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Are you struggling to increase revenue without adding more sales staff?
By focusing on your improving sales close capture rates, you can often increase revenue by 25% or more – without the need to add more salespeople. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
The first step is to determine your current sales close rate to see how you can improve. Then, you need to define a reasonable sales capture goal for your sales staff and put the appropriate procedures in place to measure their progress on an ongoing basis. The length of your average sales cycle will help determine how often you should measure progress against goal.
Once you begin implementing the practices mentioned below, you will have a baseline for your close rates and will be able to determine the impact these changes are having, and where you need to make additional adjustments if needed.
Increase Training
One of the most beneficial ways you can increase the success of your sales staff is to teach them the proper skills they need to be successful. Every organization is slightly different in their approach to sales, the products they offer and the customers they are trying to reach. Therefore, it’s critical to define your training strategy and process, and consistently communicate it to your staff.
Repetition is key to ensuring adoption. Have your staff practice the skills they learn through ongoing training. You will develop a team of top performers by establishing a culture of active learning, by reinforcing and building on your training through real-world, successful scenarios, and through peer learning. To accomplish that without a lot of added effort, you can leverage new tools such as video-based sales training.
By recording your sales interactions, your team is able to see a successful sales process in action, and you can guide them through the interaction by making suggestions for improvement and helping them quickly adjust techniques. This will provide much greater adoption of your sales process and messaging than hours of textbook training.
Enhance Communication
As George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
Sometimes, we are so ingrained in what we are doing on a daily basis, that we fail to communicate it properly to others. When sales doesn’t have all the information they need, it can negatively impact their closing rates, and they may not even realize what they are missing. The key is to have regular meetings to review product updates, goals, expectations, results, and a clear go-forward strategy. The bigger picture helps staff understand that how their actions impact the success of the entire organization. Meeting with your staff on a regular basis helps to build an open, honest and strong sales culture, and ultimately positively impacts their ability to close deals faster.
It may also seem to go without saying, but make sure you are setting goals for your team. You fail to achieve 100% of the goals you never set, and the capture rate is key to a successful business no matter what the industry. Set capture rate goals not only for individuals, but for the team and company as a whole. Then, when you achieve those goals, celebrate those successes and create a culture of winning. Celebrating together as an organization is just as important as setting the goals in the first place, so don’t forego making time to have fun with your team too.
Build and Strengthen Relationships
Today’s sales people realize that building a relationship with your prospects is going to derive much more success than the old-school, hard sale methods. Begin your process with discovery. Other than a brief introduction, ensure your sales staff avoids talking about themselves, their pitch or your products initially. Have them work to connect with the prospect on a personal level by asking open ended questions. As they listen and get to know the person, they will be better able to determine if your solution is a fit for them. This enables your staff to only focus on well qualified opportunities, which improves both your close rate and your efficiency.
As your staff begins to build their knowledge based on the peer training methods described earlier, they will become more knowledgeable about matching patients needs with different solutions. Have sales staff bring these ideas and experiences to your customers. Share with them the newest insights and learnings that may help with their particular situation. You will become a trusted expert, which will not only result in improved close rates, but better relationships and higher customer satisfaction – creating a big win for everyone involved.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]