[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Our last post, Are Your Sales Representatives the CEOs of their Territories? touched on the 3T’s every sales representative needs to have in order to really take ownership of their territory. This one will take it one step further and discuss how those 3T’s apply to the three basic steps they need to take to properly manage it.
1.) Analyze & Target the Right Market
- Time: Before the new sales year and each quarter set aside 1-3 days to make sure you are pointed at the right targets.
- Tools: What are your favorites? What are you missing? CRM, win/lost/no decision reporting, business intelligence, sales intelligence, and other Sales 2.0 tools are essential.
- Tasks: Don’t plan to fail. List generation, data cleansing, research, scoring and prioritization are also essential.
2.) Prospect & Open the Right Relationship
- Time: New territories require reps to spend 60-80% of their time prospecting –that’s 3-4 days per week. Having the right infrastructure in place streamlines the process eliminates unnecessary time spent on admin and frees up more time to sell.
- Tools: CRM, phone, pre-defined prospecting questions/ script, targeted, relevant and consistent email messaging (and reporting), surveys, website, case studies and other sales collateral.
- Tasks: Cold/warm calls and emails, networking, asking for referrals, reporting and analysis.
3.) Qualify & Engage the Right Opportunities
- Time: The best way to increase your close rate is to improve your qualification. To use time wisely, know what questions must be asked and ask them up front. Skipping this step will cost you 10-fold in lost deals and no decisions. It can also cost you a lot of time in pursuing dead-end “leads.”
- Tools: CRM, scorecards and a definitive list of proven qualification questions. Examples: What is your budget? What is your timeline? What can you tell me about your decision-making process? Who else is involved in the decision making process? What other options are you looking at?
- Tasks: Set up and hold multiple meetings, penetrate the buying center and uncover the need through effective questioning and active listening. Once qualified, engage the prospect with relevant information. This information should be personal and specific, i.e. it is content that answers specific questions which were asked, topics discussed, etc.
A key thing to remember is that at every touch point, it is important to define what “right” is AND to understand that as the market fluctuates, “right” can change. Because of that, structured reporting needs to be built into your system and CRM needs to be ubiquitous across all stages outlined below to get the necessary analytical insight to capitalize on what works and eliminate what doesn’t.
If sales is not your core business and you do not have the time, tools and tasks (or infrastructure) needed to execute and evaluate each stage and effectively build and manage pipeline, consider outsourcing to NuGrowth Solutions.
If you want to build a scalable and repeatable process, either you must be an expert, hire an expert or invest the time and energy necessary to learn. The point is, you must build it. If you wanted to build a house, you’d likely hire a contractor, but doesn’t mean that he would own the house. Much the same way, when you outsource your sales to NuGrowth, you own your sales structure, whether you build it or we build it. The benefit of outsourcing is that because it is our core business we can build it faster and with less expense.
If you are interested in working with a partner you can trust to grow business, please give us a call at 800-966-3051 or fill out a short contact form and we’ll be in touch soon.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
