Path To Success: Top 5 Best Practices for Sales Activity

Why is Sales so important?  Because the success of a business is measured in profit and growth, and those two indicators are primarily fed by sales. A lack of sales can result in little or no growth followed by financial loss and possibly even closure of the business.

Sales are driven by financial goals, and in order to achieve these goals, you must establish a process to manage three key areas:  Business Development, Sales, and Account Management.These areas work together to generate proposals/quotes, manage sales opportunities, and facilitate a smooth handoff to service delivery. It‘s important that the sales process promotes consistency, aligns compensation with financial goals, and operates in a single system, which yields high visibility.

Do you have a sales quota that you track and report on monthly, quarterly, or annually?  Do all interactions with customers get tracked in the CRM? Do you qualify leads prior to sales engagement?  If the answer to any of those questions is no, it may be time to reevaluate how you plan your sales activity.

We’ve developed five best practice concepts to ensure your sales organization is doing the right things to succeed.

Manage Your Opportunities–The sales staff should manage their opportunities weekly. The goal is to ensure each opportunity contains a future activity, an estimated close date, is attached to a campaign, and includes estimated revenue.

Find Your Sales Rhythm – It’s important to ensure you have weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales meetings.  Be consistent and put in the hard work.

Everything Becomes a Sales Order – Once an opportunity has been won, all information relating to the products, labor, services, and contract information needs to be transferred to a sales order.   The sales order will contain the additional products and services the customer will need to become fully automated.

You’ll Succeed at What You Incentivize –It’s critical to have the simplicity, timing, size, focus, and type of incentive aligned with your company’s success. The alignment includes individual, team, business unit, location, and company focus incentives.

Chase More Opportunities–Everything is a sales opportunity. Create an opportunity for every sales interaction. Increase sales by properly configuring your sales system to automate opportunity management.

Following these 5 Best Practices is sure to get your sales team down the right path.