If you run any type of sales organization, then you know that the larger that organization gets, the more small inefficiencies become major problems as you scale.
In short, activity that is not directly revenue producing needs to be automated or reassigned so sales people can focus on the task at hand. If you think about your own organization, I am sure you can identify tasks your sales people are doing that slows them down and prevents them form achieving their goals.
Sales operations is like a company within a company. The customer is the sales person and the vendor is the sales manager. The objective of the sales manager is to empower the sales people to focus on deal production.
Because of the very independent nature of commercial real estate brokerage, sometimes agents do not get the training and the support that will help them close more business. This helps the agent and the broker since there success is connected. If you are running a CRE brokerage, this is a great opportunity to review your processes and think about what you can do to make your agents more effective.
The following are 3 common inefficiencies that sales people should never have to do:
- Manual researching leads
- Manually dialing, leaving voice mails, and sending emails
- Manual data entry
Clearly ProspectNow is focused on solving item number 1 above, but there are also other tools to help you with automating the other processes. There are great dialing tools for automating the calling process such as Mojo, Phoneburner or Insidesales. With regard to data entry, this can be a killer as your organization grows. Even the smallest manual operation can cost you huge dollars as you scale. If there are certain items which must be done manually, I’d recommend setting up a support team for your sales team that handles these operations so they can stay laser focused.
Every business is different, but when you become aware of inefficiencies you will see you huge opportunities to improve the performance of your sale people and yourself.
Good luck and happy selling!