Your intentions were in the right place when you downloaded that app to help you track your mileage, or the email response automation tool, or the multitude of other options intended to help you streamline your process and increase your sales efficiency. But now you have reached a critical point where you have to evaluate if all of these are helping or hurting.
Have you seen little to no difference in your bottom line after starting to utilize these dozens of apps or programs? If so may need to take a step back and evaluate your automation tools, not only to increase your productivity but also increase your efficiency and your bottom line.
When you strategically consolidate your automation tools, you are able to simplify and automate much of your sales process and accelerate your business initiatives. More importantly, it can yield significant sales efficiency, scalability, and cost advantages which ultimately result in a better experience for your customers. Happier customers = more money.
Importance of choosing the right sales automation tools
As business owners and salespeople, you know that time is money. The more time you have, and the more efficient you can be with that time, the more sales you can make. The more time you have the more opportunity you also have to learn new tools and sales tricks. The amazing thing is now there are apps that can help you manage your territory more efficiently at the touch of a button on your mobile device. Or help you keep track of your meetings and important notes with a simple voice recording saved for later and filed by customer or prospect. But with literally hundreds of options in apps and programs available at our fingertips now in this digital age, it is no wonder many are left with their heads spinning and wondering where to start. The average outside sales rep uses 6 applications per day to help manage their day both in the field and in the office.
Technology is advancing at lightning speed, so tool consolidation is now a natural – and necessary – evolution. It’s time to retire old legacy systems and dozens of repetitive apps in favor of single platforms.
We all know in the outside sales world, especially when you have multiple sales people on multiple teams, you need to be able to track many things throughout your sales quarters to ensure everyone is meeting KPIs and your bottom line is where it should be. Whether it’s drawing out the most efficient routes or assigning your best sales agents to your territories with the most potential, you need to be able to quickly get those tasks done with little downtime. That is probably the most important reason you need to evaluate which apps offer what solutions for you and where you can consolidate.
Depending on your specific industry, your target markets, and how much face time you plan to have with potential and current clients, there are apps that are more applicable in certain instances. The key is not to overwhelm yourself with too many apps that only do one thing when there are apps that can do multiple tasks cohesively. If you utilize ten apps that each send you multiple notifications constantly throughout the day and keep you distracted (can you say FOMO?), you should utilize two apps or platforms that can do all of those things and keep you humming along throughout the day like the well-oiled machine you are, it’s a no-brainer.
Source: NNC Services
All-encompassing apps and platforms that are multi-beneficial like this offer a great solution to make your sales life easier and more efficient. You can easily take care of routing, sales charts and KPI reports, all while mapping territories in one beautifully laid out visual sales management software. And you will still have time to shake hands with your biggest customers and most profitable potential clients.
The first place to start to determine which tools will be most effective for you is to evaluate your goals. Do you want to spend less time on the road and more time face to face with potential new clients and customers who will turn into long-term revenue streams? Do you want to allocate your windshield time more at specific times of the day or specific territory areas and have the rest of the day “in office” to do follow-ups? Do you want to automate those follow-ups and recaps of meeting notes?
Examples of automation tools
After you have determined your goals you now have a perfect starting point of features to look for in the automation tools available. One of the biggest ways to increase productivity, efficiency, accountability, and streamline your sales process is to utilize a territory mapping app.
Why would you spend your time bouncing back and forth from one side of town to the other with no specific rhyme or reason when you can systematically visit your biggest possible prospects on one side of town? You will have face time with more prospects in a couple of hours than you might have in a couple days, and still have time that afternoon to check in on some current clients that you haven’t had time to visit in a while.
Source: ToutApp
You can easily save 30% on gas each and every week with territory management systems. These platforms allow you to easily and quickly map out your routes, utilizing the route planner, to produce the most impact in less time and with expert sales efficiency. If you are spending more time where it’s worth it and you are able to segment and categorize key accounts, you are guaranteed to increase your bottom line.
Another way to increase your productivity is to automate your routine sales tasks and lessen the manual work, and you don’t need five separate apps to do it. Consolidating your programs into one that automates all parts of your monotonous “follow-up” work will do wonders with how you utilize your time each day. By automating parts of your sales process, you can easily check in with clients using technologies like geo-fencing, send follow ups, and set reminders in half the time. You’ll know in a single glance which customers you need to visit. This will give you more face time to do what you do best – make sales.
With everything from scheduling personalized email blasts to multiple customers and prospects or sending automated monthly check ins with current clients, you’ll be amazed at the amount of time you save. With software like Map My Customers you can do all of these things and more. With seamless integration into several CRM platforms like SalesForce and Quickbooks, as well as sites like LinkedIn and Google Maps, Map My Customers also allows you to easily keep track of your meeting notes, decipher the sales data within your CRM, check in with your current clients and prospects, and create new accounts in one click. Map My Customers is one of the only platforms available that is a strategic partner with Google. This allows for quick search results in much less time.
You can also consolidate your automation tools that help you generate new leads. How many times do you find yourself asking Siri things like “What grocery stores are near me?” (Let’s pretend that’s your target market.) and then trying to cross-reference those potential leads in other apps to see if they are worth targeting. You now have the ability to find new potential leads like this in your area at the touch of a button. Utilizing these territory management systems to uncover new opportunities, you can quickly maximize available time in your day by adding new leads into your existing route for the day without skipping a beat. You’ll wonder why you haven’t used a route planner for sales before. This on-the-go mobile friendly technology, all in one place, allows you to operate daily at the most efficient levels and watch your ROI grow.
Conclusion
With more and more available apps and software inundating us every day as technology continues to increase, it is even more important to make sure we are leveraging the most valuable options to maximize sales efficiency and productivity. According to a Q1 2017 Hubspot Sales Survey, salespeople spend just one-third of their day actually talking to prospects. The most time, 21% of their day, is spent writing emails to prospects and clients, 17% manually entering data into CRMs, another 17% prospecting and mining for new leads, 12% going to internal meetings, and 12% scheduling and routing outside client meetings. Through carefully evaluating the areas our process and sales efficiency may be lacking, we can determine which things need to be addressed. Then we can determine which software can prove to be the most beneficial for us and our team.
As outside sales experts, having the right software providing tools like visual territory mapping, can put us ahead of the competition, offering our customers the service and reliability they deserve. Leveraging the right tools will give you the ability to clearly see where your greatest opportunities lie and the areas where you can easily improve. As you and your team are able to get to prospects and customers more efficiently and in significantly less time, and you naturally save many valuable resources at the same time.
By consolidating your automation tools, you will eliminate the complexity of overlapping apps and software and streamline your sales operations at the same time. In turn, you will completely transform your business management procedures.
Let us know in the comments how you’ve consolidated your automation tools and processes and how it’s helped improve your business. We’d love to hear from you!
