#2 Sales Technology

A key factor in a sales managerSales Manager Sales Manager is an executive who leads a sales unit, team or department by setting goals and meeting targets, formulating plans and policies, designating tasks, and developing salespeople.’s approach is technology. Without the right technology, the sales manager isn’t going to even have the right dataData Data is a set of quantitative and qualitative facts that can be used as reference or inputs for computations, analyses, descriptions, predictions, reasoning and planning. to view, let alone interpret and make decisions with.

As regards the technology, the smart sales manager will not simply take what they are given. Technology is a vitally important step…

As we’ve said before numerous times, nothing can happen in today’s business world without technology. Companies that have tried, especially since the turn of the millennium, have failed. So to succeed, a company must take advantage of technology.

What does this mean for the sales manager? A sales manager, newly hired, will likely inherit both the sales team and the CRM or sales automationSales Automation Sales Automation is the act, practice or technique of using software to simplify, speed up or streamline the entire sales process or specific component activities such as customer tracking, forecasting, and inventory monitoring. technology that the company has in place and is using (or being made to use).

As regards the technology, the smart sales manager will not simply take what they are given. Technology is a vitally important step—and so the sales manager should look at the existing technology and evaluate it. The primary questions the sales manager should ask are:

a. What kind of technology does this sales team need in order to really compete and succeed?
b. Does the current technology answer the question in “a”, or is new, more modern (or more simple or more powerful) technology required?

Here are some basic guidelines the sales manager should follow in evaluating and choosing technology for sales:

• Benefit The technology chosen should not just be “state of the art” and enforced by company policy—it should bring users a benefit. If it does, then magic seemingly happens: the sales manager won’t have to pull all kinds of fancy tricks (including enforcement) to motivate the sales team to use it. So technology should be something that salespeople will love to use, and that is easy to learn.
• Turnover Not only are these benefits important for the current staff, but also for the future. A salesperson generally remains with a company an average of 2 years. When a rep leaves and a new one comes on board, the new rep must be able to get rapidly up and running with the technology, and the leads and opportunities from the departed rep must be rapidly and efficiently turned over to the new rep. The technology must accommodate this point, too.
• Flexibility No 2 companies are alike—hence the technology should be extremely flexible so that it can be rapidly and easily customized to a company’s requirements. Such flexibility also includes ease of maintenance so that modifications can be made on the fly.
• Implementation Today no company has weeks or months to get the technology up and running, and trained in on users. It should take days or, at the very outside, a week or so.
• Processes Your sales processes, reflected in your digital pipelinePipeline Sales pipelineis a visual representation of the stage prospects are in the sales process. stages, are crucial and must reflect buyerBuyer A buyer is an individual or organizational entity that purchases a product or subscribes to a service. patterns as closely as possible. With the advent of the Internet, it’s a buyer’s world. If vendors aren’t following the buyer’s patterns and trends, they will be missing deals. Your technology must be totally and rapidly adaptable to buyer patterns and your company’s processes.
• Each Stage Then there are the verticalVertical Vertical refers to a market where a business targets only a small subset of customers such as a specific industry, sector, profession, or niche. For example, manufacturers of jet plane engines cater only to companies that produce or maintain jet planes. processes taken within each stage of a process or a pipeline; the actions and activities a salesperson takes in moving an opportunity through a particular stage. Technology must make these actions very easy for salespeople to follow and accomplish, and for sales managers to observe.

The technology chosen should´nt just be “state of the art” and enforced by company policy; it should bring users a benefit! #salestechnology

Breaking with sales technology tradition, technology should not be simply and only for the purpose of “tracking sales reps” and their activities. Rather, technology should assist the sales manager in seeing that a rep is doing an efficient job, and highlighting ways the manager can assist the salesperson to do an even better job. For example, it might be a rep could better perform if he or she had more leads—but to know that a sales manager is going to have to know how many leads the rep can handle. To know that, the manager will have to know the leadLead Lead refers to a prospect or potential customer (who can be an individual or organization) that exhibits interest in your service or product; or any additional information about such entity. conversionConversion Conversion is the process of turning a target consumer into a paying customer; or more generally, the point at which a user performs a specific action favorable to a marketer or a seller. ratio for each rep.

Further, the sales manager must be able to rapidly tell how many opportunities of what size should be in the pipeline for a rep to close a certain percentage of the quotaQuota Quota is a predefined benchmark indicating the amount of sales a selling unit such as a sales rep or a regional sales team should achieve within a given period, often used as a measure of success, performance and eligibility for commissions and other rewards.. For example, a rep has a quota of $1 million. The opportunity closing ratio for that rep is 1 out of 5. So the total value of opportunities in that rep’s pipeline must be 5 times the quota—in this case, $5 million—for the rep to make those $1 million quotas.

For a sales manager to truly provide help to reps, lead conversion ratios and opportunity closing ratios must be known. That’s the kind of data that is extracted from an empowering CRM solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges..

Pipeliner is built by salespeople for salespeople. We are keenly aware that it’s not so much the data that you put into CRM, but what you get out of it.

When a sales manager goes out seeking and evaluating technology, a very important point to evaluate about the companies he’s talking to—and evaluating software from—is: “Do they speak my language?”

This means, do they truly understand your pain points, what you are going through in managing a sales organizationOrganization Organization is a cohesive group of people working together and formally bound by a shared identity (e.g., one team, company, club, etc.) and a common purpose (e.g., business growth, athletic victory, etc.).? At Pipeliner, we are salespeople—and hence Pipeliner is built by salespeople for salespeople. We are keenly aware that it’s not so much the data that you put into CRM, but what you get out of it.

Analyzing your data, for example, you might suddenly realize that given the leads and opportunities you have, and your lead conversion rates and opportunity closing ratios, you’re not going to make your quota unless something changes. The only way a CRM will assist you in rapidly arriving at that conclusion is if the CRM is truly geared toward your sales management pain points.

CRM applications were originally designed and built by programmers who perhaps had some understanding of sales, but had never actually “sat in the hot seat.” And therein lies the enormous difference between Pipeliner and other CRM applications.

On top of our sales understanding, we are also applying a very sound understanding of business, based in business philosophy proven over 150 years. So when it all comes down to it, we have created a technology that fits a company very exactly.

Once a technology has been implemented and users trained, now comes the beginning of the story. You have fully checked out technology and put it into use, and so far everything looks great. Now you need to find out: how does this technology perform under real business conditions?

Such conditions are the true test of a technology’s flexibility. Sales, business and markets are dynamic—things change, and nothing stays the same for long. Just as you’ll be making adjustments and changes to a sales process, sales pitches, presentations, strategies and everything else, so will you be tweaking and making changes in the technology. That technology had better be flexible enough for you to adapt to those changes in a timely manner.

When all is said and done, the technology you chose has to act as navigation through the incredible complexity of today’s sales. Without technology, this won’t happen. And even with the wrong technology, it won’t happen, either.

As a sales manager, make sure that you are choosing the right technology.