An article in The Wise Marketer, (free registration required), Top ten factors that make or break consumer trust, discusses research that was recently conducted in the UK by Corporate Culture. Here is a summary of the research findings:
Gender bias
Women in particular believe trust is an essential quality in the companies they buy from (56% of women cited this as important, compared to 47% of men).
Most trusted & untrusted
The most and least trusted business sectors are:
Rank Most Trusted Least Trusted
1 Entertainment and leisure Tobacco
2 Food companies; Supermarkets; Technology Fast food
3 Pharmaceutical Petrochemicals
4 Cosmetic/toiletries Gas/electricity; Construction
Source: Corporate Culture Customer Trust Index
Top ten trust/distrust factors
The index also identified the top ten factors that make customers trust or distrust a company:
Rank Most Trusted Least Trusted
1 Keeps promises (76%) Doesn't correct mistakes (80%)
2 Customer service (70%) Fails to protect privacy (77%)
3 Consistently high quality (64%) Doesn't do what it says (74%)
4 Deals effectively with complaints (64%) Inaccurate billing (70%)
5 Value for money (64%) Too many sales calls (65%)
6 Honest/admit mistakes (59%) Inconsistent quality (63%)
7 Product safety (59%) Ingredients may damage health (60%)
8 Meets individual needs (52%) Doesn't inform price/product changes (50%)
9 Listens to customers (51%) Outsources call centers/operations (55%)
10 Clear pricing (49%) Unclear pricing (52%)
Source: Corporate Culture Customer Trust Index
The research also noted that trust drives sales. If a company loses the trust of consumers, three out of four (76%) say they will simply stop buying from the company. Conversely, if a company earns consumer trust, 42% will buy more products, and over half (54%) will recommend the product to others.
Four keys to building trust
Corporate Culture has identified four steps to help companies to earn consumer trust:
1. Ensure your product or service meets the expectations of your customers;
2. Remember that you are only as good as your last personal contact with the customer;
3. Show consumers the difference your product makes in their life;
4. Be seen to act responsibly in everything you do.
According to John Drummond, chief executive for Corporate Culture, "There has been a massive increase in the amount of marketing money companies are spending to win customer trust. This can only make sense if it is based on a genuine understanding of why customers trust companies and what the most powerful form of communication is for them. One of the key points of this research is that the future of marketing is about belief in business. It suggests that what people believe is a more powerful influence on buying behaviour than price, quality or reputation. What people believe is also more powerful than the facts about your company or your product."
Here is an article from Sales & Marketing Management's Management Advisor Newsletter, Plan a Successful Sales Meeting:
No one said sales meetings were supposed to be fun—you have to prepare in advance and take time away from clients to attend. Besides, you usually spend the duration day-dreaming anyway. When research shows that professionals feel 50 percent of meetings are a waste of time, you really can't blame your sales team for not being enthusiastic about your next gathering. But how can you get your reps to attend sales meetings without having to resort to begging?
Here are six tips to help you lead an effective and energetic meeting:
1. Set the Tone
There's more to a theme than just a few catchy words. A theme not only establishes the expectations for a sales meeting, but sets the tone and goals for the entire year. Making that theme meaningful can be the most important part of planning a sales event. Decide what message you want to send and what you want the meeting to accomplish. Also, be sure to introduce the theme early on to ignite focus and anticipation.
2. Kick It Off Right
Salespeople are active employees. They take the initiative every day to go out and take risks. It only makes sense that your sales meeting kickoff should actively involve your reps. Turning attendees into participants creates excitement. Start off with some light ice-breakers, and try techniques such as role playing to build team interaction.
3. Prevent Boredom
Make sure to engage your audience or you'll be getting those infamous blank stares. You can't maintain attention if all you're doing is talking at people. Try brainstorming activities or presenting skits in small groups. Also be sure to get feedback and suggestions as you go—it'll let attendees know their opinions have a place.
