Sales Optimization - How to get it
Richelle Suver
Strategy | Marketing | Sales Leadership | Revenue Growth | Author | Speaker
In chatting with other CROs and business leaders, there is often a common theme – how to improve sales optimization. But what does that really mean?
Most often, you are solving for inefficiency. If your team is spending too much time on the wrong things or not focused on the closest path to close, that is a good place to begin. There are some typical culprits that can rob you of being your most productive self.
Three areas for optimization include:
1.)??? Tools
2.)??? Activity
3.)??? Demos
Start by taking a look at one or all of the above areas, if you have optimization issues. For example, if you and the team are spending more time and money managing your Martech tools than engaging with customers – this is Problem #1.
Business Development Representatives (BDRs) and Account Executives (AEs) are juggling multiple tools in today's world:
Moving back and forth between all of these tools can cost you and your team time and money. Some estimates claim as much as 20-25 minutes wasted! Between checking remembering complex passwords and security questions, copying and pasting the same information multiple times, and switching between numerous open tabs on your computer, 40% of your team’s productivity navigating tools instead of deals. This results in 2.5 hours per day being spent just logging in and updating systems.
This approach is not efficient and it could be a factor that is limiting your team's output potential.
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Get that time back either by selecting tools that seamlessly integrate into one of your enterprise platforms (ex. CRM) or eliminating tool redundancy. Be sure to monitor which reps are actively using which tools most often to make a prioritized decision.
Problem #2 – Sales Activity reports that are meaningless.
Busy sales people are not always productive sales people. ?Leaders tend to track the same KPIs: number of outbound calls, number of emails, appointments, demos etc. to determine sales efficacy. This is a common mistake. Your sales activity report can certainly provide those metrics as a data point, but it doesn’t correlate to real growth. It simply tells you how people spend their day. It's quantitative not qualitative.
More insightful metrics, would be average time spent by deal stage, average contract value, lifetime, customer value, and close ratio. Once you have a better understanding of your sales cycle, your market and the ICP for your products and services, your sales people can focus more on nurturing the right opportunities instead of all opportunities. Do not underestimate the importance of upfront research and strategy that is required for a pre-call plan. That is time well spent even if it doesn't show on a report.
?Problem #3 is that demos take too long and don’t get to the point fast enough. ?Most prospects will only give you an hour or less of their time.
The average sales demo lasts 45 minutes after you talk about the weather and get through introductions. However, research indicates that human attention spans drop significantly after 18 minutes. Decision fatigue sets in after seeing more than four features, and most buying decisions are made within the first eight minutes.
Stop wasting time to talk about every feature, every integration and use case. Your prospect is most likely multi-tasking or mentally out by the 20 minute mark.
Instead, your sales people should confirm in advance, how the customer best wants to use their time and qualify – qualify – qualify! The pre demo plan should be addressing the problem, be succinct, with the buyer-persona in mind, and conclude with a final “tie it up” visual to bring it home and pay off on the need. Always be showing, not telling.
While, there isn't always a clear solution to sales optimization, the three problems outlined are the first place to begin. By adjusting even one of these optimization levers, you can improve root causes that often lead to significant time loss and reduced productivity.
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