What are sales strategies?

A sales strategy is a plan developed by a company to succeed in selling its products. In other words, it is any technique that helps agents sell products and close transactions. Contrary to what you may believe, sales strategies are not dependent only on the sales department, but rather, all levels of the company should be involved and dedicated to them.

But, what do you have to keep in mind when creating sales strategies?

• Actions to be performed

• Time to be dedicated to them

• Company sale channels

• Objective for each channel

• Available budget

• Analysis and adjustment tools

But this is not all. In order for a sales strategy to be truly effective, there are for essential factors that should never be disregarded:

• Analysis and adjustment

Measuring actions undertaken and verifying their ROI (return on investment) is essential to study whether what is being done works. Sales strategies don’t necessarily have to be definitive; instead, you can discard any one that does not work and replace it with new ones.

• Expense optimization

It is important to analyze what the money is being spent on and whether that investment is profitable. In order to accomplish this, there are several tools, such as A/B tests, which help various methods to be tested to see which one works better; or benchmarking, through which you will be able to know what your competitors are doing and get closer to them.

• Establishing goals

Without clear goals it is impossible for the strategy to work, because you don’t know what you want to accomplish. Therefore, defining goals will help you determine specific actions to accomplish them, motivate employees and justify the various actions undertaken.

• Increasing productivity

A company’s productivity can always be increased, and sales strategies are a good way to accomplish this. There are two ways of going about it:

- Through technology: having advanced tools that help you improve sales processes.

- Through internal marketing: undertake internal marketing actions that motivate employees.

You might be interested in: Resources to improve sales profits in your company

5 advanced sales strategies

Now you know what aspects to keep in mind when designing a sales strategy; but you probably want to know specific methods or techniques, so here they go:

• Improve your effectiveness

The effectiveness of a sales agent is measures by dividing the number of sales the agent accomplishes by the number of attempts he makes to sell a product. There are several ways to increase this value: researching customers to be visited beforehand, personalizing sales actions, finding out the reasons why they contacted the company, etc.

• Study your competition

Analyzing the competition and knowing what actions it is carrying out will be useful to analyze whether you should align your efforts with theirs or do something else. To this end, you should first thoroughly study the products and services they are offering to know what makes them different to yours; and also how they offer them, in order to discover whether it comes down to the products or to how they are selling them.

• Prepare your sales pitches

Sales pitches are the main tools of salespersons, so they need to be painstakingly crafted. When designing it, you should ask yourself several questions in regard to prospective customers:

-  What they need: anticipating their needs will put us in an advantageous position, where we will be able to move directly to offering the products and services they need.

-  Why they need it: knowing the reasons that drive them to purchase will let us be more empathetic, identify with them and build a certain rapport.

-  What their budget is: it is important to have an idea of the budget there are willing to allocate, so you can tailor your offer to their possibilities.

-  When and how they need it: in many cases, both the delivery time and the way in which it is made is important. You need to try to find that out and adapt to the customer’s requirements.

• Cross-sell

When opening up new markets or gaining new customers is difficult, cross-selling is an option to boost sales. Which is to say, products or services that supplement the original sale. For example, if you sell sports shoes, you can offer specific products to clean them. This may turn out to be easier, since if you offer it to an existing customer, he will always be more open to making the purchase.

• Advanced technology

Nowadays there are many technological tools focused on sales that may become a clear differentiating factor when closing transactions. A clear example is inaCátalog, a mobile sales CRM that offers a wide range of possibilities when selling. With inaCátalog, a sales agent can personalize his catalogs so that only products that are truly interesting to his prospective customer are shown; or optimize his visits, saving costs and time, since he can take orders on-site.

Having a resource such as inaCátalog may be what you needed in your sales strategy. If you do not believe so, we invite you to contact us and ask for a free demo and see it with your own eyes.

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As you probably already know, a balanced scorecard is a tool that allows you to get an overview of the company at a glimpse. This tool is composed of the main performance indicators of the company, which are displayed graphically and automatically for the Sales Director and other executives in the company to quickly identify the needs of the business and make decisions.

Before implementing a balanced scorecard, the following questions should be answered:

• What is the purpose of my company?

• What do I want to accomplish with my company in the near future?

• What do I have to do to accomplish it?

These three questions allow the mission, vision and strategy of the company to be defined, in such a way that the main KPIs will be able to be identified more easily. With this information in your power, you will be able to start working on designing the balanced scorecard for your company. But you may wander what indicators it should contain. We will tell you below.

“A balanced scorecard is a tool that allows you to get an overview of the company at a glimpse”

Main indicators of a balanced scorecard

Any balanced scorecard should have the following 4 business indicators:

• Financial indicator

Conveys the company’s financial goal. In other words, it measures how to get the most out of investments made by the company. It also controls the ability to generate value the business has and allows you to draw conclusions to maximize revenues and minimize costs.

• Client indicator

This KPI answers the following question: in order to reach our goals, how should we be seen by customers? In a business, it is essential to have customer satisfaction, which is why this information focuses on how the company is positioned in relation to its competition and the perception the consumer has of the brand.

• Internal business process indicator

In order to accomplish company goals it is important to maintain the ability to progress and change; therefore, it is important to also focus efforts on people and technology. This indicator is related to the importance that learning and training has in companies, in order to avoid stagnating, evolving and perfecting the various services offered by the company instead.

• Learning and growth indicator

These metrics provide information related to the degree of development of the various business areas. They are indicators that focus on analyzing processes involving productivity, innovation and quality within the company and the way in which they affect the commercial and financial aspect.

It is important for all of these goals to be SMART:

• Specific: all of them should be clearly defined and identified.
• Measurable: can be analyzed.
• Attainable: set goals can be attained.
• Realistic/Relevant: the established level of change can be accomplished.
• Time-related: there is a deadline for these goals to be attained.

You might be interested in: Why you should add SMART goals to your sales method

Benefits of having a balanced scorecard

Now that you know what an integral dashboard is and what indicators it should contain, it is important to remember the benefits it can offer your organization. The balanced scorecard will be useful to optimize the decision-making process within the company, not only at a strategic level, but also at a tactical level, such as production, logistics or marketing and sales.

The benefits offered by a dashboard are many, but they can be summarized by two major conclusions:

1. The Balanced Scorecard provides a detailed vision of the performance of the business, since it encompasses many concepts and allows you to see the different decisive variables for an optimal company performance.

    

2. It provides an overview of the company, allowing you to plan medium and long-term strategies and generate the necessary information to make timely decisions and avoid undesired situations.

In brief, the indicators that compose a Balanced Scorecard will provide you with a quick look of your management performance and the situation of your company with respect to the competition, in addition to giving you the ability to detect threats and know where there is a problem in order to solve it in time.

“The balanced scorecard will be useful to optimize the decision-making process within the company, not only at a strategic level, but also at a tactical level”

Define your dashboard with inaCátalog

inaCátalog is a complete, versatile sales tool that, in addition to offering the ability to take orders, show products and make reports, has a dashboard feature that provides key information about the status of the business: analysis of the main KPIs, sales stats, comparisons, etc.

Furthermore, inaCátalog lets you not only have a global balanced scorecard – since the Sales Director is provided with a dashboard where he can see indicators for each agent and supervise their commercial activities –, but also gives each salesperson the ability to have their own. In other words, with inaCátalog, every salesperson will be able to monitor his monthly sales and goals in order to have a more detailed control of his work.

Do you need more information on what a sales dashboard should look like? We put it at your fingertips in our eBook “How should sales KPIs be determined? Learn how to configure a sales dashboard using the most adequate sales KPIs.” Download it and start planning your balanced scorecard!

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But in order to be well-prepared when attending a fair, it is essential to have tools that make the job of selling easier, and in this regard, inaCátalog is perfect. Why? Below we tell you about the most important trade shows to take place next month, and how inaCátalog can help you get great results.

April 2018 trade shows

• Alimentaria Barcelona (April 16 to 19)

This is one of the most important trade shows in the food & beverage sector. It attracts a large number of manufacturers and suppliers of this industry, which implies an excellent opportunity to take stock of the food sector and get new business contacts.

The food & beverage sector works with complex, temporary promotions that are generally applied based on the volume of the purchase. The industry also employs several sales methods (prescriptive sales, pre-sales, travelling salesmen…), which means that agents should have the necessary tools to successfully perform them at their disposal.

inaCátalog is an ideal tool for working in the food industry, since it is highly versatile and allows several sales methods to be used, offers to be configured based on customers, and much more. Based on the data obtained through our Industry Report, companies of this sector that have implemented inaCátalog have managed to increase their orders by 7% and improve their turnover by 17%.

You might be interested in: Improve your contact management and increase your profits in trade shows

• Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week (April 23 to 29)

This is the largest bridal fashion fair in our country and it is divided into two: fashion shows take place from April 23 to 27, and the fair itself from April 27 to 29. It brings together the main designers and firms in bridal fashion, in addition to other accessory and party & communion dress brands.

For those working in this sector, this is one of the most expected events of the year, since most commercial activities take place during the fair. Sales in this industry are somewhat especial, because they involve a great number of items that are, in turn, divided by sizes, colors, fabrics, etc. And also because they are constrained by seasons (spring-summer and autumn/winter) and service dates are highly important. Therefore, sales teams need to turn to a tool such as inaCátalog, which allows them to have all size and color variants, bulk sales and the control of service dates on a bi-dimensional screen.

With inaCátalog companies of the fashion, footwear and accessory sector manage to boost their orders by 65% in just one year and the turnover by 74%, while during the second year these numbers climb up to 94% and 115% respectively.

• International Optics, Optometry and Audiology Exhibition (April 13 to 15).

This fair is a platform and a gathering point for professionals of the Optics, Optometry and Audiology sector, who come together for three days to learn about this market’s latest developments. Also known as ExpoÓptica, the 26th International Congress of Optometry, Contactology and Ophthalmology is also held during this fair, organized by the Consejo General de Ópticos-Optometristas (General Council of Optician-Optometrists).

The healthcare sector works with products that need to be eye-catching. Their benefits are not immediately noticeable, and a great number of additional documentation is required to get to know them (studies, demonstrations, characteristics, etc.). It is for this reason that sales agents need to make use of a highly visual tool that also allows them to perfectly explain the products’ features and convey them to their customers.

In this industry, the implementation of inaCátalog offers very good results, since because it is a sales application and a mobile CRM, it allows salespersons to have all details, characteristics and spec sheets in a single place. You just need to look at the data to prove this: thanks to inaCátalog, companies of the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector have increased the number of orders, as well as their turnover by 176%.

“A sales application and mobile CRM allows salespersons to have all details, characteristics and spec sheets in a single place”

• Espaijoia Barcelona (Abril 14 and 15).

This exhibit focuses on the sale of high-class jewelry and watches, and is held in the context of Semana de la Joya de Barcelona (Barcelona Jewelry Week). It is especially targeted at professionals of the jewelry industry, though in it you can find anything from companies with a long track record to new designers with interesting proposals. It is, therefore, a gathering point for anyone wishing to find out all details about the new jewelry and watchmaking trends.

The large number of product displays and their high cost is the main problem faced by professionals of this sector. Physical jewelry displays are cumbersome to carry due to their weight, and also somewhat dangerous due to their high value. Therefore, the number of companies that opt for mobile tools such as inaCátalog, which allow them to showcase their entire catalog without the need to physically carry it, is on the rise.

inaCátalog has implied a revolutionary solution for all companies in the jewelry, bijouterie and watchmaking industry that have implemented it, since during the first year they have been able to increase their orders by 41% and boost their turnover by 94%. All of this, while reducing risks and making the job of sales teams easier.

inaCátalog, the tool you need in your trade shows

As we have seen, having a good sales tool is paramount when making the most out of the trade shows you attend. inaCátalog is designed to adapt to all situations, from a salesperson’s day-to-day, to events such as these. It has specific functionalities for working in fairs, such as its smart barcode reader, personalized catalogs and centralized clients, which makes it perfect for fairs, showrooms and presentations, allowing all work to be centralized and orders to be placed through it.

Using inaCátalog, interactive and customizable catalogs can be created, in addition to having a mobile CRM and a full reporting system which can be used to manage customers and the activity of sales agents. While it is a tablet app, an internet connection is not required in order to work with it, because it works offline.

Do you want to learn more about inaCátalog and find out how it works for each industry? Contact us to get a free demo. 

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Sales pitches: advantages and things to keep in mind

Battle cards are documents in which what the seller needs to convey to customers is put in writing. The allow sellers to better prepare for visits, since a sales agent will be able to anticipate possible situations thanks to information contained in the battle card. For example, answers to the most common customer objections can be prepared beforehand, or various stages may be established to steer the customer toward a final objective.

Sales pitches therefore have many advantages for salespersons, including:

1. Preventing the need to improvise in front of the customer: improvising brings doubt to the customer, which is why it is paramount to have a good pitch prepared that shows confidence and certainty. In sales, what is said is just as important as how it is said.

2. Establishing a path to be followed: a good battle card must specify phases for the conversation, indicating anything from the way in which it should start to closure proposals, all the way through phases that enable the salesperson to show empathy and build rapport with the customer.

“In sales, what is said is just as important as how it is said”

3. Aligning sales processes: if sales pitches are effective, they will allow the entire sales team to work in unison and have the same guideline, thereby preventing sales from depending on the personal skills of each agent or just chance.

4. Generate motivation among salespersons: if a battle card is well-crafted, it will generate more trust and motivation for salespersons, because the more they use it, the more successful they will be, and the more sales they will accomplish.

You might be interested in: Sales books and other resources you just can’t miss

What sales pitches should include

Any sales pitch should be structured into various phases that allow all information that needs to be communicated to the prospective customer to be adequately conveyed. These are some of the parts that a battle card should contain:

• Introduction: first, a salesperson should introduce himself to the customer, indicating who he is and the company he represents. A special importance must be given to information about the company (track record, sector, value-added proposal…).

• Product or service being offered: after the introduction comes the time to present the product or service. In order to do this, one must indicate what is being offered and its general features. It is important to show a wide knowledge on the subject in order to elicit the customer’s trust, in addition to explaining all the strong points the product offers.

• Target audience: before selling, we must know well who we are talking to. Having a profile of our target audience will help us know how to communicate with it, what language and tone to use, etc.

“Having a profile of our target audience will help us know how to communicate with it”

• Addressing objections: in every sales process customer objections arise. It is therefore important to anticipate them and have an answer prepared, so that it doesn’t catch us by surprise. It is paramount for these answers to be brief and concise so as to offer a solid reply that does not bring further doubt to the customer.

• Solutions to various situations: sales pitches must also reflect the various situations a salesperson may stumble upon. Which is to say, it is not the same to contact a customer to arrange a visit than to do so to get someone’s contact information. Therefore, different pitches must be prepared for each circumstance.

This will interest you: Typical errors made during sales (that you want to avoid)

Tips to prepare good sales pitches

Now that you know the various parts that make up a sales battle card, it is important to keep in mind a series of tips that will help you enhance it:

1. Show evidence: customers are used to getting many visits by salespersons; so in order to convince them that your product is good, words will not suffice; you will also have to show them tangible aspects that corroborate what you are saying. They may be statistics, data, success stories, reviews by other customers, etc.

2. Go beyond the sale: nowadays, customers see sales as more than a mere transaction. Things like anticipating their needs and offering them a good post-sales service will be decisive when the moment comes to choose you over your competitor.

“Nowadays, customers see sales ad more than a mere transaction”

3. Highlight your product’s added value: as already mentioned, one of the questions the customer will ask is ‘what are you offering that the competition does not?’. Therefore, your number one selling point should be the differentiating factor of your company in relation to the competition. If this selling point is a solid one, you will manage to capture new customers and earn the loyalty of current ones.

4. Send the solution, not the product: customers mainly look for solutions to their problems, which is why the best sales pitch is the one that addresses the needs of the customer. With this outlook you will get better results than by attempting to sell a product or service.

Now that you know everything you need to improve your sales pitches, you will be able to strengthen them and increase your transactions. But if you need more information, contact us and we will help you.

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Measures to improve sales monitoring

All companies have at their disposal different methods and tools that help them properly track sales processes. These are some of the most important:

• Sales plan: this is a document that outlines an annual sales plan and establishes procedures to accomplish those sales. The sales plan can be made in collaboration with the marketing department, and it contains guidelines to comply with it. For example, the promotions that will be offered and their periods of validity, discounts that can be offered for specific products to incentivize sales, etc.

• Goals and sales quotas: company sales goals should be outlined in writing in a document, as well as sales quotas for each agent. This results in the salespersons focusing their efforts on accomplishing these goals and, as a result, it is easier to accomplish target sales.

• Sales force structure: another measure that helps monitor sales better is to have a well-defined sales force structure (no. of salespersons, sales areas, hierarchy, incentives, etc.).

• Customer portfolio: this includes both current and prospective customers for the company. It should contain information such as corporate name, phone number, e-mail address, position, products commonly purchased, etc.

• Order tracking: the company needs to painstakingly track orders placed in order to guarantee stock availability and prevent issues that may hamper the effectiveness of the sales process and negatively affect the customer.

