Insights for Smarter Sales
Sales targets and sales forecasts are two fundamental B2B sales tools. They show sales reps what they have to achieve in a given time, and give higher management an indicator of sales performance. But what else can targets and forecasts give to a sales team, those hard-working people on the ground?
In this article, we’re unpacking exactly how, when used together, sales targets and sales forecasts can drive a sales team’s performance.
Two fundamental qualities which sales targets and forecasts provide to sales teams are clarity and direction. Clarity in that they know where they have to go, and direction in that they can formulate a plan to get there: it is these two qualities which focus a sales team and drive their performance.
Sales targets, when made easily accessible and personalized to the individual, show a sales rep precisely where they must go: there’s no room for excuses. Similarly, a well made sales forecast stops reps from losing their way on their journey to target, acting as a guide. Above all, these tools concentrate a rep’s focus and ground their routines around a central purpose, minimizing distraction and confusion.
“Targets and forecasts give reps peace of mind, as you know where your numbers are going to come from. You have a plan which you have confidence in.” - Jonathan Hubbard, Founder
While forecasting may be stigmatized as a thumb-sucking or wishful-thinking exercise, it can become a robust planning tool when built around sales targets.
Once a target has been set, reps can sit down and begin building up a forecast based on customer sales data: reviewing the numbers to ascertain where target-beating revenue could come from.
“Forecasts show your daily alignment to the target: giving you the view of the end point and how you might get there.” - Jonathan Hubbard, Founder
Continually adjusting these forecasts as the period progresses can help a rep stick to their initial plan, or make preemptive direction changes where needed. These direction changes are best made using live-updating forecasts which can show reps the precise moment their performance starts slipping. However, if you’ve got plenty of spare time, a well maintained spreadsheet can give enough notice to turn their game around before the period ends.
Undoubtedly, sales targets and forecasts are classic rep motivators: they keep a sales team’s eyes focused on their core mission and their future rewards. Although, if taken a few steps further, these simple tools can give a great boost to rep motivation.
If you’re able to visualize a rep’s progress towards target alongside their forecasted revenue, you can produce a paceline. Built on forecasts, targets and past performance, pacelines act similarly to the record lines projected onto swimming pools during swimming races which represent a standing record or time to beat. However, unlike the swimmers, the sales team can see their paceline, and has the power to influence it whenever they like: motivating them into action.
“Forecast acts as your GPS, keeps you motivated, and on track to the total number: the target.” - Jonathan Hubbard, Founder
Furthermore, if you can show reps how much they’re likely to earn, the target and forecast take on new meaning. Tying commissions and incentives to sales targets is nothing new, but when tied to live forecasts, you can give sales teams the ability to see their potential earnings as they adjust their forecasts.
Driving your sales team using sales targets and forecasts can give them much needed clarity, direction, control, and motivation. Additionally, they can save you time: if everyone knows where they’re going, they won’t need reminding! Let’s go over our 3 main takeaways:
Want more sales advice and discussion? Tune in to SalesHitch, a Numerik LinkedIn live series where B2B sales problems are solved with the help of an expert. Watch here.
That spread’s so large because the researchers’ methodologies varied. But most researchers asked variations on the question, “Did your CRM project meet your expectations?” And for many organisations the answer was a big fat nope.
And that’s not all. All is not well with Salesforce, the grandaddy of CRMs. A 2022 report by Nucleus Research on Salesforce user satisfaction indicated 51% of Salesforce users would switch to another vendor, given the opportunity. Users also rated Salesforce as difficult to adopt and felt the value they’re getting from the platform doesn’t match its price.
Many of you are finding your CRMs underwhelming when it comes to sales. When Numerik founder Jonathan is out and about talking to sales managers, he finds many sales leaders disenchanted with their CRMs. He says, “I have six or seven calls a week with sales managers, and on most of those calls the managers express dissatisfaction with their CRM. And it’s always the same issue. It’s not being used, so it’s not a helpful tool.”
If you’re frustrated with your CRM and wondering how to help your sales teams sell more, read on for recommendations from other sales managers, sales tech experts, and the Numerik team.
Salespeople simply want to close more deals. But when it comes to making more sales, CRMs often become handbrakes rather than accelerators, as sales reps waste time they could be selling, on servicing CRM records to meet management demands.
How did a tool heralded as the next big thing for sales go so wrong? To understand why CRMs aren’t serving sales, it helps to take a few steps back and look at what a CRM is, why organisations use them, why they fail, and where they fit into the sales picture.
CRMs are customer relationship managers. They’re designed to improve an organisation’s relationship with its customers, by storing all customer interactions, orders, and data in one place. They become the single source of truth, allowing everyone in an organisation to access info on a customer, understand their preferences, and serve them better.
CRMs are used by several business areas:
And here’s where the first CRM issue arises. When a tool tries to serve too many agendas, you end up with competing priorities, functionality becomes bloated, and purpose becomes blurred.
Jonathan says, “CRMs tend to overengineer solutions and try to be everything to every part of a business, but at the same time they often fail to dial in on what each team needs. They’re like photocopiers, laden with features when most teams only need to print, copy, and scan. CRMs are the same, most organisations only use their core functionality, at best. Sales teams want to be able to quickly look up info on customers, take notes on calls, and check on targets and sales. The rest is just busy work. Creating deals, populating pipelines and everything like that doesn’t help salespeople make sales, which is why those features aren’t used.”
The more features a CRM has, the more work your team have to do to service the tool’s processes. And it’s important to ask if those processes support your team’s goals, or whether they exist to justify the existence of the CRM. A cynical observer might say that CRMs are loaded up with features to justify their high monthly fees. Certainly, it doesn’t matter how many features a CRM has, if those features don’t help you sell.
Like every tool, CRMs have pros and cons. The upside can be significant. Centralising customer data helps everyone offer better customer service, leading to an improved customer experience and the holy grail, greater customer loyalty. But the downside is the scale of the investment in time, money, and effort required to reap these rewards.
CRM benefits
CRM downsides
Often the downside of CRMs eclipses the potential wins, and with such a high failure rate, it makes sense to ask the question, why do CRMs fail?
When we look at research on CRM failure six common themes emerge:
Most of these failure factors boil down to one thing. CRM systems fail because adoption fails. People don’t understand how to use them well, and they don’t make the effort to learn because they don’t see what’s in it for them. So, most CRM failures are less the failure of a system, than a failure to enact organisational change.
The role of a CRM is to collect customer data and be the single source of customer truth.
They help management
They help marketing
They help improve customer service
But do they help sales?
Sales tech expert Nancy Nardin writes in her article Get Ready for the Disruption of CRM, “Traditional CRM is not a productivity tool. On its own, it doesn’t automate much—if anything … Salespeople often spend more time “managing” the system and activities than actually performing the activities.”
Salespeople want to make more sales. That’s their number one motivation. But CRMs don’t make selling faster or easier. As Nancy states, most CRMs don’t help sales teams manage, execute, track, or record the sales process in any way “markedly superior to an Excel spreadsheet.” Brutal. But from what we hear from all you sales managers out there, also fair.
