Use CRM Tools to Work Smarter, Not Harder
Every salesperson knows that time is their most precious commodity. Those who manage their time better are often the most successful. That’s because having more time allows them to reach out to more prospects, provide better service, and close more deals.
The key to maximizing your time lies in utilizing CRM tools that help you manage your schedule, get more organized, and become more productive.
Manage Your Time
Effectively managing your time helps you ensure that your work is completed on schedule. It also shows you when you’re available for more activities like calling prospects. An organized schedule will alert you to times that are overflowing, and keep you from scheduling more tasks to that period. The final result is that tasks receive the attention they need, and you can fill your pipe with more activities when appropriate.
Track Your Activities
Every sales deal is similar to managing a mini project. There are certain activities that need to be completed, with new requirements generating even more activities. Establishing the task list and updating it frequently is the path to a successful sales process. Leaving the task list to chance is the best way to miss steps, and to cause last minute scrambles that destroy productivity and morale.
Maximize Your Opportunities
Effective management of a sales funnel means maintaining a steady stream of new prospects, ongoing deals, and deal closes. It is far too easy to focus only on deals at the bottom of the funnel, and soon find the pipeline empty. This causes peaks and valleys that are stressful with too much activity during peaks and too little activity during valleys.
Maintain Your Contacts
The heart of every good sales process lies in effectively managing prospects and their information, expectations, and communications. Formalizing and centralizing these items causes a sales person to be more productive, more responsive, and more empathic. Prospects love communications that humanize the relationship, and quickly solve their needs.
Organize Your Workspace
One often forgotten area of productivity lies in the CRM software itself. Many CRM vendors design the screen content to be permanent leaving the user to dance across a multitude of unimportant screen fields, and to jump to other screens to complete their work. The best of CRM systems allow the user to tailor screens to their exact needs, thereby raising productivity substantially.
Easily Access Your Documents and Attachments
Another key area of organization is in the management of documents and attachments. Sales is a process filled with substantial amounts of communication in many forms. Leaving these documents unorganized in emails, mailings, and or other directories (or your desk drawer), is a quick way to sink productivity, and create non-responsiveness to prospect calls.
Are You Ready to Go from Busy to Effective?
CRM software can turn your environment from a cluttered, scattered, unorganized mess to a focused, highly productive, sales machine. You’ll see an increase in your focus, productivity, time and sales, which will lead to more satisfied customers for your business.
Isn’t it time you went from busy to effective? Jill Gibson and the business consulting team at Softech Solutions will work with you to find a CRM system that fits with the way you run your business, or help you customize your existing system to better fit your needs. To learn more about what Softech Solutions can do for your company, contact Jill at 612-309-5709 or jill@softechsolutionsllc.com.