4. Let Them Shine
If you really want to engage your reps, make sure to use the meeting as a way to recognize your team's achievements. Throughout the meeting, find ways to acknowledge those who have gone above and beyond. Make them stand up and don't be shy with your praise. Salespeople tend to be egocentric, so the chance for peer recognition is highly valued.
5. Keep 'em Guessing
The quickest way to zap people's interest is to make meetings boring and run longer than expected. Keep reps motivated and focused for the duration with elements of surprise sprinkled throughout the meeting. They'll be much less likely to zone out if they're eager to see what's coming next. Try breakout sessions and alternating speakers to keep the momentum flowing.
6. Over But Not Out
It's done. Attendance was high, participants were enthusiastic and involved, and a wealth of new selling strategies took center stage. But was it a successful sales meeting? Post-meeting followup is important to keep the meeting in your reps' minds and to prepare for next time. Use a combination of ratings and open-ended questions when soliciting audience feedback for the most accurate results. Also, salespeople often thrive on competition, so by utilizing some mini-incentives or contests you can increase the amount of feedback you receive.
Here are several excerpts from an article by Jeff Thull, president and CEO of Prime Resource Group, Prevent 11th Hour Negotiations:
One of the enduring myths of negotiation is that it is back and forth struggle with your customer that occurs in the final stage of the sale, the "close." Negotiation, at its best, is comprised of open, honest and straight-forward communication based on mutual respect and mutual trust. When you recognize it in this form, it begins with the very first conversation and is continuous throughout the relationship. We refer to it as the "diagnostic process." When you are using this process, there is no need for high-pressure, last minute bargaining, there are few, if any, objections and there is no need for "arm-wrestling" in the 11th hour.
This is difficult for salespeople to grasp. "What? No objections?" "No negotiating?" "No closing?" Please note that I'm not saying "no negotiating." I'm saying no negotiating in the 11th hour.
Negotiation takes on a new definition in the diagnostic process, which centers on clear and precise communication and collaboration—a continual series of "mutual agreements and understanding." A collaborative approach eliminates the dependency on traditional closing and objection handling skills. By the time a customer receives your proposal, you and your customer have come to common conclusions and understanding of all the key elements that would otherwise be subject to objection or negotiation when there are surprises in the 11th hour. You will have agreed on the nature and financial impact of their problems, your mutual expectations, the financial value of that solution and the selection criteria for a high-quality solution. In short, the customer has agreed to each element of a quality decision process and is not seeing any new "terms" in the proposal with which to have a reason to object.
Let's take a deeper look at this quality decision process. The first decision element revolves around the customer recognizing that they are experiencing some consequences due to the absence of the value your solution could provide.
The next decision revolves around determining the financial impact of the problem. It is important to bring your customer a process that will guide them through measuring the financial impact of their problem, just as a doctor brings the capability of running tests to determine the extent of the symptoms. We refer to this as the "cost of the problem." If you don't have a cost of the problem, there isn't a problem. In other words, if you can't help your customer measure the financial impact of the problem your solution will address, they will be unable to measure the value of your solution, likely not want to buy your solution at all and very likely not want to pay the price you will ask.
When the cost of the problem is agreed on, the next decision for the customer is, "Is this bad enough to take action?" When the customer compares this problem and its costs to other problems they have or opportunities they have to invest in, where does this one stack up on the priority scale?
When these decisions are mutually agreed upon, we have "negotiated" away a high percentage of the objections we would traditionally hear and those that might lead to a "no sale." A large number of objections occur because the customer receives a presentation or proposal before these decisions are made, a "pre-mature proposal."
Think about it—how many times have we given a customer a proposal before they decided they really had a problem? They were only "interested" in the solution we had. How many times have we given a proposal to someone who said they had the kind of problem we solve, but they did not know how much that problem was costing them? Finally, how often have we given a proposal to someone who had the problem, but had not decided that it was a top priority to address?
