In any interconnected process…your sales process, for example…there are certain places where inputs produce disproportionate outputs. In other words, there are places where a seemingly small, 1% improvement can generate a 10% increase in results…or more.
As you only have so much time and so many resources, prioritizing areas with significantly more leverage is great way to maximize your effectiveness as a Sales Ops team.
In our on-demand webinar, “How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel,” we highlight a number of leverage points in typical sales processes and illustrate how relatively small improvements in just a handful of these areas can combine and compound to produce magnified results.
But leverage points aren’t always obvious, or easy to identify. And some of the most powerful growth levers are routinely overlooked. Here are three examples:
- Sales Managers — It’s somewhat intuitive to focus on individual salespeople out in the field. After all, they’re the ones who are engaging with prospects, following up with customers, negotiating deals, and so on. But frankly, there’s a lot more leverage at the sales manager level. As there tends to be less turnover at the manager level, your efforts will have longer lasting impacts. As there are there are fewer of them to work with, it’s that much easier to get everyone on the same page. And when you have a positive influence on a sales manager, you will necessarily have a positive influence on every salesperson who reports to them.
- CRM Landing Pages — Most often, there’s a screen or page that every salesperson sees when they login to your selling system. Depending on how you have it set up, this might be a sales dashboard, an account page, or a more personalized “home” page. As every salesperson in your organization sees this page…probably multiple times a week…there’s a lot of potential leverage there. By thinking very strategically about what is presented on this one “can’t miss” landing page, you can have a positive influence on the behavior of your entire team, all at once, and in very short order.
- Existing Customers — It’s very easy to sales teams to get so focused on acquiring new customers that they overlook the growth potential hiding in their current customer portfolio. Compared to prospects you’ve never done business with before, follow-on and/or expansion sales to existing customers will typically have shorter sales cycles, higher close rates, and less pricing pressure. Unless and until you can confidently say that you have maximized your wallet share with every customer you’ve acquired, your existing customers represent a significant source of leverage.
These are just a few examples of areas where relatively small improvements and slight shifts in focus can have disproportionate impacts on overall results. As every situation is unique, they may or may not be applicable in your particular sales operation.
But the point of sharing these examples is to get you thinking. Where’s the leverage in your sales operation? Where will a 1X input generate a 10-20X output? Where does one thing affect or influence 100 other things? When you find those leverage points in your operation, you’ve found the keys to maximizing your team’s effectiveness, efficiency, and overall contribution.
Designing Effective CRM Dashboards for B2B Sales
How do you make your CRM dashboards an effective tool your salespeople will utilize long after the "shininess" has worn off? This Express Guide details ten strategies and tactics we’ve gleaned through our research with leading B2B sales operations and sales experts.