Farmland Foods is New Zealand’s fastest growing smallgoods producer. We spoke to their National Sales and Marketing Manager, Robbie Dale about why they swapped their CRM for Numerik. Robbie explains, “We already had a CRM tool but I’m always looking for optimisation, asking how can we sell better, faster? Our salesforce today spend so much time on mobile devices, so we need something that works well on mobile. I was looking for a mobile sales app that gives the sales team access to all the data they need, and I stumbled across Numerik.”
“CRMs are very one dimensional. And if the last three years have taught us anything, it’s that you’ve got to be able to adapt. And the other thing we've learned is that time is precious. So, you need an all-encompassing tool that helps you move fast, and CRMs aren’t that tool. We found Numerik offers that speed from a decision making and information perspective. We service well over a thousand New Zealand outlets every single day. So, I can walk into a store, see what they’ve bought, see what they haven’t bought, see how it ranks against other stores, and quickly elevate the discussion.”
“Numerik is CRM meets Excel meets Facebook meets Power BI. It’s the power of social media combined with data and not just numerical data but visual data. Being able to post video, photographs, and voice notes really gives the sales reps a boost. Numerik has given us a single tool, where reps and customers are benchmarked, and all the data we need is there. In any business today, data is currency, and the team with the best data wins. And because Numerik sits in our live ecosystem, the data is constantly being updated. Our guys can walk into a store, and two clicks later, report back to me. That’s a true gamechanger.”
“Numerik has replaced our CRM completely. We also use Power BI for numerical data, and we’ve lots of historical data on there. But Numerik is our go-to for customer and sales data at the moment and I think it will continue to be that. For us it made no sense hanging onto some historical CRM. Buying patterns are changing so fast in New Zealand with cost-of-living that what worked two weeks ago doesn’t work today. It’s a massive benefit to have a live ecosystem where a merchandiser walks into a store at 6:00am, sees there's no stock, and can be placing an order by 6:15am. It's instantaneous, whereas with our old CRM, nothing was live.”
“I talked to the director of the firm that owns our old CRM. They called to ask why we were moving because they really wanted to know and were truly interested in how they might improve. I was really impressed because I always measure a company's integrity by their action when they lose a customer. So, I was frank with them, and said, guys, you can't improve your existing platform. You need to change it completely. So, they went online, checked out Numerik, came back to me and said, we understand why you've moved. We get it.”
Quin Global are the world’s largest manufacturer of spray canister adhesive. Chief Technical, Marketing and Innovation Officer Carl Fowler explains how things were before Numerik came on the scene. “We didn't have visibility of what each sales guy was doing and how they were performing. Also, we had no good commission mechanism driving performance. There was a commission structure, but it was difficult for the sales team to understand where they were against their targets and what their reward would be.”
“The other problem was, we didn't have a forecast for the three months ahead of us. We had a budget with targets, but no trackable sales forecast aligned against that. As a result, we really struggled with Board buy-in for sales projections. Now with Numerik, we’ve six months of data where our sales forecasts and budgets are aligned, so the Board trust the numbers.”
Another challenge for Carl and his team was using multiple systems to track sales. Carl says, “We were using Monday.com for our pipeline, Phocas for BI, Google sheets to track performance, a database in Access, Excel, and a costly NetSuite forecast system, which was built for us. Plus, we were having email discussions about our forecasts.”
“My dream was to get our sales team running with only three systems. NetSuite as our single source of truth, a CRM, and a tool for forecasting and sales management. And that’s what we have now. We use Pipedrive for our CRM and new business pipeline management, and Numerik for numbers, targets, and commission on sales to existing customers.”
Carl and his team did their due diligence before they invested in Numerik. “We looked at other tools. And we wanted to make sure we’d investigated all the tools we already had. We tried building something ourselves. Didn’t work. We tried NetSuite for forecasting. Disaster. We looked at whether we could use Phocas or Pipedrive to forecast, and that didn't work either.”
“My West Europe sales manager has used Salesforce and other sales tools. And he said to me the other day that Numerik is by far the best sales tool he’s ever used due to its simplicity, its forecasting ability, and the team spirit it creates.”
“Numerik is genuinely a no brainer for any organisation. It’s so quick and easy, and right in the palm of your hand. I'm no longer involved in sales day to day, but I’ve more control and comfort than ever because I can see what's happening on Numerik by the minute. I can trust the data, and it hasn't let me down. So, I don't think there is a better system.”
Senior execs use CRMs to make management decisions, so their interests can end up having a disproportionate share of airtime when it comes to CRM functionality. But setting business strategy and making sales are not the same discipline, and don’t have the same drivers.
However, because CRMs are a significant investment of time, energy and money, organisations can become overly invested in their success. They’ve spent too much on the solution, gone too far down the CRM road, and the CRM cannot be allowed to fail.
When this situation arises, it can become challenging (even career threatening) for a sales leader to point out that a CRM isn’t working for their team. Their fellow senior execs are likely to push back, saying they need data to manage the business and CRMs get people to enter data, and there would be payback if only salespeople would use the CRM more consistently. Senior execs come to feel that the CRM is a necessity, whether or not it helps the sales team sell, and the inadequacy of the system becomes reframed as the inadequacies of the sales team.
But Nancy disagrees. She writes: “I have a secret. Come closer so I can whisper it, “IF CRM HELPED SALESPEOPLE IN A SUBSTANTIAL WAY, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM TO USE IT.” And she is inarguably right. Well-conceived, well designed tools sell themselves. People don’t need to be trained to use them because they’re so intuitive, and they don’t need to be convinced to use them because the benefits are self-evident.
So, you suspect your CRM isn’t helping your sales team sell. How do you make a business case for change?
Ask your reps what they need to sell more.
Then ask yourself / your CRM experts if the CRM you have offers them that support.
Many reps care about being able to access the following info fast:
The quickest way to get your reps’ buy in to a new tool is to show you’ve listened to their needs and given them something they really want.
CRMs work better for some businesses than others.
We’ve put together a useful guide with a few more things to consider when you’re frustrated with your CRM and looking for a better solution. This should help you make a compelling business case for a sales performance tool to help your sales team sell more.
DOWNLOAD GUIDE >
Here’s the thing. CRMs are brilliant. Well … let’s rephrase that … good CRMs are brilliant. CRMs provide a rich source of data to inform sales reps’ conversations with customers and make those relationships richer. That’s incredibly valuable and leads to more sales over time.
But what that data doesn’t do is solve the bigger challenge sales reps face, of staying on top of their sales pipeline, keeping motivated, and finding opportunities to sell.
So, what is the solution? Back in 2016 Nancy wrote, “I’m proposing that sales leaders flip that scenario around. Deploy new platforms that are specialized to help salespeople execute in the way that suits them best and have the data from that system feed into CRM … The key to success is for those systems to automatically communicate the data to the CRM platform without intervention from the salesperson.”
