Anyone working in the sales department knows what targets are and how important it is to achieve them. One of the ways companies drive down targets is by reviewing them every quarter. Many times, leads that looked promising when it began might not materialize when it comes to the closing stage. There will always be some repercussions due to this. It is estimated that as many as 58% of the leads so not get closed as forecasted due to various reasons. This is one of the main reasons why many sales teams use Salesforce crm training. Modern sales leaders of today use these tools help in monitoring some of the important steps in sales such as emailing, customer relationship management etc. from the way they are done today. Let us discuss the difference between these two.
Old Method Of Closing The Deals
If we take a look at the way deals were closed earlier, the first step involved listing out all the deals that have been dealt with in the quarter. After listing them, review the pipeline every day and monitor how close they are towards closing these deals with the respective sales teams. These meetings and reviews are usually conducted before the day starts in the morning and after completing the work in the evening. Come up with a promotional plan for the sales representatives. It could be either a discount or freebies or compensation in terms of money. Once the quarter is complete, get reports and monitor how many deals have been closed. The CRM cannot provide reports such as how the pipeline slowed down somewhere during the second month or why some deals were not taken care of at the right time.
Modern Day Practices Of Closing A Deal
One of the important steps in modern day method is not to push closing a deal towards the end of the quarter. Instead of taking chances during the end of the quarter, the targets are planned to monthly scale broken down into weekly and daily ones. Once a person meets the daily targets, he is on track to meet his weekly and if he meets his weekly targets he is on track to meet his monthly which leads him to meet the targets at the end of the quarter. By doing this, an employee works on a day to day basis and does whatever it takes to close the deal. When we use systems such as Salesforce, it simplifies the process and notifies us of the next step that has to be taken so that the targets can be achieved and also ensure that they are realistic.
There are many ways using which Activity Based Sales can be managed. Let’s take a look at some of the key steps involved in the process.
Define Key Performance Indicators
Get into a discussion with the top performers in the team and find out what they do to meet their targets. Many times what they do might be a routine for them, whereas other might not follow the same. Ask questions and find out their habits and practices. Once you narrow this down to certain activities, use the CRM system and set these activities as targets for everyone in the team. By doing this, everyone follows best practices and also performs at the same level. These activities must be logged by the team members on a regular basis for monitoring and follow up. By doing this, everyone religiously attempts for improved performance, which leads to the team meeting the quarterly targets.
Always Be Transparent
Once the goals are defined depending on the roles they play in the team, the next step is to have a record or a scorecard for each person where they are awarded scores depending on the work they are doing. Since the points on the scorecard are directly linked to their performance, each individual will know what their scores would be and how hard they must work to get better scores. Small focus group sessions and training sessions can be conducted based on the training needs focusing on specific skills. The scorecards can be configured within the CRM systems so that once the employee updates their activities, the scores are automatically updated.
Motivation
Once the scorecards are implemented, it is now time to train the team on how to use these methods effectively. Rather than asking everyone individually where they are at, it can be understood by taking a look at their scorecards. For companies where sales teams are large, they can allocate a lead for a set of people and make him monitor their progress and leads can report to the manager who can suggest necessary steps for action in case they are trailing behind.
