March 28, 2012
A Method that is Helping Sales People Save Time
BY John Paul Narowski IN Sales and Marketing
How much time and effort is spent in the wrong places? Sales practices are best defined by a system. A system needs to be structured in such a way to help coordinate your efforts and the efforts of others within your business, and to help become more time efficient through activities that yield great return yet require less thought and creation.
Analyze your business
• Are you spending loads of time on things that are a regular part of your sales process and practice?
• Do you find yourself missing important steps sometimes – especially when you’re busy?
These are regular mishaps that occur when a proper system is not in place. Remember that systems with proper analysis and coordination prevent these needless problems from occurring.
Then, ask yourself what can make your business more effective? Are there certain practices you’ve overlooked or ignored? When you give yourself the opportunity to step back and examine your inner functions, you become aware of what is working and what isn’t.
Developing a system that can help
Once you’ve analyzed your current sales methods, you can begin developing a system. This consists of people, processes, and strategies that function together to create consistency. The entirety of your business, including employees, management, and customers, must work together for the system to work. This leads to defining the process by which you will base your system on.
Even if you don’t have a team and you alone are responsible for sales in your business, there are times when you will need to step back and stop being the ‘technician’ in your business and act as the sales manager looking for opportunities and pitfalls.
When you organize your sales methods and system, focus on particular goals set in place to prevent confusion.
At the same time, ask yourself – are your methods transferable to other department? A system needs to rely on an inner structure that is balanced and adaptable. It will simplify the organization of your business activities.
Systems must always be repeatable. This is perhaps the most important quality of a system. In fact, my favorite acronym for SYSTEM is Save Yourself Significant Time, Energy and Money – S.Y.S.T.E.M. Consider a form that you would fill out. There are lines of text and instructions with blanks for you to fill out. This allows for a form to become universal and repeatable. Create your system as though it were a form to fill out.
That brings up the importance of flexibility. This characteristic goes hand-in-hand with the ability to repeat. The blanks within your system provide flexibility. This is key, especially since marketing strategies and customer demands change with each trend.
It is also important that your system be assessable. Calculating differences enables you to measure changes in business productivity. It will help you prepare for upcoming trend changes and adjust your methods properly. This characteristic demands feedback from everyone, especially the customer. Your system must be flexible enough to allow for feedback to effectively alter and adjust your methods. But, it must also provide the means by which you receive and process the information.
Juggling many hats
Consider the fact that being able to stay in contact with your customers is one of the revenue generating activities that often takes enormous amount of time. Why? Often, it’s because we search for little slips of paper, to do lists, and spend countless hours on developing what the “next step” should be.
Cloud based systems, such as KarmaCRM, help to provide a method by which you can easily track your sales contact management, tasks, and deals in a single sourced location. When developing a system, these abilities can provide an excellent tool for systematic organization.
How much time and effort is spent in the wrong places? Sales practices are best defined by a system. A system needs to be structured in such a way to help coordinate your efforts and the efforts of others within your business, and to help become more time efficient through activities that yield great return yet require less thought and creation.
Analyze your business
• Are you spending loads of time on things that are a regular part of your sales process and practice?
• Do you find yourself missing important steps sometimes – especially when you’re busy?
These are regular mishaps that occur when a proper system is not in place. Remember that systems with proper analysis and coordination prevent these needless problems from occurring.
Then, ask yourself what can make your business more effective? Are there certain practices you’ve overlooked or ignored? When you give yourself the opportunity to step back and examine your inner functions, you become aware of what is working and what isn’t.
Developing a system that can help
Once you’ve analyzed your current sales methods, you can begin developing a system. This consists of people, processes, and strategies that function together to create consistency. The entirety of your business, including employees, management, and customers, must work together for the system to work. This leads to defining the process by which you will base your system on.
Even if you don’t have a team and you alone are responsible for sales in your business, there are times when you will need to step back and stop being the ‘technician’ in your business and act as the sales manager looking for opportunities and pitfalls.
When you organize your sales methods and system, focus on particular goals set in place to prevent confusion.
At the same time, ask yourself – are your methods transferable to other department? A system needs to rely on an inner structure that is balanced and adaptable. It will simplify the organization of your business activities.
Systems must always be repeatable. This is perhaps the most important quality of a system. In fact, my favorite acronym for SYSTEM is Save Yourself Significant Time, Energy and Money – S.Y.S.T.E.M. Consider a form that you would fill out. There are lines of text and instructions with blanks for you to fill out. This allows for a form to become universal and repeatable. Create your system as though it were a form to fill out.
That brings up the importance of flexibility. This characteristic goes hand-in-hand with the ability to repeat. The blanks within your system provide flexibility. This is key, especially since marketing strategies and customer demands change with each trend.
It is also important that your system be assessable. Calculating differences enables you to measure changes in business productivity. It will help you prepare for upcoming trend changes and adjust your methods properly. This characteristic demands feedback from everyone, especially the customer. Your system must be flexible enough to allow for feedback to effectively alter and adjust your methods. But, it must also provide the means by which you receive and process the information.
Juggling many hats
Consider the fact that being able to stay in contact with your customers is one of the revenue generating activities that often takes enormous amount of time. Why? Often, it’s because we search for little slips of paper, to do lists, and spend countless hours on developing what the “next step” should be.
Cloud based systems, such as KarmaCRM, help to provide a method by which you can easily track your sales contact management, tasks, and deals in a single sourced location. When developing a system, these abilities can provide an excellent tool for systematic organization.
I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.
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