• List of paid and due orders: this information is particularly important, since it indicates which orders have been paid and which are due. The management of paid and due orders is therefore and essential aspect of sales tracking.

“One measure that helps track sales better is to have a well-defined sales force structure”

In the past, all of these measures have been implemented separately by means of various documents. However, nowadays there are sales management systems that allow all the information mentioned above to be contained in one place, in addition to other information such as:

• Sales quantity per period: tracking of transactions that have been performed in different periods (months, quarters, semiannually).

• Effectiveness of each salesperson: control the quantity of sales made by each agent, as well as the number of customers or prospective customers he has obtained.

• Sales forecast: statistics or data on the number of transactions expected to be closed by each salesperson.

• Seller scheduled visits: organizer containing all the pending visits for each sales agent.

You might be interested in: Sales KPIs: 30 business indicators to monitor sales

Advantages of having a sales management system

Having a tool that allows you to comprehensively manage all aspects that influence the sales process is paramount to boost company sales. Some of the benefits obtained are:

• Increased salesperson effectiveness: sales management systems affect the effectiveness of salespersons, since thanks to a better process tracking, the work becomes easier and they can sell much more.

• Creating a working standard: this tools allows for the creation of a standardized way of working for all sales agents. All of them will comply with the same working guidelines, which will be recorded in the sales management system, which will result in the information being better organized, leading to an increased productivity.

• Generating reports: these systems have a very interesting feature, which is the ability to generate reports that include key information about sales processes with the purpose of improving future visits or sales opportunities.

“Sales management systems affect the effectiveness of salespersons”

It is therefore important for companies to implement a system that helps them manage the various phases undergone during a sales process, in addition to the ability to obtain data and statistics on it to improve in the future.

Apps to track sales: the solution to improve sales

Track sales applications such as inaCátalog are a great solution for both the salespersons and the sales director of a company to see everything that is going on. As we have seen, this type of tool collects all the information about transactions, which means, among others, it can be used to:

• Have an overview of company sales.
• Have updated, faithful information.
• Track paid and due orders.
• Control the accomplishment of goals and KPIs.
• Obtain sales reports.
• Have a fast, permanent access to the information.
• Help with decision-making in order to improve the sales strategy.

If this application also involves a mobile CRM, as inaCátalog does, then the benefits for the company will be much higher. Why? We invite you to download the eBook ‘How to choose the best mobile CRM to boost your sales’ to find out.

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Specifically, 208 companies that used inaCátalog as a sales tool between the years 2015 and 2017 were analyzed to prepare this Industry Report. All businesses included in this report sell their products or services both nationally and internationally, since inaCátalog is being used in 104 countries around the world.

The results of the report have been broken down by sector:

• Food & Beverage
• Home & Decoration
• Pharmacy & Health and Beauty
• Industry
• Jewelry & Bijouterie
• Fashion, footwear and accessories
• Gifts and stationery
• Childcare & child fashion

Across all of them, the conclusions obtained were very positive, since the average number of orders and sales turnovers have increased during the first business year since the implementation, as well as during the year following inaCátalog’s implementation.

This study outlines the results obtained by over 200 Spanish companies after implementing inaCátalog

Needs addressed by inaCátalog per sector

As we have previously mentioned, inaCátalog is a system that can be employed in many sectors, addressing different needs for each of them. These are the main needs, as found in the Industry Report:

• Food & beverage: inaCátalog allows companies to work with complex and temporary promotions (gifts, special prices and discounts). It also allows for the management of several sale methods concurrently (prescriptive sales, pre-sales, travelling salesmen).

• Home & decoration: a highly visual sale takes place in this sector, where agents need quality images. Furthermore, there are many product variants based on dimensions and colors – especially for textile products – and prices also vary based on these aspects. inaCátalog offers the opportunity of managing it all by using a single platform.

• Pharmacy & health and beauty: this is a sector in which the benefits offered by a product are not immediately noticeable, which means that a great amount of information needs to be available to be given to the customer. Furthermore, products need to be segmented by market, and as a result, agents need a catalog that can be customized, such as inaCátalog.

Agents need a catalog that can be customized, such as inaCátalog

• Industry: in the industrial sector, tailor-made products are quite common, which means that agents require a tool that, like inaCátalog does, allows them to personalize their characteristics. With inaCátalog much more detailed information about a great number of references can be obtained, and projects can be also managed and monitored.

• Jewelry & bijouterie: inaCátalog enables the management of the broad product exhibitors used in the jewelry and bijouterie industry, and allows the hassle of carrying these exhibitors around all day (and their high cost) to be eliminated. Our system also allows for an adequate stock and time management in regard to the manufacturing of ordered products.

• Fashion, footwear and accessories: this sector uses large color, fabric, size and other exhibitors. It is therefore necessary to have a tool that reflects all of these needs, in addition to properly manage service dates. inaCátalog also allows for season-based instead of calendar-based sales, which is a must for this sector.

• Gifts & Stationery: agility and speed in order-taking, as well as payment options are a must for this sector. With inaCátalog, they can manage payment policies and orders can be placed in seconds.

• Childcare & child fashion: the needs addressed by inaCátalog for this sector are similar to those of the fashion, footwear and accessories industry. Easy management of size, color and fabric exhibitors, season-based sales and tracking and management of service dates.

Main findings of the Industry Report

As we have seen, inaCátalog is more than a sales catalog and an ordering tool; it is a robust CRM system that provides information to agents and helps them make their sales visits more successful. You just need to analyze the main findings of the Industry Report to learn about the advantages offered by the implementation of inaCátalog:

• Increased productivity: by using inaCátalog, time management is optimized, increasing the number of visits by 20% regardless of the industry. Additionally, the efficiency of these sales visits is improved by 45% thanks to data integration and information synchronization, among others.

• Better purchasing experience: the implementation of inaCátalog allows the sales department to work with an omnichannel strategy, so that the focus is put on the customer and the agent has all the information about the prospective customer at his fingertips, improving the purchasing experience and increasing sales probabilities.

By using inaCátalog, time management is optimized, increasing the number of visits by 20%

• Greater sales team motivation: inaCátalog increases the commitment and efficiency of the sales team, since thanks to this tool, agents can sell more and better. With inaCátalog, they have much more information about the customers when preparing their visits, and it becomes easier to find new customers thanks to segmented databases and geolocation.

• Better brand image: companies that have implemented inaCátalog have managed to improve their brand image by having a tool that makes the purchasing experience easier and more innovative. Furthermore, given that inaCátalog allows the application’s look & feel to be customized, a much more businesslike image is conveyed.

inaCátalog increases the commitment and efficiency of the sales team, since thanks to this tool, agents can sell more and better

These is just a broad idea of what can be found in the Industry Report, but you will find much more detailed information in it, broken down by industry. Do you work in fashion, decoration, food, childcare…? Download the Industry Report and discover what companies in your sector have accomplished since they implemented inaCátalog as a sales tool.

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Even though the theory is clear, since both teams are aware that they have one same common goal, which is boosting company sales; when the time comes to get down to it, the roads they take are different, and this is the aspect that needs correcting. What measures can be taken to revert this situation? The answer is in smartketing.

Only 22% of companies work with truly aligned marketing and sales departments worldwide

What is smartketing and how can it help marketing and sales get aligned?

Smartketing is simply the integration between the sales and the marketing department with the purpose of having them both working in unison to accomplish company goals. In order to do smartketing, it is paramount to comply with these three pillars:

• Dialogue: communication between these two departments should be constant and fluid in order for efforts to move forward. The marketing team is in charge of generating leads and guaranteeing that they have a high quality, while the sales team is who should turn those leads into customers. This means that if communication is not good, accomplishing goals will be much harder.

• Teamwork: in order for a proper alignment to exist between both departments, it is essential for them to work as one. Carrying out periodic meetings between both, sharing printouts and tracking the process will strengthen the relationship between the two departments and will lead to better results.

• Unification: in regard to the previous item, teamwork also means that both departments use the same tools for their work. Having a sales tool that both sides can use, such as a CRM, will be paramount for both departments to track processes. In addition, it will imply cost savings and facilitate the management of information between marketing and sales.

You might be interested in ‘Why you should add SMART goals to your sales method’

Advantages of smartketing for the company

Even though this whole smartketing deal sounds like a passing trend, it actually isn’t. Unifying sales and marketing management has many advantages for companies that undertake this:

1. Improves internal communication: thanks to smartketing, the interaction and communication between departments is incentivized. Which means that if these two sectors within the company go hand in hand, internal communication will improve, not only between them, but company-wide, since other departments will follow suit.

    

2. More motivation: common goals imply an incentive for all workers to follow one same path with the purpose of accomplishing those goals, so that an extra motivation and a better work environment emerge.

    

3. Greater coordination: the joint efforts of both departments fosters coordination, since time management and work processes are optimized. It is also positive for the two departments to share a joint strategy that conveys a better corporate image, both internally and externally.

    

4. More information: aligning marketing and sales implies that both areas have a greater volume of information at their disposal, for example, in regard to lead quantity and quality, the stage of the sales funnel they are currently at, etc.

Aligning marketing and sales implies that both areas have a greater volume of information at their disposal

Tips to get your marketing and sales teams aligned

If now that you know what smartketing is and its advantages you are convinced that this is what you need for your company, here are a few tips to keep in mind in order for the implementation to be a resounding success:

1. Single definition of the buyer persona: in order to accomplish sales it is important to be clear on what your target audience is, and this vision needs to be the same for everyone. Therefore, sales and marketing departments should have a single definition for buyer personas so that they can focus their actions on that target, making closing sales easier.

    

2. Unify goals: if each department has different goals, it will be very hard for both to work in unison, since each will focus its efforts on accomplishing its own goals. Therefore, both teams should have a single set of goals that are measurable and encourage them to work jointly for the common good.

    

3. Have the latest technology: to improve the productivity of both teams, it is important for them to have the best tools at their disposal, and in this regard, technology will be a great ally. Having a joint CRM will lead the marketing team to obtain the data it requires to improve lead capture strategies, while the sales team will be able to better track customers and sales thanks to the sales dashboard.

Both teams should have a single set of goals that are measureable and encourage them to work jointly

After seeing all the benefits your company can obtain thanks to integrating the marketing and sales departments, you might be interested to know what a dashboard can do for your sales team. Contact us for more information.

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Do you want to learn how to transform your company step by step? Keep reading and learn how to do so successfully.

Learn how to sell more and better thanks to business intelligence

What we should understand by ‘digital transformation’

According to the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Business School (IEBS), we should understand “digital transformation” as “the new business strategy opportunities that arise thanks to the emergence of technologies.”

Digital transformation implies not only a technological change, but also the need to adopt new skills both by individuals and by the reinvention of organizational processes and structures. In this regard, digital transformation “is not oriented toward the technology being used […] but rather toward using it to accomplish set goals.”

Digital transformation is not oriented toward the technology being used, but rather toward using it to accomplish goals

What are the greatest challenges for digital transformation?

It is precisely this change in the corporate culture and business models that is one of the greatest challenges faced by digital transformation nowadays. As stated by Expansión, most business digitalization projects are aimed at:

• Improving customer relations through the opening of new channels
• Apply new marketing formulas and a data analysis that optimizes business efforts
• Attain higher operational efficiencies

However, this change toward digital is taking place in an isolated manner and through small initiatives which are disconnected from the rest of the company. “In many occasions, projects are undertaken by a small independent team,” that has budgetary issues and problems to accomplish the involvement of all other departments.

Cultural and organizational changes are the main issues to overcome in business digitalization

Cultural and organizational changes are the main issues to overcome in business digitalization. In this regard, organizations should be capable of:

• Getting all of their teams involved, fostered by management
• Creating a collaboration and synergic environment between departments
• Rely on technological tools that benefit everyone
• Get the entire organization to commit in order to make that change come true

If you want to know more: How to boost sales: provide your team with a CRM system

Phases of the sales team digitalization

The technological adaptation of the sales team is one of the key strategies of business digital transformation; this is because it can be beneficial to adapt to current markets and improve the accomplishment of goals. These are the key advantages of sales digitalization:

• Generating a greater value for clients
• Having more contact points to interact with prospective customers
• Professionalize business schedules
• Optimize efforts

How to transform a sales department into a digitalized sales force. These are the steps you should take:

• Prove your results

As technologies evolve, customers are using internet more and more to get informed before making a purchase decision. Which is why digital sales teams should be active online, being capable of providing assistance to prospective customers on any channel.

You might be interested in: Seven techniques to improve the capture of B2B customers

• Align sales with marketing

When it comes to selling, marketing and operations are as important as the sales team. In this regard, the marketing department is highly valuable when providing the pieces that salespersons need to interact with their clients, and salespersons can share valuable information about what works with the audience in order to create campaigns that are better focused.

In this sense, measuring the sales and marketing traceability will be useful to optimally coordinate efforts in order to accomplish goals for both departments.

• Identify internal skills and build your team

At times, organizations are not aware of the human resources that make up their teams. Evaluating these skills and aptitudes will demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of our employees, in order to create a training program that helps in turning traditional salespersons into digital talents that connect, convert and are more productive.

• Segment and monitor your audience

Identifying leads that will become clients is a key aspect of the sales process. Mobile tools for salespersons enable agents to identify the best leads to follow based on data obtained from the highest number of available channels.

Segmentation is the best way to obtain positive results, organizing prospective customers into several levels can help your sales team understand which strategy to employ.

• Measure your effectiveness using the right indicators

By identifying and using the right metrics, an organization can optimize its strategy and improve the aspects that are working, yielding the desired results. There are hundreds of metrics you can analyze, but we advise you to start by the sales K PIs to measure sales performance, and customer KPIs to configure your customer loyalty strategy.

Metrics can be used to optimize the strategy and detect aspects that need improving

How can I be more competitive in this digital revolution?

One of the main concerns of companies when facing the digital revolution is how to be more competitive and avoid falling behind with respect to the competition, and how to optimize resources and efforts.

Focusing on the day-to-day is no longer enough; you need to properly establish a strategy designed for the mid and long-term, since digital changes imply a more open mind in every aspect.

Digital transformation is a trip that requires constant evolution

In that regard, you should keep in mind a series of tips to improve your efficiency within this technological transformation process:

• Define your digital strategy around the global strategy: define digital goals and monitor them to verify their accomplishment.
• Employ agile methodologies: agile organization allows for the fast deployment of various pilot projects, fostering creativity and flexibility.
• Rely on technological tools: digital transformation demands the deployment and interconnection of different applications and IT tools. The team’s familiarity with them and their ease of use help them get implemented faster and more successfully, as is the case of inaCátalog – a very intuitive app that is deployed on tablets.
• Keep your customer in the spotlight: it is paramount to align persons, processes and technology to foster innovation and improve the customer experience across all aspects and environments.
• Digital transformation is a trip: digitalization is an effort that spans several years across the entire company, which requires a constant evolution. Once you accomplish your goals, you must set new ones, working to always stay at the cutting edge.

Now that you know how to perform the digital transformation of your sales force, learn about the software that your company needs to accomplish this transformation and accomplish your goals. Contact us for more information. 

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We know that there is a broad offering and that we don’t always have the time to choose those books that are most important, and we don’t know where to begin. This is why we have selected for you the sales books and other resources you just can’t miss, which will help you build the foundations of your activity as a salesperson. Make a note:

Learn how to choose the best mobile CRM to boost your sales

Sales books you just can’t miss

• Thank you for Arguing – by Jay Heinrichs

A true classic among sales books in the United States, Thank you for Arguing outlines the strategies and tactics to manage to convince anyone depending on their context. In order to accomplish this, it recounts the rhetoric and art of persuasion of some of the most renowned historical figures, such as Aristotle, Lincoln, Churchill, Cicero and even The Simpsons. Whether you want to come out on top when arguing with your friends, win bets or become a sharp negotiator, you can’t miss this book.

• The Active Listener – by Rodrigo Ortiz Crespo

Ortiz states that “in today’s business world, success depends for the most part on the effective communication between people, fostering a positive work environment and contributing to the achievement of goals.”

A good communicator must have public speaking and active listening skills. In order to accomplish this, this books teaches anything from how to prepare for listening, to grasping the main ideas and the feedback process, all the way through the position and look we have to adopt when standing in front of someone, and other key aspects of nonverbal communication.

You might be interested in: 7 resources to optimize the purchasing experience

• Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships – by Charles H. Green

Trust-Based Selling describes a way of selling where the most valuable is the relationship between the client and the agent, instead of focusing on individual transactions. Charles H. Green recommends giving priority to your prospective customers’ needs in order to gain their trust in an honest manner and build solid bonds that will bring more revenues for your company in the long term.

Through a number of real-life cases and company examples, this book teaches you how to adopt the four fundamental principles of trust-based selling; focusing on clients and assisting them instead of competing; caring for their interests to increase sales and the customer retention rate; and adopting an outlook where “the relationship is the customer.”

• Vender es mucho más: secretos de la fidelización en la venta – by Cosimo Chiesa

Selling is an essential activity in today’s market; however, there are still high levels of improvisation, lack of advertisement and promotional support and seller recognition.

