4 Reasons to Use a Technology Platform to Accelerate Sales
Sales Acceleration, Sales Technology
This post is an excerpt from our eBook, “The Sales Technology Survival Guide for the Busy Sales VP.”
Today’s world of customer acquisition is a challenging environment for sales leaders. Among other things, you’re challenged with recruiting and onboarding productive sales reps, designing and implementing sales processes and keeping your management team informed of your progress. Not to mention that big, hairy, audacious goal that stares you in the face every morning.
And to make things even more challenging, the business buying process has changed. Your buyers are now in control of the process. You’ve likely heard the Corporate Executive Board’s finding that the average business buyer completes 57% of their sales process before ever contacting a sales person.
So how will you be able to do all of the things necessary to hit your numbers and make your management and investors happy?
The answer is simple, yet not so easy to execute – design and implement a sales technology platform that will produce a predictable revenue stream for your company.
What is a sales technology platform?
A sales technology platform is an integrated set of applications that automate elements of your sales process like lead generation, lead qualification, sales outreach management and sales analytics.
10 years ago, sales technology platforms were often embedded within ERP systems that produced sub-optimal outcomes. Most modern sales organizations use a “best-of-breed” approach that integrates the various elements of the platform in a hub and spoke configuration with the company’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system serving as the hub.
Because most of the components of a sales technology platform are based in the cloud and are accessible via mobile apps, they are always accessible to your sales team.
Here are 4 reasons to use a sales technology platform to accelerate your sales.
1. Sales technology creates a transparent sales organization
Sales technology provides transparency into each sales rep’s behavior and activity.
With a transparent sales process, you no longer have to wait until the end of the month to identify sales reps that aren’t meeting performance targets. You also don’t have to waste time finding out that underperforming reps aren’t hitting their numbers because they haven’t generated the appropriate sales outreach activity.
A transparent sales process helps identify which reps need coaching and how you should coach them. For example, if a rep is chasing sales prospects that don’t meet your lead qualification criteria, a transparent sales process will identify the rep and the problem so that you can coach the rep to focus on qualified prospects.
A transparent sales process creates an environment where each member of the sales team focuses on the appropriate activity every day. It also gives management real-time feedback on sales performances so that there are no surprises at the end of the month.
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