Insights for Smarter Sales
In the competitive arena of B2B sales, working smarter — not harder — is crucial for salesreps to hit their targets. As you strive to hit those ever-climbing targets, the right sales enablement tools can be your secret weapon. In a sea of thousands, it's crucial to choose tools that not only deliver results but also provide actionable analytics, insights, and intelligence. This guide will spotlight top-tier sales solutions, each infused with analytics and reporting capabilities to elevate your sales game.
Field sales reps, constantly on the move, need tools that not only generate leads but also provide deep insights and easy access. According to research by Forbes, sales reps spend up to 65% of their time searching for prospects and doing outreach. The right tools can significantly streamline the process, enabling sales reps to focus more on engaging with leads rather than finding them. Here are five tools that redefine lead generation efficiency
Investing in the right lead generation tools is a game-changer, especially for field sales reps. It’s about hitting those ever-growing targets with smarter strategies, not harder work. With tools like these, you’re not just chasing leads; you’re strategically engaging and converting them.
Invesp's research shows that nurtured leads can yield 20% more sales opportunities. Effective nurturing tools are essential for maximizing these prospects. Lead nurturing is all about strategically cultivating relationships with potential customers throughout the sales funnel. In 2024, the game has changed – it's not just about staying in touch, it's about staying relevant, engaging, and one step ahead. Here’s a look at the top lead nurturing tools for sales teams this year, each bringing something unique to the table:
Selecting the right lead nurturing platform is crucial for turning prospects into loyal customers. With tools like Pipeline, Inside Sales Box, AWeber, Salesforce and Pardot, and LeadSquared, your sales team is equipped to not just follow up, but foster meaningful relationships that drive conversions. (Add Numerik into the mix, and you've got a winning formula for nurturing leads with precision and insight.)
Communication is the cornerstone of success. As sales teams navigate through the complexities of client interactions, target chasing, and internal collaborations, the need for effective communication tools becomes increasingly evident. The right set of tools can transform the way sales teams interact, share information, and collaborate on strategies. It's not just about staying connected; it's about enhancing productivity, fostering a culture of collaboration, and aligning team efforts towards common goals.
Each of these platforms offers unique features tailored to different aspects of sales communication and collaboration. From the comprehensive team management of Microsoft Teams to the specialized sales focus of Numerik, these tools collectively empower sales teams to communicate effectively, collaborate efficiently, and achieve their targets with greater precision and insight.
The paradox of reporting is that while it's essential, it can eat into valuable selling time. Today's sales teams require tools that offer more than just data compilation – they need systems that provide real-time insights, identify trends, and facilitate swift, informed decision-making. Here, we explore some of the top sales reporting tools of 2024, each bringing unique capabilities to the table.
These tools are tailored to transform the way sales teams approach reporting. They provide the perfect blend of efficiency, insight, and user-friendliness, ensuring that sales strategies are data-driven and results-oriented. Whether it's through detailed analytics or at-a-glance updates, these platforms empower teams to make informed decisions swiftly, driving sales success in today's competitive market.
As we step into 2024, the landscape of B2B sales continues to evolve. Embracing these cutting-edge tools is not just about keeping pace – it's about leading the charge. Are you ready to equip your team with the best to not just meet, but exceed your sales goals? The future of sales is here, and it's powered by innovation. These tools provide a competitive edge, blending informed strategies with workflow optimizations. Remember, the right tool not only fits into your current process but elevates it.
Embracing these sales enablement tools means you're not just keeping up with the industry; you're setting the pace. Here's to smarter selling and bigger wins!
Building robust sales relationships goes beyond the routine practices of sending monthly newsletters, commemorating birthdays, or offering substantial discounts—although these gestures are universally appreciated. However, the real depth of sales relationships is often overlooked, with Sales Reps frequently defaulting to CRMs when considering the use of customer data to enrich interactions. A more impactful strategy lies in utilizing data to initiate meaningful conversations. This article unveils three key sales metrics, derived from customer data, that Sales Reps can leverage to enhance sales relationships without disclosing sensitive company details.
Facing challenges in deciphering the reasons behind a customer's erratic or stagnant year-on-year growth? Identifying these patterns is crucial for leveraging the full potential of your customer relationships. The Revenue Swing metric, a cornerstone in sales data analysis, facilitates dialogues around the overarching trends impacting a customer's purchasing decisions by comparing their monthly revenue year-on-year.