In other words, sales teams may need a sales performance tool layered on top of your CRM, that supports your sales team and talks to your CRM / ERP because that’s your single source of customer truth.
Intent of sales performance app
Intent of CRM
CRMs aren’t all bad. In fact, they’re valuable tools for many areas of your business, but they fall down when it comes to sales, because they’re Customer Relationship Managers, not sales performance tools (the clue’s in the name).
The new generation of sales performance apps like Numerik, are especially designed to meet salespeople’s needs and help them make more sales. Not only that, but different tools are designed for the needs of different sales teams. Numerik is ideal for businesses with large inventories of products, regular repeat customers, and reps on the road.
Numerik doesn't replace your CRM, it works alongside it, with integrations for Salesforce and NetSuite feeding customer data back to your CRM as your single source of customer truth. It simply replaces the clunky functionality of the CRM for your sales team, with streamlined, social, intuitive app, that places all the customer data they need at their fingertips.
Numerik’s built by sales professionals, for sales professionals. That’s how we deliver the transformational business results our customers enjoy. To test drive the best sales tool on the market, book your Numerik demo today.
Upselling and cross selling to existing B2B customers can be one of the most effective ways to quickly increase sales. There are hundreds of different approaches, each being suitable for a different situation. In this article, we’ll look at 5 upselling and cross selling techniques, with accompanying examples, which product-focused B2B sales reps can use to increase sales.
Convincing someone to buy a more expensive product requires more than social proof and a list of benefits. Despite our world becoming more remote, the value in physically demonstrating products in context is worth the effort.
Real-life demos can be a convincing and natural way to begin an upsell, particularly since a demo’s only cost to the customer is their time.
Let’s investigate this through an example. Your company specializes in high grade building equipment and has released a new cordless drill which fully charges in 8 minutes. When your top-growing construction customer contacts you to order more standard drills, explain that you’ve got a new model out: and you need to show them what it can do because compared to the standard drills, it’s a better fit. However, rather than bringing the drill to the office, head out to the building site, and show how the newer model stacks up in context. Demonstrating the better product in use could be the final push needed to convince your customer and secure the upsell.
By leveraging your knowledge of a customer’s needs and goals, you can craft a cross sell based on making their business smoother with complementary products.
If you’ve got a strong relationship with a customer, it’s much easier to ask questions about their needs and spot hidden sales opportunities. And if you can consistently improve their efficiency by recommending products which save them time, you’ll develop a stronger relationship.
Example: You’re in the tire business, and have one customer who consistently averages around $25k’s worth of tire orders a quarter with you. However, changing a tire takes more than fresh rubber: what else does your customer need to change tires, and do so more efficiently? They may need bead sealer, tire mounting lube, valve stems, cores, caps and more. How much more convenient and efficient would it be for your customer to buy these additional products from you with the tires instead of gathering these consumables from other suppliers? Discuss this with the customer, perhaps there are other products they need which you didn’t consider.
Particularly if you’re working in FMCG, you can try using a story centered on the customer’s journey to success, the risks they may face, and how you’ll support them, to encourage an upsell.
A vivid success story which uses risk to create stakes can be solid reasoning for a customer to purchase more because it shows them what they desire, and what could happen if they don’t take action.
Example: Your top retail customer has just contacted you to replenish their toilet paper stock. When the time is right, begin your upsell by reminding the customer of what their success looks like, for example 50% category growth for the year. Explain how you’ll work together to get there, and the opportunities lying ahead. Now create stakes: what if there’s a supply shortage? If you sell out, you’ll be making 0 profit, and you can’t afford that- not while you’re picking up momentum. Having extra stock on the shelf may seem intimidating: reinforce the purchase and dispel the customer’s uncertainty by offering additional support: the steps you’ll take to ensure they mitigate the risks and sell successfully.
Consistently planting the seeds to an upsell can be a practical way to keep new products in the front of a customer’s mind and gradually guide them into a higher value sale. A great method to stay consistent is to create a schedule for following up with customers.
Example: After meeting with a customer and gauging their interest in a better product, plot out a series of dates in your calendar to recontact the customer and continue discussing the upsell product. The key is to stick to your plan: send out calendar appointments to the customer, and ensure that if they ask for something, you get back to them.
In nearly every industry, time-sensitive deals are used to build urgency and increase sales. You can do this yourself by creating a bundle package offer available only within a set timeframe.
Example: Let’s say you supply automotive parts and have arranged a package deal for August based on your most popular SKUs. In early August one of your auto parts customers calls in to place an order for engine oil and filters. Here you can drive a cross sell by explaining your package deal: free delivery plus a 20% discount on coolant, grease, additives, and transmission fluid available only until September. By pairing suitable products and marking a deadline, you create urgency and lower barriers to purchase. Don’t forget to follow up on the offer throughout the month.
Upselling and cross selling are staple techniques in a B2B sales strategy. If you’re struggling to get inspiration for your next up/cross sell, use these 5 techniques to inspire you:
Still looking for more sales techniques and tips? Check out our article on the 3 principles for building stronger B2B relationships, based on the advice of US sales expert Liz Heiman.
Sales call notes are a rep’s personal record of client information, notes taken during clients calls which are crucial for remembering important information and highlighting sales opportunities.
Unfortunately, reps easily forget to record call notes, or don’t record the right things.
In this article we’ll give you a handy quick guide to the most important things to ask your reps to include in their call notes to make the most of sales opportunities.
Let’s jump right in.
If a rep can’t get a client’s first and last name right, the road to building a prosperous client relationship will be a long one. Without the trust that comes with strong client relationships, your reps will find it difficult to probe for deeper information to find sales opportunities.
Cementing relationship foundations needn’t be hard: it begins with recording contacts and personal news in call notes. Regularly updating a client’s full contact details shows a rep is committed to keeping in contact despite change. Additionally, reps can build rapport by noting any exciting personal news: a new child, a wedding, a long-weekend holiday up North.
Ultimately, these small details can help reps develop client relationships where there’s room to ask deeper questions or make more ambitious offers.
When a payment problem, or pricing misunderstanding is left unchecked, a damaged customer relationship is the least of a rep’s worries.
To avoid losing a customer, recording any discussions around pricing, problems with payment, or incorrect invoices should be a priority in a rep’s call note checklist. If credit terms were set up wrong, or a price misunderstanding has occurred, the rep needs to note it down and make it a priority. This information could present an opportunity to give a customer a better price, or a discount deal if a certain volume is purchased.
To stop this information slipping by, suggest faster ways for your reps to get their pricing notes recorded, perhaps with voice-to-text notes entry or call note templates.
Regular proposal rejection could be a sign your reps don’t have a great understanding of their clients needs. How can reps get more sales if nothing seems to appeal to their clients?
Taking call notes of what resonates with clients regarding products, pitched over the phone, in whitepapers, or new range presentations, is crucial feedback for nurturing a sales opportunity. What did the client think about the new product? Did anything stick out to them in the new range presentation? What stayed with them?
Encourage reps to ask these questions and note feedback: the rich detail could be used to help a rep pitch products more suitable to their clients.
