Four Smart tips to improve your direct sales outcomes

Do direct sales still matter or is it just a part of the old system that needs to be removed.

In most organizations, direct selling remains the significant part that determines the ultimate turnovers. If you can master the direct sales process, it will instantly get you more customers and higher revenues.

If you get really good at direct selling, it means lesser hardships at achieving the targets. It also helps you build and nourish better customer relationships. However, being bad at direct selling will lead to directly opposite results.

In this blog, we will look into the different aspects and characteristics of the direct sales process.

Direct Selling is a Prime customer acquisition channel

Whether you’re selling a physical product or software, the direct sales is an important part of your business. Even as your initial touch point with the prospect is through email or website, you will probably need a direct meeting to actually realize the final transaction.

This keeps the direct selling as a critical phase for all your sales funnels.

If you aren’t good at this phase of your sales process, it’s likely that you will suffer a significant drop-off at this part of the sale.

Also, the direct selling is a combination of multiple skills. Typically this includes negotiation, presenting a convincing demo or some other closure defining activity. Otherwise, you are likely to end-up watching the majority of your sales opportunities fail immaturely and bite the dust.

For this, you need to be attuned to realize all the direct selling opportunities that come your way.

Figure out a direct sales approach

In the world of online transactions, you could use elaborate sales funnel and multiple touch points to close a particular sale. But the direct sales take a fast-lane approach that need speedy decision making.

Any sense of inadequacy or inefficiency could easily puncture your chances of closing those sales opportunities. Usually, the direct sales reps need much more data to actually help you close the deals.

This makes the speed and efficiency of decision-making to be the significant aspects of your sales approach. You should be able to tweak your individual decisions to utilize the available opportunities.

A direct sales app like a mobile CRM can help you manage the sales activities at the desired efficiency. This helps you make all the necessary decisions through a single unified platform.

This helps you eliminate point of indecisions or time-lag throughout your direct sales process. The unified system also gives you easy access to product features and consequently better chances of deal closures.

Personalize and manage the customer meetings

In the present scenario, you should deal with an increasingly well-educated customer base. The customers should be well-aware about available market options and the pricing ranges.

By personalizing the existing relationships, you can easily combine and manage the existing relationships.

A normal business process facilitates numerous arenas to collect and personalize your customer relationships. The role of the business would be to utilize and leverage all these numerous touch points.

According to pitneybowes, these are the possible touch points to collect data and build customer relationships.

If you can properly utilize these touch points, it will lead to better customer relationships and engagement. It’s also a resourceful opportunity to discover revenue generation avenues.

Scaling the number of direct sales meetings

In a competitive arena, the number of sales closed to the meetings attended is always falling.

This requires you to consistently increase the number of sales meetings attended during each day. You should also get your best foot forward in these situations.

This problem could affect the entire organization vertical.

For example, the wall street journal shows that an average CEO spends 18 hours a day on meetings and 20 hours on miscellaneous activity every week.

You can multiply these numbers by 10X for an average sales guy where he needs to collect and figure out all the aspects.

At the end, this limits the ability to efficiently scale the number of meetings. A better daily meeting planner system lets you manage and arrange the meetings throughout the day. You can also radically increase the number of meetings attended each day.

Manage and organize daily negotiations

Typically, the sales negotiations are a normal part of all sales deal. A successful sales negotiation program lets you influence and create multiple opportunities – deal margins, up sell and cross sell opportunities, total product customization etc. It turns multiple aspects of the deal making to your advantage.

As most of the live negotiations are a part of direct sales, you should be equipped to close every deal.

In a successful negotiation, you need to constantly add data and successful deal factors that lead to closure. If you can lead to particular closures, you can accelerate the deals. Otherwise, it will face constant troubles. It may also require a flow of information that facilitate faster decision making.

This requires the direct sales person to come-up with conclusive decisions at the earliest. This is true for small and large organizations alike…

A mobility-based CRM platform helps you streamline multiple parts of the decision making. This also helps you lay-out the process flow that leads to individual decisions.

Take away:-

The difference between closing 10% – 5% of your sales meetings are usually worlds apart in terms of the final generated revenue. A good direct sales team will be able to discover and convert the right opportunities. This is usually achieved by the most agile and versatile sales teams.

How Mobile CRM Can Benefit Your Startup Business

India’s startup ecosystem continues to increase at a rapid pace. Now we have nearly 19,000 technology-enabled startup companies, according to Economic-survey 2015-2016. However, despite the innovative ideas and groundbreaking projects, many businesses struggle to survive the competition, and many are eventually forced to shut down.

Accepting the challenges, many companies are now using Customer Relationship Management software and getting wonderful benefits out of it.

As per the latest survey by Trackvia, successful implementation of CRM software can boost sales revenue by 41% for per salesperson and can enhance customer retention by up to 27%.