An approach might include discussing observations such as, "We've noticed a trend in your spending with a decrease from March to June, yet an increase from September to December. Could this be related to budgetary restructuring?" This metric not only paves the way for customized sales strategies but also enriches the CRM database with actionable insights for future engagements.
To calculate the revenue swing, compare the monthly revenue generated by a customer in the previous year with the corresponding month in the current year to identify the year-on-year variance.
Struggling with pitches that miss the mark, despite having detailed purchase histories? The Quantity Swing metric offers a granular view of a customer's purchasing patterns, comparing their monthly purchase volumes year-on-year to unveil trends of growth or decline.
By inquiring, "Could you share how current market demands are influencing your order volumes? Are there new projects on the horizon?" Sales Reps demonstrate a vested interest in the customer's operational challenges and preferences. This depth of understanding strengthens sales relationships, enabling the delivery of tailored product recommendations.
To determine the quantity swing, organize a customer's purchases from the previous year into a 12-month history and compare it on a month-by-month basis with the purchases made in the current year, in order to detect any increases or decreases.
When sales teams have access to customer data and SKU pricing but still face reduced order sizes, additional context is needed. The Average Unit Price Swing metric illuminates the specific pricing changes affecting purchasing behaviors, comparing SKU prices year-on-year.
A conversation starter might be, "We've observed a notable decrease in your usual SKU purchases. Are there new sourcing strategies in place, or are other factors influencing your purchasing decisions?" This metric fosters a comprehensive understanding of customer preferences and market dynamics, crucial for strategic sales planning.
To find the average unit price swing: Compile the prices of SKUs purchased by a customer last year, and juxtapose these figures with this year's prices for the same SKUs to identify any price changes.
With the right customer data at their fingertips, Sales Reps are equipped to foster insightful conversations at any engagement level. However, the challenge often lies in efficiently accessing these insights. Sales performance apps like Numerik are revolutionizing this process, consolidating critical sales metrics and enabling on-the-go access without compromising sensitive data.
In essence, targeted sales metrics can profoundly enhance sales relationships, provided the conversations aim at achieving personalized, mutually beneficial outcomes. If navigating these metrics seems daunting, consider exploring how a tailored demo can illuminate these insights, transforming your approach to sales strategy and CRM integration.
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We know that sales performance apps help sales reps achieve their targets and increase overall performance, but how else can this tool boost sales results?
In this quick article we’ll discuss a sales performance app’s additional benefits to help you decide if it’s the right investment for your team.
The quarter is nearing completion, and ¾ of the team is set to make their target. Unfortunately, you have no idea why the other ¼ is struggling. Without intervening and guiding reps towards more successful behavior, growth will stagnate: how can you boost sales results before it’s too late?
Good sales coaching is about recognising the core issue behind a rep’s poor sales results and then personally working with them to improve. According to a 2021 Harvard Business Review article, a big step for successful sales coaching is understanding the root cause of a problem and making expected behaviors clear.
Fortunately, a sales performance app can act as a problem diagnosis and behavior guidance tool through tracking performance and activities of reps, and assisting managers in encouraging specific actions that lead to best results with KPIs. Once a rep begins struggling, their manager can intervene and specify the correct behavior. Managers and reps can then measure performance against these behaviors on a KPI leaderboard.
Reps are blocking out whole afternoons to update the CRM and they’re getting increasingly frustrated that they’re having to set aside this time at all when they could be selling. How can you drive sales results if your team is being forced to do admin?
Cluttered and unintuitive CRMs and slow to update BI tools aren’t made to quickly give reps insights they need, like customer revenue vs last year, gross profit vs LY, a six month sales forecast, or their customer notes. Furthermore, if reps are waiting until later in the day, or week, to log customer notes, it’s almost guaranteed they’ll have forgotten key information which could help them make future sales.
A sales performance app cuts that time by making rep-specific information a priority, meaning reps can quickly spot opportunities, spend more time selling, and enjoy taking customer notes without the admin.
This month’s sales campaign isn’t off to a profitable start and rep motivation and competitiveness has dried up. If the problem isn’t solved, you’ll have missed another target and be left with overstocked warehouses.
A recently developed field in management and still growing, gamification involves applying gaming attributes to non-game situations to increase engagement and motivation. Articles from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2015 and 2016 explained that among existing research, gamification can succeed in a sales context, particularly using leaderboards.
