Is Long Term Technology Planning the answer?: Given the right circumstances, most companies would relish the opportunity to increase their sales to such an extent that they only needed to concentrate on the administration. Even with the best will in the world forecasting sales is not a science, it’s more like science fiction and is more likely to cause stress through incorrect or misleading data than any other aspect of business. Unlike other areas of your business, sales can be the least quantifiable as invariably, the act of selling happens away from the manager who needs to monitor the activity and performance. Yet from new business sales, all else flows.
When manufacturing a product there is a process; the raw material goes in at one end and the finished product comes out at the other end. Every process within this is planned, managed and monitored to ensure consistent quality.
The raw material required in the production of sales is your staff and they need to be quality managed and monitored just as much, if not more so, then your product or service if you are to achieve the level of sales you desire.
The first part of the process is the telephone call. Whether your telesales team sells products direct or if they make appointments for field sales executives to sell face-to-face, the telephone is the single most important tool that your team has to use, yet it is the least managed and monitored. This is because, for the most part, you can only hear one side of the conversation.
Sales on the other hand can have an off day – or two! Poor sales performance is often attributed to a downturn in the market or to ‘the customer’s simply not buying at the moment’ or to a host of other well-worn excuses.
The solution: listen, coach and automate.
Technology plays an enormous role in the development of businesses, however to succeed in this arena a director needs to have a creative awareness of what is achievable with the technology available in order to instruct an IT department or supplier.
By combining the functionality of commonly used systems it is possible to create a structure that can assist in accurately forecasting and maintaining your team’s performance like never before. Identifying where a sales person is having difficulty with their delivery or close can also become far easier and quicker. This is the only strategy that can guarantee consistency without stripping away valuable management time.
The objective is to focus on the end result, i.e. the sale, and work back from there.
Components Required Some of the components required you may already have, but here’s the complete list again:
Most modern telephone systems offer significant functionality, however, no matter how intelligent the telephone system is, it is the people using it that count.
The cost of running a business is illustrated on the profit and loss account. It is the responsibility of a director to manage the costs, not simply to keep them to a minimum, and ensuring the business gets value from money. Recruitment can run into thousands of pounds, not only in agency costs but also in the time spent interviewing and training new staff.
Creating your own golden goose is always desirable but rarely achievable. This structured solution can ensure consistency in output, consistency in training and instant identification of existing or potential problems that can be rectified quickly through coaching.
Telephone System Every business has a telephone system, however to ensure connectivity to other products the telephone system needs to have the facility for computer telephony integration. If your telephone system does not have this at present, it may be upgradeable.
Voice Recording Some businesses use voice recording for dispute resolution so that if and when disputes occur businesses can resolve them quickly and effectively. This is a typical scenario within the financial services industry.
Call centres are also high users of voice recording; you may well have heard adverts that say “calls may be recorded for quality and training purposes”.
However for typical sales companies with say five plus sales executives, voice recording is not normally considered as it is thought of as being too expensive. Fortunately the cost of this equipment has reduced dramatically over the past few years and in some cases is as little as £200 per user.
CRM Software Nowadays most sales departments operate using a database in one form or another, from simple Microsoft Access databases and off-the-shelf products like ACT!, Goldmine and Microsoft CRM through to bespoke packages written for specific industries. Once implemented these software packages can provide a sales team with all the sales tools necessary - as long as the customisation matches the business process. This is key.
By integrating a database with voice recording, it is possible to insert every conversation with every customer in the respective customer's history. This enhances your level of customer service by all staff being aware of previous conversations.
Automated Dialling In conjunction with a customer database, automated dialling software uses the common data, i.e. the company name and telephone number in order to produce a call list. The dialling software maps the call against the original database record simplifying the activity for the sales team and massively increasing productivity by as much as 100%!
Inbound Contact Solutions With an increase in outbound activity it stands to reason that eventually the number of inbound communications received from your customers will also increase.
With so many options available to your customers to contact you it is essential to structure all inbound activity in the same way.
Typically a business will receive communication in the following forms - telephone, e-mail,
Web Chat, fax or
SMS text messaging. It is possible to manage and distribute the flow of inbound communication to identified staff to maintain a high degree of customer service, customer response and most importantly, customer retention.
If you need any help ascertaining your needs please contact us on 0800 970 9751 or email us at
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