It’s been 6 months since your rep picked up their latest client, however, they're yet to jump on an upselling opportunity. After questioning the rep, it happens that they don’t have any information on what the client currently stocks, or who’s stocking it for them.
Any information concerning your competitors could highlight a sales opportunity, and should be recorded in call notes. Additionally, understanding a client’s purchase patterns can help a rep see if there’s an existing sales gap to jump on.
If the client normally buys safety goggles for $7 per unit from your competitor, but you sell them for $5.85, the rep could make a special offer.
With over 30 clients to attend to, it’s unsurprising when a rep misses the follow up call they promised to have with a client a month ago. Unfortunately, that rep could’ve unknowingly missed out on a lucrative deal and burnt goodwill that might have led to extra future sales.
If a rep has the right sales performance tool, they should take initiative to record a call note against the client about any agreed next action. If it’s following up on a client’s decision, or sending a quote through, a rep should record it and put it in their calendar, or even tag the note as an activity for your KPI leaderboard. Furthermore, putting a date down acts as a deadline for a rep to resolve any other issues raised in the call.
Personal client information, pricing discussions, client feedback, current stock, and agreed next step should form the foundation of your rep’s call notes if they want to capitalize on future sales opportunities.
If you want to get more consistent, high quality notes from your reps without wasting their time, check out how a sales performance app runs customer note-taking.
Building strong B2B relationships takes more than a weekly phone call and quarterly gift bag. To establish and grow client relationships, sales people need to carefully evaluate compatibility, communicate decisively, and collaborate regularly. But how does that all work in practice?
In this article we’ll unpack 3 principles which underpin strong B2B relationships, based on the advice we received from sales expert Liz Heiman, founder at Regarding Sales. Read on to discover inspiration and actionable advice for improving client relationships.
The essential ingredient to a strong B2B relationship? Compatibility. While slight incompatibility can make selling your product a minor inconvenience for a client, a majorly misaligned client relationship could net you $0 revenue.
Liz explains that unless your product fits the client’s sales catalog and end buyer needs, your client will struggle to sell your product.
“They have to sell products which fit with yours, if you’re asking them to go outside of their normal interactions it doesn’t work…make sure that it [your product] fits so well with buyers that they [partners] prioritize you over any other option.”
A compatible B2B relationship makes selling easy: if your product is easy to sell, there’s a higher chance your client will prioritize you over your competition.
But how to find a compatible client? In a single sales territory, there could be many suitable customers. However, taking time to evaluate each prospective client’s compatibility could make a huge difference. You can use the following criteria to judge a prospective client’s compatibility:
There’s a large difference between calling a client every week to ask them about a deal’s status versus a guided conversation. Spamming clients and pestering them for updates only leads to distrust, frustration, and missed phone calls.
The solution: proactive communication. It’s a fundamental sales skill, essential for building rapport with clients and nurturing transparency in B2B relationships. From her experience, Liz explains that scheduling discussions for updates, lead progress, and delivery changes are shared is a great way to kill spam and work as a team.
These discussions can give a sales rep greater understanding of their client’s situation: when the right questions are asked. To get started, use the following questions:
Listen to Liz’s full approach to proactive communication with your B2B clients here:
Strong B2B relationships need constant maintenance and course-corrections to stay productive. It’s for that reason why Liz recommends yearly and quarterly client collaboration using 2 set agendas. Designed to help sellers understand how to improve their client’s success, these yearly and quarterly discussions use a predefined structure to encourage efficient collaboration.
The yearly agenda is made to focus on wider partnership goals and needs. Discussion should focus on the following topics:
The answers gathered from these questions can help a rep understand the likely position the client will be in over the year, and how that position will affect the client’s spending.
The quarterly agenda focuses closely on month-by-month progress against yearly goals identified in the yearly agenda discussion and outstanding needs. Each quarterly discussion should include the following:
Framed by the wider structure set in the yearly agenda, quarterly discussions help each party quickly share information, review progress, and set the next quarter’s pace.
In action, Liz’s 3 principles can be used as guidelines to ensure new client relationships get a solid foundation. Likewise, if you or your sales reps are struggling with a stagnant relationship, consider using the principles as a diagnostic tool: are we properly aligned, do we have a communication framework in place? Furthermore, if you’re enjoying a strong, issue-free B2B relationship these principles can be used to inspire new ways of working constructively with clients.
If you’d like to get more sales insights and opinions from experts like Liz, why not keep an eye on our webinar page? Stay tuned for details on upcoming free live shows in August and September 2022.
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“I think it's really important that sales is both manageable and predictable, and people think that it can't be, but it absolutely can. Even when you're working through a partner.” Liz Heiman, CEO and Chief Sales Strategist at Regarding Sales has made it her mission to take the mystery out of sales. When it comes to getting the most from distributor relationships, her position is clear: it’s about them, not us.
A US based sales expert, Liz Heiman specializes in optimizing B2B sales organizations. She joined Jonathan and Connie for Making Your Number 2, where she shared her approach to growing sales results by setting shared sales goals with distributors. Additionally, Liz’s discussion set the scene for Numerik’s latest feature release, Customer Goalcards.
Read on to watch the Making Your Number 2 recording, get Liz’s key takeaways, and learn more about how Numerik’s latest feature can help you achieve better sales results with your distributors.
How can you leverage your distributor relationships to grow sales revenue? According to Liz, it’s all about being proactive, picking the right distributors, setting up plans, and sticking to yearly and quarterly agendas. That’s a lot to think about. Let’s break it down!
“The first thing that we really need to think about is that we tend to think if I have a partner that I'm selling through (or a distributor or an agent) that “all I can do is take orders” and just be reactive. And that’s absolutely not true.”
If you aren’t communicating proactively with your distributors, you’ll only come across as spammy, slowly damaging distributor relationships to a point where there’s no goodwill left to explore shared sales goals.
Liz explains that as suppliers, you need to “Find out what their goals are, figure out exactly what they need from you in order to sell your products; support their needs. Figure out some co-marketing opportunities so that you’re actually working together to grow income and have a predefined way to check on the status of existing leads so that you’re not badgering.”
By asking these proactive questions, you’re building distributor relationships, understanding how each distributor defines success, and how you can help them get there.
To put proactive communication into practice, Liz recommends to “...have a process that you go through with them [distributors] where you communicate about what’s going on, what they need from us, and what timing they think they’ll need so you can deliver in time. It’s all about them, not us.”
You can’t build strong distributor relationships and set shared sales goals without the right distributor. If misalignment exists between the products you offer vs those the distributor sells and the end user’s needs, you should be looking for a different distributor.
Before choosing a distributor, Liz asks us to consider: “do you share the same client profile? If you don’t know who your ideal client is, and you don’t know who your ideal agent/partner/distributor is, then you won’t be able to align. You have to be really clear about who your product is best for.”
If your product fits the distributor's needs and works with their clients, they’ll sell it.
