Discover the most effective sales team collaboration techniques that can turn a group of individuals into a result-driven team

Every business – from a tiny startup to a huge enterprise strives for development and growth. Despite the fact that businesses come in all shapes and form, they all face many similar problems. One of the most frequent issues so many companies deal with on a daily basis is that they fail to establish an effective business process that would optimize their workflow and boost the efficiency of applied strategies. For example, let’s take a closer look at the sales department. Nowadays, the sales cycle tends to get longer while the rate of customer attrition continues to increase. The sales representatives need to handle countless of responsibilities while focusing their efforts on the established business goals and sales quotas.

Why sales collaboration is important?

The word “collaborate” comes from Latin word “collaborare”, which can be translated as “to labor together”. Recent studies suggest that an average group of people who effectively collaborate can solve problems faster than a professional working alone. The ability to share ideas has become an obvious necessity. Understandably, common business goals made top-management work on the best techniques to transform their sales reps into an actual sales team. They have concluded that lack of communication and ineffective time-management are one of the major problems that hold the company back. 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting, while businesses with tightly synced sales and marketing departments enjoy 38% higher sales win rates. Truth be told, there have been countless sales collaboration techniques developed and a lot of them have proven themselves quite effective. Technological progress and CRM industry have achieved impressive results in automation of key business processes and helped employees of different business units cooperate. Collaboration in sales department are particularly important as some sales reps consider themselves team players while others like to work alone. Take a closer look at some of the most efficient techniques that will make your sales team cooperate:

Arrange team meeting to make sales reps share their achievements

Being a sales representative is a hard and time-consuming job. Getting the deal closed requires flawless execution of every step of the sales process. Evidently, each successful deal is a rightful achievement of each individual sales rep. Try to schedule a short meeting once a week, where your sales team can openly chat about their successes and wins. It is going to be the best chance to get the recognition they deserve. Consequently, it will motivate other members of the sales team to work harder and conquer new heights.

Acknowledge the defeat

As hard as it can be, your sales reps need to admit that some prospects were lost in the sales process. Not having a clear vision of the sales process is one of the major causes. A mind-blowing 68% of B2B companies have not identified their pipeline. Therefore, sales teams that are able to make an in depth analysis of each stage of the pipeline and specific stages where prospects are dropping off, will gain the necessary knowledge to determine the formula of the most effective sales techniques to close more deals in the future.

Hire team players

It might be one of the most overlooked detail in creating a productive sales team. Sports parallels happen quite often when talking about sales teams. It is a common knowledge that even a group of individual experts does not make a good team. Each one of them would probably fail to cooperate and share knowledge. Hire the applicants who emphasize on the growth and achievements of their previous company instead of the ones who take the credit for the wins to themselves.

Invest in your sales team

Time is a currency that your sales team cannot afford to waste. With all the meetings, field sales and a countless responsibilities that sales reps have to balance, it is imperative to take advantage of the technological progress and implement a technological solution that would free you salespeople of time-consuming routines and let them focus on opportunities. Overwhelming 88% of deals were lost because sales could not find or leverage internal resources. Luckily, CRM applications like bpm’online empowered with powerful sales collaboration tools can assist and guide your team through every step of your sales process. It also enables your sales representatives to work perfectly in sync and plan their workflow within the system. Not to mention the effective time-management.

Use your personal social network

Sharing their thoughts offline makes it even easier to share them online. If previous techniques helped your company to establish an atmosphere of open discussion and understanding of common business objectives, enterprise social network (ESN) will be exceptionally useful if you want to extend this communication online. ESN enables your sales managers to actively participate and engage in every aspect of the sales process and share new ideas. With ESN every sales representative can receive the newest updates and notifications in the newsfeed with an ability to comment and “like” different posts. ESN also allows businesses to spread their sales teams across various geographies. Bpm’online took its technology one step further and created a single platform where colleagues can discuss the progress of current tasks and projects. Essentially, a separate social network has been created within bpm’online CRM.

They say that when there is team and collaboration, incredible things can be accomplished. Tried and true collaboration strategies and advanced CRM applications like bpm’online use the best sales collaboration tools to back up that statement. Ultimately, the inability to assist or coordinate business activities between your colleagues throughout the sales process can put your business at a disadvantage. That is why the implementation of appropriate CRM solutions is highly necessary for any organization. Powerful sales collaboration tools unite individual sales department employees into a strong result-oriented team ready to drive your business forward.

References

• What Is the Sales Force Automation
• Beginner’s Guide to Sales Team Collaboration
• Best Sales Management Software for Your Company
• 7 most efficient sales management software platforms for high business productivity
• Top Six Sales Management Softwares: from Improved Client Interactions to a Noticeable Volume Hike