This is Final in a 3-part Series on Trends in Selling

This is final in a 3-part series on Trends in Selling. The first was the role of

#digitaltransformation and how it drives the Customers’ journey with your company. You must understand their behavior to make it easier for them to buy.

Part 2 was about the role of #talent in influencing the final leg of the journey. Good sales talent can facilitate the last leg of the journey or reset the table for a lost customer. They are expensive and hard to find, but there are alternatives.

The last trend is the role of #analytics in understanding how to manage the organization’s alignment to their customers, to marketing, to selling and fulfillment. It’s the thing that helps a connect the system together: the Process and the Capture Tool.

The #salesprocess is the structure, and the tool is the Customer Relationship Manager (or #crm). A sequential linked sales process will raise your likelihood to close to 93%. (You’re Working to Hard to Make the Sales, Travisano and Brooks). It can do this because the CRM  is able to help you gain insights into the trouble spots of your sales funnel.

The CRM market is the largest software marketing space in the world. According to Fortune Business Insights Group, the CRM marketplace will grow 12.5% a year and will be a $145B by 2029, driving the rapid growth of Digital Transformation.

However, 50% of companies with less than 11 employees don’t have one; while 91% of companies over 11 employees use some kind of CRM. There is clearly a flexion point, most likely driven by complexity and cost. A CRM will range in price from $12-$300 dollars a month. It’s an investment to install, manage and leverage. Adoption rates by Sales tends to be high, (reps will put data into the system), but not utilization (they’ll not use the full functionality of the tool to actually sell.)  

I believe the reason for this is twofold. 1.) the sales process does not align to the CRM functionality, or vice-versa; 2.) accountability, managers really don’t care about the how, but the results.

Both are costly. Data is the new business oil. It’s rich in unlocked revenue for the business because it provides insights into customer buying habits and signals.

The ‘how’ is the grist of #sellingskills. Good leaders are great coaches. Great coaches identify the strengths and weakness of the team. If I cannot follow a rep’s planning logic, I cannot help them improve their sales intelligence, and call execution.

The sales process aligns to the customer’s journey, which is tracked by an intelligent CRM which in turn gives insights into what the customers’ values are, which accelerates the digital transformation we are all trying to better manage.  

The role of a Chief Revenue Officer is to pull these pieces together for the business. While expensive, they save small and mid-size businesses a ton of headaches and time and accelerate growth. If you are not ready for the whole package, consider a #fractional resource to get you on the right path. #sales