As Liz explains: “They have to sell products which fit with yours, if you’re asking them to go outside of their normal interactions it doesn’t work. So make sure your product fits into their product line well, that they are happy with your relationship and with your product, and that it fits so well with clients that they [partners] prioritize you over any other option.”
Meeting regularly to share information must happen, otherwise you’ll have no idea what products are selling. At a minimum, have quarterly meetings with distributors to update them on product changes and make note of anything you can do to help them achieve their goals.
Liz says “you want to have regular meetings with your distributors, at least quarterly. What do they expect to sell so that you can be prepared to deliver it? How can you help them hit their personal goals?”
To plan your next move, you’ll want to find out what tools and support they need and what products they need improved. Additionally, to find sales opportunities, ask the distributor where you stand with them compared to your competitors: their answers help you develop an advantage.
To set shared sales goals and track progress with distributors, you can use yearly and quarterly agendas, whose purpose is to help grow distributor success. Remember: making your distributors more successful makes you more successful.
Starting at the yearly level, Liz says “you want to ask them what are their overall goals, how much money do they want to make this year, how much can you make with us, what do you need for support from us.” Identifying tools and marketing is important, as these can help distributors sell more efficiently. Additionally, take note of changes happening in the distributor’s market, as these could alter your own activities.
At the quarterly level, focus on showing the distributor “their progress toward the goal that you created together. And their progress towards their own personal goal with all of the products they sell. And if they’re not selling the other products, help them sell more of yours.”
Keep the ball rolling by updating each other on leads gathered, those you have for the distributor, and those they’re bringing to you. Help them maintain their schedule by giving an update on future deliveries, pointing out when they can expect orders in what time frame. To maintain proactive communication, don’t forget to ask your distributor for extra information, and give them transparency on any changes you’re making to products, deliveries, or the sales goal.
Got any questions for Liz? She's open for questions: send her a message at liz@regardingsales.com
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The purpose of Customer Goalcards is to allow users to set and track a shared sales goal/rebate with a distributor. The automated system makes it easy to engage distributors in a set sales goal/reward program, helping companies build a better rebate structure.
"they [companies] find that the reporting on rebates is very manual, it's a spreadsheet that goes out once a quarter. Often they will set a target and put a target in place, but it doesn't really drive the results."
In the same way which Numerik's Scorecards help reps keep track of the score, Customer Goalcards helps distributors monitor their progress towards a goal, and motivates them to achieve it.
Distributors will be given a login to Numerik, which'll allow them to see their target, for example, an annual goal of $15,000 per year.
"...they [distributors] are able to log in at any point in time and see how they're going against the goal that's been set for them. What then happens is they're able to break down that goal, click on it and see sales broken down at the product category level."
At the product level, products which have been purchased more/less than last year are highlighted in green/red, allowing reps to have meaningful discussions with distributors on how they're going with their sales.
"...everyone wants to be winning and doesn't want to be in the red. So you naturally start to ask those questions: why is that product group behind, or why is that product behind?
Was there a problem with it? Is it just not getting enough air time within the business? Was there a problem with supply?"
Fully customize-able incentives or rewards can be tied to the achievement of shared targets. Additionally, goals aren't limited to annual goals: you can set promotional goals too.
"...we can also set a promotional goal. This example is a promotion that's running maybe for a month, or it could be running for a quarter. That keeps the distributor not only focused on their annual goal, but also on the promo that's running within the month. And within those arrangements, we can do the' buy 40 get 10 free' type arrangements or any kind of bundle deal."
"...building those relationships with distributors: in this instance, they've probably got 100, 200, or 300 different people selling to them. So how do you be the people that really stands out in their mind?"
By using Customer Goalcards to share the numbers, users are able to ensure they're staying front-of-mind with distributors, and building trust with transparency.
"...[it's] the point about building trust through transparent sharing of the numbers: there's nothing hidden."
Customer Goalcards help remove the strain of organizing data to share with distributors and tracking rebates.
“This is how we'll remove the admin burden from the finance team. Often we found rebate tracking is done by the finance and it's a hassle. [Goalcards] removes that and automates all that part of it."
Send Jonathan an email at jonathan.hubbard@numerik.ly to get more information on how customer goalcards can help you boost your sales revenue.
11:00mins - Jonathan: That's excellent. Liz. I was really interested in your point about building out relationships within the business. I think often people just sort of tend to think of that one to one. Have you got anything more to say about how you've seen that work, or ways to spread your reach if you were with those distributors?
11:21mins - Liz: So there's a couple of ways to do it. First is that the existing relationship with that one person has to be really successful, and then you can ask them: “Hey, who else in your company would be successful selling my product, and can you introduce me?” And: “How is what they're doing different than what you're doing?”
If your distributor is happy with you, if they like working with you, and you ask them to introduce you, they probably will. The other thing you can do is go into each organization, go into LinkedIn, (if you don't have LinkedIn Navigator, you can try doing it on regular LinkedIn or any other tool) and look up all of the people in that organization who are selling, but aren’t selling your product- sometimes it’s an engineer, sometimes it’s a salesperson, sometimes it’s a dentist!
Now you could ask for specific introductions, but you could also send emails, personal emails, let's say: “I'm working with _______ in your company, I'm helping him do about this much a year. I'd love to help you increase your revenue by that much, can we talk?” You can use campaign tools to do this, especially if you really understand what they’re needing, you can say: “Hey, this is the product we sell. And here are some of the tools that would make it easy for you to sell it. Can we talk about how I can help you do this?”
The most important thing to remember is not about you. It’s about the distributor. Every conversation we have is about them and not about us. It's about how do we help them.
13:07mins - Jonathan: That's really good. I thought that your systematic approach, the quarterly and then the annual approach was good. This sales process can be applied to distributors just the same way that it can be to new prospects. But sometimes we don't think about mining those existing relationships do we?
13:26mins - Liz: Yeah, it's a problem. It's not just mining for additional people, it's about mining in the relationships that you have. They don't always think of you. I often help my clients come up with a plan for ‘when this is happening with your customer, that is a good time to talk about this.’ It gives them a little bit more help about when it is a good fit.
13:56 - Jonathan: And I like what you mentioned about how distributors sell what works. If you think about it from their perspective, all these suppliers coming to see them, all these different products. At the end of the day, the products that make them the money, the suppliers who are easy to deal with: they sell what works. It’s always a good challenge, do you think, to have that in your mind from a sales rep perspective, ‘is my offer really working in this account/customer or not?’
14:29mins - Liz: Right. And our distributor is our customer, right? So for our customer and their customer, it has to be a good fit. It has to work and we have to help them.
If you’d like to hear from more sales experts, keep an eye on our Webinars page to save your spot at our next live event.
The quickest way to increase sales is to sell more to existing customers. However, to get a customer into a position to purchase more, a sales rep will need to nurture them, using specific know-how, sales data, and the right sales tool.
In this article, we’ll look at why a sales performance app is the ideal tool for helping reps identify which existing customers to nurture.
To identify customers who need nurturing, it’s best to start with a wider perspective by looking at overall customer performance.
