By 2020, one million sales representatives willlose their jobs to e-commerce, according to Forrester Research. To stay relevant, it’s time for sales organizations to change, and fast. Fortunately, Forrester has some good news for sales leaders. While sales representatives that fit into order-taker roles will diminish, we’ll see an increase in demand for sales reps that fill the role of customer consultants by 10%.
So how do you create an environment where your reps spend less time taking orders and establish themselves as trusted advisors with your customers? Sales organizations that have invested in digitizing their workplaces and processes are leaps and bounds ahead of those that haven’t. According toresearch from McKinsey & Company, when sales teams prioritize digital investments, customer churn can decrease by 10% to 15%, the win rate of offers can increase by 20% to 40%, and the costs to serve customers can decrease by up to 50%. But organizations need to find the right balance between digital interactions and a human touch in more complex sales and customer relationships.
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Luckily, work management solutions integrate with the sales tools your sales organization uses day in and day out that can help automate repetitive steps and give time back to your salespeople to learn new skills. As you tackle a robust digital strategy, that still prioritizes valuable human interactions, consider these three different ways your team can benefit from work management integrations with your existing sales tools.
Look for New Ways to Automate Processes That Take Place Outside of Your CRM
CRM platforms like Salesforce are the heartbeat of today’s sales organizations, but if the rich customer data your reps generate remains siloed to your sales software, you are missing a significant opportunity. This data is critical for the rest of your company access, not only to galvanize around an accurate understanding of your customer base and their journey through the sales process, but also to better serve those same customers.
Here’s where a work management integration, like theSmartsheet connector for Salesforce, can come into play. Take the customer hand-off between sales and professional services as an example.
Keep your professional services team completely up to speed once deals close byautomating the transitionfrom the sales cycle to new professional services project. With this integration, when a deal is closed in Salesforce, you can automatically generate an alert and project plan for professional services in their work management tool. All relevant details are captured and seamlessly transitioned to the new team engaging with your clients, and updates are automatically synced between Salesforce and Smartsheet. That way you can say goodbye to time wasted by your services team tracking down details, and start blazing the way as a consultant that understands your customer best.
Create Better Internal Accountability, Both Within and Outside of Your Sales Department
Electronic signature tools, like DocuSign, have dramatically accelerated today’s rate of business and enable sales reps to close deals within minutes instead of days. However, if you’re only using this technology externally, you’re realizing just a small portion of potential value,particularly when electronic signature tools are integrated with a work management platform.
An integration likeSmartsheet and DocuSign可以帮助创造了强大的内部可见性。为example, teams can manage data like compensation plans in Smartsheet. Slicing and dicing the data by sales role and associating the relevant compensation plans with the appropriate groups is simple and straightforward. All the right departments and leaders have access to current plan status in Smartsheet, while automatic triggers in DocuSign take care of the minutia involved with getting each plan signed and archived. With this combination, when each new quarter or year starts, leadership can quickly send out new plans across the entire sales organization; sales has clarity into objectives and leadership can be confident that everyone is aligned.
Get Key Customer Data Out of Email
Your CRM isn’t the only information silo preventing you from operating at today’s speed of business. Important customer data trapped in email is also consigning your teams to manual tasks, like data entry, and keeping them from having the complete picture of a deal or a customer in one place.
Your sales teams can take the lead in digitizing your organization by eliminating information trapped in individual inboxes with a work management add-on for email. With an integration likeSmartsheet for Outlookor theSmartsheet Add-on for Gmail, reps can automatically keep important details in customer records in your work management platform.
Now is the Time for Sales Organizations to Digitize
Becoming a digital sales organization means more than moving your CRM into the cloud. By leveraging work management integrations, evolving your digital practice is easier than you think.
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How can your teams become more successful from your digital transformation? Get them the tools they need to succeed today, in 2020, and beyond.