Aimed at those who work with sales, this text cannot be missing among your sales books because it provides, in a simple and straightforward manner, a few tips to improve selling and customer loyalty, narrated in the form of advice given by an experienced sales director to a young, novice salesperson. In addition, the book highlights the need for the agent to become a consultant, capable of offering an added value to his clients.

Related reading: Open-ended questions aimed at selling more based on consultative selling

• Selling in Tough Times: Secrets to Selling When No One Is Buying – by Tom Hopkins

All companies go through a rough patch at some point, which bring disruptive change and paralyze those who are unprepared. Great sales professionals will manage to succeed while going through it, finding a way to deal with adversity and stay positive.

In these pages, Hopkins tells his own experience as a salesman and shares his plan to come out on top during tough times, offering a number of valuable lessons about keeping morale high and turning problems into sales opportunities.

Other useful resources for salespersons

In addition to these five sales books which will help you deal with several aspects of your activity, some professionals in the field share resources that you can download for free, and which may help you improve several aspects of your performance as a salesperson. Here are three key texts:

• How to determine sales KPIs – by inaCátalog

This free resource, developed by our team of sales and sales management experts, is aimed at all sales directors and specialists who want to learn how to configure a sales dashboard with the most suitable KPIs.

In it, professionals will find a good starting point to optimize their efforts and sales network resources thanks to more effective KPIs, as well as the best way to evaluate sales force performance.

You can download it for free by clicking on this link.   

• 11 tácticas de ventas que utilizan los vendedores profesionales para tener éxito – by Daniel Ronceros

An eBook aimed at salespersons who do not have a sales prospecting strategy, those who are starting off in sales and want to avoid errors, and experienced salespersons who want to learn about new ways to connect with clients.

This resource lists a few tactics to successfully navigate the first approach to a prospective customer. In its pages, it explains several ways to generate sales and new businesses, as well as laying the foundations of a prospecting strategy, and what a digital salesperson is. All of this with the purpose of helping the reader gain confidence to capture new users.

Find it here.

• Las 7 claves fundamentales para vender a empresas – by Leticia del Corral

Leticia del Corral, strategic consultant and result-oriented B2B digital marketing specialist recounts her experience working with multi-national corporations, small companies and self-employed businessmen selling products and services to companies.

An expert in ‘business to business’ marketing, she includes in this eBook the keys to obtaining business customers and the four fundamental steps for your company to attract other corporations. In addition, it contains a checklist with all the characteristics your marketing actions should include.

To download it, visit this page.

If you want to get more information and obtain more free sales resources, contact us and we will be glad to help you.

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As stated by the El Economista newspaper, profit is the “result of an investment that is composed of the sum of the interests or dividends obtained plus the revaluation or deprecation experienced by its market price.”

But how are sales profits improved? In this post we will show you a few tips to accomplish a more productive and profitable sales team.

Problems of sales networks which affect their effectiveness

Fernando Rivero, marketing director of Tatum, quoted by José Francisco Alfaya in his blog on “strategic resources for organizational survival,” states that there is a situation that affects profits in sales teams nowadays:

• A lack of optimization of sales efforts
• Departments are usually not standardized, systematized or modernized
• Reactive performance by salespersons
• Lack of sales proactivity
• Lack of parameterization and analytic knowledge
• Poor customer database exploitation to gain the loyalty of those of the highest value
• Decision-making based on limited information

Solutions to improve sales profits

In light of these hindrances that can negatively affect sales profits, there are a series of tips to improve the productivity and profitability of the sales team:

• Properly plan your strategy in order to miss no details

  A fundamental part of running a business is strategic planning, which is to say, defining objectives, strategies and procedures to be performed in order to accomplish our mission in compliance with our vision and values.

If you want to manage properly, it is important for you to dedicate time to the creation of your strategic sales plan, its revision and the constant analysis of all of your inputs and outputs.

• Prioritize tasks

  The next step to increase sales profits is to analyze all tasks that agents need to carry out during the week and sort them by relevance for their success.

With this we will realize that, while all of them need to be carried out, there are some to which we will need to dedicate more time (perform and prepare for sales visits, prepare orders and personalized offers, etc.) and those that are merely administrative and we should be able to do less.

We should get organized, set times for each task and be able to comply with them. How can we accomplish this? With a sales app that helps us automate the submission and writing of reports, sales reports included, and lets us avoid unnecessary calls to the central offices or loss of information at key moments.

• Improve the technical knowledge of your sales personnel

  Your salespersons should have all possible information about the various products and services of your business, their advantages, which problems they can solve, which items can supplement them… In this way, not only will they offer a much more professional corporate image to your customers, but they will also convey trust in your products and help them be more effective.

In addition to training them about your product catalog, you can strengthen their knowledge through a complete and well-crafted product data sheet.

You might be interested in: How to increase your sales network visits by 20%

• Measure and analyze

  In order to increase our sales productivity we must measure and analyze, obtaining information that lets us know the company’s and our customers’ situation, in order to forecast projections and fix errors in time or strengthen areas that need to be improved.

In order to analyze this performance we should measure the quality of the sales efforts, looking for a balance between the criteria of quantity and quality. You can achieve all of this by using a sales dashboard that is properly configured, in order to monitor and analyze your department’s activity.

• Motivate and incentivize your sales force

  Keeping your employees motivated and with a positive attitude in the face of daily tasks and the accomplishment of their goals is key for all of the processes in which they are involved to be more beneficial.

Motivation does not only involve the wage or economic incentives to the sales team based on their transactions. Achieving a committed department implies a change in the corporate mindset and in certain processes. This is why we recommend that you read our post titled ‘How to motivate a sales team through methodology and technology’.

• Know your customers and adapt to them

  We should know how our users are and segment them in order to personalize all of our interactions. To accomplish this, reinforcing the pre-visit planning and having all the information about a customer before the encounter will be of great help. In this way, we will be able to personalize our relationship with users and improve our  customer management in order to make each visit more effective.

Mobile tools for salespersons will be useful to obtain key information at the right time, make reports at any moment, anywhere, and centralize the information of the customer database in order for all departments and agents to have it at hand when they need it.

In addition to having a CRM that helps you store, analyze and segment customer data, in order to get to better know your customers and determine their quality, you can monitor and properly control customer KPIs. Through all of this, you will obtain a better outlook on how to interact with your users and gain the loyalty of those that are the most valuable for your business.

A CRM that helps you store customer data will let you obtain a better outlook and gain the loyalty of the most valuable ones

Technology to improve sales productivity

All of these tips will help your sales team become more productive and improve the sales performance if you know how to perform them and use the right tools for salespersons.

Did you know that there are applications that boost sales productivity? By using them, you can centralize these processes and properly monitor your salespersons’ activities and the status of your goals. You will also be able to know your prospective customers better in order to determine when they are prepared to acquire your products, and you will considerable improve the decision-making processes, since you will have all the necessary information to improve your strategies.

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But, what is competitive intelligence and how does it apply to sales? Competitive intelligence for sales (or business intelligence) is the ability a company has to obtain valuable information and help improve sales, sales decision-making, and in turn increase the conversion ratio. To this end, it is necessary to have the right technology that allows data to be collected, structured and analyzed.

Tools that implement business intelligence benefit from a more efficient and real-time customer data management. In this way, not only is key information obtained at the right time, but it can be better used to make strategic decisions, helping create a competitive advantage for a business.  

What can sales tools be used for and how do they help with competitive intelligence

Having a competitive intelligence tool for sales that includes a good sales dashboard will make it easier to create effective strategies based on real and useful data. These applications can be used to:

• Obtain an overview of the company quickly and visually
• Have reliable, faithful and valuable information for better results
• Access information quickly and constantly
• Help make strategic decisions
• Track product, customer, sale and sector performance
• Monitor goals and KPIs
• Report obtainment and analysis
• Implementation of business actions and strategies for the future
• Correction of counterproductive actions and improvement of the strategy

All of these uses make sales applications the best tool to study what is happening in our organization and with our customers, and understand it.

By properly using the information collected we can make future predictions based on faithful and updated information and decide what the best actions to perform are in order to accomplish our sales goals.

You might be interested in: Why you should add SMART goals to your sales method

How to improve sales with business intelligence

The automation of processes and business intelligence offer great advantages to define a business strategy that identifies trends and allows customers to be segmented. In summary, it can help you sell more and better since it:

- Improves the preparation of sales visits

Sales teams have a customer’s history at all times, which is useful to better prepare for each visit based on their tastes, needs, objections and even their interaction with the catalogs in previous visits.

If you want to know more: How to prepare sales visits in a few minutes

- Facilitates proactive selling and the relationship with customers

Correctly analyzing the information we have allows us to offer products to the customer and suggest the solutions that are better tailored to his needs, as well as suggesting supplementary products and use better upselling and cross-selling techniques, as well as proactive selling.

This type of visit is much more pleasurable and proactive, where the agent seeks to educate the customer and offer advice, succeeding in improving the purchasing experience and the relationship with the consumer.

- Allows for the automation of order-taking and other administrative tasks

Taking orders and making reports about the sales efforts happen almost automatically, without the need for significant administrative work and with a constant data updating, integrated with the company’s ERP.

- Helps deal with objections and turn them into opportunities

The ability to make sales reports on site makes it easier for all sorts of details to be reported, including a customer’s objections. They provide high-value information to competitive intelligence, to know more about the inquiries, tastes, trends and purchasing criteria of our consumers.

Related reading: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

- Optimally track visit types

Planning visits and segmenting customers is paramount to achieve an efficient management of the sales appointment schedule and obtain optimal results. With inaCátalog, each touch or click on the screen of the salesperson’s device is registered so as to be transformed into useful information.

Competitive intelligence and mobile CRM, all-in-one

The CRM and competitive intelligence for salespersons share various functionalities, especially by using history data to identify key trends that companies and sales teams can take advantage of to fulfill their objectives and obtain other benefits. Therefore, there are more and more tools that, like inaCátalog does, include this duo, adding characteristics and benefits of both techniques.

In addition to a sales app and a mobile CRM system, inaCátalog is a competitive intelligence tool in itself, which allows you to collect a significant amount of data and turn it into valuable information. On the other hand, it facilitates the structuring of those parameters in order to turn them into information that is easy to understand and usable.

Thanks to it, sales teams can build a solid knowledge base that helps, on one hand, to make smart decisions at the right time to improve their sales strategy and, on the other, to make the right decision on the sales representative’s everyday efforts in order to increase effective visits and improve sales results.

Additionally, inaCátalog also implies a cost reduction by implementing mobility, increased productivity for all teams and the optimization of sales and marketing actions.

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The B2B lead generation process, where professionals try to create interest on certain products or services while they attempt to close sales, is mainly differentiated from B2C in that companies are more rational when acquiring products.

Furthermore, we need to keep in mind other particularities of the capture of customers in B2B marketing when designing our techniques to attract customers and improve the sales process:

Characteristics of customer capture in B2B companies and marketing

According to Leticia del Corral, B2B marketing consultant, the characteristics of business to business customer capture are:

• Products or services are sold to other companies
• Large scale sales are made
• The customers – in this case other businesses – look for efficiency
• They want to be educated, they are professional customers
• They need to address specific needs, not desires
• They work with relationships with suppliers that are generally very long lasting
• Decision-making involves various levels, and is more rational
• We target few customers that make large purchases
• Consumers focus on the products’ logic and features
• They aim to accomplish long-term goals

How to capture B2B customers

• Define what is a quality lead for your business

  We should clearly define our target audience and determine when a customer will be ready to buy. Defining and classifying these parameters will let us detect the actors and factors that are involved in our customers’ purchasing process and also tailor our strategies to them.

Another important step to improve your B2B contacts is to define their maturing process, in order to work on them and guide them through the purchasing process toward a successful closure.

• Align the marketing and sales teams to optimize their resources

  Communication and information exchange between the marketing and the sales department must be continuous.

It is sales agents who are in constant contact with customers, and they can help in determining which are prepared to buy and what marketing strategies are giving the best results (which pieces are more attractive, what products can be included in a segmented catalog, what are customer objections that can be addressed with more information, etc.).

The information that the sales team can offer the marketing department is highly valuable, and will help you optimize your campaigns, segment your audience more, determine the most effective channels, create more effective catalogs and many more advantages.

If you want to know more: Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability

• Include online marketing in your B2B strategy

  As pointed out by Jesús A. Lacoste, founder of Soy Digital, 98% of the companies look for their suppliers through the Internet, so “if you do not have a good online presence, you are losing 98% of your customers.”

Having an optimized website and a corporate blog with useful and updated content about your products and services is the first step to reach online communities. Leaning on other platforms such as social networks to get your users talking, sending newsletters and taking advantage of other tools – premium content downloads, social network campaigns, etc. – will help you nurture your contacts and turn them into customers.

• Personalize interactions with your customers

  B2B buyers demand purchasing experiences that are increasingly personalized, which show that their supplier knows them well and knows how to satisfy their needs.

Mobile tools for salespersons such as inaCátalog are your best ally to accomplish this. First, because you can use its CRM, which will help you collect valuable information and analyze it effectively in order to make better decisions; second, they allow for the creation of marketing pieces much faster and targeted thanks to their personalized catalogs, significantly facilitating this personalization, as well as focusing customer visits.

You might be interested in: How to design the perfect product data sheet

• Digitalize your sales

  The technological adaptation of sales teams succeeds in adding value to users, obtaining useful information for prospecting and lead generation.

Applying digital sales to the sales force has key effects when improving the optimization and efficiency of a business. Technological tools can be used to align the marketing and sales departments, personalize customer service and professionalize sales appointments. All of these are, as we have seen, techniques to improve the capture of B2B customers.

Learn about the advantages of digital sales beyond the improvements when capturing customers in our post “Digital sales: your sales force’s best ally”.

• Obtain advocates for your brand

  Other users’ opinions is highly important in the capture of customers. If your prospective customers are satisfied, it is more probable for them to recommend your brand.

It is the best technique to attract customers, since it is a voluntary action by our buyers and can encourage other potential customers to contact us to try our products and services.

Related reading: Reasons to implement an omnichannel strategy in your business

• Measure your customer satisfaction

  Using customer KPIs and measuring their satisfaction can provide highly valuable information. By using these metrics, you will be able to determine their degree of loyalty toward your products and services with the purpose of improving them and gain customer loyalty to increase recurring sales.

Knowing your customers’ satisfaction with your organization should be a part of your sales strategy. With it you will manage to tailor your services to the real needs of your prospective customers and retain them; something that is up to four times more profitable than trying to get new customers.

Furthermore, an effective loyalty strategy will also be useful to improve your corporate image and generate ambassadors to your brand that share their positive experience with other prospective customers.

Now you know what tactics you can use to improve the way in which you capture customers and how technology can help you attain this goal. The next step is to determine which mobile CRM is better tailored to the needs of your team. 

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In order to fix this issue, there are sales tools that, like inaCátalog does, connect with the company’s ERP and retrieve data on debt collection in order to facilitate internal liquidation, customer payment management, receivables collection and debt organization tasks.

Below we will show you the features offered by inaCátalog to your sales force for controlling the collection of debts and traceability for the customer and the advantages this implies for your sales team, administration department and management.

What is payment collection management and how is it performed in inaCátalog

In regard to the management of receivables, inaCátalog informs about pending debts for each customer in-depth, grouping them in order to provide the various teams (sales, administration and management) with details about the risk that each user implies for the company. This information also allows you to know the customer’s quality and, based on several numbers, the company may restrict and even deny the placement of orders to a specific buyer.

Even though most of payment collection management is automated and managed through banks and electronic systems, there are many companies that use payment methods that require the physical presence of a debt collector.

It is in this scenario where the inaCátalog’s payment collection management becomes an essential tool, since, on top of the information of payments due for each customer, it adds features that let agents register the collections it performs during his visit, offers him the possibility of issuing a receipt for a delivery and facilitates the liquidation of payments.

In addition, it anticipates the communication of debt collections to the company’s administration, which accelerates the customer’s risk management.

Related reading: Reasons to implement an omnichannel strategy in your business

What information does inaCátalog collect on payments?

inaCátalog’s CRM system integrates with the company’s ERP in order to collect information on the debts that a customer has with the organization, and their quality. Thanks to this information, the company can know the full risk that is takes when selling to each of its customers.

Specifically, it includes the following variables:

• The invoice or document that originates the debt and its date
• The debt’s due date
• The amount pending payment
• The means of payment provided
• The due payment’s status (pending, due or unpaid)
• By adding all amounts a summary of the customer’s financial situation is obtained; in other words, the risk

You might be interested in: How to design the perfect product data sheet

inaCátalog’s functionalities for the collection of debts

In addition to the information available to company members, inaCátalog includes a series of functionalities that facilitate and optimize the collection of debts:

• It provides an overview of the customer’s debts and their state (pending, due, unpaid or collected).
• Offers a detailed per-user report for each debt.
• Allows debts to be organized through a selection of criteria and grouping them into different lists.
• Generates reports about invoices pending payment that the agent can share during his visit.
• Allows a number of onsite actions to be performed, such as: collection, registering received payments, which debts are cancelled and their amounts. It also registers the payment method chosen and its details (promissory note number, bank, due date).
• Allows for advance payments, without prior debt and partial payments.
• Issues detailed debt collection proof to be handed during the visit.
• Generates the report for the liquidation of collections made by the salesperson within a period, in order to check the data against the documents and the cash provided.
• Immediately informs the company about payments made in order to recalculate each buyer’s risk.
• At the company’s prerogative, it enables the placement of orders to be blocked or restricted for customers that have unpaid debts.

