Explode Sales with Sales Tools that Work

Increase Sales & Profits with Sales Tools that Work

Using Advanced Technology to Communicate and Collaborate with Direct and In-Direct Sales Teams by automating sales lead routing and tracking, sales pipeline and forecast reporting.

Summary

This paper gives your company a rock solid lead and opportunity management architecture and lead management, opportunity management strategy. This paper is for any business that needs to generate leads track sales opportunities to create new buness and increase profits. The sales system described here is suitable for for small and medium business and enterprises which are using a multi mode selling approach which consists of inside and outside salespeople and indirect salespeople. This guide tells you how to boost communication with your salesteams and by doing so, cut sales cycles and increase new business wins.

This system makes sure all leads and opportunities that are passed to remote salespeople and sales channels are followed up promptly, worked efficiently and reported back to your sales business accurately. This system, if deployed as suggested, will exponentially increase sales lead qualification and closing efficiency and will return exponential dollars spent on this investment.

Sales Deals are Lost to Bad Communication with Direct and Indirect Sales Teams

Good sales channel communication will differentiate your business. Effective communication will streamline sales cycles, cut time and waste from the selling process. Increased effectiveness will win market share and will increase profits. In many cases, competitive sales teams use your distribution partners. This is the nature of distribution sales. The strongest distributor mindshare, built by being easy to work with, will get your products in front of more buyers more often.

Communication and collaboration with channel partners, as done today in most companies, is slow and time consuming. Sales companies use email, phone and even fax to route leads and to gather sales information. This information is often not gathered and if collected is dated and inaccurate. Extranets, or a web portal which forces the in-direct sales person to sign in to report, can cause pain with the vendors because of the time it takes to adopt and use the tool.

Use Advanced Sales Technology to Collaborate with Sales Partners

On the surface, passing and following up on sales information with sales channels is simple. Lead and opportunity data is passed to the correct salesperson and all a sales person has to do is apply sales methods to move the sales lead through a sales cycle. Companies have been doing this for generations and many are still doing this data transfer the exact same way they did years ago; fax, email, phone.

It is progressive and logical for a business to seek out better and more efficient ways to communicate sales data to and from sales channels. The internet and advanced sales software now give us an elegant solution. The solution is fast to set up, easy to use for all parties and the return on investment is easy to figure. The return on investment, based on closed new business deals, can be measured in the 1000 using Advanced Online Sales Software Solution

ITW: Loveshaw of South Canaan, Pennsylvania sells capital equipment through over 400 dealers in the US and non US territories. Previously, all sales data was gathered using emails and phone calls. Many deals fell through the cracks due to no visibility. Loveshaw deployed DataForceCRM last year and they now import all trade show leads directly into the sales software system. Leads are routed to regional sales managers based on the state where the lead contact resides. If there is more than one regional sales manager in the state, for example in the state that HQ is located, then the tool will also look at zip code for correct routing. The RSM now quickly evaluates the lead in an Opportunity Detail. This detail shows company/contact, lead source, description and even notes if applicable. The RSM just works the deal or with one mouse click sends to one of 400 distributors of his choice. This mouse click has started a closed loop chain reaction of immediately notifying the distributor of the lead and asks him to update on a required, timely basis.

Real-time Sales Tracking with True Sales Force Automation

The lead/opportunity sends out a call home message on a pre-set time frame. The alert is simply checked off by the correct salesperson in this LeadNET email. This simple click and send of the email updates the sales database. The lead/opty record database is color coded. Lead color codes are used for fast checks of lead progress. The lead turns a bright red if not touched. The lead can then be reassigned to another sales resource or sales management can query the salesman. Sales stages are updated from lead to opportunity, to quote, win, lose or draw all using LeadNET. The distributor clicks in this email and the sales database is updated. The lead report, the sales pipeline and the sales forecast is updated.

Real Sales Data will Drive Sales Strategy

Business executives can view the efficiency of the trade show marketing spend as well as the effectiveness of each direct salesperson and each of their 400 plus distributors. This solution has cut sales cycles, eliminated waste from the sales cycle and has made all ITW: Loveshaw leads 100 increase in sales in the first full year of using our online sales software.

Peter, the director of client consulting, at http://www.onlinesalessoftware.com has over 20 years of experience in the CRM and Sales Software industry.