Office-based CRM systems are powerful tools for small businesses, but once you get outside the office, you will be completely disconnected from the affluence of your CRM tools.

That is the way sales-based startups face maximum problems regarding information management, client communication and team collaboration. Opening up your laptop to log in to a casual chat with your client is not a convenient option all the time, especially when you are out for a meeting.

Having your sales team equipped with a mobile CRM can benefit you to a large extent.

Quick facts about mobile CRM

• Not only is the CRM industry growing at a rapid pace, but Mobile CRM is expected to grow by 500%, with more than 50% of business rolling out or piloting mobile CRM. (Source- Gartner)

• Mobile access to a CRM increases sales force productivity by an average of 14.6% with a further 3 in 10 mobile CRM users reporting productivity improvement of more than 20%. (Source- Nucleus Research)

• Companies that have mobile CRM enabled had a much higher percentage of reps achieving their sales quotes. (Source: Super Office)

Selling on-the-go

CRM software is nothing but the backbone of a sales team. They need to access different marketing and sales tools, even if they are outside the office. Without a mobile CRM this could not have been possible at all.

Going out for a meeting with a mini-office in your pocket will surely give a higher level of confidence. You can carry out the selling process any time, no matter where you are.

All time access to updated information

Imagine the common scenario of a company with a decentralized sales force – while attending a meeting you suddenly need some information to show your client. You called your team members, and asked them to send a mail attached with the documents, and waited a long time expecting to receive the mail from the office.

Logically, you simply can’t waste your time like that. It certainly leaves a bad impression on your client and for this you may not get your expected closure.

With a mobile-enabled CRM system you can access updated client information, product information, brochure and everything in just a click.

Besides, the information comes with an organized form, making things easy to figure out. And the best part is that its limited access completely confirms the information security.

Real-time reporting

If you or one of your sales team members completes a transaction on the meeting site with a client, you may need to return to the office to update the MOM or transaction details into the system later on. This type of delay slows down the process.

While running a startup company, you need a superfast selling process. With a mobile-enabled CRM, you can simply update all records from your smartphone or tablet while you’re there with the customer. These real-time updates will show up on the dashboard, so that your co-salespersons and the executives can instantly know about the work progress.

Shorter sales cycle

From the previous points, by all means a CRM can successfully cut down the sales cycle, rescuing you from the exertion of long sales cycle. It streamlines your team efforts with technological tools to prevent you from unnecessary delay.

Collaboration on the peak

A startup company always needs a fully organized and coherent sales team. They need a platform, where they can chat, share, report and make big decisions instantly.

CRM gives you the right opportunity to enhance your team collaboration. With its inbuilt chat facility, you can share anything with your team, be it an image, video, audio or a document. Form a group or go for one-to-one interaction – with your CRM you can resolve any team or client related issues immediately. You do not need to call for a meeting or individually call people and ask their problems. You can interact with multiple employees directly through your mobile CRM app.

[Find more on team collaboration, with mobile CRM – 5 Applications of Mobile CRM to Achieve 5x Sales Results]

Also, it gives you the opportunity to maintain and track the performance and work progress of your employees. 

Most importantly, your CRM tools will always take care of your data privacy.

Ultimate customer engagement 

With your CRM in your pocket, you can contact your client whenever you want. The integrated social networks and other systems will help you to answer the customer queries, mails, social media comments and feedback.

By giving prompt response to customers’ inquiries and feedback, you can achieve remarkable customer engagement and brand loyalty.

Conclusion 

With the upswing of mobile computing, cloud-based data networks and smart devices, companies now understand that anything that can be done digitally in office can also be accomplished effortlessly on the go. So, why not with your CRM?

Having a Mobile CRM is no longer optional.

Utilizing mobile CRM you can manage a prospective business in your sales funnel. You can make opportunities to define the prospect of your business, manage pipelines and related activity circles, and make certain the accuracy of sales forecast.

5 Applications Of Mobile CRM to Achieve 5X Sales Results

Whether you are at the office or shopping or bed, how often you don’t have your mobile phone beyond your arm’s reach?

I bet that you could mostly palm your mobile phone by the flick of your wrist.

The mobile phone has become an in dispensible part of the 21st century’s lifestyle.

But if you are even remotely associated with sales, this now becomes one of your work responsibilities; Today, the sales pro’s use the mobile phone as a primary means of professional communications.

Sales professionals frequently travel, attend events and client meetings or even participate in business conferences. At all these times, you have mobile as a means of connecting with your fellow team members and clients.

This means that the mobile phone takes a significant role in your professional life.

Now, let’s consider a real-life situation.

Suppose your company has decided to 5X your sales target from the coming month. Rather than revolting, can you make changes that help you achieve this target?