Advantages of a proper receivables control

A proper control of receivables and the organization of debts has significant advantages for various teams in a company, especially for the sales force, the administration department and management:

Advantages for agents

Provides instantaneous and detailed information about the customer’s financial situation. This allows them to define how the visit will be approached and simplifies the preparation of collection liquidations for the company.

Additionally, during the meeting with the user itself, the salesperson can register the payment documents he receives in detail, and issue a complete payment proof to the customer.

Thanks to this, the agent can prepare for visits, manage payment collections and refrain from selling to customers that have problems, ensuring the success of the sale and the management of his customer.

You might be interested in: Corporate image and how you can surprise your customers

Advantages for the administration department

This connection of the administration with the activities of the sales force facilitates the registration of payments, which are registered immediately from the agents’ devices, centralizing the information and avoiding confusions between teams.

All of this allows the administrative staff to better and faster manage each customer’s financial situation. Furthermore, the department itself can block the sale to certain problematic customers, so that agents refrain from visiting them and they can optimize their day and increase productive visits.

Advantages for management

Thanks to inaCátalog’s management of payment collections and the features of this sales app, a company’s management can make sure that agents do not sell to clients that have solvency issues, minimizing the risk taken and ensuring a better invoice collection.

Keep reading: Strategic sales plan: defining sales goals

Now that you know how to properly manage the collection of debts and receivables with inaCátalog and the benefits offered by the tool for this activity, keep increasing your knowledge and learn how to sell more and better thanks to business intelligence.

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In current markets, the relationship that the company has with its customers implies an advantageous differentiation with respect to its competitors and an enrichment of its own processes. Both when generating new relationships and when strengthening existing ones, customer management and CRM tools have been evolving with the passage of time, being useful to optimize sales processes and the management of sales and marketing teams.

In that regard, Customer Relationship Management systems address the need to integrate technological strategies that allow the organization to automate certain tasks and processes, in addition to offering an overall and precise overview of the activities affecting sales.

You might be interested in: Reasons to implement an omnichannel strategy in your business

What is CRM?

As stated above, one could say that CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a strategy that affects the company at every level, whose purpose is to help improve customer care and his relationship with the organization, managing all data inputs and outputs through platforms of various natures, integrated with computing tools and the company’s ERP.

If you want to know more about CRM trends and how these systems have evolved toward a mobile technology, we recommend that you take a look at the following post: “Mobile CRM software trends for 2018”.

Customer Relationship Management in decision-making

Obtaining key information about customers is not only useful to benefit the efforts of salespersons and their relationship with prospective customers (personalized service, improved pre-visit planning, exclusive offers…), but it also optimize other business processes and levels.

More specifically, and where mobile customer management systems become particularly effective, is in decision-making, which can be enriched due to several reasons:

• Thanks to a sales software, management teams and sales agents have a complete and detailed information about each consumer, his tastes and needs. With it we can perfect our offer in order to provide them with the services they value and the products they wish to buy.

• They include information about the current and potential value of the customer, which allows you to develop personalized loyalty plans, know each user’s profitability and boost the conversion and the number of customers.

If you want to know more: Customer KPIs: the path toward recurring sales

• They enable the creation of an integral profile for each prospective customer, facilitating consumer, and thereby, offer, segmentation.

• They centralize the information in a single system, avoiding the loss of particularly interesting data and minimizing errors.

• They facilitate the analysis of reports and key information, allowing the detection of purchasing trends and other data of interest to the company.

• They allow you to predict the chances of success of a marketing and sales campaign for each segment, anticipating behaviors and estimating its investment and returns more in-depth.

• Thanks to a Customer Relationship Management program, we are able to forecast the sales volume, measure the quality of customer service and monitor the business’ performance.

Keep reading: How to prepare sales visits in just a few minutes

All of this information, in conjunction with an automated and centralized reporting system such as inaCátalog allows data to be collected in an orderly fashion so that its use in statistics is faster and simpler. This facilitates the evaluation of different variables in order to monitor them and implement predictive and much more effective strategies.

Advantages of inaCátalog as a sales software

The inaCátalog mobility tool offers all of the advantages of Customer Relationship Management, facilitating a complete control over the activities of the sales force and its relationship with consumers.

This mobility-based sales app and CRM, used on mobile tablets and which offers on and offline connectivity, allows agents and the team to access key information anytime, anywhere, preventing the loss of information and improving customer tracking and sales thanks to:

• Optimization of sales routes

  inaCátalog’s geolocation system allows you to easily find customers and plot an optimal sales route before a salesperson starts working.

Related reading: How to increase your sales network’s visits by 20 %

• Faster access to information

  Salespersons have all the information about a lead just one click away. This way, they can better prepare for visits and have any information that may help them lead an effective sale.

• Greater sales force autonomy

  During the visit, salespersons will have complete information about all products, their features, supporting material, and stock information in real time, without depending on the central office to act, and letting them close sales and report sales on site.

• Data synchronization and real-time analysis

  A Customer Relationship Management tool that offers mobility, such as inaCátalog, allows you to make reports anytime, anywhere, thereby obtaining a higher-quality feedback. It also lets the central offices and management teams to query and analyze different variables, saving time and resources and facilitating decision-making.

• Simplification of the sales process

  The use of mobile technologies and automation tools helps streamline sales, reduce the sales cycle for a complex product and obtain greater profits.

In addition to these benefits, the characteristics of inaCátalog itself (speed, ease of use, task management and automation, relevant and measurable information, permanent reliable information, innovation and specialization), let it adapt to the various organizations and equipment, integrate with the company’s ERP system and align with the accomplishment of its goals, providing value to each interaction with the customers.

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How can a product spec sheet help a sales representative? The answer is through the information it can contain. When using a sales app that implements interactive catalogs, product sheets are a valuable source of information about product stocks, special offers and related products, etc. All of this with the purpose of not only closing a transaction, but also for it to involve larger orders and help us collect information about the customer at the same time.

In order to accomplish this goal and for our catalog to be, at the same time, something that is attractive to the consumer and useful for the salesperson, in this article we will discuss how to design the perfect product spec sheet and the information it should contain to be of significant use.

What characteristics should a product sheet have?

These are the characteristics that any product sheet should have, and that we should pay attention to if we want to influence in a positive way the size of the orders:

• Full and detailed product descriptions

  The perfect product sheet should contain optimized text aimed at making the article relevant. In this regard, we should provide precise and clear information, explaining its main characteristics and highlighting the benefits this product offers to the buyer.

• Optimization of the SEO structure

  Making a detailed and eye-catching product description is an important step, but it is not enough. When making a digital product description, it should include content based on keywords and semantic variations that accompany a coherent, informative and attractive text, while helping the products be easily found during the visit.

• Eye-catching, quality images

  Even though it may sound obvious, it is important to note the importance of including graphical elements that have good definition and are attractive to the buyer. Remember that the eyes are what give the first impression of your products, so your images should be original, and at the same time provide information about the product and its qualities. When a customer is decided to acquire your products, he needs to see them clearly and, especially when involving clothes or accessories, see how they look when worn.

Related reading: How to create personalized catalogs in five minutes with inaCátalog

How to make the perfect spec sheet

In addition to the (graphical and visual) description of your articles, digital catalogs offer a set of information that can be added to product sheets in order to make them more effective and help encourage a purchase.

In this regard, in order to design a perfect and competitive product sheet, you should keep certain indispensable variables in mind:

• General information. This field includes the basic information about the product. In order for it to be easier to find on the agent’s Tablet and be useful, it should include the following information:
  • Code
  • Description
  • Notes – detailed description
  • Barcode to accommodate orders via barcode scanners
  • Main image
  • Supplementary images
  • Multimedia associated with the product
• Classification. These criteria help salespersons quickly search and find products and items related to a specific category, as well as ordering, based on the criteria required by the user at any given time.  
  • Catalog
  • Category
  • Subcategory
  • Item type
  • Model (for size and color-based sales)
• Sale. Allows you to be aware of offers and temporary promotions, volume sales-based gifts… The goal is to be able to offer benefits if the volume of the sale increases, as well as facilitate a fast sale focused on the customer.
  
  • Minimum sale
  • Sale increment
  • Samples and points (in order to manage gifts based on the purchase).
• Logistics. In order to facilitate the management of warehouses and optimize logistics, guaranteeing a continuous, timely supply of the products and services.
  • Dimensions
  • Weight
  • Volume
  • Units per box and pallet (different sales volumes)
• Stock sheet. A real-time stock control allows the user to be informed whether a product is available or not, providing credibility and allowing sales to be closed during the visit.
  • Available stock (in order to control it and prevent overselling)
  • Stock pending reception
  • Expected availability date
• Languages. Translation of data that applies to the various languages of the application.
• Rates and prices. Price and special discounts for the selected customer, notes, rate selection, rate type per volume, promotion sheets, etc. They offer an added value to the visit and the acquisition of certain products.
  • General prices
  • Rates
  • Special rates per customer
  • Temporary promotions, discounts and gifts
• Related products. In order to favor cross-selling and upselling, two good options to include in our product sheet, as long as we have a well-thought strategy. In this way, we will obtain greater chances of increasing order lines and order volumes on every sale, in addition to addressing needs that our customer didn’t know he had.
  • Related products
  • Alternative products
• Labels. They visually highlight certain product characteristic, showing icons on the main image (top seller, offers…).

You might be interested in: Advantages of implementing an omnichannel strategy in your business

Why is a product sheet useful?

The best product sheet is the one that offer the most information to the salesperson so that he gets to know the products and how they relate to the customer. An effective sheet will enable agents to sell more and better, without the need to perform the many movements on the screen and decreasing visit durations.

Furthermore, not only sales teams should pay attention to product sheets. The marketing department should also use them, since they play various roles:

• They provide information about the product and the image, which are vital to increase sales.
• With a lacking data sheet, very few of our customers’ questions can be answered, while with a detailed one his needs can be addressed, and the can be used to better know his tastes and needs, as well as respond to objections with arguments and proof.
• Good relationships with other products and attractive promotions can be used to sell more, because sales are streamlined, reducing visit times and increasing sales volumes.

How to make the product sheet more effective with inaCátalog

inaCátalog implements all the functionalities and characteristics aimed at making a product sheet more effective. Furthermore, it allows you to add additional product information (multimedia files) in order to have all the details that cannot be included in an image (brochures, videos, presentations, technical specifications…).

The tool collects specific sales stats for each customer, letting you notice trends, changes in conditions, and repeating orders to accelerate sales and make customer management more effective.

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The way in which our products are presented is a part of our corporate image, which should be cared for and be related to the latest in corporate culture and our corporate values, in addition to being adapted to our target audience and set us apart from the competition. This can be accomplished by using a sales app that is tailored to our company.

Corporate image, a differentiating factor

Each interaction we have with a customer, either current or prospective, contributes toward our brand identity. Providing a surprising and unique experience in each of them requires planning, processes and support tools. From the notes we write about the customers up to the benefits from customer loyalty, and detail can make a difference.

As stated by the Bienpensado platform, “delighting” our customers can become our competitive advantage. “The competition may copy your products, lower their prices or offer similar benefits, but something they cannot copy is what they experience when they work with, or buy from, you.” And corporate image plays a major role in this, by helping strengthen our position on the market and satisfy our prospective customers in a unique way.

Related reading: Customer KPIs: the path toward recurring sales

How to improve the image of the company with every visit

The sales visit is the perfect moment to improve and strengthen the image that the customer will get of our brand. Salespersons can interact with prospective customers directly, personalize the product and services offering and address their needs and doubts. All organizations that have direct contact with the audience need to be aware of the importance of their corporate image, and it is for this reason that they should bet on perfecting and differentiating it.

Nowadays, the best ally when improving a company’s corporate identity to sell more and better are sales applications. Just like inaCátalog does, they offer a series of characteristics that will help capture the customers’ attention and they are useful to improve the corporate image on every visit:  

• Personalized and segmented catalogs

The inaCátalog catalog-based sales app allows you to design interactive and eye-catching catalogs that capture your customers’ attention and can, at the same time, be useful to know which marketing pieces are more attractive and are working better. But not only that; it also lets you create personalized catalogs segmented per customer type in just a few minutes, in order to offer each user the products and services that are better tailored to their needs from the get-go (personalized offers, related products, past orders…). Lastly, it allows other content (PDF, multimedia files, etc.) to be added to the product records in order to have much more information about each article and professionalize the visit.

If you want to know more: How to create personalized catalogs in five minutes with inaCátalog

• Onsite reporting system

Thanks to reports and digital sales we can also strengthen our corporate identity, since we can perform tasks much faster and mechanically, giving sales agents more time to be dedicated to the visit and the customer. Likewise, inaCátalog allows you make reports and perform satisfaction surveys during the visit itself, which will be useful to obtain a much more thorough and detailed feedback of each sales visit and use that information to make better decisions.

• Databases and thorough customer records

Not only will we have detailed product records with as many attached files as we need or want, but we will also have records for each customer. They are automatically uploaded to the databases and customer history, providing agents with all the necessary information to improve the pre-visit planning and personalize each encounter, maximizing the chances of success and the prospective customer’s feeling of satisfaction.

• Stock control

inaCátalog allows you to access the product inventory and its detailed information about availability, sizes, colors, etc., anytime, anywhere. Thanks to the real-time stock management, closing sales no longer depends on calls to the central offices, and if a customer wants to know how many units of a specific product are available, we will be able to answer automatically. This not only translate into a reduction of times and a greater autonomy for the agents, but also into a fast, personalized, quality and reliable service at the lowest possible cost.

• Innovation and adaptation of the brand’s identity

To all of these features that catalog-based sales apps have, we can add that by using inaCátalog, we can tailor the tool’s image to that of our own brand identity, unifying the outward impression to be in tune with our values and corporate culture. Furthermore, we will radiate the sensation of being an innovative company thanks to this technological tool and its functionalities.

You might be interested in: Reasons to implement an omnichannel strategy in your business

Other tips to surprise your customers

Preparing sales visits is an activity that we should continuously care for and perfect in order to grow our corporate image. In addition to personalization and satisfaction, we should try to surprise our customers on every interaction. In order to captivate users, the Entrepreneur magazine offers a few tips:  

• Know what influences their satisfaction: identifying what aspects are influencing the customer’s satisfaction in regard to the relationship, which changes depending on the sector, and even, on each customer.

• Generate emotions: you should find ways to create experiences that make him feel emotions during the encounter. These emotions are what the person will remember in the future.

• The surprise itself: “don’t get in touch with customers only when you want to sell them something” is what they say in this portal. You should stay close, give them gifts when suitable and generate positive memories of their purchasing experience. “If you are associated with a good service, it is harder for you to be replaced for someone else,” they claim.

• Offer benefits: offer benefits just when your customer needs them. Any action that your competition does not do will surprise the prospective customer, who will remember it in a good light and increase the chances of him returning to you in the future.

• Satisfy new needs: just like customers change and evolve, we should as well. For this, we should pay attention to their consumption habits and respond to their new needs.

Now that you know how to surprise your customers and improve your corporate image, learn more about what a tool such as inaCátalog can do for you, which offers business intelligence and a mobile CRM.

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As pointed out by Foro Marketing, “trade shows are living business operation markets. They bring together, live and in person, the best source of information for the sector, and they are also an opinion and trend exchange hub.” Which is why we should optimally and profitably take advantage of all the resources that it offers us, in order to foster our development and the accomplishment of our goals.

In this article we bring you a few guidelines to improve the obtainment and management of new contacts and cash in on trade shows.

How to increase profitability at a trade show

It is important to keep in mind that trade show participants prepare for months, but they last very few days. As a result, we should leave nothing to chance, and prepare for each and every stage. This way, we will see how our investment is rewarded and profits increase.

Before starting with the preparation, or even before choosing to attend one show or the other, we should determine the objectives of our presence. Do we want to increase sales? Capture new customers? Gain loyalty? Make contacts? There may be many reasons, which is why we need to clearly define our goals and find out whether we will be able to meet them during this event.

You might be interested in: Strategic sales plan: defining sales goals

Once the event that, at first glance, may accomplish our goals, we should start with the preparations. During this process, we need to be thorough, since it may determine our success or failure. According to the Expansión newspaper, companies need to keep in mind a set of aspects that will help increase profits:

• The budget: this variable includes all items – from the cost of the stand, its design and construction (materials, transport, etc.), to promotion costs for the products and other marketing actions that encourage sales at the point of sales and the capture of new customers.
• Stand design: you need to inform the company in charge of designing the stand about the message, image and goals of our company when participating in the fair. Furthermore, the stand’s message should be clear and direct – it should make a statement. A good starting point is choosing a specific product or service and focus on it as a means to allure.
• Staff: the time taken to close a sale at a fair is not the same as that of a normal workday, which is why it would be preferable to select the members of our team that are more straightforward. In addition, special training may be required for that event. If we decide to outsource the sales personnel at a trade show, we should be careful and train the staff in order to align it with company goals, and design a working plan.
• Marketing actions: attending a fair and having an alluring stand is not enough to get customers. We need to perform an adequate customer management y promotional actions, a task that should have started months before the event. To this end, in addition to specific promotional material, we should send out personalized invitations to major or prospective customers, schedule interviews, and offer information about our presence in advance through our website and social networks.

