Top 4 Data Driven Strategies to Increase Sales

by Smith Wakeupsales Wakeupsales

Everybody likes to see higher sales figures or better productivity from the sales team. What if I tell you, it’s possible without expanding your sales team or stretching your budget?

We surveyed more than 500 of our CRM users to compile statistics that we thought will help you guys make better decisions backed by data. Based on their usage, we gave special attention to certain actions you should also take to ensure optimum performance from your sales team. Here are some of the strategies you should consider:

Let Your Sales Team Focus on Sales Only!

Surprisingly, an average sales guy spends more than half of his time not-doing sales but performing admin duties, data entries, managing all his records & preparing reports. No wonder the sales team’s potential is not being fulfilled.

Implementing strategies to boost your sales team’s productivity should always be on top of your to-do list. And I am not even talking about allocating higher budgets for them or increasing the headcount. Things like stricter scrutiny during lead qualification, creative team building & training, setting clearer objectives using ideal customer personas or best is to simply start using a CRM application that’ll do most of the mundane jobs for you… saving you loads of time to focus on actual sales.

Create a Clear-cut Sales Process

Research says that more than 80% of the companies accept the fact that an inconsistent sales process or lack of it results in below-par sales figures.

It’s actually very difficult for sales folks to move customers or deals through your sales pipeline if there’s no pre-defined sales process for them to follow. Hence create a simple sales process for everyone to follow. The most common stages in a sales pipeline usually are new, prospecting, qualified, quote, won/lost. Define the significance of every stage clearly, so that your sales folks are able to plan their activities accordingly for better sales results.

Do Your Homework on the Customer

There’s no short-cut to this, neither any work-around. A survey tells that more than 85% of the customers feel sales folks don’t understand their needs. This is a very harsh truth to sales folks. How much do you try to understand your customers or prospects?

In order to build a rapport & convince the prospect of buying your product/service, you really need to understand their needs, bottlenecks, values or even likes-dislikes. Knowing your prospect inside-out also helps you cater to people who are more likely to be in need of your offerings.

Read more about Data Driven Strategies on Wakeupsales Blog.