Built to communicate information in leaderboard format, a sales performance app is a great fit for a sales manager looking to incorporate gamification as part of a wider motivation program. With rep leaderboards and a live feed, this tool can help managers and reps quickly check progress and share performance with the team.
Your reps are struggling to find success pitching additional products to clients, and it’s affecting customer relationships. Clients are feeling as if their reps don’t understand them, and missed sales opportunities are beginning to impact sales results.
Upselling and cross-selling can help reps quickly boost revenue and give customers more personalized deals providing they understand customer intentions, needs and purchase history. According to Forbes and Business Matters in 2021 and 2020, upselling and cross selling can build better customer relationships and loyalty. Business Matters particularly highlights how access to customer data can influence an upselling/cross-selling strategy.
A sales performance app is designed for reps to quickly access and record customer notes and data to help them identify a current or future sales opportunity. The customer data insights they provide, including revenue vs LY, average unit price vs LY, and quantity purchased vs LY can help reps make informed upselling/cross selling choices.
To kickstart the sales coaching process, spice up sales campaigns with gamification, free up selling time, and make better upselling/cross-selling decisions, you’ll need a sales performance app. If you’d like to see how this tool can deliver a strong ROI for you and your team, book a demo here.
Harvard Business Review, Avoid a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Sales Coaching, December 16, 2021
Knowledge at Wharton, Gamification: Still a Gamble, but One with Real Payoffs, December 7, 2015
Knowledge at Wharton, People Love Games — but Does Gamification Work?, February 3, 2016
Forbes Advisor, What Is Upselling? Everything You Need To Know, December 15, 2021
Business Matters Magazine, Upselling and Cross-Selling: Maximising your business’s revenue and profits, September 7, 2020
Sales leaderboards are tools which can boost sales motivation by displaying rep performance against their peers. Additionally, sales leaderboards can create healthy competition, help build company culture, and guide your reps towards successful sales behaviors.
Let’s see how a simple sales leaderboard can help you motivate your sales team to greater success!
It’s mid year, and you’re struggling for ways to reinvigorate a stale sales campaign. Even your best reps are struggling: sales motivation is low.
A company’s front line fighters, sales reps are passionate, determined, and enjoy a competitive environment. Unfortunately, without motivation, a rep’s performance begins to stagnate, as they begin to slack off. Luckily, if sales motivation is dwindling, you can use a sales leaderboard, and gamification to turn your sales campaign into a competition.
Gamification applies game playing concepts, like leaderboards, points, or scores to non-game situations to make them more engaging. Essential for nearly every competition type, leaderboards show who the winners are, and who’s on the up. Using this simple principle to stir up existing competitiveness amongst reps is a great way to boost sales motivation: especially if there’s a prize.
Mistrust, jealousy, conflict: these problems borne from poor company culture can seriously affect sales motivation. If the workplace isn't nice, reps won’t be keen about working there!
Sales leaderboards can help you create a more supportive and tight-knit company culture through transparency. Sharing rep performance with the team is a great way to break the ice and facilitate interaction: if the leaderboard shows someone is clearly struggling, it’s simple to ask if they need a hand.
By using a sales leaderboard to create transparency, you’ll take the first step into creating a workplace where reps feel motivated to do their best, knowing they have the support of their colleagues.
While your top reps consistently exceed their targets, you can see others struggling to adapt their sales strategy to each customer. There’s nothing more demotivating than trying everything you can to succeed while others seem to succeed without trying.
To revive sales motivation, you can use sales leaderboards, and activity Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to coach your reps into more successful behaviors. Begin by selecting the specific sales techniques you know bring greater success and assign targets to them: these could include sales meetings per product sector or targets by product category. You can now create a KPI leaderboard which shows rep performance against their peers for each KPI, adding a competitive element to the journey for better sales results.
By guiding your sales team towards more consistent and successful behaviors, you’ll find that satisfaction and sales motivation increases as each rep finds their stride and starts earning higher commissions.
Ultimately, a sales leaderboard is a versatile tool which you can use to generate competition, build a better workplace culture, and guide your reps to greater sales success. If you’d like to see a sales performance app which uses leaderboards for not only rep competition, but also customer performance and revenue breakdowns, click here.
A sales deck is a slide show which sales reps use during a product demonstration, new range presentation, or sales pitch to engage prospects and reinforce their talking points.
However, if your reps are using a poorly designed sales deck, they’ll struggle to get purchase with their prospects, and sales performance may suffer. If you’ve got waning sales performance, reviewing your rep’s sales decks should be on your list.