The key to successful negotiations is that each party is well informed and understands their respective mutual interests. You are working towards an equitable exchange of value and a continuing relationship. When you reach agreement on each critical point of the exchange, as each emerges during the decision process, you have brought great clarity to the relationship. The foundation of the diagnostic approach is that it is easier to reach clarity and agreement on many small points, than a single summary of all those points.
If you pattern your sales approach after a quality decision process, rather than a sales process, you will be able to stay away from "pre-mature presentation," and most likely you will not be a victim of those 11th hour negotiations.
Check out the complete
source article for more.
Here is an article from Steve W. Martin, the author of Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom..., The Seven Deadly Sins of Salespeople:
In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory described the seven deadly sins from the least serious to the most, as superbia, invidia, ira, avaritia, tristia, gula, and luxuria. Translated from Latin, they are pride, envy, anger, avarice, sadness, gluttony and lust.
What do you think are the seven deadly sins of salespeople? Here's my list, in order of least to most severe.
Chattering. Salespeople talk too much on sales calls for a variety of reasons. Some are nervous chatterers who just can't keep their mouths shut. Others think they know more than the customer so they lecture the customer to death. Many salespeople feel compelled to recite their canned pitch regardless of the customer's actual interest. You have conducted a perfect sales call when the customer has been persuaded to buy even though you listened far more than you spoke.
Gourmandizing. Millionaire railroad tycoon Diamond Jim Brady was a legendary gourmand who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. For breakfast he ate eggs, pancakes, pork chops, cornbread, fried potatoes, hominy, muffins, and beefsteak and drank a gallon of orange juice. Lunch consisted of two lobsters, deviled crabs, clams, oysters, beef and several pies. A platter of seafood and carafes of lemon soda constituted his 4:30 snack. The evening meal began with three dozen oysters, six crabs, and turtle soup. The main course was two whole ducks, six or seven lobsters, a sirloin steak, and servings of vegetables. Dessert included a platter of pastries and often a two-pound box of candy. Does your sales organization include a "Diamond Jim Brady" who devours company resources to the point of gluttony?
Inactivity. Salespeople must be short-term thinkers and long-term planners. An inactive salesperson neglects the future and does not spend time on activities that build his future pipeline. Inactivity is not to be confused with laziness. Many hardworking salespeople are completely focused on the here and now. Unfortunately, they forget about next quarter and next year. Other salespeople place all their eggs in one basket, never really thinking about what will happen if their big deal collapses. They have been lulled into a state of inactivity and could be jolted into reality at any moment.
Obliviousness. Many salespeople don't take the time to understand how customers fit within their own organization. I am continually amazed at the lackadaisical attitude many salespeople have about understanding the organizational structure of the companies they call on. When they are asked what a person?s title is, they will answer, "manager," or something equally nebulous, when they should answer, "manager of application security who reports to the director of application development, who, in turn, reports to the CIO."
Shallowness. Salespeople who don?t know their product well enough to build customer credibility cannot be expected to drive account strategy. How can you determine your next course of action if you don't understand the customer's technical objections and how best to emphasize the product?s strengths? Worse, in this situation you are completely at the mercy of someone else because another member of your company has to explain how your product works.
Presumptuousness. Assuming information you really don't know is one of the worst sins for a salesperson. Salespeople who are not certain but make their best guess about who the ultimate and final decision maker is within an account are more than halfway to losing the deal.
Ignorance. Ignorance is the deadliest sin. If you do not have a spy within an account who is telling you what is happening in closed-door meetings, defending you when you are not around, and disseminating propaganda on your behalf, you will most certainly lose.
Your success is your responsibility. The road to the top is paved with hard work, diligence and self-discipline. The salesperson who avoids committing these seven deadly sins is well on his or her way to becoming a Heavy Hitter, a truly great salesperson.