Keep reading: 7 resources to optimize the purchasing experience

• Event follow-up: this is the most important after the show. We should follow-up on contacts in order to maintain quality leads and be able to guide them through the purchasing cycle until we succeed in landing a business opportunity.
• Result analysis and opportunity detection: management personnel should estimate accomplished goals and, whenever possible, quantify them. This stage will also be useful to detect opportunities and things to be improved, if the data collected has been properly compiled and the necessary reports have been made.

Contact and data management to improve results

As we have previously mentioned, a proper contact management is decisive both for achieving success during the trade show and, in particular, to generate new business opportunities in the future.

What can we do to improve the management of contacts at a trade show?

Plan and determine the contact management strategy in advance

When planning the contact management strategy, we should pay attention to the way in which business contacts are obtained, the way in which they are weighed, and to the follow-up processes.

Collect data digitally

Having a digital tool that lets us collect all possible data onsite will help us record all useful information, as well as add notes and comments about the contact and attach any document that may be useful for an adequate follow-up. With a sales management tool such as inaCátalog, you will automatically have the contact in digital format, sorted and with a lot of key information for the post-fair relationship with this prospective customer.  

Perform an adequate business follow-up with a CRM

Having an application that, in addition to collecting data, includes a CRM that stores and manages all information of interest of generated contacts will make it easier to turn contacts into sales.

Offer quick responses

You should be able to respond to user questions and requirements quickly and effectively to increase the chances of success. By using personalized catalogs and a real-time stock control you will be able to address your contacts’ questions and meet their needs.

Nourish your contacts

Whether you have turned the contact into a customer or you see that he may become a future lead, you should nourish the relationship with that person and be present whenever he may require your products or services. To this end, as previously stated, it is paramount to have all the updated information and history for each user, in order to guide him through the sales cycle and determine the best time to close a deal and gain his loyalty.

Sales technology for trade shows

The management of contacts during the trade show and their subsequent follow-up are two variables closely linked variables that will help us increase the profitability of our presence at a fair.

In order to improve these processes you should have an adequate sales tools that is not only tailored to your sales force’s day to day, but also to an event of this type.

In this regard, inaCátalog is designed for every business situation, combining interactive, custom-tailored catalogs with a mobile CRM and a full reporting system that allows you to adequately control both customers and sales agents’ activities. All of this while working on or offline, with the latest technology and an eye-catching look for the customer that is also intuitive for the salesperson.

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As stated by Observatorio de Ecommerce, “omnichannel has become a must, rather than a choice.” Users move through different platforms, which makes it paramount for businesses to adapt to that reality as well. Implementing an omnichannel strategy means transforming all of our processes and organizational practices and tailoring them to current market and audience needs.

What is an omnichannel strategy?

According to Juan Carlos Mejía, digital marketing and social media consultant and speaker, omnichannel is the “set of tools that a company uses to reach its customers” and the way in which it uses them to streamline its relationship with them. In it, the focus is on customers and their importance is increased, which is why it becomes particularly important to compile information about them by means of every available channel.

By having a well-defined and effective plan, the omnichannel-related goals in an organization may be attained and be more effective upon their implementation. Their main goal is to improve the customer experience, gain a greater loyalty toward our brand and thereby increase the possibilities of a purchase.

Reasons for implementing an omnichannel strategy

Marketing and sales experts point out that implementing an omnichannel strategy will bring many benefits for your company. Among them, they highlight the opportunity of ensuring traceability in consumer interactions, regardless of the channel they use to contact us; and offering our customers the idea that our company is focused on providing a homogeneous and unique customer experience. Furthermore, implementing an omnichannel strategy will also mean the dissemination of a coherent brand message, regardless of the channel used for such purpose.

You might be interested in: Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability

What are the main reasons for implementing an omnichannel strategy?

• It improves the consumer’s perception and his loyalty:

Consumers expect to be served through different means and obtain satisfactory answers that meet their needs on every channel. Customers look for a unique, personalized experience that is also coherent and unified in regard to the brand’s message.

When a company decides to employ several channels, the result obtained is a more personalized interaction. As already seen, this will help improve the consumer’s perception of the brand, as well as his loyalty after seeing his needs addressed through any channel.

• Allows for a more efficient data collection:

The main idea behind an omnichannel strategy is for your business to be able to keep track of your customers using several channels, while your team collects data about their preferences in order to offer them a better service.

This tracking will help your company better understand the needs of your users and their preferences, and you will be able to set in motion cross-selling and upselling strategies, as well as specific actions that are tailored to each customer at the best time.

Keep reading: Guidelines to improve your customer management from the start

• Helps boost sales:

On one hand, by knowing our customers better and adapting to their needs and all times, we will be able to better detect sales opportunities and get larger orders (by taking advantage of cross-selling).

In addition, omnichannel will allow organizations to have an overview of all of their communication channels, as well as to make the most out of them.

• Enriches decision-making:

Having multiple communication channels will let you access many flows of information and collect very interesting data for your organization. In order to have a good control over your business and your situation, you need to understand these flows of information.

Thanks to the data analysis offered by a CRM system such as inaCátalog, you will be able to comprehend, measure and review the interactions with your customers with the purpose of making them increasingly efficient and personalized.

Furthermore, having all the data in one place will let you determine patterns, detect trends, predict and better detect business opportunities and get more breathing room to act in the face of certain problems that may emerge.

• Efficiency increase:

Thanks to focused databases you will be able to have all the information just one click away, in order to query at any time and place the available products, daily offers, prices, etc. In this way you will be able to lead a real-time stock control and address each customer’s inquiries at the moment of the visit, without depending on the central offices. This will translate into a greater effectiveness and independence for your sales force.

This optimization will also be possible thanks to onsite reports, which will allow for the reporting of each interaction with the customer at the very moment that it takes place, preventing a loss of information or mix ups.

Keep reading: How to create personalized catalogs in five minutes

How to implement omnichannel in my business

Omnichannel in the interaction and communication between companies and their customers has gained a particular importance nowadays, since these strategies are based on users and on improving the purchasing experience, increasing the retention and loyalty of current consumers and helping obtain new ones.

Companies and all of their agents should be capable of understanding their users and creating the necessary methods for them to have an optimal and effective communication with the organization.

Even though you will need to carry out a number of specific actions to address your needs and meet your goals, according to the ESIC Institute of Digital Economics, the first thing you should do to develop an omnichannel strategy and implement omnichannel marketing processes is to implement a CRM and integrate it with your ERP. This will let you know your customers and users, your products and your sales.

La entrada Reasons to implement an omnichannel strategy in your business aparece primero en INACATALOG.

A good pre-visit planning is paramount if we want to achieve good results and end as many visits as possible with a sale. Visits are not a mechanical work, even though it may seem like it; the accomplishment of goals is based on a strategic planning.

Do you want to give a pleasant surprise to your users and accomplish profitable visits? In order to do this, you need to know your customer, follow a strategy and learn from it. In this article we will show you a few tips to prepare optimal sales visits in a few minutes.

Preparing sales visits: what information I should include in my strategy?

If the salesperson organizes every visit better, he increases his trustworthiness and his control over the customer, which makes it easier for him to close orders and boost sales. In order to prepare profitable sales visits, we should know each user in-depth. For this, we should be able to compile certain strategic information:

Customer profile

What he does, which products he buys and to whom, who his competitors are and what his business model is, etc. Is he a busy person? What does he do in his free time? What does he appreciate in a supplier? All the information that helps us create a profile and a preliminary segmentation of the lead, as well as achieve a possible connection with him.

His tastes and needs

Which products have we shown to him in the past and which did he find interesting? What were his doubts and objections? These matters will help us determine his tastes and needs and tailor the offer accordingly.

Purchase comparison

For example, it would be very useful for us to know what the user bought last year during the same period and compare it with this year. In this way, we will know whether the customer is purchasing more or less products/services when compared to his purchase history.

Consumption habits

Thanks to them, we will be able to determine the purchase frequency, amount of specific items, discounts obtained, etc., and prepare a final offer that is tailored to each customer that helps us increase the volume of his order and recommend him related products he may not remember.

Reasons for non-purchase/objections

We must treat the reasons for non-sales and objections as opportunities offered to us by the customer to better know his needs and concerns and, in consequently, to learn how to better address them. Furthermore, they can be useful to us to learn what our users’ recurring needs are and address them in future visits, even before the customer brings them up.

Related reading: Report sales objections to create opportunities

Functionalities to prepare sales visits in just a few minutes

Sales tools such as inaCátalog include a set of functionalities and features that make pre-visit planning and the preparation of sales visits in a few minutes easier, with a lot of key information to know the customer better and sell more. They are:

• Operations analysis: analyzes and calculates average values for the total amount of operations performed by each agent, per day and week, including information on incidents, performance, speed and overall results.

• Visit analysis: automatically analyzes and calculates average values for visits performed by our sales personnel, per day and week. It also relates visits with order amounts.

• Sales routes: inaCátalog automatically tracks the route for each agent, capturing the exact position at the time a report, catalog display, incident input or others are performed.

• Tracking of performed and pending actions. We can find various tables and graphs based on the parameters we wish to analyze.

• Reasons for non-sale: inaCátalog’s mobile CRM stores and analyzes the reason why operations are not closed, in order to determine patterns or learn the reasons for a non-sale.
• Traceability: monitors the device and its activity (list of items shown by the salesperson on each visit and which attached files each salesperson shows). In this way, it allows you to relate articles shown with orders/operations performed and amounts, so that the marketing department can verify how well its campaigns and actions are actually working.

You might be interested in: Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability

• Conversion of sales efforts: the tool studies the reports and relates them to the contact’s source, the action performed, the interest shown by the customer for specific items and/or his objections, as well as the outcome of the visit (incidents, performance, speed and overall results).
• Activity-results ratio: studies the relationship between the number of visits performed (both overall and per-agent) and the deals or transactions closed.
• Visits-results average: measures average values for visits performed and compares them with the number of operations executed or results (sales) attained.
• Objective tracking: inaCátalog includes a complete dashboard that allows you to track KPIs for an adequate monitoring, management and preparation of the sales team.  

Other tips when performing visits

In addition to take advantage of the tools and applications for salespersons such as inaCátalog, there are a number of tips related to the human factor that you should keep in mind when preparing sales visits:

• Be concise and precise: you need to try to optimize each sales visit, and in order to do this you should be concise and able to summarize clearly and thoroughly. Include specific data, metrics and other graphs in your presentation that help you show the performance, other customers’ experiences and success stories for your company.
• Offer solutions: according to the Reinventa tu Marketing blog, you should be able to solve at least one problem your customer has. What is important for users is for us to show that we understand their issues and are able to address them.
• Do not criticize your competitors: quite the opposite – learn from them. Show that your product is good in and of itself and that you do not need to put down others in order to stand out.

If you want to know more: Guidelines to improve your customer management from the start

• Talk to him about his market: this can be useful to make him understand problems that he may even have been unaware that he had, and offer him new benefits and solutions. This will also help your customer see you as an expert in his market and trust you.
• Be sincere: provide value to the customer with honest answers; use an open, transparent communication and do not lie. In this way, you will succeed in maintaining your credibility.
• Learn from experience: use the reports to write down all relevant information for the visit, that may come in handy both during future interactions with the same customer and to establish behavioral patterns.

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The success of a company’s sales plan lies in an adequate development and supervision, focused on boosting sales efforts. The document should detail and establish the necessary bases to improve the processes and accomplish sales goals, establish objectives and control their accomplishment and foster a greater economic growth.

In this article we will talk about the procedure to follow to draft a strategic sales plan and some key aspects to keep in mind. We will also see how to establish objectives and strategies, in addition to the sales tools that can help us measure our performance and manage to accomplish our goals.  

Five steps to design a strategic sales plan

According to the Uncomo website, there are five basic steps when creating a good strategic sales plan:

• Lay the foundations

  The first step when designing a successful sales plan is analyzing the matters that are required for its performance. Among them we can find “knowing and analyzing the characteristics and potential of the product or products we offer, identifying our target audience and, most importantly, analyzing our competitors and what they offer.”

We can also take data from previous years, if available, to make a forecast to use for guidance.

• Defining realistic and well-detailed sales goals

  It is advisable to define and detail the goals to accomplish during the business year. They should be set “taking into account our turnover needs, the business’s profitability and its potential for growth within its market.”

With this information as the starting point, we should describe the sales, position and awareness goals. They should be realistic and attainable by our team, so that it does not get demotivated or gets lost while attempting to accomplish it.

Related reading: How to motivate a sales team through methodology and technology

• Determine sales strategies

  In order to meet the aforementioned sales goals, we should also identify which sales strategies we are going to undertake. Strategies may be related to the distribution channel, the increase of final sales, improvements in customer management, etc.

In this regard, it is paramount to know our target audience in-depth, their tastes, needs and demands, as well as other information of interest (profile, purchasing patterns, segments…).

• Specify the tactics and actions

  It is also necessary to define what actions we are going to perform to improve business operations. Each of the tactics and actions mentioned during our sales planning must include a specific timeline for its execution, as well as costs and a ROI forecast. Anything from sales promotions to marketing actions, personnel recruitment, discounts to boost customer loyalty and others can be undertaken.

• Measure, analyze and fix

  Properly determining and taking the time to design a good sales plan is as important as following it and measure our day-to-day performance. This will help us compile key information, analyze data and detect failures and opportunities that may emerge in order to accomplish our goals.

If you review the plan every certain amount of time, for example, every six months, you will be able to more easily determine whether the desired results are being accomplished. You should also periodically update the strategic sales plan in order to respond to the evolution of market conditions.

How to define goals for the sales team

A major part of sales planning is sales goals, since they will be the basis for the other items in the document. As already stated, goals should be realistic and attainable. With this in mind, there are a few tips and resources that we could employ:

• Collaborate with your team: get your employees involved. For example, you can accomplish this via brainstorming sessions that help identify ideas or obstacles. We must also take into account their reports and analysis, help them organize their appointments and optimize their visits and times.
• Outline the necessary means: make an inventory of the resources available at the company and verify that they can be used to accomplish our objectives. Otherwise, goals will have to be revised.
• Detail all stages: in relation to actions, costs, timing, human resources, etc.

You might be interested in: Digital sales: your sales force’s best ally

• Have an internal communication strategy: our team must understand all aspects of the new sales strategy, which is why they must be explained to the employees and be available for consultation at all times. Having a tool that centralizes all the information will also be useful for the sales force to be able to review their performance and relevant data.
• Periodically evaluate accomplishments: this is one of the best ways to foresee unexpected problems or positive factors that affect the accomplishment of goals. To this end, having a good dashboard that lets us monitor the main sales KPIs will help guide our sales management and verify the state of our goals.

Do you want to know more about how to determine your sales team’s objectives? Take a look at “Why you should add SMART objectives to your sales method”

The strategic sales plan: objective monitoring

Creating a well-defined strategic sales plan that ensures good results in the long run is no simple task. It is necessary to take many variables into account, compile key information and be able to analyze obtained data. For this purpose, having the right technological tools that help us perform an adequate monitoring of the sales performance and goal accomplishment, will help us achieve our objectives and detect possible errors with enough margin to fix them.

In that regard, inaCátalog includes a sales dashboard in order to properly manage and plan sales. In addition to being the sales director’s best ally, this sales app will help you keep track of the KPIs and the accomplishment of sales goals, in addition to improve decision-making and the design of a strategic sales plan, thanks to its data analyses, which enable you to detect behavioral trends, reasons for non-sales, and much more relevant information. On the other hand, it will result in a greater independence and efficiency for the sales force.

La entrada Strategic sales plan: setting sales goals aparece primero en INACATALOG.

According to the Todo Marketing blog, the customer’s purchasing experience is “everything the customer perceives during the purchase process of a product or service.” Its goal is to take care of all aspects involved in the acquisition process, including both actions by the company prior to the interaction with the user (marketing actions, visit preparation) and elements used during the moment of the visit.

The purpose of any strategy for enhancing this experience is to increase the satisfaction of prospective customers and gain customer loyalty. In order to do this, there are several resources and guidelines that you can benefit from in order to improve the purchasing experience and increase the chances of success.

Resources to improve the purchasing experience

1. Personalize the customer’s experience

Users demand as service that is personalized and tailored to their tastes and needs. As stated by the Entrepreneur newspaper, “humans are complex customers; we do not like being sold to, but we love to buy.” Which is why we want our interactions to be unique and meet our expectations, solving our problems and providing added-value solutions that prompt us to close the sales cycle.

A good way to achieve personalized sales is to strengthen the pre-visit planning and learn all possible information about a customer before the meeting. In this way, we will be able to individualize the contact with each customer, addressing their needs and offering them specific resources (unique offers, personalized catalogs, etc.).

