The cost of living crisis is taking hold, and businesses are watching costs soar and profits take a tumble into the unknown.
There’s no doubt that directors are under more pressure than ever to boost their sales performance and ensure healthy turnover.
But if tightening purse strings have your profits falling short of stakeholder expectations, how can you improve performance in 2023?
To help you on your way, we’ve compiled some top tips that will revitalize your sales. Let’s get started.
1.) Harness Sales Intelligence Tools
In the age of digital transformation, companies are pushing their tech implementation to new heights and streamlining key business operations. There are a number of tried and tested software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that can help you to unlock the potential of your sales pipeline.
The first place to look is sales intelligence SaaS. This is defined by software purchasing platform Vertice as a type of software designed to provide sales teams with data insights and automations, helping them boost the productivity of their sales process.
These tools can help bring new customers into the sales funnel and ensure repeat custom, by enabling efficient data collection, organization, and analysis.
The numbers don’t lie: one report by market research outfit Forrester has shown that if companies choose to invest in a sales intelligence platform, they could reap a wide range of return on investment benefits.
Assessing the performance of the Salesloft SaaS tool, Forrester found that companies could realize a 394% return on investment and up to 60% improvement in response-to-opportunity rate. Other market-leading tools include Salesforce, ZoomInfo, and Groove.
2.) Re-train Your Staff
With new tools come new opportunities to polish your workforce. Nowadays, we’re all pretty well-versed in tech — but if you’re introducing new sales systems, automations and processes, you’ll need to make sure that your staff are trained in how to use these most effectively.
Running a comprehensive training programme to refresh employees on their sales technique and how to supplement this with any new tools that they’re using can be helpful.
While each company will have its own workflows and processes, there are various online tutorials that can assist with the general use of tools and queries about their implementation alongside a sales strategy.
It’s important to note that SaaS can’t all-out replace a skilled workforce, but it can be a great asset to improve productivity.
It’s also worth coaching your sales managers in the key leadership skills needed to encourage high performance from their reporting staff.
Just because somebody’s a good salesperson doesn’t necessarily mean that they possess the people and management skills to supervise a team — so you should always look to develop managerial leadership skills.
Indeed advises that good managers possess key soft skills such as confidence, communication, listening, decision-making, and team-building.
3.) Increase Customer Satisfaction
However, there are no better salespeople than your customers. When clients come away from a deal satisfied with the product you provided and the price they paid, they can market your products for you, without you needing to even spend any of your budget.
Increase your customer satisfaction by investing in customer success and ongoing support for your clients, so that you provide quality customer experience on every sale.
You can leverage customer satisfaction to your advantage by asking for testimonials and reviews of your products, or simply allowing your buyers to go out into the world and pass on recommendations to other prospects by word of mouth.
Or, you may use successful sales as an opportunity to build a dedicated customer referral network. This is defined by ReferralRock as “a group of customers who have signed up to recommend your business.
They share your business with interested family and friends, and earn incentives for doing so”.
Ultimately, satisfied buyers are more likely to return with their own repeat custom. Invesp reports that it costs an average of five times as much to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one — making your existing customer base a vital component in boosting sales performance at every level.
4.) Optimize Your Company Strategy
A first-class sales strategy followed by all members of staff is the holy grail. You shouldn’t be scripting your pitches down to the word choice, but each potential lead should have a researched, customized and uniquely implemented approach.
To achieve this, your sales team needs to conduct thorough research into the client’s needs, any previous sales, and understand back-to-front how your business could address their pain points.
You should attempt to motivate your team by setting specific goals to work towards and monitoring each individual’s performance.
HubSpot recommends that teams make use of measurable quantitative KPIs to direct and assess their strategy’s performance, such as:
- Sales volume
- Client engagement
- Upsell and cross-sell rates
- Sales cycle length
- Customer lifetime value
This way, you can gain insight into the contributions of each member of the team, address when deliverables aren’t being met, and develop a culture of high performance.
5.) Engage The Workforce
Now that more companies than ever are adopting hybrid or fully remote working schedules, some businesses have suffered from a breakdown in communication between team members. This can lead to poor company morale and a disengaged workforce.
Therefore, it’s vital to prioritize employee well-being and communication. If you’re working tirelessly to improve sales performance and see top numbers at the end of the quarter, it can be all too easy to lose sight of other important variables, like staff satisfaction.
As well as creating an unfavorable working environment, this can lead to a decline in performance.
This applies particularly in sales, as unhappy employees will lack the motivation to provide top-notch service — taking a toll on sell rates and customer experience.
Bring your employees back into the loop by listening and incorporating their feedback into the running of the business.
This can re-engage staff and help them to feel supported, as well as inform proactive decision-making across the company.
Consider regular progress reviews, pulse surveys, and benefits schemes. Employee engagement experts at Hppy recommend little acts of recognition, such as shout-outs, personal development opportunities, lunches and contests to boost morale.
Integrating just some of these changes can pay dividends for sales performance and get your profits back on track.
It’s never going to be easy to grow your company, but putting measures in place to streamline operations, bolster customer experience and re-align your workforce are productive starting steps towards success. We wish you the best of luck.