In this article, we’ll give you 4 criteria every high performing sales deck should meet.
After a new range presentation, your rep remarks to you that despite their existing relationship with the customer, it was difficult to engage them, no matter how many anecdotes were told. Surely there’s a more effective way to capture attention?
Fortunately, reps can use narrative structure to re-engage their audience with creativity and clear direction. Using a problem→solution story structure can spark curiosity among a rep’s audience as they wait to know how a product can solve their problem.
Build out a story sales deck by recognising and empathizing with the prospect’s problem. Identifying the prospect’s problem should be easy if your reps are logging detailed call notes. Next, outline costs for not solving the problem and the failings of other solutions. To finish, the rep presents their product as the best solution.
Despite having statistics for ROI evidence in their sales decks, reps are still being asked the same product questions: Is it popular with your other clients? What do they say about it? The reps are struggling to shift stock and you’re beginning to notice sales performance is flatlining.
To break a prospect’s barriers to change, reps need to use social proof in their sales decks, through either case studies or testimonials to justify the product solution their story identifies.
Reps could contact their top customers and ask how well the product contributed to their sales performance, or what their customers have to say about it. After setting up a testimonial slide in their sales decks, reps won’t be faced with additional questions.
The sales decks your team produces for new range presentations have images, but you don’t think they’re enough to make an impact on customers, and some appear to be purely decorative. How can their sales decks be visually modified to generate buzz and help close deals?
Humans are excellent visual thinkers- sales reps can use this to explain complex ideas in an appealing way using visual metaphors. Visual metaphors use pictures or videos to stand in as a symbol for something else: think of any car advert where a cheetah is used to represent performance.
Ask your reps to identify each product’s largest benefit: how would you visualize that benefit? What image can you produce that’ll get the product to stick in the prospect’s mind?
Reps are seeing great results with sales decks for wholesaler product demos, but struggle to gain purchase when presenting account managers the same content. You know that without getting through to these key decision makers, sales performance won’t grow quickly.
Reps should adapt sales deck material and story structure to their audiences as no audience is the same: an account manager needs different information to be convinced to purchase compared to a branch manager.
For existing customers, reps could use customer data and details captured in call notes to justify additional spending on a product, perhaps sales are down on last year’s and there’s room for a deal?
Using story structure, justifying claims with social proof, and explaining points with visual metaphors are key steps which can help a rep’s sales deck contribute to sales performance.
However, if you want to help reps personalize their sales decks to customer needs, you’ll need the up-to-date sales gap insights offered by a sales performance app. Check it out here.
If you’re using sales KPIs but aren’t getting sales results, or finding it impossible to get your team engaged with those KPIs or writing customer notes, read on.
Welcome to setting KPIs reps care about: with David McMurdo and Jonathan Hubbard.
To help you create better sales KPIs, we had veteran sales coach and founder of McMurdo Consultants, David McMurdo, with us to discuss the KPIs you should avoid, the ones you should embrace, and how to create them.
Complementing David’s teachings was a feature release demo for Numerik’s new KPI/posts feature given by our CEO Jonathan: unique rep-focussed features designed to make note-taking as fun and simple as possible.
Scroll down to discover David and Jonathan’s top 5 takeaways, a full transcript with images, and the live-show recording.
If you’ve got any questions for David and Jonathan, you can reach them on LinkedIn at:
Five key takeaways from David’s discussion on making better KPIs which drive success:
Five key takeaways from Jonathan’s KPI/Posts feature Numerik demonstration:
Key timestamps:
0:25 - Connie’s Introduction
2:33 - David begins his discussion
3:03 - David’s background
5:38 - The Rack Model
6:55 - How do we get results?
8:23 - The Effort Model
9:44 - What are KPIs and what should they look like?
11:07 - The mistakes organizations make regarding KPIs
13:50 - Using activity KPIs
16:02 - David finishes his discussion
16:26 - Jonathan begins his demonstration
18:06 - How Numerik works (targets)
20:26 - How Numerik works (leaderboards)
22:33 - Why we’ve introduced KPI/posts
25:00 - What can posts do?