2. Be capable of addressing the questions and needs of your prospective customer

Users demand immediate information and answers. The more you are able to respond to their inquiries, the greater the feeling the customer will have that you are understanding him, the more trust he will put on you and your business, and, in the end, he will get a better purchasing experience.

3. Use a catalog-based sales app

In order to improve the pre-visit planning and immediately answer the questions presented by users, we need to have all up-to-date information (both in regard to stock and to the customers) anytime, anywhere.

The best way to always have the information at hand and access it is through catalog-based sales apps such as inaCátalog. They help you manage all stock information and facilitate the reporting system; they automate many of the administrative processes and work both on and offline so that you can have the information at all times.

If you want to know more: Benefits of real-time stock management

Furthermore, they take advantage of all the benefits of the mobile CRM and the catalogs are much more attractive and interactive, which offers a fresh and innovative view of your products and your business. On the other hand, they allow you to segment catalogs based on various criteria and create personalized marketing pieces, which will help you create unique customer experiences.

4. Employ active listening techniques

Only by listening to our prospective customers will we be able to get to know them and serve them appropriately. Pay attention to their tastes, their issues, their needs and collect valuable data. All of this will grant you an outlook on how to adapt to them and offer them solutions that satisfy them, generating a bond of trust and increasing their satisfaction.

One of the techniques that is becoming most widespread among salespersons and that will be trending in sales in 2018 is sprint selling. Its essence lies in properly listening to the customer, knowing how to adequately interpret his messages and communicate optimally.

5. Deal with objections and use them as opportunities

One of the biggest mistakes salespersons can make is being afraid of objections. Why? Because they are nothing more and nothing less than sales opportunities; information that the customer provides us so that we can know him better.

We should therefore be able to deal with objections and use them to collect high-value information, anticipate the doubts of other customers and, in summary, optimize each visit.

If you want to know more, visit: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

6. Do not sell products, offer solutions

According to the Hablamos de Emprender platform, “in order to be able to compete in current markets, it is necessary for your sales force to become another advisor rather than a salesperson as such.”

In this regard, if we want our representatives to be able to advise the customer during his purchasing process, we should forget about selling products and move on to offering solutions that provide an added value to consumers. Focus on the benefits that they can obtain, the issues they can resolve thanks to them, and even anticipate possible future needs with other items that may come in handy. All of this will exceed the expectations of your visit for your customer and it will translate into a better purchasing experience.

7. Measure, analyze, improve

As stated in the Marketing Directo journal, starting with a good purchasing strategy and a well-planned implementation process is not enough. We must be aware that the market is not static; that we are in an ever-changing landscape and that our competitors will also try to prosper and implement improvements in order to maintain their position in the sector. This is why we should continuously collect and analyze information that helps us improve.

To this end, we will need to have a good reporting system that lets us create reports for each interaction with the customer, have a good dashboard that helps us optimally track sales activities, take advantage of the sales appointment organizer and determine and structure customer KPIs in order to gain loyalty.

Now that you have new resources to improve the purchasing experience that you will offer to your customers, you can learn to measure the accomplishment of your goals and optimally track sales activities, in order to make sure that your objectives are being met and to improve any aspect with greater speed.

La entrada 7 resources to optimize the purchasing experience aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Customer KPIs: satisfaction is important

Knowing that capturing a new customer is up to four times more expensive that retaining an old one, since satisfaction is the key factor in the customer loyalty process, it is essential to have an engagement plan and follow-up through well-established customer KPIs, which allow user loyalty to be measured.

Furthermore, a satisfied customer may become an advocate for our organization, but a disappointed one will also share his bad experience with your company with even more persons, probably.

This is why we should establish a retention strategy with well-defined customer KPIs that let us measure our loyalty plan’s success and help us increase recurring sales. Below we bring you the most useful metrics and indicators to evaluate your prospective customer’s satisfaction.

Related reading: Digital sales: your sales force’s best ally

Which are the KPIs used to gain customer loyalty

Customer KPIs should be focused on three different aspects of the relationship with our prospective customers: acquisition, retention and efficiency. As stated by the Euroresidentes portal, there are certain Key Performance Indicators that every sales director should have in mind to analyze the degree of customer loyalty and satisfaction:

• Net promoter score (NPS):

  As indicated by Puromarketing, the Net Promoter Score “is a methodology that allows you to know and manage emotional customer loyalty and measure the degree of loyalty toward a company, brand or service” by asking a simple question: Would you recommend this company/service/product to a friend or family member? Analyzing it is quite simple:

1. Customers must respond to this question with a score ranging from 0 to 10.

2. We divide the answers into three groups:

• Scores 9 to 10 – Promoters. These are loyal customers that are satisfied with our brand, who buy most frequently, and who may even become ambassadors to our business.
• Scores 7-8 – Passives. These are users that are satisfied with their current purchase, but who have not reached a level of satisfaction to be always faithful to our brand, and they are even at risk of going to the competition.
• Scores under 6 – Detractors. Unsatisfied customers who will probably not only not buy again, but they are also a threat to our company, since they may damage our image with their comments.

NPS = % promoters – % detractors

After subtracting these percentages we obtain a number that ranges from (-100) to 100. If the result is a positive number, you can consider the level of loyalty as acceptable, and if it is over 50 it is also very good. If it is negative, your customer satisfaction is not good, and you should think about revising your loyalty strategy.

• Customer Profitability Score (CPS):

  The Customer Profitability Score measures a user’s profitability in a specific period of time, which is to say, how much profit it brings the company and how much it costs to satisfy his needs. This helps us determine which the customers that bring profits are, which will be those on whom we should focus our strategy. 

CPS= (Overall income for the customer – overall expenses for the customer) / overall expenses for the customer

• Life Time Value (LTV or CLTV):

  The next step to measuring customer profitability is finding out for how long this profitability will hold. This customer KPI helps us determine possible discounts, gifts or unique promotions that we can offer our users to maintain them.

LTV = Average sale amount x repetitions per month or year x customer average lifetime

• Conversion rate:

  This metric will let you determine which amount of prospective users have ended up becoming customers. In addition, this information will be useful to interpret what consumers are looking for and what finally leads them to buy your products or services.

Conversion rate = total leads accomplished / visits performed x 100

• Cancellation / forfeiture rate:

  This shows users that have stopped having a business relationship with us. With it, we will be able to know the amount of prospective customers who have abandoned the relationship with our company (within a specific time frame) and the reasons.

Cancellation rate = (consumers lost by the end of a period – new consumer in that period) / consumers at the beginning of the period x 100

• Retention rate:

  This is the percentage of repeat customers every year. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact we have with the user, and lasts throughout the entire life of the relationship. It can be useful to establish the goals for our next loyalty plan.

Retention rate = 100 – cancellation rate

• Customer Satisfaction Index:

  Knowing the level of consumer satisfaction with the brand will allow us to make changes in our future strategies. In order to know this index, it is necessary to perform a brief satisfaction survey after any contact with the customer.

In it we should include various questions about the overall satisfaction with our company or products, and weigh them (using scores or criteria such as not satisfied, somewhat satisfied, satisfied, highly satisfied or don’t know/no opinion).

You might be interested in: Sprint selling and other selling trends in retail

Use technology to measure customer KPIs

In order to determine customer KPIs, you may rely on sales applications. Sales tools such as inaCátalog are designed to perform an adequate metric measurement.

Furthermore, they provide useful and objective information about sales representatives, such as exact location where actions are performed, the specific time of each action or task traceability.

In addition, there is a preliminary phase within the inaCátalog implementation project that contemplates the exploitation of data collected by the application and the basic training for companies to make the most out of dashboards.

La entrada Customer KPIs: the road toward recurring sales aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Of course, in order to address the question of how to sell more and better, it will also be necessary for you to apply certain tactics to your sales strategy, as well as certain day to day practices that may come in handy. However, technologies and sales applications are the best ally to make your sales force get the most out of every visit and successfully close more deals.

You might be wondering, how can I sell more by using technology? And above all, why will tools help me increase transactions? In this article we will explain the reasons, and which functionalities you should add right now to your sales force. If you want to sell more, with a higher sales volume, and provide a better sales experience that gains the loyalty of your customers and helps you capture new ones, pay attention.

Key factors for the success of your sales strategy

As stated by SEMrush, a successful sales strategy should consider 4 key factors:

Analyze, fix and change

Analyze all actions and measure the ROI of marketing pieces. Which have been more effective for sellers, which actions have been carried out, how objections have been dealt with, which products have seen better sales, how orders and reports have turned out… The more standardized, comparable data you have, the more you will be able to perfect your strategy.

In order to accomplish this, we need to be able to collect all the detailed information and analyze it. This is paramount to detect the strong points of the strategy, which must be corrected, and what the best way to do so is.

Keep reading: Marketing intelligence: improve your ROI with sales data

Optimize expenses

In order to optimize expenses, we need, first, to analyze obtained data. As we have previously mentioned, this is how we will know what is worth investing more resources on and which actions are not resulting in profits.

Likewise, mobile tools for salespersons enable resources invested to be optimized for various reasons:

• They eliminate investments on paper catalogs.
• They allow custom-tailored pieces to be created faster and with a lower budget.
• They unify all of the information and allow you to access it from any device, which makes sales more comfortable, interactive, faster and thorough.
• They facilitate a greater independence for salespersons, who optimize their visits by not depending on calls to the central offices to know product details, stock levels, related products or personalized offers, etc.

Related reading: How to increase visits of your sales network by 20%

Increase productivity

Once we have fixed the actions and optimized expenses, the next step is to increase the productivity of our personnel. In order to do this, sales apps such as inaCátalog will succeed in boosting the profitability, since they adapt to the needs of sales teams and consumer demands. All of this as a result of a number of factors:

• They allow for the automation of certain tasks of the sales process and get rid of unnecessary formalities, offering more time to improve visits.
• They facilitate an effective appointment management as well as simplify the reporting system.
• They allow for real-time stock control.
• They are mobile tools that salespersons are used to working with, easy to use and intuitive.
• They help accelerate the sales cycle for complex products and take better advantage of cross-selling and upselling techniques, resulting on a greater profitability on every visit.
• They can be used to determine and organize the sales team more effectively, thanks to features such as geolocation.
• They improve decision-making, moving from analytic to predictive methods thanks to business intelligence.
• They boost employee motivation, who gain a greater independence and efficiency both when selling and when dealing with objections.

You might be interested in: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

Determine objectives

Determining sales objectives will help us establish our plan of action to be always in line with the accomplishment of our goals. Furthermore, it is the previous step to be able to keep track of metrics, and will also come in handy as an incentive for our teams to work more in order to accomplish them and stay motivated along the way.

Objectives should be SMART. Why? Because this methodology does not only help us know what we are dedicating our time for, but it also helps us foresee and deal with problems that may arise along the way.

In order to optimally accomplish sales goals, reports and data analysis will let us know the status of the KPIs, what is working, and how much accomplishing each of our goals is costing us.

If you want to know more: Why you should add SMART objectives to your sales method

How to sell more and better on every visit: tactics

As we have seen, using technology and mobile CRM tools is a safe bet in order to improve sales and optimize visits. In addition, there are a series of tactics or actions that salespersons should keep in mind when dealing with the customer, regardless of the tools they use for support:

1. Watch your body language and nonverbal communication.
2. Make a direct, clear and simple pitch.
3. Listen to your customer and ask about his needs.
4. Respond to the customer’s needs with the benefits of your products, not with a specific product.
5. Be sincere; consumers will appreciate it.
6. Keep your supporting material organized.
7. Perform a follow-up on every case.

inaCátalog‘s technology will help you set in motion these strategies to sell more, since it will let you perform a better user segmentation, a better control over each customer and a perfect organization of the supporting material in every case.

All of this, by implementing a sales up with a Tablet CRM that works both online and with no connection, so that you can always have information ready and updated, and give each customer the most complete and personalized purchasing experience possible.

La entrada How to sell more and better on every visit: use technology aparece primero en INACATALOG.

How does it accomplish this? This catalog sales app has hundreds of functions that the client can add to sell more and faster. Its catalogs are interactive and the adjustable parameters can be tailored to each of the company’s needs.  

While some time before we showed you how the tool can help you control your stock in real time or make reports to increase the profitability of sales efforts, this time around we show you how you can create personalized catalogs in five minutes with inaCátalog. This way, you will be able to segment your products based on the type of customer and better care for their needs, as well as strengthen the bond with the user. The result will be speed, efficacy and increased sales.

How to create personalized catalogs with inaCátalog

inaCátalog adds mobility to the sales force and creates segmented and personalized product lists that will help you close larger orders, faster. These are the most useful features to create personalized catalogs with inaCátalog:

Sell much more with just a click: using bundles

Bundles are product packs that allow you to suggest the purchase of sets of products to a specific customer who has shown interest for any of them in the past.

The bundle is a way to group products under a single article, multiplying the volume per order hundredfold so that you can save in sales efforts. It can be used both to sell POS displays and to sell several bundles containing several sizes and colors with just one click.

Special promotions

inaCátalog can create a complex system of rates where we have specific prices for a customer, special offers, multiple rates… It shows us how each rate behaves, and inside it rate it displays price ranges based on included item amounts.

On the other hand, thanks to the promotion button we will have several offers and their details just one click away, being able to sell several products instead of a single unit.

Keep on reading: How to speed up the sales cycle for complex products

Sizes and colors system

inaCátalog’s sizes and colors system is infinitely faster: using a grid, it allows you to fill out an order much faster, thanks to the inclusion of product sizes and colors, as well as entire looks.

Refines the search using filters

Filters allow you to quickly find products, and are one way to present catalogs based on customer profiles and offer those that the user is looking for at every moment.

When we execute a filter and present the products that are displayed within that limited search, we will be able to focus the sale and show products much faster than if we were browsing pages to find products. In summary, we will be able to take better advantage of digital sales.

inaCátalog allows items to be divided based on several criteria:

• Item description

Up until now, we were used to inheriting the item description from the company’s ERP. However, inaCátalog includes a field for detailed descriptions, were many characters can be added and, in addition to describing the product, we can add search tags – and use them for indexing – that can later be used to find the item.

• History-based filter

Location of products based on customer consumption. It shows products bought by a customer within a certain time period or in the last order, among other criteria.

In addition to finding certain products, it let you add data variables in order to know the number of sold units and units pending delivery, yearly sales comparison, consumption information, etc. The history-based filter allows you to find products consumed in a specific period by a customer and displays them, making it easier to make repeat orders in the blink of an eye.

• General filter

In addition to filters per name or certain characteristics, they allow for the selection of a specific price range with a specific stock level.

• Parameterizable filters

They filter based on specific requests by prospective customers, the let you find things such as “which products did a customer not buy from me,” “what usual products for this type of customer is he not buying from me,” “what products is this customer buying less of in relation to the previous year.” With 3 or 4 parameterizable filters the sales team can find anything.

You might be interested in: Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability

How to control sales with a dynamic catalog

In addition to allowing you to configure personalized catalogs in a few minutes and filter products in order to be more effective, inaCátalog lets you accelerate sales by letting you generate:  

• Past orders: it may be a previous order, a template order or one that I have pre-made. In this way, we will only need to duplicate the order we have already prepared and remove or add specific items. Much faster than creating an order from scratch.
• Files attached to products: if you provide your sales team with sufficient technical material, you help the salesperson sell with more skillfully. In more advanced cases, for example in the pharmaceutical or industrial sector, attachments are interactive documents that let the salesperson carry out the sale much faster and thoroughly, having the ability to add product technical specifications, among others.

Image at: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_FCdM4-R9-FWm9nM3cxMlhpNmVpN3dxakY5by1JOWNHVkxz

• Surveys: in order to make sure the buyer is understanding what we are saying at all times. We guide the salesperson and he can make a more technical sale, since he know the product better and can offer it better.
• Customer attachments: we can add information about each type of customer to sell more (statistics, analysis, comparisons…). The better we know the customer, the better we can serve him. It will even let us attach files in video, PDF, Excel, 3D visualization, GIF and many other formats.
• Cross-selling and upselling: inaCátalog has 3 product organization levels: it allows for several photos of a product, cross-selling and upselling, which help the salesperson easily increase the orders volumes. We can add any item we want to sell.
• Full customer records: general information, details (marketing-oriented information), sales information (economic), all contacts… In customer databases we can not only find ERP users; prospective customers and other customer categories should be contained as well; which we will later be able to geolocate thanks to the tool. This helps salespersons better find sales opportunities.

Strengthening proactive sales

inaCátalog is always thinking about, and developing, new techniques and features for its tool which help better categorize our products, create personalized catalogs and boost sales.

Its filters are proactive; they show products automatically and allow you to generate orders faster, as well as create catalogs based on filtered items. Moreover, you can configure exclusive catalogs per agent, per area and others using the back office.

As a result, the tool lets you create dynamic catalogs quickly and simply, allowing the marketing department to adapt to ever-changing needs and market situations, and the sales agents to be more proactive and sell more. Through this, our company is able to stand out from its competitors and start getting results since day one.

