Sales as a process is hard. It is a ‘numbers game’ but with a huge disparity within those numbers. The only truth is that at some point, someone who wasn’t ready to buy earlier, may be ready to buy at some point in the future. The trick is to be in front of them when that point arrives. This means managing the vast numbers who are not ready rather than the few who are. Salespeople are not good at that. So, management needs to own and manage the follow-up process for everyone who is not ‘ready’.
ROMS has it’s own true CRM module but it is absolutely a departure from traditional CRM systems. Even if your company does not process ewaste this should be of interest to any company running a salesforce.
Traditional CRM is largely a mechanism by which a mid level sales manager can keep tabs on what their individual sales persons are doing. This is not Sales Automation. The salesperson tells the system what they have done and then the system will tell their manager what they told it. Yes, there are some bells and whistles around ‘moving prospects through the sales pipeline’ but it doesn’t actually automate anything to do with activities required to develop a prospect.
Salespeople are typically pretty good at following up with those prospects whom they suspect are ready to make a buying decision, and rightly so. However, these prospects represent just a tiny portion of the total adressable market of everyone who may at some point be a buyer of your product or service.
A true prospect is someone who has a need for your product or service, the need is immediate or short term, the prospect has decision making authority and they have been price conditioned.
As a person managing a sales process, where would you be if you were still in contact with everyone, any of you sales team had ever contacted whether interested or not? True sales activity automation involves taking control of the follow up process at a corporate level.
So what does this involve and how is it done?
Businesses typically are able to exist because of repitition. A sales process is no different. If you, as a manager were to cold call a prospect, you will have heard the possible outcomes many times before. Very loosely, these will fall into one of the following categories; ‘Yes’ (to whatever next step you are proposing, ‘No’ (they are not nor will ever be a prospect), you cannot get through, ‘send more information’ or ‘Wait’ (call back in x months or weeks).
Imagine now that you have only a single prospective buyer in the entire world for your product or service. Your salesperson calls them and is told that they have just signed with a competitor. Will they have heard that before? Of course they have. The difference now is that at a corporate level you have pre defined what the follow up process should be for that exact outcome. Remember, this is the only prospect you have in the world. So what would you do?
You would probably send an email thanking them for their time, acknowledging that they have just signed with a competitor and promising to keep in touch and you’ll touch base again in the future. You would then twiddle your thumbs for around 3 months then possibly send another email, ‘Hi John, just a brief note to let you know that I haven’t forgotten you etc’. Possibly 4 months later, another, ‘Hi John, I was going through some files and came across your name and was wondering how the new competitor was working out?’
Possibly another email 3 months after that. Lastly, a week before the aniversary of the initial call another email, ‘Hi John, it’s been a year since we spoke and I remember I promised to touch base again around this time so I’ll call again next week’. 7 days later the salesperson gets a call instruction with a list of the new possible outcomes.
Now imagine that ALL of the prospects your company has are in one of many predefined communication cycles and always will be. The communications are generated automatically on behalf of the salesperson. So yes, the salesperson benefits because eventually an email will arrive at exactly the right time and now you have another real prospect. The true benefit is that you, management have taken control of the follow up process.
There are many other positive ramifications that flow from this. Please call Graham on 602 317 3981 or email Graham@Recyclesoft.com to learn more.
