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Automating Your Sales Processes For Success

Guest post by: Russ Lombardo

Article Overview: There's a lot of talk about using technology to automate your sales force, telemarketing, and/or marketing activities, as well as to help your business improve its customer relationships. Find out how to automate your sales processes for success.

Automating Your Sales Processes For Success

There's a lot of talk about using technology to automate your sales force, telemarketing, and/or marketing activities, as well as to help your business improve it's customer relationships, or what is commonly known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). No doubt, technology can help any business become more efficient and effective. Purchasing technology alone will not, however, improve sales and marketing performance. It will only allow you to accomplish poor habits more quickly. Sales occur either by “Process” or by “Accident”. An accident happens when a sale comes along that is basically a surprise and wasn’t expected. For instance, a client calls you and says she needs one thousand of your widgets immediately, otherwise she will lose her budget for next year. A Sales Process, on the other hand, is a step-by-step procedure that is executed for each potential customer (or prospect) in order to get her into a position to want to purchase your product or service.
Since accidents don’t happen often enough, we have to rely on processes to be successful. Therefore, a Sales Process needs to be defined and implemented so that each sales rep, telemarketing activity, and marketing program performs at the most effective level, thus increasing their success. A Sales Process defines the methodologies for which steps need to be taken, and repeated, to move the process along the sales path toward a purchase. It also includes the methods for qualifying a prospect, listening to the prospect’s needs, analyzing alternatives, and presenting the appropriate solutions so the prospect will want to purchase from you. Therefore, you should develop Sales Processes and methodologies to increase your success. Along with this, you should also provide ample sales training so your teams will understand these new processes and methodologies. The training should also help them understand why the processes exist, how the processes will benefit them, and how to use and implement them.
Once you have your Sales Processes defined, you can look toward technology as a tool to implement and deploy them. There are many sales automation, contact management, and CRM products available today. However, simply choosing the right product will not guarantee success. Remember that technology is used to deploy your Sales Processes and CRM strategy, not drive them.
The right CRM product should replicate your best sales practices. Thus, first understand what your best practices are. If you don’t have any best practices, or what you have is insufficient, then develop them. Then use technology to deploy and replicate them. By designing your product around your processes and successful methodologies, your weaker sales and telemarketing reps will become more successful. Your stronger reps will become more efficient. And, your new reps will have a reduced learning curve since they will have the pre-defined steps for success and a tool to make them more readily effective.
Since there is a lot to consider in choosing a CRM product, be sure to evaluate multiple vendors. Develop specs and give them to the vendors to prove they can meet your criteria, now and in the future. The product you choose should grow and expand with your company and with your future plans. Thus, having a Sales Process and CRM strategy defined and documented at this stage will be critical so you know where you’ll want to be in the future.
The right CRM product should not only handle the obvious functions such as; contact management, calendar events, scheduling, mail merge, and email management, but it should also be able to run your marketing campaigns, handle your forecasting, share information with everyone in your business whether local or remote, and much more. A good CRM product can, in effect, run your company's sales, marketing and support functions.
Finally, as with anything that is powerful and sophisticated, be sure to use specialists to help with both the planning and the implementation phases. Their experience and expertise will prove to be invaluable to your success since you won't end up wasting a lot of time re-learning what experts already know, nor wind up heading down the wrong path or over your head.
Having a Sales Process is akin to having an architect’s plan for a new house. Without one, all the best tools money can buy won’t build the house you want. You need to first have a plan, then buy the right tools to start building. A business, like a house, is best built with a good up-front plan and a strong foundation.


Good Luck & Good Selling!
Russ Lombardo

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Article Tags: customer relationships, sales processes



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