31:57 - David adds insight (rep motivation to enter data)
32:43 - Jonathan’s response to David’s point
33:35 - Examples of posts your reps could create
34:45 - Introducing the KPI leaderboard
36:10 - Jonathan summarizes his demonstration
38:35 - Q & A session begins
39:07 - David answers the first question
41:25 - David gives his answer for the second question
42:40 - Jonathan gives his answer for the second question
44:05 - Connie gives David and Jonathan’s emails, and teases the next webinar in July
Is your team performing at their peak? If your targets are being consistently missed, reps are slacking off, the CRM isn’t being updated, no-one is communicating: chances are they’re not quite there.
It’s vital we solve lacking sales performance issues to ensure we consistently make our number and ensure you’re getting the most from your frontline staff.
To solve this problem, let’s look at 7 quick tips you can start using today to improve sales performance.
Flicking through the CRM, you realize that despite increasing the number of proposals they’re sending out, your reps still aren’t getting more customers. Are these proposals actually driving sales success?
To redirect your reps’ focus, you’ll want to identify the right sales behaviors, and incentivize their achievement. Start by identifying specific activity Key Performance Indicators which align with company strategy, then tie a target to each KPI and set up a leaderboard to track rep progress against each target.
Show your reps what’s in it for them by setting up incentives for topping the KPI leaderboard. Explain that achieving the KPI targets will help each rep’s sales performance and ultimately help them earn higher commissions.
Several times a month your reps come to you for help finding their sales targets in the BI tool. Without quick access to their sales target, your reps’ will begin to flounder and sales performance will miss the mark.
Easy, clear access to the sales target is critical for rep engagement, focus, and sales motivation. Collaborate with your team to set achievable targets which everyone can access no matter where they are.
You’ve started noticing your reps are becoming gloomy, and are hesitant to reach out to you. When pressed on the issue, they explain they’re unsure if they’re performing well because you aren’t giving feedback.
To sustain sales performance and improve company culture, we need to acknowledge success to provide a benchmark for others. If your reps are doing a good job, celebrate their achievements: post feedback into your sales team WhatsApp, or put it in your sales performance app posts page.
Reports are in: overall revenue for every customer is down by an average of 39% over last year. Your reps have been missing out on deals and if the sales opportunities can’t be identified, company growth will flatline.
An effective way to improve and sustain sales performance long term is to capitalize on hidden sales opportunities. Teaching your reps to identify sales gaps in customer data within the CRM/BI tool is a great way to accelerate progress towards the sales targets, and grow their commission.
However, getting information from the CRM can be a difficult and time consuming task for reps: it’d be far quicker and easier to use a rep-specific sales performance app to drill into customer data.
When the month began your team was performing in top gear, yet they finished well behind target. Worse, no-one can pinpoint when things started going wrong.
A high performing sales team needs sales forecasts for the same reason they need sales targets: direction. Without a sales forecast, reps will struggle to gauge sales performance towards target and fail to take action when progress starts slipping. Get started by meeting with the team to create a forecast or let them update their forecasts themselves throughout the month using a smart sales forecasting app.
Your sales reps are bored: you can see they’re at idle, doing the bare minimum to get by - but only barely. There are no excuses for a poorly performing sales team, and you have to act quick before progress grinds to a halt.
Reps are determined and naturally competitive: use this to your advantage to reignite sales motivation. Sales leaderboards are a visual tool which pits rep performance against each other, harnessing rep competitiveness, motivating them to sell more. You can use leaderboards in conjunction with unique rewards/achievement to gamify your sales campaign and put the spark back in your reps’ worklife.
If you’re tracking at 65% for the month, you don’t have time to drill into your reporting data to see what your reps were up to. You don’t have time to build a sales forecast or sales leaderboard from scratch. And you definitely don’t have time to manually sort through customer data to find sales opportunities.
Rep-focused sales performance apps are designed to be a rep’s go-to tracking and insight tool, while allowing you to spot gaps in their performance. A sales performance app can provide forecasts, leaderboards, identify opportunities, and benchmark current performance based on historical data all from your phone.
Clearly there’s a lot of moving parts to give your reps the best shot at a stellar performance. If you want to give your reps that opportunity, we recommend you book a demo here.
Sales targets are a sales team’s most important goal - the final destination and visualization of success. Whether you benchmark revenue, units sold, or gross profit, the biggest costs of consistently missing sales targets are the same: stuttering company growth, rep burnout/turnover, and stock pileup.
In this post we’re going to cover four ideas that can help your team make their sales target, without having to hire more reps.
Let’s dive in.