Here are several excerpts from an article by Laura Patterson, the president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, The Power of Persona:
Often sales executives try to implement a common sales methodology that leverages the processes used by the high performers. This process is known as sales enablement, and it is a key factor in accelerating customer acquisition. For these processes to be successful, every salesperson must have the knowledge on how to handle different selling situations, such as how to position against a particular competitor and how to communicate her value proposition to each person in the buying process. The sales organization relies on marketing to create the tools to support the sales enablement process.
The purpose of these tools is to help the sales organization improve their effectiveness in generating revenue and earnings. Marketing and sales need to collaborate with each other to ensure appropriate materials and tools are created and properly distributed. Examples of sales enablement tools include tracking and disseminating best practices, providing case studies, and more recently creating personas. In fact, a recent study by MarketingSherpa revealed that 40 percent of business technology hardware marketers, 22 percent of software marketers and 19 percent of professional services companies are now using personas as a sales enablement tool.
What Are Personas?
A persona is a concise description of a specific customer type.
It's important not to confuse personas with profiles. Personas are narrative descriptions that bring user profiles to life. They present an alternative representation of user profile data that is easily understandable and is designed to communicate customer details that are easy for team members to keep in mind during the buying process. Personas should be developed to help the salesperson recognize and identify with the prospect as people rather than a collection of facts.
An example of a profile might be:
Gender: 50 percent male/50 percent female
Age: 18-34
Education: Wide range: high school education and most have a BA degree or some college education
Marital status: 50/50 Married/Single
Comfort with technology: Average, comfortable making purchases online
This example of a persona illustrates the differences.
Persona for network engineer: Mike, 34, works normal business hours most of the time. Mike is well-paid, has six years of network management experience and is a Cisco-certified internetworking expert. Mike started out in the network operating center and has two primary areas of responsibility:
1. Isolating and resolving the more complex network issues that have been escalated from network technicians
2. Planning and rolling out changes to the existing network environment
Mike's job is part interrupt driven (isolating complex problems and working out solutions) and part planned (rolling out changes to software, managing configurations). Mike uses a ticketing system and network management system regularly and also uses basic utilities for telnet/ssh, tftp, ping, trace route, etc. He is very familiar with Perl because he has experience-writing scripts and has an in-depth understanding of managing networks. He does not know xml or java very well at all.
Profiles are the foundation for constructing personas. And while these two concepts seem similar, they are different. Profiles describe types of prospects, customers or users. Personas describe specific people.
Why Use Personas?
A well-crafted persona enables you to stand in your customer's shoes and take a more customer-centric view. Using personas has a number of benefits, including providing the organization with a common point of view about customers' goals and needs, a vehicle for helping develop an initial set of market requirements, more focus on what customers will use rather than what customers may say they want, and a process for prioritizing development efforts.
Personas provide a valuable insight into the motivations and personalities of specific buyers and users. While they are simple in form and structure, the information they contain is powerful. It can be applied to decisions throughout the sales enablement process. They can help with understanding specific requirements, facilitating alignment, and expediting the sales cycle.
Creating Personas
One of the best ways to gather this data is to interview real customers. You will need access to real customers to conduct the research. Your first step will be to decide who to interview. You should include both current and potential customers. Plan on conducting at least 15 to 20 one-hour-long interviews for each persona type.
Once you complete all of the interviews. review the data with an eye toward looking for patterns and clusters of attitudes and behaviors. These clusters can then help you to define the customer's attitudes and behaviors. Give each persona a brief description. There is no ideal number of personas; however we suggest keeping the set small, perhaps four or five primary personas.
After you've identified the clusters, you can start creating the personas by adding details from the interviewees' behavioral traits. Analyze your interviews and select details that stand out such as working environment, frustrations, relationships with others, skill level and demographics to include in your narrative. Then give each persona a name and a photo or graphic representation. Once finished, you should have captured information about your customer's goals, needs, behaviors, concerns, experiences, likes, dislikes, etc.
Now that you have several detailed personas describing your customers, you can adapt and customize your sales tools.
Messages that resonate with each persona can be developed, and sales presentations and materials customized accordingly. Using personas allows you to better focus your sales and marketing training and materials improving your overall effectiveness.
