A successful business needs a competent, enthusiastic and informed sales force. And when it comes to your sales force, you have to know what they are doing. You have to know who they’ve seen, what they sold, how much they’ve sold and what promises they have made and received. Without this information, you have a hard time projecting costs and cash flow. You also won’t know when to increase or decrease production. Inventory on a shelf is a liability, but so is being unable to reliably deliver goods. This is why it’s important to have Customer Relationship Management tools that are easy to use and easily accessible by both you and your sales team. The ability to know what is going on with your sales, in real time, can make a huge difference in your business. Here are a few tools to achieve those goals.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based or desktop system. It is easy to install and easier to use. With Salesforce, you can have access to data as your sales staff enters it, and its slick analytics tools can quickly forecast future sales. Salesforce has a number of tools that can help you get a handle on your business and your staff. You can see how well products sell best based on location, determine that some products just may not be right for the geographic area your staff is pitching. You can also generate reports that show who on your sales team is meeting their goals and who needs a little coaching.
Best of all, your sales force can access the tool from wherever they are because it’s in the cloud. They can see for themselves how they are stacking up against others on the team and which products are selling well in their sales area. With the analytical tools provided with Salesforce, you can transform the way you communicate with, market, sell and present your business.
Collabspot
Collabspot is another tool to keep your sales team going and informed. It works with Salesforce and also integrates with Gmail, Linkedin and Facebook. With Collabspot you can send calls to action to your sales team. You can use its email tracking feature to see if messages you’ve sent have been opened or read. Your staff can use it to synchronize their calendar with Gmail or with Salesforce. This can open up the lines of communication and ensure that your directives and goals are received and read.
In addition to these excellent tools for your sales staff, Collabspot can also make sales a more collaborative effort, as it opens a line of communication between proposal writers and the sales staff. The questions that the proposal writers must answer in Requests for Proposals (RFP) can be useful information when your sales staff is pitching a client. They may be able to let the sales staff know about technical details that the sales staff is unaware of but which can be useful when selling the product. There may be industry trends that would help your sales team that your marketing staff is aware of. All of this can help your staff sell your product.
Uberconference
Web conferencing has a myriad of advantages over a phone call, email or even a conference call. Web conferencing provides a forum for your sales team to meet online and share successful and unsuccessful sales strategies. If you have something new to promote or some new information that may be helpful to them, you can share it online.
The great thing about Uberconference is not only its flexibility, but its affordability. This is a powerful web conferencing tool that can help you build a solid and collaborative team that is enthusiastic and feels like they have the support they need to get their job done right.
Edited by
Kyle Piscioniere
