Every business needs more sales and wants to improve sales execution. Achieving this requires a commitment to first define your sales process, automate it, then manage each phase of the sales cycle. This is one of the core features of CRM software, but CRM tools by themselves are not the answer to improving sales execution. The tools need to be complemented by strong sales management and a sales team that appreciates having a structured sales process in place. This will result in quicker sales cycles and closing more business.

Step 1 – Lead Qualification

First, the sales organization needs to define what a highly qualified prospect looks like for their business. Start by simply asking a few questions such as:

1. What customers do we serve better than anyone else?
2. What are these customers’ competing alternatives?
3. How can we efficiently convert prospects into new customers?

Incorporating these questions into your CRM will automatically qualify each new opportunity based on a set of predefined criteria or questions as illustrated below. In flexible CRM solutions, these questions can be customized for your business.

Based on how each sales representative answers the questions, the system will then rank and color-code each lead. [Red for hot or highly qualified; yellow for warm – there is an interest but more work to be done; and blue for cold or just starting out.]

This automated business process ensures that each sales representative is laser focused on the most promising opportunities based on the company’s qualification criteria and not their gut instinct, saving your business valuable time and money.

Step 2 – Sales Cycle Management

The next phase of sales enablement is to define the steps in your sales process. The screen below highlights a sample of the sales stages for each new business opportunity.

The ability to monitor deal flow will provide your organization with substantial value. Sales managers can monitor where each new business opportunity is in the sales cycle, determine if it is stalled or moving through the process as expected, and assign the proper resources to help win the business at the right time.

Step 3 – Sales Reports

Using a CRM for forecasting will help optimize your selling process by improving the timeliness and accuracy of your monthly and quarterly sales forecast.

The CRM system organizes each forecast based on the sales stages you have entered within the system. In addition, you can review each opportunity in your sales funnel and drill into both pending and completed activities to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

The pathway to your success in improving sales execution will be based on:

• the commitment of your management and sales team to devote the time and resources necessary to define your sales processes
• adopting a CRM software application that will enable you to automate and optimize your sales process
• and taking advantage of best practices your solution provider can offer to ensure the proper implementation and use of their software

To learn more about how you can maximize sales enablement and optimize your sales process contact Commence CRM sales at 732-380-9100.