With a sales performance app, sales reps can access a dynamic customer leaderboard which ranks their customers according to a selection of sales metrics. It’s a tool which can give reps a wider perspective on which customers are generally performing better, who the top performers are, and who is lagging behind.
The above example shows the top 7 customers on a rep’s leaderboard organized by order of highest revenue earned for the period. The small vertical dashed line represents a paceline, which signifies a customer’s performance for the same time last year. Those customers in red who are yet to reach their paceline could have the potential to grow if nurtured. However, a rep will need to dig deeper to understand where they should focus their efforts.
If a customer is lagging behind, sales data can help a rep pinpoint where they should focus their effort to nurture more sales.
Drilling into a customer’s sales data reveals which products a customer has purchased more of, those purchased less, and even shed light on why. Similarly to the customer leaderboard, product group and SKU leaderboards use a paceline to show a customer’s purchases for the same time last year, and can be adjusted against other sales metrics.
In the above example, the sales data shows us that purchases in the Laundry group are slightly down from last year. To figure out why, a rep can drill into the product level and even sort their product leaderboard by average unit price compared to last year: revealing if price increases have contributed to the decline in sales of Laundry products.
It’s this intensive data breakdown which gives reps the ability to spot sales opportunities and diagnose why a customer is lagging. From here, reps can look at building a game plan for taking advantage of any sales opportunities and develop ways to nurture customers back into purchasing previously coveted products.
While getting this information from your sales CRM or BI tool isn’t impossible, it isn’t exactly easy and can be a massive time sink for sales reps. A big advantage of the sales performance app is its accuracy, and speed.
Relying on data from your ERP, the sales data used in a sales performance app is live updating, ensuring reps are never making decisions based on month old invoice data. Additionally, quick workflows give reps the capability to quickly skim through sales data to remind themselves of a customer’s situation before going into a phone call or meeting.
Nurturing existing customers is a great way to sell more if reps can identify the right customers to invest time into. By keeping a close eye on sales data, a rep can be the first to spot a sales opportunity, or take action to win back sales.
When it comes down to it, a sales performance app helps reps nurture existing customers by:
If you’d like to see everything a sales performance app can do for you and your sales team, get in touch with us for a hassle-free demo.
If you want to increase sales, the best place solution isn’t casting the net in search of more customers: use your existing customers instead. However, while this sounds simple on paper, getting more sales from existing customers can be like getting blood from a stone: unless you have the right plan.
We spoke to Ian Cartwright, a sales author and consultant with over 30 years experience to discover his technique to growing sales revenue. The result? Use your existing customers!
Listen to the video below to hear Ian’s technique for increasing sales with existing customers, or read our breakdown.
Knowing where to do it is really like polishing what you've got, and hopefully, you have got some way in which you categorize your customers. It's about understanding - and Pareto principle really applies - that typically 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers.
Before you can polish your existing customers and increase sales, you’ll need to understand each customer’s significance to your business, and their growth potential.
One of the best ways to do this, Ian explains, is to categorize your customers: in our case, that’s Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. From here, you’ll need to decide the criteria a customer must meet for each tier. This could be based on how much business they give you, their average spend, or their growth potential.
By doing this you're making sure that you're actually following the money and not chasing unicorns: it's a phrase a customer reflected back to me because he was spending a lot of time on people who ended up being Bronze categories, because he thought they might be good, but he hadn't been through the process to work it out.
What about timeframe? Ian recommends you use customer sales data over 2-3 year to build a detailed picture of customer trends, however you can use software to identify these trends for you quicker. Using sales data will show you why an existing customer has grown, or why they flatlined: information you can use to decide which customers you could increase sales with.
Once you’ve categorized your existing customers, and identified trends, you’ll need to put a plan in place for nurturing them. To start building this plan, ask the following questions:
[once we’ve identified our top customers, we can] program objective activity to make sure that we are in front of them or reaching out to them the right number of times in the right places regularly. Being able to find a way to gather that information and share it within your team is really important. Because that means that across the team you can start replicating good practice which works: making sure that you are clear on who your top customers are and that you are really loving them.
Your goal with this plan is to give sales reps the guidance and resources they need to start nurturing their top customers and realizing their growth potential. Jumpstart your planning with the key account plan template on Ian’s website.
We know who your Gold and Silver customers are: but are you getting all of their business? A really simple exercise to identify low hanging fruit here is to identify whitespaces.
Using their key account plans, your sales reps can now plot out what products your existing customers are buying: and make plans to fill the gaps. This is the ‘how’ of increasing sales among existing customers. Follow these steps:
By identifying whitespaces, your reps can capitalize on previously hidden opportunities to get more sales. As Ian says: “If you can really nurture those existing customers, make sure you're maximizing the amount of problems you're solving for them - you do that you'll get the revenue.”
By this stage, your sales team will be on the way to increasing sales among their existing customers. But what if that’s not enough? Ian has an answer for this too: grow mold.
My last little saying around knowing where to do it is grow mold. Mold grows and spores right next to each other. So does really good sales. So if you've got an existing customer who might be doing some business in an area really similar to where you'd like to grow the next piece of business, just replicate that.
Growing mold is about leveraging the strong relationships formed with existing customers to get referrals and contacts in related businesses. It’s simple for reps to ask customers "we've been doing some great business together, who else do you think I should talk to?”
When a strong relationship exists, Ian explains that these discussions can even turn existing customers into advocates. Additionally, reps can use these customers to generate low cost case studies, perfect as anecdotes for other customers, especially those who are being nurtured from Silver to Gold.
Increasing sales among existing customers is all about nurturing the right customers, taking advantage of sales opportunities and leveraging relationships. Want more expert sales advice? Check out our upcoming sales expert webinars here.
Sales leaders from all industries use sales coaching to equip their talent with the right skills and abilities to effectively achieve sales success. It’s a no-brainer that sales coaching improves sales performance, however, coaching doesn’t come naturally to everyone.
Before you bring in a top sales coach, it’s best to look at your own sales coaching style and make improvements. In this article, we’ll provide five research-backed and expert sales coaching approaches to help your team improve sales results.
Your lowest performing rep has just hit their target for the first time thanks to your one-on-one coaching. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said when you try the same approach on a top performer. Where did you go wrong?
It’s long been discussed that to improve sales results quickly, you’ll need to adapt your sales coaching approach to the individual.
Adapting sales coaching style to the individual is a core finding from a 2015 Texas State University review and research paper. Key Takeaway: You should prioritize adjusting your approach to suit a rep’s character, what they need, what they like/dislike, how they like to communicate.
Some reps may need a show-not-tell approach. Some prefer hard critiques, others need softer words. Perhaps you could sit down for coffee to talk through a sales performance problem, or maybe a few chat messages will suffice.
Jamie is your longest standing rep, a close friend, and takes every critique with ease. In contrast, new rep Casey appears guarded whenever feedback is given. You’re just trying to help, but if feedback isn’t being taken on board positively, it’s hard to see how Casey’s sales performance will improve.