When asked, your reps explain that their sales target is unreasonable, they simply can’t find a way to achieve what’s being asked of them. Their performance is clearly flagging, and you’re concerned these issues may land you with resignation letters if it isn’t solved in the long run.
Set up properly, sales targets can be a mechanism to drive rep performance. To get there, you’ll need to deconstruct the overall sales target and work with your team to set a new one which they can refer to whenever needed.
Set up a time to get together with the team, hear their thoughts, and collectively work to create a new sales target which they mutually agree is achievable; then ensure everyone can see the target, whether on their phone, or on a whiteboard.
Your reps aren’t following up their leads, aren’t communicating with you, and their capacity for customer data reporting has dried up. Low rep motivation is a pervasive issue which may lead to your team slacking off and doing the bare minimum.
Sales reps are a company’s front line, whose passion for selling must be nurtured, at team and individual levels.
Light a fire under your sales team by nurturing inter-rep competition. You could turn your sales campaign into a game, keep a physical scoreboard, and make the competition a regular part of standup team meetings.
Alternatively, if it’s an individual rep you’re concerned for, you could try helping them understand their individual impact, or suggest sales techniques which play to their strengths.
Stock is beginning to pile up and your team can’t seem to shift it, despite their continued efforts. After downloading customer data from the CRM, you’ve identified a pattern of missed sales opportunities which your team could’ve capitalized on: if they had the right information.
Acting quickly on a pre-existing sales opportunity could be the final push a rep needs to reach their sales target. To give your team this capability, you’ll need to either drill down into the customer data yourself and regularly share your findings, or encourage your reps to independently work through the data.
Unfortunately, using CRM data to identify sales opportunities can be very time consuming: in a pinch, a sales performance app is far more effective.
Sales performance was at a high on the 1st, but by the 30th, your team appears to have lost their way. Without a road map to plot the course ahead, the unfocused team is unlikely to hit their sales target.
Stopping to reflect on a sales forecast can be a great way to empower your reps. Forecasts give you the ability to influence the final result before you get there, allowing you to take corrective action before it’s too late.
At the month’s beginning, get together with your team, look at current spend vs. the sales target and plot how much additional spend is needed to get on track. To keep it simpler, you could look at using a sales performance app to give reps a live-update forecast on their phone, tied to their commissions, which can instantly show them how they’re tracking, and what they’re earning.
To make immediate improvements, collaborating to create more achievable targets, motivating reps at team and individual levels are both practical options. However, to properly identify sales opportunities, and make best use of a real-time sales forecast, you’ll need to look at using a sales performance app.
If you’re in a critical position and need to find a solution before another sales target is missed, get in touch now.
A sales performance app is a tool which sales managers and reps use to track their sales progress towards a target, motivates them to achieve it, and shows where opportunities for growth are. On the other hand, a sales CRM is a tool for managing customers, interactions your reps have with them, and who potential customers are.
On the surface, these two sales tools appear to do the same job, but when used in the workplace, they’re very different.
In this article we’ll highlight the key differences of these two systems and help you understand which is right for your sales team.
It’s five minutes before the quarterly meeting with their top automotive parts buyer, and your rep is feeling somewhat unprepared. Imagine the confidence your rep would have with a product breakdown by number of units sold, average price and the products which are growing/declining on hand to quickly identify an opportunity to sell more! Would they have the time to find this information in a CRM?
Because CRMs are built for managers, to analyze customer data and produce detailed reports, it can be very difficult for reps to find the right customer data when they need it. On the flip side, a sales performance app is designed to communicate essential customer insights to the rep in a quick, straightforward way.
The key difference is that sales performance apps give reps the customer data they need to make decisions in the moment, whereas sales CRMs give managers insights into customer relationships to plan for the future.
If your rep asks you what their potential bonus will be for hitting a forecasted target, chances are you’ll need to plough through your CRM’s forecasts to get an answer. You don’t have the time for this, but with a sales performance app, your reps won’t be asking you this question anymore- they can find out for themselves.
Both sales CRMs and sales performance apps provide forecasts and incentives. However, a powerful sales performance app combines forecasts, incentives, and commissions into one real-time updating package, keeping reps up-to-date and motivated.
Unlike CRM forecasts which must be updated manually, a performance app forecast can be updated on a rep’s phone very quickly, helping them visualize their potential earnings and change tactics if they see they’re falling behind target.
Sales CRMs give forecasts and incentives, whereas sales performance apps do forecasts, incentives, and show reps their commissions, all in real-time.
