It goes without saying that a sales manager’s job can be challenging, but technology is playing a crucial role in surmounting obstacles. But other than griping about it what doesn’t go without saying is your ability to do something about it. We’d like to introduce you to the number one in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems – Salesforce and what it can do for your business’ sales department.
Salesforce as a consumer-centric solutions platform
holds more than a 15% share in the CRM market. In addition to this
Salesforce has made close to $20 billion in subscription-based revenue in 2021
catering to the needs of 150,000 companies,
90% of which were
on the Fortune 500 roster.
If that hasn’t got your attention yet, then you could also consider how the
Salesforce Sales Cloud runs 70% faster than on-premise competitors generating a 35% increase in sales for your enterprise. Confronting the problems that your sales executives face begins with identifying their biggest pain points. The second half of the battle is brainstorming viable and sustainable solutions.
Let’s take a look at some typical challenges sales managers face and how Salesforce can help you overcome them.
1. Lack of Clear Sales to Marketing Interaction
Considering the parallel nature of the sales and marketing teams you would assume that they would interact with each other on a frequent basis. This is most often not the case between both departments. When both teams are not working towards the same objective it is highly unlikely to reach predefined sales targets.
Under such circumstances it would be best to establish a workflow that allowed for a closed-loop feedback system thereby enabling better coordination. Achieving alignment requires transparency and accountability, and Salesforce can help bring sales and marketing into alignment. Salesforce offers solutions that help automate sales and marketing tasks, while providing necessary data integration so that both sales and marketing teams have visibility into prospect and customer activity – the data that they can then use to further generate interest (marketing) or close more deals (sales). Salesforce also easily integrates with other cloud software such as HubSpot, Marketo, Eloqua, etc. to offer a seamless experience to your sales and marketing teams while allowing them to use the software of their choice for their day-to-day activities. In this manner both departments will have access to lead interaction history. Sales teams can plan follow up strategies while marketing can focus on which channels are prime targets to focus efforts on.
2. Fragmented Channels of Sale
The biggest issue with a lack of any software to streamline processes is that each employ their own processes. A disparate system such as this will inevitably crumble. Salesforce via features such as Price Books, Products, Quotes, Opportunities and Progress Bar can help bring order to such chaos.
- Coordinating Quote Generating
This permits sales execs to generate a quote for a prospect and the corresponding product, each prospect can have multiple quotes any of which can be finalized for the product. This allows the data to remain up to date eliminating any potential errors.
- Establishing Product and Price Transparency
With Products and Price Books sales managers can create product sections and have representatives add on quotes, prospects and orders. This information can later be used for targeted sales activities.
- Enhancing Visibility Through Opportunities
Opportunity records in Salesforce allow tracking of deals in pipeline, deals won, deals lost and some prospects that need to be attended after a certain period of time, making the entire sales process more transparent for a sales manager. These records of opportunities or prospects enable sales execs to track sales thereby increasing visibility into the sales process.
- Constructing the Sales Process Using a Progress Bar
The Progress Bar available in Salesforce Sales Cloud allows sales managers to set a clear course in which to progress as well as milestones along the way that other reps can use as a reference.
3. Ineffective Proposals
There are many reasons why the proposals put forth by sales reps may not be as effective as you would have hoped. Salesforce can help you impress buyers with well-written proposals and quotes thereby eliminating the following:
- Formatting errors are common leading to negative first impressions
Applying Salesforce means eliminating the need to nit-pick over finicky formatting details and elements.
- Poor time management around the proposal can lose audience attention
Using a Salesforce template can save a lot of time in this regard.
- Minimal collaboration can lead to poor planning
Salesforce can be used to amplify collaborative efforts across marketing, finance, presale engineers and other teams.
4. Extended Time Due to Consumer Deliberation
Not knowing if a prospect will finally convert or not can be a daunting thought for any sales manager. It translates into a lot of uncertainty and time potentially wasted, not to mention loss of ROI in the event that a lead does not bear fruit. The best way to meet such a challenge head on is to direct attention towards automation-based solutions that can offset the time consumed by manual actions on the part of sales reps.
- Intelligent Automation (IA) with guided selling
Guided Selling on Salesforce can drive sales activity by automatically making relevant content available to sales reps at the right moment. This gives sales execs internal sales aids along with additional lead information pertaining to aspects such as their position in the funnel, job profile and so on that they can use tactically to give their leads just the right nudge.
- Leveraging Social Media to Decrease Lead Time
Salesforce Classic allows executives to access social media such as Twitter and YouTube to extract insights regarding their prospects to identify their requirements more accurately. This way they can send out targeted emails or limited period offers in an attempt to coax them into converting.
Conclusion:
Salesforce helps streamline operations, monitor budgets, track goals and manage leads. Collaboration is greatly enhanced, both for departmental and interdepartmental efforts. It is not an exaggeration to state that IT plays a critical role in successfully aligning sales and marketing to get the most out of Salesforce implementations.
If your company is interested in improving sales management using Salesforce, eConnect would be glad to help. At eConnect, we understand the nuances of leveraging Salesforce for your unique business requirements. We provide hassle-free support with implementation driving digital transformation for more efficient operations and better business outcomes. Our team has experienced and knowledgeable experts to enhance lead nurturing and even reputation management. If you’d like to explore using Salesforce to your advantage,
reach out to us and we’d be glad to help.
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