A clear selling framework helps your team members focus on
articulating value to buyers.
In a small business, you need to leverage every advantage you can to make a personal connection with your customers during your marketing process. Since you are small, take advantage of your ability to transform your personal selling process to drive revenue and growth. Selling is the best way to build rapport, understand customer preferences and persuade buyers that your company and solutions have value.
Here are four ways to dramatically grow your small-business by transforming your sales process.
Create a Clear Strategy
Your selling strategy is what guides your sales process. Your sales team will execute their roles within your business model based on the process. When your sales people understands your long-term vision and the primary solutions that drive your success, it is easier for them to target the right types of customers with effective messages.
A simple strategy combined with a well-developed sales process makes selling more straightforward.
Design a Stable Framework
It is important that your sales reps feel free to interject their own personalities and unique touches into their sales activities. However, a consistent selling process is beneficial to you business. First, outline a consistent approach. You can more efficiently train and develop your sales professionals to sell with it.
More importantly, you need to continually develop the skills and productivity levels of your team members to drive your company's growth. A well-outlined selling process enables you to set goals, evaluate each rep's performance on stated criteria, and coach sales people that need to improve in particular areas.
Value Data and Analytics
The days of relying solely on intuition, hunches or gut feel in running a business are largely over. Competition is too high and the quality of CRM software programs too powerful for you to not take advantage of technology in your small business marketing system. By collecting data on your prospects and customers, and comparing customer types to their buying activities, you get a more accurate depiction of what products and communication methods work best with each of your customer segments.
When you gather and analyze quality data, you can greatly enhance your team's understanding of the deep-level needs, preferences and motives of individual buyers. People buy a solution that optimally matches their problem and knowledgeable reps articulate value better.
Build Skills at Each Sales Stage
Competing as a small fish in a big sea is challenging. You need to seize upon any advantage you can to make a positive and lasting impression with buyers. This point is especially true in a niche industry. You can't afford to have sales rep damage your brand because of a lack of discipline or knowledge.
When coaching your sales people, the most important thing is to hit on specific areas for improvement. Don't just say, "You aren't performing as well as other employees, I need you to increase your numbers." Instead, monitor execution at each selling cycle stage, including lead generation, appointment setting, conversions and customer retention. You may have some reps that need to get better at landing meetings with prospects. Others may need to focus on minimizing customer churn through enhanced training on post-sale actions. Streamline your training to express specific deficiencies.
Once you set clear goals and expectations for your team, that's the starting point to transform your small business sales processes. Build a consistent approach that leads to simpler performance evaluations, and a standard selling framework. Remember also the significant value you can gain, by leveraging a CRM program such as www.Insightly.com, and focus your training efforts on areas of greatest need.
This article was originally published on www.succeedasyourownboss.com as 4 Ways to Transform Your SMB Marketing and Sales Processes.