their tasks individually.

The sense of having a team around helps in better management and boosting sales productivity.

5. Creative Gamification

This is essential to drive productivity behaviors. The sales manager can define goals, estimate the time taken to achieve those goals and then measure the results. Gamification helps each sales rep to receive a distinctive experience that is drawn from his or her previous behavior.

This includes formal training of the reps and sales coaching in not only the skills required, but also industry and business knowledge. This helps in customizing challenges and making it easier to strategize.

Gamification improves resource adoption and utilization. Most sales teams use this technique to expand training and knowledge-sharing amongst sales reps. Instead of just focusing on a few star achievers and pitting team members with each other, gamification also recognizes individuals who put  in their best to make the ‘team’ work.

Here are some gamification tools that will help you improve your team’s sales productivity:

• LevelEleven: With this tool, you can launch team-wide contests and reward top performers to increase employee motivation and productivity. Their ‘compete’ platform appeals  to businesses that rely heavily on sales teams to generate their revenues.
• Hoopla: A SaaS provider that uses data analytics and gamification to bring the element of fun in a sales workspace. It uses motivational psychology and helps managers engage employees, boost productivity and drive business results. The tool uses rewards for motivation and offers custom features to keep employees focused.
• Monitae: The software encourages employee engagement and helps instill the right mindset in your sales team. It boosts motivation to increase productivity by using contests, competitions and challenges. The tool also helps the management by soliciting the best ideas, processes, performance measures and feedbacks from the team to improve overall sales plans.

Over to you

Making a successful productivity plan is tough. It not only requires the sales manager to conduct a proper analysis, hold detailed discussions with the subordinates and estimate results, but also perform all his duties with perfection.

While a sales productivity plan might vary from business to business, the aforementioned points must definitely be covered in it.

Is there something we missed that a sales productivity plan must absolutely have? Feel free to add to this post by dropping a comment in the box below!