For much more on this subject, be sure to check out the complete
source article.
A BeTuitive post linked me to a Guerrilla Consultant article by Mike McLaughlin, The Art of the Client Interview. Here are several excerpts:
When a prospective client calls about a project, it's natural for your pulse rate to rise a bit. After all, it means your marketing worked. As you settle into the conversation with the client, the first and most important step you take is to learn more about the opportunity. How you handle this essential activity can make the difference between winning the job or heading home empty handed.
First Impressions Are Tenacious
Whether we like it or not, a client's early impression of us influences the outcome of a sales opportunity, and that impression is formed in the initial sales interview. A client's first impression may not last forever, but beginning the sales process with a good impression beats having to overcome the fallout from a poor one.
Creating a positive, initial impression means emphasizing substance over technique. Instead of relying on canned sales questions, PowerPoint slides, and body language 'techniques,' lead your client through an insight-based discussion of the issues. You may not win the 'Smooth Salesperson of the Month' award that way, but you'll win in the client's mind and that's what counts.
Of course you'll need a few questions to get the conversation rolling, but expect to develop most of those questions as your understanding of the client's issue evolves. And if you're ever tempted to ask a client, 'what keeps you up at night,' cover your mouth and count to ten.
When you first step into a client's office to discuss a project, you're likely to be viewed as a salesperson, and that can be a tough impression to shake. But using the power of insightful questions and discussion during the interview, you can shed the salesperson label and replace it with that of business adviser. That will add immeasurable strength to your sales process.
Discover Differentiation
Professional service marketers know that every project opportunity deserves its own 'win theme.' It's rarely enough to compete solely on a firm's expertise. Instead, successful firms compete on the basis of both expertise and client-specific insight.
You can search the Internet about a company's issues until your fingertips are numb, but that search can't replace the insight you'll develop from a client's answers to your relevant questions. If you uncover just one nuance about the proposed project, whether it's about the specific client issue or potential barriers to completing the project, you have the basis for crafting a differentiated--and winning--proposal.
But you have to dig for those subtleties. It takes time and, more importantly, trust for a prospective client to open up to you. After all, the client is probably talking with other consultants and hearing similar questions. So your ability to conduct an interview that forges trust with the client and encourages candor gives you an important differentiator--client insight.
You'll also eliminate needless guesswork about how to frame your proposal if you've conducted thorough interviews. And if you have a need to follow up with the client after the interview, you'll have substantive matters to discuss. The information you glean from the client interview will advance your sales effort by providing you with the raw material to create a compelling and differentiated offer.
The Rest of the Story
The business world is full of sales advice, and much of it is very good. One thing is certain, though: If you do a great job in the early stages of the sales process, you're more likely to benefit from all that great advice. Stumble out of the gate, and you're likely to play catch up just to stay in the race.
The sales interview gives you a chance to put your best foot forward as you demonstrate your skills at analysis, diagnosis, creativity, and empathy. And few things serve your sales process more effectively than great interviewing skills. It's not unheard of for a client to hire a service provider on the spot after a great interview.
So keep this skill in top form, and odds are you'll be able to use the rest of that good advice about sales--from crafting great proposals and closing, to execution, follow through, and building long-term client relationships.
Here are several excerpts form an article by Bob Conlin, CMO at Centive, Sales Compensation Best Practices:
Sales compensation plans are one of the most powerful tools organizations have to affect sales performance. Properly designed and deployed, sales compensation plans drive superior performance and result in achieving and exceeding sales and revenue targets--without exceeding compensation budgets.
Unfortunately, most companies fail to adequately test and model sales compensation plan variables and attainment scenarios. This failure is largely due to the inability of their current spreadsheet-based sales compensation management systems to easily create and effectively run models. Restricted by their inability to model plans and attainment scenarios, executives are often reluctant to make the significant plan changes needed to better align their sales team with corporate sales, revenue, and profit goals.