Defined as close harmonious relationships, rapport is essential for not only a great work culture, but great sales coaching. Without rapport, there is very little trust, and low chances of advice being taken to heart. No doubt you already have great relationships with your reps, but it takes time to build trust in all areas of any relationship- especially when it comes to criticism.
In 2019, researchers from California State University found that unless rapport existed between managers and reps, sales coaching effectiveness would be minimal at best. Key Takeaway: Rapport must exist for feedback to be taken seriously and for sales coaching initiatives to succeed.
Build more rapport with your reps by sharing perspectives, asking for their opinions, and empathizing with their experiences.
The logistics of coaching a large sales team can be unrealistic at the best of times. There’s only one you: there has to be a better way to spread knowledge and improve sales results!
Why not use your existing talent? Having top performers act as mentors can be a cost effective approach to quickly improving a newbie’s sales performance, or anyone who’s struggling.
A Kennesaw State University article discovered a strong link between sales mentoring and increased learning uptake in mentees. Additionally, they found that internal mentoring was more effective than external sales coaching. Key Takeaway: Reps will learn more from mentors than outside sales coaches.
What you can do: recognise your talent, work with them on a mentor role (perhaps help them manage their time or give an incentive), and pair them up with someone struggling.
Recently, you’ve been struggling to get your message across while coaching your reps. Perhaps using the same assessment and feedback approach is starting to get old: you need ideas.
Using role play and participating/observing reps in-the-field can be a great way to build better relationships within your team and proactively guide them towards higher sales performance.
A 2017 essay from the University of South Florida explained that unlike typical business coaching, sales coaching requires greater involvement from managers to facilitate learning: using role play or participation/observation. Key Takeaway: Draw conclusions and feedback based on a rep’s sales performance out in the field.
Ask yourself: what are some situations where your reps could find your presence helpful? You could try listening to a sales call on speaker, attending a new range presentation, or getting a rep to try their upselling skills out on you.
While your top reps consistently exceed their targets, you can see others struggling to adopt the same sales-winning behavior. If you can’t find a way to change their behavior, there’ll be no time left to improve sales results before the quarter’s end.
Woven throughout sales and marketing, key performance indicators are metrics which can be used to drive sales performance when they’re tied to sales activities.
According to Australian sales expert David McMurdo, activity KPIs guide sales behavior by identifying expected results, and where the results should come from. Example: you choose a target behavior (e.g. overall sales meetings), show reps exactly where they’ll get success (e.g. a particular category sector), and then benchmark sales performance against the activity (e.g. sales meetings per category sector.)
Look at using activity KPIs in your sales coaching strategy as a tool to define specific successful selling behaviors and set benchmarks. Afterall, what gets measured, gets done!
From the research, we can see that adapting to the individual, building rapport, using mentors, getting involved in the field, and activity KPIs are all viable approaches to beef up your sales coaching. Next time you’re needing to shake up your sales coaching approach, Would you like more free advice like this? Consider booking yourself into a Numerik webinar: where we get sales coaches in to share their approaches for sales success.
In order of appearance:
Badrinarayanan, V., Dixon, A., West, V.L. and Zank, G.M. (2015), "Professional sales coaching: an integrative review and research agenda", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49 No. 7/8, pp. 1087-1113.
Nguyen, C.A., Artis, A.B., Plank, R.E., and Solomon, P.J. (2019), Dimensions of effective sales coaching: scale development and validation. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Vol 39, No. 3, pp. 299-315.
Bradford, S.K., Rutherford, B.N., and Friend, S.B. (2017), The impact of training, mentoring and coaching on personal learning in the sales environment. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, Vol 15, No. 1, pp. 133-151
Nguyen, C.A. (2017), Essays on Sales Coaching. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. University of South Florida Scholar Common
In a previous post, we took a closer look at how Numerik brings value to sales reps. However, there’s more to Numerik than admin-free notes, ease of use, and live commissions. In this article, we’ll take a look at 3 more Numerik features, and see how they give value to sales managers and the wider sales team.
Sales performance has started dropping: your sales reps explain that their targets are unrealistic, difficult to access, and that they’re struggling to plot their course. Left too long, these issues will solidify into long term performance problems, and higher management may intervene.
Being able to tailor sales targets specifically to the individual rep, have them accessible at a moment's notice, and have a live-updating sales forecast can give you and your sales team the visibility and clarity needed to regain sales performance.
“I get a forecast from my managers twice a month. That used to be an arduous task, where they’d have to pore through data and chase their team. Now it’s easy for the sales managers to do forecasting because their sales team are live forecasting on a daily basis.” Daniel Roberts, Tradelink
With Numerik, you can create custom sales targets and use live-updating sales forecasts to set reps on the right path straight from your phone. To account for each individual’s different capabilities, you can set specific sales targets, and change these on-the-fly as sales performance improves. And with live updating sales forecasts, you can always be sure that your team knows where they’re headed, with the forecast itself able to be adjusted by each rep as they anticipate a deal.
It’s the end of Q2 and each rep is over $5k behind their sales target. Unless they can find extra sales, they’ll all miss their targets, growth will stagnate, and you’ll have higher management knocking on your door.
Showing reps how to identify potential deals in sales data can help you boost sales performance and dodge a missed target. However, if you can’t find these easy wins quickly, it’ll be a waste of time.
By drilling into existing customers’ sales data, sales managers and reps can quickly find a hidden sales gap. Perhaps your top automotive parts buyer is $500 behind the pace on oil filters compared to last year:why is that? These sales gap insights give reps the heads up they need to get in touch with customers and close the deals needed to get them to their sales target.
Your reps barely use your CRM for data entry, and you need a sales report compiled ASAP. Without the sales data, you’ll be spending another evening combing through hastily typed notes to piece together your team’s sales performance.
Sales reports may not be critical for an individual rep’s day-to-day, but they help sales managers make better decisions and coach their team. Above all, reports remove the mysteries behind a sales team’s sales performance and customer spend.
Automatic mobile reports in Numerik collate sales data to give you bite size, customizable sales reports whenever you need them. Reports can be configured to share sales team progress, outstanding quotes, revenue and GP, and customer performance. Additionally, reports can be set up to send daily, helping you build a clearer picture of sales performance and as an early warning system when performance starts to drop.
Rep specific sales targets, live updating sales forecasts, sales gap insights, and mobile sales reports can all help you and your team get a better understanding of your sales performance. If you’re curious to see how Numerik works in practice, get in touch with us here to book a live demo.
“My mantra is that sales has no real dark art. It's actually just about being organized and disciplined, and using the right tools so that you can manage the right activities in the right places.” For author and sales consultant Ian Cartwright, growing sales revenue requires a simple but direct approach defined by action: not fixating on end sales results.
Ian Cartwright is the founder of Ian Cartwright Sales Coaching, and author of The 6 Fundamentals of Sales Know-How, a sales handbook for new B2B professionals and SME owners. Ian joined Numerik CEO Jonathan Hubbard for a discussion and interview on his approach to growing sales revenue based on his 30+ years of sales experience.
