Whoever you are, whatever you do, how much ever money you have or don’t have, however good you are… we all have only 24 hours a day! Those 24 hours that are magically given to us every day whether we ask for it or not… So, now, how are we spending it?
Closing more deals quickly requires, among other things, an excellent idea about the customer’s situation, creating a buying vision for them and engaging them to go with you at the right time (prioritizing the ready-to-move customers). Which of these have you really automated? Digitally organizing data in CRM and retrieving it fast is of course needed for closing deals. But you don’t just want to close deals, right? You are already doing that with or without automation. You want your entire team to close more deals within those 24 hours.
What then? Well, first, one should think beyond mere automation… not just getting data into a CRM system but serving that data as customer insights which will help in closing. Second, reps become good at closing deals when they get customers ready to move forward. Finally, we also need sales training, though, it works only if we don’t forget what we learnt. If you want to save all this manual work, consider tools that actually get valuable customer insights into all of your reps’ hands, guide them to get their customers ready and even suggest steps to close deals (intelligent training). Said differently, you need insights, training and automated prioritization all bundled up in one tool. Compare the cost of paying for a tool like this against the hours and days wasted in not closing faster? What is such a tool then worth to you?
The moral of the story is that getting a CRM is just step one to make your sales machine perform consistently. When you spend all your time and effort in hiring good reps to produce the best, recognize that good reps are good only because they use the right sales techniques. And if those good hires are not performing to your expectations, the problem might just be that YOU haven’t invested in the right tools or techniques.