These are primary changes that come to your mind to incrementally scale the results.

1. Have multiple teams to work simultaneously
2. Align and collaborate with your marketing and sales operations
3. Be agile with your lead management
4. Ensure accuracy about your sales forecast

When you think about it, the gist of all these applications is your need to start working as a team, rather than adding up all the lone efforts.

1. Manage and encourage Daily interactions

On a hectic day, internal miscommunication could be a source of employee conflict and time waste.

For example, the frequent calls by an employee could be interpreted as casual interference by another team member. This becomes increasingly high when you try to reach the ground sales teams.

Often, they could be out-of-reach or unclear about the means of communication. Or the message could be received after the right point in time.

When the salespersons are on the road or attending meetings outside the office, mobile CRM software could be the core factor of the internal communication system.

You don’t need to install any additional application to communicate with your colleagues. Mobile CRM is solely enough to make your communication system better.

For example – Kapture CRM has a unique option named KapChat that provides the facility to communicate with your fellows.

You can make chat groups, share files, and send videos, without logging-in into another app.

Reasonably, it will save more time and make your interaction process smooth and convenient. Effective communication system builds high understanding and boost’s supportive mind sets of the employees.

This prevents misunderstanding, lack of communication and a low team spirit from thwarting your team efforts. The internal communication also helps you increase your deal closures and get maximum deal value for each lead.

2. Share, Assign, Collaborate and Solve

The sheer number of decisions each salesperson has to take each day has the potential to overwhelm the person. It can also affect the productivity of the salesperson. In order to get the maximum value from data, salespeople need to have access to the evocative information that right away relates to their organizational role.

With the cloud-enabled KaptureCRM software, you can share multiple files with the other team members, allocate operations, discuss problems and come up with a cohesive solution.

Even in different files you can store information, segregate it according to the usability and quality. It naturally enhances team productivity, as it wins over the cooperative spirits of the employees.

That is why sales reps saw productivity increased by 15% when they had mobile access to CRM applications.

3. Facility to Create Live Report and Upload Information on Dashboard

The processing speed is an important factor that determines the present sales outcome.

The sooner the lead gets responded; the sooner an order is placed; the sooner the chosen service or product is ready to be delivered, the shorter each order cycle is condensed. This allows you to get more satisfied clients.

To support this entire process and fasten the delivery process, the management should have a direct overview of different customer interactions. This enables the employee to push each potential deal. They need a common portal, where they can see the work progress of the entire team. A mobile CRM system offers this facility to you.

For example – in Kapture CRM dashboard, a salesperson can upload information whenever an order is placed. Even they can update the order status, and minutes of meetings with the clients.

You can display the priorities of your business on the dashboard; can generate the monthly report and daily reports, if required.

This all-pervading system gives you a perfect platform, where team collaboration and workflow automation go hand in hand. And the ultimate result will always be positive.

4. Maintain Self and customer Data Privacy

Now, you are thinking, such facilities are good enough for team collaboration, but what about the privacy issue?

This problem is not entirely limited to your customer data privacy. For example, can you imagine your sales prospecting list ending-up in your competitor’s hand?

This will directly limit your rate of customer acquisition.

This means that you can’t share your prospecting list across your team, where anyone can decide to disclose the list.

A daily planner and assigning will help you solve this problem. You can attach specific meetings to each employee on a daily scale.

Based on this data, you can also follow employees across geography.

This allows you to limit the employee access to the only set number of retail stores. Moreover, you can limit the information access to each employee to its required limit.

You can also ensure that your mobile operators are given adequate information concerning each store activity.

You can give your team member the access to the dashboard so that they can manage the entire system. On the other hand, you can restrict the access from others to ensure the security of data.

For example – with Kapture mobile CRM system you can restrict access from the executives and employees, who are no longer a part of your team or business.

5. Accelerate Deal making protocol

In business, you are not entirely new to have your most promising deals fall flat on the face.

With passing time, your prospect’s initial attention may wane-off or you may have new decision makers entering the picture anew.

Anyways, having the ability to quickly wrap-up deals makes a significant difference to your bottom line.

In this situation, you need to have a protocol for accelerated decision making.

The Mobile CRM enables you to introduce accelerated deal-making within your existing business process.

This helps you avoid the traditional time lapses in managing your normal business operations.

Conclusion

Today, the sales and marketing processes are required to rapidly scale the results.

Mobile CRM gives you the opportunity to manage data, but also measure results and prepare a valuable report from it.

The features of this application leave the direct effect on sales revenue and office work culture. With a better environment employee can give their best performance, thus the company can increase its ROI rate. 

According to Innopple Technologies, 65% of sales reps who have adopted mobile CRM have achieved their sales quotas. While only 22% of reps using non-mobile CRM have reached the same targets.

