In sales, speed is everything. It builds sales volume by connecting salespeople with additional prospects. Efficiency impresses leads, increases the chances of conversion, and encourages managers to assign you more lucrative projects.
But speed bottlenecks trip up even the highest performers and prevent further growth. Time wasted on failed conversions can encourage rushing through others to compensate. This approach leaves successful techniques by the wayside and creates a cycle of sloppy work in salespeople who can't keep their cool.
With a few careful techniques, agents can once again build a successful sales cycle faster than ever before.
In lead conversations, sales reps need to strike a careful balance.
Prospects need something more than a lecture that bombards them with bullet points. Listening to their needs and adapting to them is a key part of sales. When an unoptimized route causes the rep to rush through a meeting, prospects won't hear them.
From the opposite perspective, sales reps need to take great care to maintain control over the conversation. When rushed, the rep never seizes the opportunity to transition the conversation from a pitch to a sale.
Time provides both participants the chance to breathe and form a meaningful connection and gives the rep the chance to employ every one of the sales rep tools in their arsenal to help clinch the deal.
When they're planning a route for a day of sales, a rep must locate the right leads — the ones who want or need the product or service for sale.
A variety of factors can come into play, including:
These all influence the likelihood of a conversion and vary from product to product.
The same is true in B2B sales. Sales reps need to meet their clients' needs.
Sales reps need to meet the interests of their audience, or they won't get far in the sales process. Careful planning to locate and prioritize the right prospects increases return on investment for busy sales reps and increases their operational efficiency even if meeting volumes decrease.
Reps are human and can tire. When a rep puts off a promising sale until the end of the day, thinking it'll be easy, it raises the risk of simple mistakes. Even the most positively-inclined lead finds oversights off-putting.
Route optimization to put the best chance of conversion in the most productive hours of the day increases ROI and helps stick the landing. When promising clients get the rep's absolute best, they're more likely to be satisfied and strike a deal.
Applications help sales reps stay on time and on task. It’s easy to lose track of time, even in the midst of a great day.
Failure to account for traffic, long lunch lines, and a lack of time blocking for any obligation besides prospect meetings can prevent successful sales.
Rushed sales reps who appear unreliable impress no one and no client is inclined to buy from an agent late to a meeting.
Automated time management through a sales rep app not only optimizes routes but also makes it easy to see where a rep is in their route and move the day forward every time.
Procrastination is very similar to time management but falls within the rep's sphere of control.
It's easy to put off the busy work needed to plan an optimal route each day and follow honed instincts. But data is king, and data is never wrong.
The right tools make it easy to automate the busy work of planning a daily route and return to the most exciting and enjoyable part of the job — the sale.
