As a salesperson, the idea of closing deals regularly is thrilling. Winning long-term clients means more profits, and you’ll be assured of business success.
However, closing deals isn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s because clients’ needs keep changing, which creates the need to embrace a dynamic strategy of closing deals. That requires you to fine-tune your sales approach overtime to attract more long-term clients.
How can you improve your Sales Process?
Though the desire to close more deals will never end, no matter how many clients you have, it doesn’t have to be a challenging task. Sales process optimization involves acting on working things and those that are not with the present current sales approach.
If you don’t have the slightest idea on how to go about everything, here are sales process optimization strategies that are ideal for any industry or business:
- Identify the bottlenecks and leaks in your pipeline
Of course, we are always looking for the ‘perfect’ pipeline. However, before that, you need to identify the inefficiencies in your sales process, including the bottlenecks and the leaks.
How to identify leaks
Leaks happen whenever there is a considerable drop-off in your completion rate or conversion from one sales process point to the next.
To pinpoint potential leaks, always seek to know your sales process phase when the conversion rate was the lowest. In most cases, bottlenecks trigger leaks in the sales funnel.
A bottleneck happens when a single phase of the sales process is ‘plugged up.’ In short, it’s a case where your prospects and leads get stranded at Point A and can’t proceed to point B.
Bottlenecks tend to be time-sensitive. It’s hard to convert prospects after they’ve spent forever stuck in your funnel. In other words, your prospects and leads can’t stick around waiting for you.
You’ll identify bottlenecks once you establish the stage of your sales process where your customers spend most of the time.
To fix bottlenecks and leaks, review your long-term sales information. How long does it take your reps to seal deals, and how long do your potential clients take in different stages of your sales process?
- Automate your sales process
Closing deals is time-sensitive and overwhelming as well. All business sales representatives can experience burnout, especially if they are stranded handling tedious tasks instead of selling. Workers are more productive if they concentrate on their strengths. Therefore, there is a need to empower sales reps through automation.
Besides, automating tasks help save time. That way, your sales team will have the time to build healthy business relationships instead of using all the time in data entry. That’s quite beneficial, especially in the account-based selling era where most sales targets demand serious nurturing; hence time is of the essence.
- Reducing your churn rate
In your struggle for more sales, you must not forget the existing customers. It is easier to retain a new customer than it is easy to win a new one. A reduced churn rate is one of the features of an effective sales process. And that will bring more money your way. To reduce the churn rate, you can adopt a customer relationship marketing approach.
For instance, you should keep checking on your customers. Also, be sure to offer a service that meets their expectations and to learn about the solutions those clients might need in the future.
Customer retention has everything to do with relationships and personalization. So, you must maintain meaningful conversations.
- Align your marketing goals with the sales goals
Always ensure that your sales reps understand your business marketing campaign. To enhance your efforts towards the success of your business, ask your marketing team the following questions;
- What strategies will the company apply to outdo its opponents?
- Are there discounts, pricing changes, or promotions you should inform your team about?
- What are the marketing channels being used for present leads and clients?
In short, your marketing and sales teams must be well-informed about your business campaign to align your business goals. If the two teams are operating within a CRM such as Copper, it’s easy to support one another through activity notes with specific clients.
- Reduce your sales cycle
Time plays a key role in your sales process. According to Drift’s reliable findings, over 55% of businesses take roughly five business days before responding to leads. Some don’t respond at all.
If your business takes longer to follow up with prospective clients, there are lowering chances of closing a deal.
Fast response speeds up the sales process, not to mention that it’s an effective way of reducing bottlenecks. Shortening the sales cycle isn’t about taking shortcuts. It’s about implementing ways of reducing lag time.
