How to Achieve Better Results with the Same Resources?

Just as all previous crises have passed, this one will too, despite the fact that the current situation in the business environment is quite challenging. It will take significantly more effort for some time to achieve the sales results of previous years. But the real question is whether to work harder or smarter? Or is the truth somewhere in between?

Digital transformation allows us to measure almost everything today. What does this mean for the new generation of sales and marketing leaders? They will need to understand customer data even better and know how to analyze it, continuously improving processes based on this data that will lead the company to new customers. The client is therefore more in focus than ever before. This is not a trend but a way of working from today onwards.

What does ‘360° view of the customer’ mean for a company?

In most companies, information is scattered across different systems. Sales spends a lot of time in ERP, where transactional data (offers, invoices, debts…) is stored. Customer support uses a separate application for complaints. Marketing uses one or more separate applications (for sending newsletters, social media posts, managing advertising, etc.). Although each of these applications can do its job very well, operating in different applications leads the team to practical problems that result in a poor customer experience. Additionally, useful knowledge about customer habits, scattered across multiple applications, will not be adequately utilized by your sales and marketing teams, thus hindering sales opportunities.

The ideal central place for all data is a CRM like Salesforce, where all customer data relevant to you will be stored. Your employees will gain a ‘360° view of the customer’, meaning they will see all relevant information in one place – whether it is about marketing campaigns, transactional data, or inquiries to customer support.

How to effectively manage marketing and bring greater revenue to the company for the same money?

In a crisis, management will most often first resort to reducing costs of long-term functions such as marketing. The reason is that advertising costs are transparent and concrete, while the successes and results of marketing are often very difficult to measure.

CRM allows tracking data about a potential client from the first contact to the realized sale. For each individual channel (e.g., advertising on LinkedIn or a local portal), the marketing manager will have information not only about the cost but also about how many new leads that advertising has brought, as well as the revenue it ultimately generated. In this way, the decision about the advertising strategy on a particular channel will not be made ‘by feel’ but through transparent criteria such as the return on investment of that channel. Thus, resources will be invested much more wisely and directed to channels that yield the best results for the company. In other words, they will achieve better results for the same money.

How to help the sales team perform better?

Although company directors and sales managers quickly recognize the benefits of CRM for their company, sometimes the implementation does not reach its maximum potential. The key factor in the success of implementation is that the application is used by sales employees. Salespeople often resist this solution, especially if they have not encountered similar solutions before.

For this reason, a lot of attention is given during implementations to automating daily activities, as well as educating management on how to effectively use the data obtained. The role of the sales manager is to improve the team’s performance, and to do this, they must gain insight into the activities of the salespeople, that is, how they work. They analyze data for their team and define who the ideal customer is for the product they are selling, which sales method has proven to be the most effective, and spread that knowledge throughout the team. So that everyone together can achieve the best possible results. 

For more tips on improving business, visit the HSM blog at salesforce.hsm360.com!

{embed_digitalno_izdanje}{/embed_digitalno_izdanje}