Now that you know how inaCátalog lets you create personalized catalogs in a few minutes, learn how its mobile CRM will help you improve your decision-making. Download our eBook “How to choose the best mobile CRM to boost your sales” for free.

La entrada How to create personalized catalogs in 5 minutes with inaCátalog aparece primero en INACATALOG.

• What are inaCátalog’s functionalities? What extra features does it include?

  inaCátalog was born as a tool to manage the sales catalog and to take orders, but it has increasingly evolved into a system that provides information to agents that helps them in preparing for visits in order for them to be more successful, and in collecting other types of information that allow companies to improve the way in which they approach their products and their sales. It is increasingly becoming a powerful CRM system and a sales booster.

It is intended to be a solution rather than a product. The app is just one part, – the onsite Mobility Server containing all the information, the communication system, and above all, the human team are what make projects have an almost guaranteed success.

Its extra features are the fact that the tool is really multi-platform, ensuring that the application behaves identically on any tablet (iOS, Android, Windows). Another important extra feature is a very powerful business relationship, which allows highly complex prices and promotions to be applied, as well as customizable reports, which enable companies to generate personalized items and analyze them.

As product manager, I can say that we work to improve on every aspect and adapt to market needs.

If you want to know more: Business Intelligence: planning at the service of your sales force

• How many people can use it and from where?

  The company can deploy an unlimited number of devices and persons using inaCátalog, but it depends on the processing capabilities of the systems at the central office. It is mainly used on mobile tablets of the three major platforms: iOS, Android and Windows. And from PCs as well. A web version will be available soon. It is highly visual and intuitive, and regardless of the platform where it is running, everything looks the same.

• What features does the standard tool offer and which can be added as extra?

  The standard version includes features such as: dashboard, reports, configuration system, data exchange, integration… Anyone installing inaCátalog will have this and much more. In addition, there are more specific and special features, such as the automatic submission of Excel or Pdf orders through the Mobility Server containing information about the products and their images (product, quantity, price, stock, photo, EAN, etc.).

We also have modules such as Year-To-Date Comparisons based on subcategories and products in units and price, value and percentage; report submission via e-mail and others that have been requested by many companies, such as PLUS Fees and Promotions or the ability to add new configurable filters based on the customer’s needs.

Then, for example, in the pharmaceutical sector, the wholesaler transfer order generation feature is quite handy; companies in the industrial sector that offer direct shipping find the fee calculation per agency and best option to be quite useful; in the cosmetics sector the feature that allows discounts to be exchanged for gifts and point-based sample control see significant use, among others.

• What are the most useful features?

  I would say the sales dashboard, Instant Reporting (analysis using the Five Ws model), the customer records (that contain key information for preparing the visit and knowing what to focus on), the rates, offers and promotions features as well as the sales process itself, the personalization capabilities and image processing.

If you want to know more: 10 basic features every sales app needs

• Which services of inaCátalog’s CRM help with decision making?

  The application itself does so, by allowing information to be available and accessible anywhere, anytime. More specifically, reports, and above all, statistics. Reports allow information to be collected in an orderly fashion so that its subsequent handling in statistics turns out to be easy and agile.

• What is the information that inaCátalog lets you handle, and how does it accomplish this?

  Each agent, department, etc., may bring up a customer’s sale logs, which allows him to establish patterns, behaviors, sales templates… And analyze that information in order to draw conclusions. On the other hand, the reporting feature is very powerful and useful, because each customer can configure them as he pleases based on the parameters he requires, and perform his own analyses. This information can subsequently be analyzed and distributed among salespersons (technical information, sales information, characteristics…). The reports handle information in text mode, which means that when you want to send a statistic, graph or report that combines images with text, you need something else. That is where attached multimedia files come in, which give you the possibility to link a record for a product or customer with a document (PDF, Excel, video…) in order to have a global overview of them.

You might be interested in: Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability

• How is the tool’s security ensured?

  The first assurance is that all information is contained in an encrypted database, which means it is practically impossible to access its contents. This measure has been implemented from the start. We also offer security in device communications, making information transfers encrypted. We then have usage security measures, such as the ability to destroy information, access using passwords and remote device control.

• What is inaCátalog’s implementation and installation process like?

  In order to be able to install the tool and prepare the devices, an implementation process is carried out. The key aspects are ironed out with the company and the necessary information is added to their server to configure the tool. Lastly, the agents just need to download the application, enter their username and password, and start working with inaCátalog.

• How much can technical departments manage and customize this tool?

  Technical departments can personalize or adapt the tool to their liking and requirements in several ways:

- By adding new optional modules.

- By configuring the various options. The application has about 500 parameters to customize its behavior.

- By changing the look & feel of the application, adapting it to the company’s image.

- By defining catalog structures that help with the presentation and sale.

- By adding relevant information with reporting and multimedia.

 Do you want more about this? Make contact with us

• How do you adapt your CRM system to technological changes? How do you decide whether to add a new feature?

  Since we are developers, we add improvements based on needs pointed out by our customers. Furthermore, we pay attention to technological trends and lead the product toward them when we see they are starting to take hold.

• How are errors handled?

  Possible errors are notified to the support department. They are verified and we attempt to reproduce them. If we succeed in reproducing them, it is considered to be an error and it is handed over to the development department. There, a solution is sought and the work is planned. Upgrades to the application that resolve the incidents detected within a period are periodically published to all markets.

If a major or crippling error is ever detected, all available resources are dedicated to its immediate resolution.

• How is inaCátalog’s CRM integrated with companies’ ERPs? Which programs or systems is it compatible with?

  Integration is performed through an exchange of information that adds all available data in inaCátalog to the ERP. It is practically a custom-tailored integration and it does not depend on the ERP, only on the functionalities it offers to allow the exchange of information.

There is no standard interface per type of application, because the information is organized by each customer as he pleases, even when dealing with the same ERP.

• What would you recommend to the technical team of a company that is looking for a Mobile CRM system?

  To weigh the power and flexibility of our solution and the human team behind it, since because we are developers, we have the autonomy to make the application evolve and satisfy the needs that clients have throughout time.

Our team is what makes us different; our commitment and involvement in every project, with every client.

La entrada How to boost your sales: provide your team with CRM software aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Under this premise, counting with a tool that includes industrial CRM services will enable us to automate certain information and have the necessary data to optimize decision-making, improve processes, and enhance the customer’s experience and the relationship with them. All of the above, as we will see in this post, translates into increased sales.

Why should inaCátalog be implemented as an industrial CRM? Because it allows you to address problems and needs for companies and sales teams of the sector, such as:

• The need to implement a digital catalog and a CRM that is always accessible, which allows salespersons to generate orders anywhere
• The requirement of having detailed and updated stock information
• The requirement of updating the sales force’s working tools to improve customer management and make it easier to meet sales goals.

Thanks to mobile tools that, as inaCátalog does, include a CRM tailored to the industrial sector, sales teams can overcome the unavailability of detailed information in real time and improve on other aspects such as pre-visit planning, shortening the sales cycle for complex products, track visits, etc.

Results of implementing an industrial CRM such as inaCátalog

InaCátalog’s deployment process in the industrial sector, as with any other industry, involves an integration with the company’s ERP, installation on all of the company’s computers and the installation of the central program. In addition, the CRM has a commissioning phase and offers technical support services. Thanks to this, companies can easily implement an industrial CRM, and a powerful business tool, that they can quickly benefit from.

Taking advantage of everything the app has to offer and implementing a sales methodology allows for the obtainment of improving data in the short term, facilitating a fast return on investment.  

By analyzing one of our success stories – a leading business group in the Spanish paper industry with a strong international presence and a team of 14 salespersons – these are some of the amazing results obtained with inaCátalog during the first year since its implementation:

• 92% increase in sales volume

  It was possible for sales in this company of the industrial sector to increase after implementing an industrial CRM such as inaCátalog, where the sales rose by a 92%. This increasing trend lasted through the second year, maintaining a sustained 24% growth.  

• 80 percent more orders

  Access to key information by the sales force such as stock information, in conjunction with a more effective tracking of prospective customers and the portfolio offered by the industrial CRM and its features, such as onsite reporting, quickly translated into an increase in the number of orders, reaching an additional 80% more requests during the first year, and 29% during the second.

• Significant growth in order lines per sale

  Using a tool that includes personalized catalogs and other features such as cross-selling and upselling helps in accomplishing more order lines per sale. The ability to make a better pre-visit planning helps industrial companies to achieve up to 69% more lines per order during the first 12 months, and a 29% more during the following year.

• 20% increase in the number of visits

  Agility and speed are boosted for representatives. In addition to facilitating management and eliminating administrative tasks that take away their time with customers, using a tool that includes an industrial CRM such as inaCátalog also makes visits last less and makes them more effective. The outcome is a 20% increase in visits when compared to equally long days.

Related reading: How to increase visits in your sales network by 20 %

Using technology to optimize sales visits

The fact that representatives have a sales application and an Industrial CRM for use on their tablets, that is fully integrated with their computer systems, at their disposal, allows for a significant optimization of sales visits and performance for the sales department. This arises from certain benefits obtained and several factors, such as:

• Significant time savings in administrative tasks due to the elimination of duplicates and tasks that are no longer necessary, such as manual data entry or the need to search among large quantities of documents and printed catalogs (which are often outdated).
• Automatic information synchronization (clients, rates, products…). With inaCátalog, catalogs and rates are updated easily and immediately. Data is also updated offline, since the tool allows you to work without a connection so that you never lose contact with the databases.

• Full and automatic data integration, which allows for time savings, avoiding possible manual errors and perform a stricter control over the information and the management of sales teams. All of this with high-security, highly reliable systems that are easy to couple with the company’s ERP.
• Information that is always available and updated, with full details on stock, personalized offers or related products. This makes calls to the central offices by salespersons, and vice-versa, to decrease. The sales force now focuses on what really matters: to sell more and better.

Why should you implement a tool such as inaCátalog?

inaCátalog is an all-in-one sales application and mobile CRM, ideal to automate processes in a sales network and optimize key aspects of this activity and of customer management.

Companies of the industrial sector that keep carrying out visits using physical catalogs and a traditional or independent CRM do not only depend on greater amounts of time, but also on higher graphical material adaptation and printing expenses. In this regard, having a mobile industrial CRM will simplify sales, and help optimize times and visits. All of this, with an innovative brand image and the ability to enhance the customer experience and the relationship with users.

In summary, inaCátalog addresses today’s industrial company needs – companies that require an easy and effective mobile customer management system, a visit and data analysis manager, and a sales suite, all in one.

If you believe your business has these requirements or if you are looking to obtain the benefits of implementing a sales tool and industrial CRM, all in one, ask for a free inaCátalog demo or get in touch with us.

La entrada Success story: results of using inaCátalog as an industrial CRM aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Retail trends for 2018

• Metrics and accounting are as important as the product

  Companies of the retail sector are increasingly considering data to be of great importance. This is because, based on that information and analytics, a greater knowledge about users can be obtained and trends can be detected, sales and marketing traceability can be measured, problems in products or campaigns can be corrected and demand can even be predicted.

  As stated by the MODAES magazine, “we live in the world of instantaneity and it is very important to be able to use technology to manage departments in a highly effective manner while, at the same time, storing all the managed information to draw conclusions.”

• Instantaneity and information management – two must-haves

  Information demand by customers requires increasingly immediate responses. Sales agents should be capable of offering details on products, personalized promotions, stock or new services in real-time. With this in mind, retail trends show that technologies will have to adapt in 2018 to an online and offline service in order to never get disconnected from databases.

  Information about visits and reports will always be made instantaneously thanks to onsite reporting systems, which are made possible thanks to mobile technologies and the sales applications available to sales representatives.

   

Further information: How to increase the profitability of your business efforts with sales reports

• Mobile technologies as a link between marketing and sales

  Mobile applications, which are becoming increasingly popular among sales representatives, also seem to be particularly useful to marketing departments. Thanks to them, marketing teams may take advantage of information collected by the sales force to create targeted advertisements at a lower cost (special campaigns, segmented catalogs for different consumer groups, etc.).

  This will not only cause an increased marketing ROI, but will also generate synergies among marketing and sales departments which were up until now practically disconnected.

   

Related reading: Marketing intelligence: improve your ROI using sales data

• Automation, personalization and recommendation

  According to Fundación Orange, the integration of mobile technologies is another existing retail trend that will continue in 2018. The use of technological tools allows us to “accomplish improvements in the customer’s experience, more personalized offers based on user habits and tastes, and changes in processes for a greater automation. All of this helps retailers strengthen their brand, get closer to customers, anticipate their needs and make revisions and recommendations in a more effective manner.”

• Concern over the buyer’s experience

  The sales process needs to be interactive – a true dialogue with consumers in which they let us in on their problems and we can build a bond of mutual trust. Salespersons need to be capable of collecting important data on users, only then will they be able to provide an added value to the service and an improved purchasing experience.

The strength of sprint selling when getting to know users

As we have seen, buyers are the center of the entire sales ecosystem. Therefore, within the techniques salespersons carry out to boost sales in the retail sector, so-called sprint selling is the one that is gaining the most strength, and one of the prevailing retail trends for 2018.

Active listening is one of the key elements of the perfect sales process. Its essence involves properly listening to the customer, knowing how to adequately interpret their messages and communicating optimally.

As stated in our article Guidelines to improve customer management from the very first moment, knowing our prospective customers will provide us with insight to adapt to them and properly fulfill their wishes and needs.

New tools and technology are already implementing these active listening techniques and will continue to do so in 2018. For example, inaCátalog has a number of features focused on getting to know the customer.

Among them, we can mention the onsite reporting system, which includes customer satisfaction surveys that can be performed at the very moment when the purchase is taking place. In this way, in addition to making the customer participate in the development of the company, we can collect highly valuable information, since it will be at that moment when he will communicate his most immediate feelings and opinions to us.

Bet on mobile technologies

Preparing for the future and the rapidly changing markets is a difficult task, but not impossible. It implies developing new skills and knowing how to take advantage of the tools we have at our disposal, as well as finding those that are better tailored to our teams and their needs.

In this regard, technology is hard at work to stay updated on the work of our sales force in order to offer them the best possible solutions for the performance of their sales, and enhanced customer relationships. For example, a mobile sales & CRM app such as inaCátalog offers access to all customer information, stock levels, sales routes and organizer within a single application.

Furthermore, its advantages include a geolocation system, which makes it easier to know about sales performance by means of onsite reports, which allows salespersons to fill out their reports anywhere, anytime. All of this is integrated with your company’s ERP and has an automated information transfer system that works both on and offline, so that key information is available at all times to optimize sales efforts.

Now that you have seen the retail trends for 2018, we recommend you study the opportunities at your disposal and analyze how they will help your sales force. You may use our document “How to choose the best mobile CRM to boost your sales” for inspiration, and to learn about the results obtained by applying technology to your sales force.

La entrada Sprint selling and other trends in retail aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Both aspects are closely related: if the sales force increases its effectiveness in each visit, getting rid of secondary tasks and having the necessary autonomy, sales visits will be shorter. This will offer a greater time leeway to carry out more visits.

This does not happen just because the salesperson is able to eliminate auxiliary tasks, but also because each visit has a greater quality for the user and allows us to address his doubts, needs and issues in a timely manner. This ability is obtained thanks to information.

This said, how do we manage for visits to be shorter and more effective at the same time? How can we increase the number of sales network visits by 20%? Keep reading and find out.

Improve the effectiveness of the sales network through mobile tools

Information is key to increase the quality of our sales network visits and business intelligence. In this regard, we are not only referring to information on stock, products and supplementary services or special offers. Sales representatives must also track sales visits, collect all important customer data to carry out future actions and improve the pre-visit planning.

In order to obtain this information completely it will be paramount to correctly monitor the sales activity in order to know how it performs and which are the actions, components or factors that make a visit more effective.

How do you collect key information to increase sales network sales? Through an adequate sales management system that adds value both for customers and for the sales force. To accomplish this, it should include a set of characteristics to improve the sales efficiency:

• Planner: a sales tool that includes a schedule planning and visit prioritization system will enable the classification of customers by dates and criteria. Additionally, this planner should be linked to customer reports and spreadsheets to decide when the best time to make a visit is and to improve the pre-visit planning using relevant data.

• Geolocation system: the application our sales force will use will exponentially multiply its effectiveness if it includes a geolocation system. Salesperson productivity and efficiency will be increased; in addition, it will also be useful to monitor salespersons and know details such as where a sale or report is being made.  

• Real-time automated stock control: An efficient and automated order and stock management allows customers to be offered a fast, personalized, quality and reliable service, as well as the possibility to quickly address their inquiries.

Keep reading: Benefits of real-time stock management

• Interactive catalogs: interactive catalogs, such as those offered by inaCátalog, can easily adapt to each customer without consuming too many resources, in addition to being more appealing. If we already have a segmented product list we will be able to meet our users’ needs faster and with a higher chance of success.

• Proactive sales techniques: in order for the visit to be more profitable we should increase the sales volume. Having a tool that offers upselling or cross-selling will make this job easier for the sales network, which will be able to increase the number of lines per order much easier.

• Online and offline data updating: getting disconnected from our database in the middle of a visit may result in a significant waste of time and even an inability to successfully close a sale. Having an app that is able to be used offline will prevent representatives from being left hanging out to dry due to service problems.

