Whitepaper Cut to the Cash: How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
Think about it the more obstacles that stand in your sales reps way, the less time they have to close new deals. Think about it the more obstacles that stand in your sales reps way, the less time they have to close new deals. So to shorten your sales cycle, you ll need sales processes that run as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, most sales teams don t. What with manual input of data, inefficient sharing of information between teams, nonexistent research processes and generating sales reports, reps often spend more time on admin than on selling. A recent survey by The Economist asked 236 sales executives about the biggest obstacles to growth. A staggering 71% of respondents said too much time spent on administrative tasks, far ahead of the next-leading concerns: lack of customer understanding (33%) and lack of information-based decisionmaking (28%). 1 Meanwhile, a recent CSO Insights survey of more than 2,000 companies worldwide says salespeople spend just 41% of their time actually selling to customers either face-to-face or on the phone. 2 When the same survey ran in 2006, salespeople were spending 46% of their time selling despite having less technology available to them. 3 So why are sales reps so tied up in non-essential tasks? 1 The Economist. The empowered sales team: Enhancing productivity through the better use of information. A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Sponsored by Microsoft. 2010. 2 Accenture. Optimizing Sales Effectiveness to Achieve High Performance: Key Findings from the 2011 Sales Performance Optimization Study. 2011. 3 Gschwandtner, Gerhard. How Much Time Do Your Salespeople Spend Selling? SellingPower Blog. February 23, 2011. 2 Cut to the Cash: How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
What stands between Leads and Cash? Companies that want to shorten the sales cycle (and who doesn t?) typically face several major obstacles: 1. Manual data entry steals time. If a rep receives his lead list via email, he then has to manually key the list data into his customer relationship management (CRM) system and if he can t type at Olympic speeds, that will eat up hours of prime selling time each week. Compiling a comprehensive prospect profile can mean hours researching companies and contacts online even before the first call. And once they ve made the call, well, that leads to yet more manual data entry. According to that CSO Insights study, salespeople are spending 18.8% of their time generating leads and researching accounts. 4 2. Lack of shared information misses opportunities. If they can t easily see what your colleagues are doing, reps may worry that a call will interfere with the efforts of one of their sales colleagues. With no visibility into anyone else s pipeline, they may hesitate to make that first call to a prospect, and another hot prospect goes cold. 3. On-the-road means off-the-map. Road reps without quick access to corporate systems can t effectively address questions, place orders, or even compile detailed notes. On returning to the office, there s the chore of sifting through emails, spreadsheets, and handwritten notes to recreate each meeting within the company s system leading to more time lost. 4. Sales reporting cuts into selling time. Sales reps can spend hours each week compiling information on current sales opportunities to satisfy management requests and, in truth, often rushing them to meet deadlines. In one CustomerThink survey, 9% estimated their sales reps were spending 60% or more of their time in non-selling activities such as paperwork, reports, training, and sales meetings. Another 28% estimated that non-selling activities were eating up 40-59% of their sales reps time. The largest segment 40% estimated non-selling activities were taking up 20-39% of the sales team s time.5 That CSO Insights study also found that salespeople are spending nearly a quarter of their time on meetings and administrative tasks, including reporting. 6 A staggering 71% of respondents selected too much time spent on administrative tasks 4 Accenture. 5 Thompson, Bob. Improving Sales Productivity: An Opportunity for Sales and IT Leadership. CustomerThink white paper. Sponsored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM. April 2008. 6 Accenture. Cut to the Cash: How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle 3
Four best practices for sales team efficiency These four initiatives can help you boost efficiency in ways you can measure, as quickly as possible. 1. Automate the lead entry process. An efficient CRM system can capture the contents of web forms and turn them into leads, then automatically funnel those leads to the right salesperson, freeing up time for the sales manager who would normally have to allocate them. Sales departments can respond to the hottest leads immediately, qualifying them right away and increasing the chances of a successful engagement. 