How many times have you entered your CRM only to discover that you’re missing half the customer information you expected to have? You already know why; none of your reps are using the CRM because it takes them away from what they’re good at and forces them to spend time in the office. Motivating your team is one thing, but you won’t get them using the CRM if it isn’t easy and natural to use.
Mobile sales performance apps are designed to be quick and usable, fitting with a rep’s on-the-road lifestyle. Instead of finding a space to set up their laptop and begin filing, they can pull out their phone to log notes using voice-to-text right after a meeting, keeping their manager updated.
A sales CRM is designed to be used by managers who have time to sit down and use the software for extended periods of time to dig for information they need; a sales performance app is made to be easily and quickly used on-the-go by the sales rep.
For sales reps, having a mobile, user-friendly tool that provides on hand insights can help them achieve more sales. CRMs retain their use for managers as a tool for reporting customer data, but they can’t give sales reps quick access to usable data, proper motivation through live-update forecasts/commissions, or easily slot into their lifestyle. If you’re interested in learning more about how a sales performance app can help your reps close better than your CRM, click here to get a free demo.
Powerful business tools designed for managers and analysts, CRMs are a great tool for making major business decisions based on customer behavior insights.
However, CRMs struggle to provide the same value as a sales performance enhancement tool; why is that?
In this article, we’ll explain a CRM’s key limitations as a sales performance tool and how to recognise your CRM is affecting your sales team.
Think back to your CRM onboarding experiences. At first you couldn’t find what you needed, but after months of extra training courses, independent how-to guides, and support calls, you were a natural.
However, without the outside support, you would’ve been in big trouble. Would that extra content still exist if the CRM was truly intuitive? A sales rep should be able to pick up a new software that’s built specifically for them and quickly begin using it to optimize their workday, however, if the software isn’t intuitive, they’ll only be wasting time.
Your CRM’s customer data section is empty, the team is falling behind target, and to top it off, they’ve all gone back to pen and paper. Is this a familiar situation? Chances are your sales team has been overwhelmed by your CRM.
If your management, onboarding, or IT Department misses the mark with CRM setup, it’ll become overwhelming for reps to use. If it’s a struggle to use, reps can become disengaged and lose motivation to use the CRM. An overcomplicated improperly setup software, doesn’t easily fit into a sales rep workflow, even if it’s intended as a tool to streamline regular activities.
How many times have your reps asked: “Do you want me to sell stuff, or do administration?”
Often, CRMs disrupt sales rep activity by pulling them away from their main role as a salesperson, interrupting their workflow; a classic example being sales note taking.
Having to hastily catalog a potential sales opportunity into the CRM between meetings wastes a rep’s time and explains why notes are not detailed, or non-existent. Without that information, management will have no idea if forecasted targets will be met, or if performance is on track at all.
Company managers/management decide what information is relevant for reps to use and enter, even if it’s unrelated to sales performance. Spending time entering data unrelated to their job for management’s benefit decreases rep efficiency and could discourage them from using the CRM altogether.
Now, sales target progress cards, sales team leaderboards, and sales live feeds are all tools which deliver valuable insight for a sales rep. Unfortunately, in practice, your CRM isn’t designed to deliver this value to the sales rep; the value is delivered for management only.
CRMs have their uses, but don’t cut it for reps who exclusively need sales performance insights. In practice, asking a rep to use a CRM to meet their target is like asking an accountant to use a compass to do finances; the tools don’t apply. It’s vital to have the right tools for the job, something you can learn more about here: sales performance app vs sales CRM.
Designed for sales managers and their reps, a sales performance tool is used to track sales target progress, foster sales team motivation, and identify sales opportunities. Business intelligence, or BI tools, are powerful data analysis and reporting systems which provide higher management with past vs present business performance data to help them make decisions.
Which is best for your sales reps? In this article we’ll compare these two tools to help you find an answer.
Let’s get into it!
With 3 minutes left on a call with top whiteware customer Sleek Kitchen Solutions, your rep has a hunch that there was an opportunity to get more sales. The rep settled on a microwave order half as large as last quarter’s, but the frustration remains; what caused the drop?
That information could have been found in a BI tool - but not easily. Even the best sales rep would struggle to trawl BI reports, and scan spreadsheets while keeping up an engaging and professional conversation with a customer.
Designed to make customer data available at a glance, a sales performance app can effortlessly drill down to the product level showing a rep where sales opportunities and gaps lie.