Four Major Criterions to meet your Customer's Service Expectations

The term satisfaction is closely related to expectation. Relatively speaking, you only need to exceed your present expectations to achieve customer satisfaction.

For better or worse, the recent years have seen customer expectation steeply climbing high.

Yet, it’s more important than ever for businesses to impress and satisfy their customers. 89% of marketers think customer experience will become the main differentiator in 2017.

Sometimes it’s really difficult to understand what customers want and how to get them satisfied. Each individual has unique preference, but being a customer, all people want a single thing – quality service.

Now what is quality service? Simply put, quality service is something which exceeds the customer expectation. In this blog we are going to discuss about four major customer expectations and how to address those.

Personalize your Customer Experiences

Today’s customers are accustomed to receiving personalized experiences in the web and digital ecosystems. They have grown to expect the same experiences to be infused into their daily and customer service interactions.

They assume that you have the knowledge about the objectives, interests, and challenges. Even sometimes greeting by the first name means a lot to them. Customized service, personalized offers, follow up calls ensure satisfaction– make them feel special.

To begin with, consider these facts.

• 66% of customers say they are likely to switch brands if they are treated like a number instead of an individual.
• 73% of customers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to make their experience better.

In short, there is an immediate requirement for you to personalize your customer service experiences. A customer management platform lets you collect and streamline all customer information. This also allows you to streamline all the necessary customer responses.

You can access knowledge about customers’ name, contact numbers and background, information on purchase history, and pervious complaints, so on and so forth. You can also access personalized data based on associated contact data and other related parameters.

This helps you instantaneously switch to one-to-one customer conversations and streamline different interactions. You can also cumulate the data into necessary forms.

Initiate Communication through Multiple channels

The business need to keep open multiple channels for customer interactions.

Customers want self-service, digital, voice, and social ways to interact with a brands and its executives — and they expect each to provide a personalized experience. In past three years, the use of live chat and social media communication has increased dramatically.

• 63% of customers said they were more likely to return to a website that provides live chat option.
• Research from JD Power finds 67% of customers now tap social network like Twitter and Facebook for customer service.
• Nielsen has found that 33% of customers prefer to contact brands for information and customer care service using social media rather than telephonic conversation.

So, if you have a multifaceted communication system with people, your customers will be more engaged with the brand. You will have more feedback for improvement and more chances to bring your target customer into the sales funnel.

Manage Quick and Slick Customer Responses

Having quick response to a complaint or a query happens to be the prime concern of a customer. While launching a complaint to the customer care service, people are always in a state of urgency.

According to a survey of social media users by the joint Nielsen-McKinsey venture NM Incite–

• 33% of customers would recommend a brand that provides a quick, but ineffective response.
• 17% of customers would recommend a brand that provides a slow, but effective solution. 

Unquestionably, the demand for quick and effective solution will be stronger than the above two. But, the interesting thing is customers always prefer the brands that reach them within an hour of the complaint or query.

53% of people, who tweet about a brand, expect a reply within one hour. That figure rises to at least 72% for those with a complaint. Whereas, just 14% of customers anticipate a response will take a full day or more than 48 hours.

Create Diligent Follow-up Protocols

The majority of customers like to have follow-up calls. But, that doesn’t mean you can call your customer anytime.

These facts will throw the light on the significance of follow-up activities-

• Odd times are not suitable to call a customer, as it causes annoyance.
• Whenever customers ask to call after one hour, you should call them exactly after one hour – maintain the reliability anyhow.
• Call your customers to ensure satisfaction, even after the purchase.
• Excessive calls, mails and messages result in detachment.

Follow up calls increase loyalty and enrich the brand-customer relationship. Let your customers know that the relationship matters for you and you are incredibly eager to maintain it.

Consistently meet the set Customer expectations

Needless to say, sporadic good customer management could lead to increased complaints. You need to provide the assurance consistently by providing good customer responses.

You can meet and manage these expectations with a customer management platform. In this, you can collect the entire customer data involved in providing personalized services, managing multiple communication systems and delivering prompt response on a single dashboard. You also need to have a reminder system for following-up with prospects.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management software facilitates you with-

• Opportunities to update customer details and call summaries
• A common dashboard to access information easily
• A mutual platform for receiving and responding to feedbacks, social media comments, enquiries, and complaints
• An opportunity to raise unique ticket number for each query, so that executives can follow up with the status of the enquiry
• An integrated system to manage customer relationships to create more happy customers.

Conclusion

Being a very crucial challenge for any customer service executive, ‘customer expectation’ is a never ending topic. Even for the customer it matters more than anything. 86% buyers would pay more for better customer service.

For addressing all those expectations you need a perfect tool to manage information properly and coordinate with other employees. Kapture CRM can help you there.