Lesson #198: Support Your Sales Team

We recently learned the synergies between your sales team and operations team (Lesson #194), and between your sales team and R&D team (Lesson #197).  And, back in Lesson #161, we learned how to create an "everyone sells" culture within your organization, where all employees tap their collective networks to help drive leads for your sales team.  But, there several other areas where your organization can help your sales team to maximize efficiency and revenues.

APPOINTMENT SETTING

You always want your sales team spending their time selling, in front of clients.  Any time they are spending hunting down key contacts or trying to set up meetings, is time taken away from the client meetings themselves.  Where you can, try to find an in-house administrator or outside appointment setting firm to do the heavy lifting here, so your salesperson can come in and close the deal.  More closing time, means more revenues.

SALES ADMINISTRATORS

The same holds true around a salesperson's back-office tasks, like tracking and submitting expenses, entering lead data into your CRM or booking their travel.  Again, an in-house administrator should be leveraged to help maximize selling time.

SALES OPERATIONS

The third part of these better efficiency plays is having an internal sales operations person in charge of helping your outside salespersons track down stuff internally.  Maybe that is getting client deliverable dates approved, or doing the technical demo, or shepherding a custom sale through the R&D process, or tracking down signatures on key contracts or onboarding new clients with the account management team.  The sales operations process, is as important as the sales efforts themselves, if you are trying to scale your business.

SALES ENGINEERS

If you have a highly technical sale, nobody is going to know how to educate a client on its features and functionality better than the technical engineers that built it.  So, a salesperson, coupled with a sales engineer can make for an effective one-two punch with clients--the sales person selling the relationship, expertise and economics, and the sales engineer educating on the technical aspects of the product.  Notice I didn't say selling the product.  Very few technologists have strong sales skills wired into their DNA, like a good salesperson does.

Hopefully, the collection of wisdom above is helping you learn that sales success is a collective effort.  And, the better your process is optimized, and the key team players are aligned, the better your revenue growth will prosper.

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