This time before their meeting, your rep was able to find Sleek Kitchen Solutions’ purchase history in their BI tool. Unfortunately, because that data was out-of-date the deal fell through: Sleek Kitchen Solutions felt as though your rep wasn’t paying attention to their recent purchases and had pitched them a product they didn’t need.
Without a live-data stream, reps may struggle to make strong decisions, and won’t be able to change their path if they aren’t on track to meet their target mid-month. Sales performance apps plug right into your ERP, and can present live-updated customer data in the moment when new invoices come through. With this tool, reps can rest easy that each sales opportunity they identify is genuine, and that they’re giving their customers the best possible experience.
Having access to the latest and most relevant customer data can give sales reps a big advantage when they’re negotiating with customers. BI tools have their benefits, but they can’t give reps up-to-date insights when they need them most, unlike a sales performance app.
If you’re interested in another comparison between a sales performance app and another common software for sales teams, the humble crm, check out our previous post.
To learn more about how a sales performance app can help your team, click here to get a free personalized tour.
You're 3 weeks deep into the month and you're still unsure how your team is progressing towards the target. You don't know where your reps are at, and you're pretty sure there are unrecognized sales opportunities among your existing clients. Now is the time to learn how sales tracking can be used to up your sales performance!
Although, without an understanding of the specific areas to focus on, it can be difficult to know how to use sales tracking to paint a clearer picture of rep performance.
In this article, we'll take a look at the most important areas to focus on in sales tracking to give you the best chance of improving sales and rep performance over time.
A new quarter has begun, targets have been assigned, and your team is overwhelmed, unmotivated, and already lagging behind. How can you drive your team towards the quarterly target, and preempt a drop in performance?
Sales tracking is a critical tool which, when updated regularly, can help a team visualize their progress towards the overall target, and act as an early warning system for a drop in pace. Tracking team progress can help a team understand how their individual efforts are helping move the team towards the target, boosting motivation and focus.
If visualizing the goal in a clear way isn't enough, you can additionally use sales tracking to build forecasts- which are great for tracking the team's pace and identifying when to intervene to prevent poor sales results. If you use a sales tracking app, this is where you'd be keeping an eye on your team-wide pace using real-time updating forecasting / progress tracking.
Without having current data on rep activity, it's hard to tell what your team is really up to; are they following up on their leads, or following up on their Instagram? If you had the right information, you may have been able to pinpoint the moment when one rep began lagging behind, and gaps started growing between your top performers.
Tracking individual reps can help you identify rep level sales gaps and quickly identify which reps you should follow up on. Rep tracking data can additionally be used to drive healthy competition with leaderboards, and create better work habits using sales KPIs.
You could even tie a KPI to a sales activity, for example, number of face to face meetings, and track instances of reps meeting this KPI on a team leaderboard; increasing rep engagement and giving you an even clearer picture of rep performance.
March's revenue for your top buyer SensationBathrooms Ltd have suddenly dropped by 60% compared to last year. Without customer level tracking, this drop came out of nowhere, and now your rep is falling behind their target. Imagine if your rep had the customer data on hand to spot this earlier!
Keeping record of customer purchases, tracking their progress towards a target, and giving reps speedy access to that data can help reps identify sales opportunities and recognize which customers are behind and need attention most. However, if you still aren't getting a clear picture of why a customer is falling behind, you may need to drill down deeper to the product line / SKU level.
While investigating SensationBathrooms Ltd's purchase record, your rep has noticed that gold shower heads, the customer's most purchased product, is earning far less profit than last year. After checking gross profit for other shower heads, the rep realizes that performance can be improved by persuading the customer to buy the more profitable stainless shower heads at the same price.
Without that information, your rep would have missed the opportunity to the right sales...those which make the most money for the company! Through access to purchase tracking at the product / SKU level, reps are able to understand why a customer is lagging, and what they should do to get a better sales result.
Whether you're tracking team-wide targets, individual reps, customers, or specific SKUs, it's important to use a tool which updates information regularly and gives reps the right data when they need it. However, sales tracking isn't solely influenced by the tracking tools you use; external factors like supply, season, or global heath crises can also impact sales performance.
Understanding team performance is one thing, but it's another to understand where you sit at the macro level. If you'd like inside knowledge on how you and your reps sit in comparison to other sales teams across a range of industries and countries, watch this space for a cross-industry, cross-country benchmark of sales performance.