2. Share information on all prospects and customers. A sales rep with a hot lead should be able to find a detailed history of your previous contacts with this prospect complete with all sales intelligence entered at that time. Or, with a new contact at an existing account, they can get complete information on the relationship including products purchased, licenses held, and any outstanding maintenance issues in seconds. Reps can work together to share information and tactics, and avoid stepping on each other s toes. 3. Go mobile. Sales binder? So last century. Laptop? So last year. Nowadays, sales reps are getting hooked on their tablets and smart phones even using them for video and audio presentations, with full online access to all the information and services they need in real time. According to a Nucleus Research survey, 74% of companies have allowed mobile access to CRM applications and increased productivity of their sales teams by 14.6%. Nearly a third logged productivity increases of more than 20%. And companies that also used social CRM boosted productivity by a further 11.8%, with 21% citing an increase of more than 20%. 7 Successful reps can get instant access to all the information they need from their tablet, including pricing and availability and create a quote on the spot. Then they can update the opportunity status for their colleagues so when they return to the office there s no messy afterwork to do, leaving them more time to chase additional contacts. 4. Automate sales reporting. Even if you ve already set up a system that automates lead entry and centralises prospect and customer information, it can perform better by pulling in data 74% of companies have allowed mobile access to CRM applications and have increased the productivity of their sales teams by 14.6% from sales activities and inserting it into a well formatted report or intuitive dashboard. A web-based dashboard can help your reps monitor opportunities, react to changes, and work towards their quotas. And sales managers can use dashboards to get a high-level overview of key metrics, while drilling down for the full story. 7 Nucleus Research. The Value of Mobile and Social for CRM. Market Focus Report. March 2012. 4 Cut to the Cash: How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
Sales team efficiency in action: case studies Three leading companies recently discovered the benefits of streamlining their sales cycle when they implemented new CRM solutions or reconfigured existing ones: USAFact sales cycle reduced from up to 6 months to just 1 week USAFact is a web-based preemployment screening company founded in 1977. The company s sales team lacked a quote structure, and its managers couldn t track accountability, activities, or profit. As a result, sales opportunities were falling through the cracks. After reconfiguring its CRM solution to support greater sales team efficiency, USAFact reduced its sales cycles from 3-6 months to within the same week as an inbound call. With automated quote generation and standardised volume pricing, an offer that would have taken three people 30 minutes to complete now takes one person less than five minutes. GM Colombia automated customer records led to 60% revenue increase in 3 years GM Colombia holds a 33.9% market share in Colombia s automobile market. Its aftermarket division focuses on driving customer loyalty to increase incremental revenue. But the group recently noticed that the quality and depth of its data was limited. GM Colombia implemented a CRM solution offering easier access to vast amounts of customer data, and could then quickly organise millions of customer records and implement custom reports. Since then, GM Colombia s aftermarket division achieved a 60% increase in year-on-year incremental revenues over three years. Fresenius Medical Care webbased CRM means a three-day job now takes just a few hours Fresenius Medical Care is the world s largest integrated provider of products and services for kidney dialysis. Over a recent four-year period, the company s Rio de Janeiro operations doubled straining sales, customer service, and back-office processes. But sales representatives were still using spreadsheets to manage information from customers, clinics, and hospitals. After implementing a web-based CRM solution, Fresenius found that order submission and processing that used to take up to three days could be completed in just a few hours. The Rio de Janeiro division now processes 500 orders per day a level of performance that was previously impossible. Request your free trial of SugarCRM Highly efficient sales teams tend to close deals quickly and sell more products. They increase revenue without introducing overhead or adding staff. How? With SugarCRM. SugarCRM is an open source sales force automation solution that makes it easy for companies of all sizes to identify and pursue hot leads, organize and share customer information, and measure and report sales performance across the company. It s also social-ready, which means you can integrate with your social media accounts to drive online collaboration, document sharing, and sales intelligence. Are you ready to transform your sales team into a sales machine? Start your free trial of SugarCRM today: www.sugarcrm.com/free_trial Or learn more about SugarCRM via a free webcast: www.sugarcrm.com/webcasts Cut to the Cash: How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle 5
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