Read on to watch the full liveshow, get access to Ian's free resources, and view our highlights.
Get the resources mentioned in the video here
How do you grow sales revenue? Ian explains that to grow sales revenue, you’ll need to recognize which sales activities bring success, and concentrate on doing them in the right areas.
“…if you understand your numbers, and what it takes to get a prospect through [to a closed deal], then you can do the right things in the right places every day.”
Make sure your reps understand and can measure how much of a particular sales activity they need to do to achieve a particular sales result.
“In my first sales role in 1994/93, I knew my measurement was I needed to make 12 phone calls a day for meetings: it's still really simple like that. Things have changed with social selling and digital selling, because we're doing different types of outreach, but we still need to be doing the activity.”
Here's an example: If a rep needs to hit a $100k sales target, and they know that 50% of proposals succeed, they can work backwards to find out which activities they need to do each day, and how many. E.g. X number of calls, X no. meetings, X no. proposals per day.
If you want to grow the most sales revenue in a short time, the best place to start is with your existing customer base: building closer relationships, understanding how your products help them, and where growth opportunities lie.
To pinpoint which customers have room to grow, and make plans for nurturing them, your reps will need a way of categorizing their customers, relative to their importance/growth potential.
“I know who my Platinum customers might be: those one or two which your business really revolves around. Then you've got your gold customers, silver, bronze. You’ll need to come up with some criteria that works for your business to ascertain what it means if a customer’s gold, silver. It might be to do with how much business you do with them now, but it might be potential.”
By tracking customer performance over time, reps can see which customers have room to grow, and which ones should be left alone. Make sure your team knows how to communicate with, and nurture each tier (platinum, gold, silver, bronze) of customer.
To get their deals over the line efficiently, reps need to know exactly the right people in a business to be talking with.
“[It’s] about making sure that you know who all the decision makers are, particularly in your platinum and gold customers, because you don't want to be surprised.”
Encourage your reps to find out who the key decision makers are for each tier of customer and note them down in a contact matrix. As for getting a contact, it can be as simple as asking 'this deal that we're trying to get over the line...who else do I need to be talking to about it?'
Once your reps have a better understanding of their existing customers’ potential, they can start looking for sales opportunities: whitespaces.
“Write down who your top 10 customers are. You may have five, six, multiple products that you're dealing with, or taking to market, but you might be able to map out and say actually, for my top customer, they're only dealing with four out of my six products. And I know they're getting the other two from someone else. So I need to put a plan in place to see what I need to do to secure that business.”
By understanding each customer’s problems, building rapport with them, and knowing how to engage with them, reps can begin to capitalize on these whitespaces to boost sales revenue.
Once reps have developed great customer relationships, they can start leveraging those connections to get case studies, referrals, and turn existing customers into advocates.
“If you can really nurture those existing customers, make sure you're maximizing the amount of problems you're solving for them, then you get to develop low cost simple case studies that you can share as anecdotes with other customers that you're talking to.”
Reps can ask their customers for recommendations of other related businesses they could get in contact with: an easy conversation to have if a strong relationship exists. Ian explains that sales is like growing mold, mold spores next to one another, and so do great sales.
Read the condensed interview below for Ian’s take on enriching customer relationships, developing a sales coaching routine, how his 6 Fundamentals work, and how to advance prospects down the sales funnel better.
Jonathan : 15:15min - If I’m a rep out in the field, what can I do to make sure I’m talking in my customer’s language?
Jonathan : 17:29min - Would ‘speaking in your customer’s language’ be something a sales manager could roleplay with a new rep?
Jonathan : 18:39min - How can sales managers practically work coaching into their month?
Jonathan : 20:51mins - Can you give us an example of how your 6 Fundamentals have worked well in practice?
Audience Question : 26:02mins - In the sales funnel you referred to customers being further along these days. In your opinion is it better to give them more info online and let them advance themselves? Or get them to contact you to get that info (but potentially frustrate them) but control the process better?
If you’d like to hear from more sales experts, why not come along to our next webinar on July 12th? Click here to get more details.
First and foremost, Numerik is designed to be a sales rep’s go-to tool for sales performance management, customer insights, and data entry. Sales managers can use the app to track rep performance against set targets and view rep notes instantly - but how exactly does Numerik give value to your sales reps?
In this article we’ll unpack with examples three reasons why Numerik gives sales reps value.
With over 5 million search results for ‘how to get sales reps to use crm,’ on Google, it’s clear that poor sales CRM engagement among reps is a chronic problem. CRMs are a great, powerful tool, but they don’t give sales reps instant access to relevant features or insights to help them close more deals or manage their sales performance.
As Daniel Roberts of Tradelink explains, his reps were disengaged from the CRM because it wasn’t giving them the information they needed to make better decisions and sell more. His team needed help: “Help me reduce my admin. Help me increase my conversions.”
To cut out admin and reduce time spent on non-sales activities, Numerik gives reps the ability to make quick multi-media sales notes against customers. Designed to work like a social post, these sales notes can be shared with managers and the wider sales team, who can react/comment on the post, ultimately providing a growing record of info saved to each customer.
In the heat of a customer meeting, reps need sales insights on hand to support their case and show their credibility. Of course, they could get these insights from a BI tool, provided they curate the latest data, identify the sales opportunities, and type/write it up… before the meeting. Do your reps have time for that?
Carl Fowler’s sales department started using Numerik in late 2021, and praises the app’s ease-of-use. His West Europe sales manager agrees, despite having used Salesforce and other tools, Numerik is the simplest to use.
Check out the quick clip below to see how quickly and easily a rep can find customer and product insights starting from the homescreen:
Commissions are a massive motivator for sales reps: who wouldn’t like to have the power to directly influence their potential earnings? Unfortunately, having the luxury to instantly view your current commission, or future commissions is a luxury few reps have.
With Numerik, sales reps can see their commissions update in real-time when customer orders come through, and can adjust sales forecasts to show them their potential future earnings.
Both Carl and Daniel agree that Numerik’s live updating and forecasted commissions have saved them hours, and helped motivate their reps to get more sales from their customers, especially when tied to forecasting. Daniel says “A salesperson can see instantly on their phone what happens to their incentive if a customer orders more. Seeing their incentive dollars ticking up in real time drives salespeople to use forecasting.”
Zero admin sales notes, quick easy access to sales insights, and live-updating commissions linked to sales forecasts are just three Numerik features which give reps value. In another post we’ll explore how Numerik’s other features, including customizable sales targets, sales gap insights, and glanceable reports can give you and your sales team extra value.
“The team love Numerik. They say, ‘If you're going to invest in a new tool, just make it as easy to use as Numerik, because Numerik helps me do my job’. If someone was on the fence about choosing Numerik, I’d send our most change averse salespeople to speak to their team. Because when even the tech cynics in our team are using it and being advocates for the tool, that speaks volumes.” - Daniel Roberts, Tradelink
Click the following links if you’d like to read more about Daniel and Tradelink’s Numerik journey, or Carl and Quin Global’s Numerik story.