Best practice sales-compensation management calls for sales and finance executives to work with sales operations to build and model compensation plans, analyze and forecast related commission earnings at both a macro (plan) and micro (individual) level, and then choose those sets of plans that best fit corporate parameters for sales performance, revenue, and associated commission costs.
This best practice exercise begins with the requirement to leverage a sales compensation management system that supports the ability to easily build multiple compensation plan models. Spreadsheet-based systems typically do not meet this requirement; the complex macros and linked worksheets needed to support multifaceted sales compensation plans are too difficult and time-consuming to build within a desktop application. To be effective with this exercise, multiple models need to be analyzed. Spreadsheet-based systems do not easily support this best practice.
Multiple models are needed because executives need to evaluate a myriad of changes and options--for example changes to quotas, commission rates, territories, and organizational structures. Attainment levels also need to be modeled--for example, a company may expect sales and the revenues associated with those sales to increase in some areas or with certain product lines, and decrease in other areas or with other product lines. So not only do executives need to model multiple plans, they also need to run multiple attainment scenarios through each of the modeled plans. By modeling both plans and data, executives are empowered to evaluate results and implement the plans that best fit their organization's business model.
During the modeling phase, results should be analyzed at both the macro level (i.e., what are the total compensation costs associated with this modeled plan?) and the micro level (i.e., how will this plan affect the earnings for particular sales team member?). Good sales plans should result in attainment that follows a standard bell curve, with the majority of reps grouped near 100 percent quota attainment. However, bell curves don't reveal details, and you need to make sure that new plans won't negatively impact your top performers or unfairly reward poor performers.
After the right sales compensation plans are implemented, sales and finance executives should actively monitor actual attainment and commission costs and compare them to their modeled plans. Modeled versus actual analysis helps ensure that companies are in position to quickly react should unforeseen influences affect results. In fact, best practice sales compensation management calls for executives to run new models periodically during the year to reflect market influences that may not have been initially factored in.
By modeling commission plans and forecasting related costs, sales and finance executives gain confidence that their sales plans will drive superior performance at a reasonable cost. In many ways, a sales team is like a highly tuned race car; it can achieve amazing performance results, but can quickly skid out of control if not carefully monitored and tweaked when results don't meet expectations.
Here's an insightful article by Allison Kaplan that originally appeared in The Minneapolis-St. Paul Pioneer Press:
It's that time of year when we reflect on what really matters, like being able to find a salesperson when we're ready to pay.
Better customer service never seems to come in Santa's bag, so the following list of retail resolutions is intended to inspire salespeople, store owners and producers of objects of all kinds to make improvements. Because no matter what differences exist between us, fundamentally, we all want the same thing: To shop without pulling out our hair.
You've got to dream big.
Dear retailers:
- Unless you'd like to go out on a date, don't ask for our phone numbers at the register. Being pumped for personal information makes a shopper think twice about buying.
- When a customer presents a gift receipt to return merchandise, don't ask for the original receipt. Obviously, she doesn't have it. As the term 'gift receipt' suggests, the item was a gift.
- On the subject of receipts, why do they seem to get longer with each trip to the checkout counter? All we need is a record of the purchase A A- not an unwieldy scroll of advertisements, store information and coupons for the very items just purchased. Inevitably, the coupons will expire before these goods are used up.
- Also on the subject of receipts, set the cash register to print out the copy that needs signing first. Then, we'll have something to do while the customer copy is printing, rather than standing there jiggling our car keys, as so often seems to be the case. It's all about empowering the guest.
- Scan the credit card for us until your store can streamline the self-scanner situation. That machine is always covered in tape, or it is positioned too close to the counter to make a complete swipe or it simply doesn't work. We're annoyed.
- Don't think you're fooling us with the buy one, get one half off sale. The only people who need two are twins.
- Keep a few sweaters and jackets and mittens and boots in the store at least through February. It's a long winter, and we're apt to lose stuff.
- Stop basing shipping fees on the price of the item (Macy's). It should not cost more to mail a dress than a new piece of luggage because the little slip of a dress happens to be a designer garment. Base the fees on weight, just like they do at the post office.
- Offer a broader range of sizes in stores, not just online. Whether tall, petite or curvy, we'd all like the opportunity to try things on before buying.
- If you're going to sell pants that are a mile long, include free alterations A A- even when the merchandise is on sale.
- If you're going to 'support a cause' with sales from designated merchandise, have the integrity to disclose how much is actually being donated and where the money is going.
- Lots of us appreciate fashion even though we lack the means to drop $200 on a simple cotton top. If boutique owners want to steal our business away from the mall, they need to seek out more affordable but still stylish lines. High prices are not the only way to distinguish a specialty shop.
- Memo to shopping centers: Get some new stores. We're bored. Bored with seeing the same chain stores everywhere. Bored with not knowing if we're in Woodbury or Maple Grove A A- and not caring. Bored, bored, bored.
- While it would seem to go without saying, this clearly needs to be said once again: Get off the phone, stop chitchatting with co-workers, remain within eyesight of the cash register. Acknowledge us and offer assistance, but don't hover. And we, in turn, will be appreciative and less grumpy.
- And stop claiming this is the last chance to save. We know there will be another sale tomorrow.
Here are several excerpts from a press release that references a recent study on sales recognition best practices:
Motivating sales people requires a mix of 60% tangible, 40% intangible incentives, according to data from research and consulting firm Best Practices, LLC.
Intangible rewards - that are clearly important to motivation - include special recognition by management at team meetings, praise in private and mails from direct managers. By contrast, tangible rewards are such items that can be touched or consumed such as gift certificates, trophies and plaques, and cash and dinner for two. A summary of the report "Best Practices in Sales Recognition Programs," can be found here.
The most frequently used tangible rewards are gift certificates, plaques and cash awards, followed by dinner for two. When asked if there was a ceiling on cash payouts, more than half (54%) of surveyed companies said there was.
This research (available as a fee download) profiles 84 companies across industries on the prevalence of intangible and tangible rewards as well as:
- Tax implication of programs
- Communication of programs, including website support
- Presence of formal measurement of program
- Lessons learned
"In this research, respondents strongly stated that a link exists between the motivation of staff, a system of rewards using tangible and intangible recognition and increased performance," said Jon Easter, director of Best Practices, LLC's Business Excellence Board.
Here is a summary of an article by Elizabeth Millard, 10 Tips To Help New Reps Increase Sales with CRM:
Automating the sales process is one of the most important functions of a CRM system. In fact, much of today's CRM software has its origins back in the mid-'80s and early '90s, not as "customer relationship management" software, but instead as "sales automation" software.
Although much has changed over the past 2 decades, the goal of sales automation software remains the same: make it easy to help sales reps help themselves, and their customers, to increase sales. CRM software is designed to accomplish this goal in two ways: by automating redundant parts of the sales process, which saves time, and by putting all the necessary information right at the fingertips of the sales team.
Part of the challenge for a sales manager is getting new reps up to speed so they can get the maximum benefit out of their company's CRM system. There are still many salespeople who have never used CRM software. And, even if someone has used CRM before, the implementation is usually quite different from one company to the next.
Of course, after new reps have been trained on the basics of using a CRM system, it's time to help them hit the ground running with proven methods to increase sales. We asked some of the industry's leading CRM gurus for advice and came up with these ten tips to help you leverage the power of CRM to boost sales and keep on selling.
1. Get a complete view of customers and prospects
2. Give service personnel more CRM power
3. Build in more automation
4. Go back to the training room
5. Bring together marketing and sales
6. Create incentives for customer data input
7. Consider a different interface
8. Create customer success stories
9. Use a digital notepad that ties into the system
10. Keep an eye out for emerging technology
For much more on each of these 10 tips, be sure to check out the complete
source article.