• Report system: once a visit is over, having an automated report system will make it easy to evaluate data obtained and classify it. In line with this, onsite reports offered by mobile sales tools will help us know in-depth our performance and outline future successful courses of action.

Keep learning: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

All of these features should be added to a sales management plan in a mobile solution that, as inaCátalog does, always accompanies our sales force. Analyses performed by our company show that thanks to these advantages a sales network increases sales visits by up to 20 percent.  

How to optimize sales management to increase visits

Before we presented a few guidelines to making sales visits more productive, but there are also a set of practices that are related to team management.

What can we do, as sales managers, to optimize our sales network efforts and increase sales? According to the Emprendedores magazine, these are the 4 steps one should follow:

• Plot a route: Before going out on the street and selecting a route for visits, we will have to think where our prospective customers are located and which of them are a perfect fit for our offer. Once this decision has been made, we will have to reflect on the added value we can offer them.

• Change the method of compensation: the article states that most companies nowadays have a compensation method that rewards obtaining new customers over generating customer loyalty. And, as we can see, retaining and taking care of our existing clients is increasingly important.

• Seek new sales strategies: our product is the excuse to build a relationship with the customer, but we should look for new ways to focus on him and find alternative means to expand his consumption through our company.  

• Set realistic goals: define salesperson goals in a realistic manner they are comfortable with, and with consideration to the market’s current state. A method that is of significant help when setting goals is the SMART method.

La entrada How to increase your sales network visits by 20% aparece primero en INACATALOG.

This digital sales process requires mobile tools that put the sales force front and center, providing advances and features to improve the sales experience and optimize the agent’s work.

As pointed out by the Directivos y Dirigentes platform, the technological adaptation of sales teams succeeds in generating value for users, obtaining useful information for prospecting and managing leads. In addition, technological tools “align marketing and sales departments, personalize customer service and professionalize business calendars.”

Benefits of applying digital sales to my sales force

Applying digital sales to the sales force results in key effects in regard to improving the optimization and efficiency of a sale. The main benefits obtained through the transformation of the sales department are:

• Collection of key information

  Mobile tools make it easier for salespersons to make reports and collect information. The complex spreadsheet information submission systems are replaced and standard report models can be used, which any salesperson may access and fill out using his mobile device.

• Enhanced customer experience

  Representatives may carry out personalized visits and offer products and services tailored to the needs and requirements of each user. Furthermore, stock information is always up-to-date and available, which means information requests by prospective customers can be addressed, and sales can be closed much faster. Lastly, the fact that catalogs can be created with the tool itself, and that they are interactive, facilitates the salesperson’s daily visits, offering more attractive presentations and having the entire range of products in a single device to show it on the fly.

• Strategic sale 

  Having digital sales means information regarding promotions and discounts, fees, related products, product cross-selling and others are available at all times; as a result, prescriptive sales and cross-selling techniques are much easier to apply successfully.

• Increased efficiency and productivity

  Mobile tools allow for an easy management and organization of the sales network, as well as an easier monitoring of the business calendar and KPIs. All data in a single place and just a click away, for salespersons to be able to access it and prepare for each visit effectively.

• Data analysis to improve decision making 

  Orders, reports and all sales operations will be automatically integrated. In addition to saving time by eliminating administrative tasks, this allows for an analysis of metrics and use of this information to facilitate decision making based on data. Business intelligence at the service of your company.

Results of using mobile tools during sales

• As we have seen, the benefits of applying digital sales to your sales force are many. In fact, the results of digital selling and the addition of a Mobile CRM such as inaCátalog can be seen from year one. Here we bring you some data collected from our successful implementations:

• Increased sales volume 

  The latest results show that companies of the pharmaceutical sector that implement inaCátalog have managed to increase their sales volume by 176.07% in the first year, and up to 137.20% in the following two years.

• Unification of orders and error prevention

  The processes performed by any salesperson, regardless of his location, are submitted to the central server and managed much faster. And with no margin of error, because the agent submits the order during the visit itself and reviews the information with the customer first.

Related article: Why you should add mobility to your 2018 sales action plan

• Perfecting the pre-visit planning 

  Managers point out that one of the aspects that shows the best results when using inaCátalog is pre-visit planning. This is because the client’s information history is available in a single platform, where all details obtained during every interaction can be found.

• Improvements in competitiveness and innovation

  Relying on a tool that is constantly being updated and adapted is the best way to digitalize the sales force, since they at all times have the best and most cutting-edge technologies. This means not only succeeding in being an innovative company, but also being more competent in our sector.

Phases of sales transformation

According to the Expansión newspaper, there are 3 key steps in the process of digitalization of the entire company and the sales department:

• Beginning

  In order to overcome this phase several steps need to be undertaken: comprehension and knowledge of the target audience, internal analysis of resources and capabilities to adapt to digitalization, and lastly, design of a technological strategy based on business goals.

  During this stage, experts state that, when digitalizing a company, it is necessary to “completely rethink the offer of products and services, thinking what it is the user needs the most,” in addition to finding more efficient models of action.

• Execution

  Once the resources are analyzed and the strategy is laid out, it is the time to create plans of action. Specifically, these tactics should involve four fronts: customer-centered actions, talent development, creation of a digital culture and technology management.

• Optimization

  The last stage is optimization, where the goal is to design future service, identity and corporate culture optimization operations, as well as identify those areas and employees that may be drivers of that change.

Business accomplishments and market adaptation depend for the most part on the proper use of the technology at your disposal. In this regard, Mobile CRM tools and sales apps facilitate monitoring and automation of sales processes. In addition, they allow for a proper metric monitoring to understand which strategies are being effective, what is failing, and to have greater room to act when compared to traditional offline customer relationship management systems.

The features offered by tools such as inaCátalog allow you to easily adapt to digital sales and collect useful information that will not only make the salespersons’ day-to-day easier and allow them to be more independent and efficient, but data centralization will be the best ally to your company’s directors and managers.

La entrada Digital sales: your sales force’s best ally aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Companies constantly reconsider certain goals in order to always maintain a clear corporate vision and make sure that all of their employees are working toward a same goal. They also do this with the purpose of making the whole team aware of the importance of their work and the common goal.

In the case of the sales department, the main goal will always be to increase sales. To accomplish this, one should not consider generic answers, but instead perfectly specify why we want to achieve this increase in sales and focus on how feasible it is, how measurable, and how long it will take us to accomplish it. As we will see below, this is the way to apply the SMART methodology, which will greatly facilitate accomplishing these goals (as long as it is properly applied and with the help of the right tools).

What are SMART goals

The SMART technique is a way of smartly establishing and accomplishing business goals. Many companies work without objectives or with very abstract goals. This leads its workers to get distracted and prevents them from performing their work in the most efficient way, since they are unaware of the road to follow to accomplish goals, and what obstacles they will face.

Establishing SMART goals will therefore help not only to learn what we are working on, but also to foresee and deal with certain problems that may emerge along the road. In order to optimally fulfill sales goals, reports and data analysis will let us know the state in which each goal is; what is working and, ultimately, what is not working in order to make decisions.

Before delving into the way in which data should be used as SMART indexes, let’s go over the definition of “SMART goals.” The term ‘SMART’ was coined by professor and researcher George T. Doran in 1981 in his document “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives,” published on the Management Review magazine. In the article he defined the five characteristics that define a smart goal.

Characteristics of SMART goals

SMART goals are a reference to each acronym:

S – Specific

What do we want to accomplish and how will we accomplish it? In order to answer these questions we will have to be as specific and clear as possible, since this decision will guide the rest of the way and future plans of action.

M – Measurable

What KPIs or indicators can be used to measure their efficiency? 

If we set measurable sales goals we will also be able to analyze them and make better decisions in relation to them or any unforeseen situation that may emerge along the way.

Establishing success indicators as part of our goals and objectives will let us know how far we are from accomplishing them and obtaining tangible results.

A – Achievable

The goal should be ambitious, a challenge for us and our team, but doable. It is important to be reasonable, discerning and analytic in order to define goals and establishing them in a way that can make accomplishing them possible.

Realistic goals area also a good way to maintain and strengthen the sales team motivation.

R – Relevant

Company goals should be relevant for our customers, but above all, to the company itself. Time should not be wasted in secondary aspects; we should always act in accordance with the company strategy and attempt to target goals that can add value.

T – Timely

How much time will it take to accomplish these goals? It is paramount to schedule them, set a deadline for their accomplishment. Otherwise, the goal may be pushed back and never get accomplished.

Measure SMART indicators to maximize their effect

The importance of SMART indicators lies in that they are reachable and measurable (both in time and in relation to certain business indicators). Monitoring this process through an app that offers sales process automation, such as inaCátalog, boosts its effects and allows for a greater efficiency in their accomplishment.

Combining SMART goals with technology helps the Sales Director manage them in an optimal and integrated manner. This monitoring will also provide the sales force with a series of advantages:

• Efficient data management

All of the sales force information will be available at all times on any tablet (whether there is an Internet connection available or not). In addition, inaCátalog allows for reports to be made on-site and to know where they are being made (whether the customer’s home, a car…), avoiding delays or losses of relevant information.

• Improved decision making

With inaCátalog, data will always be updated, and it is possible to design and incorporate personalized dashboards and statistics, as well as set up our own indicators. All of this improves the strategic decision making process.

• Optimization and sales management

The app makes it easy to link the sales organizer with the reports by each representative and the entire customer spreadsheet. In addition, any need or indicator can be defined and parameterized. As a result, the whole team will know whether goals are being met or not and will have relevant data to help accomplish them on each visit.

• Enhanced customer relationships

The management of customer databases allows customer service to be optimized to identify and nurture those with a greater potential.

• Adapting to changes

inaCátalog’s technology, which is being constantly updated, allows for your business to always be up-to-date and to stand out among competitors.

SMART goals are essential to focus on what is really important for our business strategy and to determine which areas should be addressed more urgently. This said, it is important to review and update them as necessary.

When companies, their teams and employees work with clearly defined and established goals, with the support of technological tools such as inaCátalog which help tracking them, productivity improves exponentially.

Now that you know how to define sales goals using the SMART technique, you can apply them to your next strategic sales plan. On the other hand, we invite you to discover what the benefits of adding mobility to your 2018 sales plan of action are.

La entrada How to include SMART goals in your sales method aparece primero en INACATALOG.

If your business has a sales and marketing strategy in place, with well-defined schedules and goals and an adequate methodology, you are doing your job right. But that is not enough. Implementing a plan of action is as important as knowing how to correctly measure results. Only then will we know whether that work is offering expected results or if the strategy needs to change.

What is sales traceability?

According to the Emprendedores magazine, product traceability consists of a “set of measures, actions and procedures that allow for the tracking and identification of each product from its origin to its final destination.” Originally, the term applied to products of the agri-food sector, but in time it has spread to all sectors and business realms –sales and marketing departments included.

Therefore, sales and marketing traceability would involve the tracking of promotional material and advertisements and the measurement of their impact in real-time. It can be used to detect and optimize marketing ads and actions, tailoring them to the customers’ needs and responses. In summary, the data obtained is useful to learn whether the business strategy is working or not and, when applicable, revise it in a timely manner.

In this regard, the ability to collect real-time information and being aware of sales agent routes, making onsite reports and exporting data to every device in order to have them always available and synchronized with the central offices, will make it easier to perform that item analysis and to make the right decision when facing new campaigns.

Advantages of measuring sales traceability with inaCátalog

Measuring sales traceability allows marketing and sales teams to optimally coordinate their efforts in order to accomplish the goals of both departments. In addition to providing information on marketing campaigns and sales force activities, inaCátalog allows for the evaluation of the entire customer service traceability. This includes:

• Knowing which marketing advertisements are more attractive to consumers. We can know what marketing material salespersons show on each visit to learn which are working better per segment and revise them.
• Drawing conclusions based on user behavior. Thanks to data obtained from tracing sales visits we can analyze customers based on characteristics (such as age, gender…), their tastes and their behavior.
• Knowing the state of KPIs or conversions. Knowing whether goals are being accomplished and which actions are working toward them. Measuring the traceability is useful when monitoring KPIs and conversions, to redefine the strategy when necessary.
• Time optimization. Given that sales and marketing departments work in a coordinated but independent manner, a duplication of administrative tasks is prevented and efforts are focused on accomplishing common goals. In addition, the digitalization of marketing material allows for a greater margin to adapt, employing less time and money.
• Improved decision making. As we have already discussed, data is the key of business intelligence and of a strategic decision-making that is based on analysis and experience.
• Error prevention and a greater room to act. Knowing all the information makes it easier to detect errors in time to correct them faster, in addition to knowing where the problem lies exactly.
• Design of future strategies. Information and data analysis will be useful when designing future strategies targeted at consumers, implementing well-defined goals and actions.

You might be interested in: Business intelligence: planning at the service of your sales force

Benefits of using sales applications or traceability software

Sales force tools such as inaCátalog offer data analysis and facilitate the collection of strategic information. These applications, which include traceability features, offer a number of benefits which enable cost reductions and the optimization of sales and marketing activities:

• Attractive information

Printed catalogs disappear and are substituted by interactive, attractive and intuitive elements. The presentation of products and customer services through the use of mobile systems (tablets) is much more eye-catching and gets customers more engaged.

• Personalization and experience

These applications provide access to client records before each appointment; as a result, sales teams can carry out a much better pre-visit planning and can make personalized visits. This personalization, in combination with the interaction offered by a sales app, translate into a better purchasing experience and company-customer relationship.

• Integration and easy access

Systems allow for the storage of all information and access to it anytime, anywhere. In the case of inaCátalog, its data integration system is automated, which means its contents are constantly being updated and that it is in constant operation, since its on/off-line system guarantees the app will work no matter where you are.

• Mobility and independence

Sales representatives have all stock information just a click away, providing them with greater independence from the central offices.

• Innovation:

All of these benefits are multiplied with a sales application that is constantly updated and adapted to company needs, always with the sights set on sales and marketing innovation through the application of the most advanced technology, and a less costly implementation.

Information as a competitive advantage

In order for traceability to help improve marketing and sales strategies, it is paramount to create and optimize marketing materials and take advantage of sales traceability tools to more effectively trace consumer actions and responses.

When the marketing department has this valuable user information at its disposal – that only salespersons can collect –, both teams optimize their efforts and accomplish goals hand in hand.

In this, technology and mobile tools play a major role. But knowing how to take advantage of them is as important as having them. In this regard, inaCátalog is a tool that is easy to use and highly intuitive. The result? Increased productivity and an improvement in sales and marketing performance at every level.

La entrada Advantages of measuring sales and marketing traceability aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Within a company, closing a sale with an existing customer is as important as, or even more important than, generating a new customer. Or at least, it should be. And this conversion process starts before the visit. First impressions are important and, therefore, performing a better pre-visit planning is just as useful as adequately following-up on sales visits. As a result, we will succeed in transforming a lead into a buyer that is satisfied with our company and faithful to our products or services.

What is customer management?

As already said, customer management is related to the purchasing experience, but it goes way beyond that. It involves knowing our target audience, monitoring, measuring and classifying its behavior in order to have all possible details about prospective customers, so that we can offer them personalized experiences. This will not only exponentially increase the possibility of successfully closing a sale, but we will also succeed in gaining the customer’s loyalty in such a way that he becomes an opinion leader in favor of our brand.

In order to attain this all-encompassing knowledge, we must extract as much information as possible from each consumer, store it and analyze it so that we can have useful data quickly, anytime, anywhere.

How to optimize customer management from the start

Even though each customer is unique and his purchasing process will differ, there are a series of guidelines that will help you optimize customer management from the start:

• Know your leads

How can you serve your consumers properly if you do not know them? Pay attention to their tastes, problems, needs and objections and collect all valuable data. All of this will give you an idea of how to accommodate your leads and how to offer them the solutions that satisfy them the most. This will generate a bond of trust and improve our brand image.

Related reading: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

• Obtain the right information at the right time:

Collection of valuable data is not achieved just by observing and asking our target audience (even though it is an important part of the process). It is also essential to report data at the right time.

The sales team that has an automated reporting system that is permanently connected will be capable of making reports on the visits even as they are taking place. Onsite reporting will make it easier to obtain the right information, at the right time and at the right place, increasing the profitability of the sales efforts.  

• Analyze data:

Analyzing and classifying data for each visit is another good practice of customer management. Why? Because analyzing variables and classifying data will allow you to segment customers based on different criteria and phases of the strategy, as well as draw conclusions from the statistics and improve the decision making process.

Obtaining and analyzing data are two paramount actions to find out what our consumers’ concerns are, what they want or need, and when the best time to offer it to them is. It will also be useful to set goals, check what is working and monitor KPIs, and accomplish goals.

• Personalize interactions

Once we understand how our users are we need to show this to them. With this in mind, strengthening the pre-visit planning process and having all the information about a customer on hand before the meeting will be of great help. In this way, we will be able to personalize our contact and interactions with each customer, knowing how we can help address his inquiries and how to offer unique, custom-tailored solutions (e.g., by means of specific offers, cross-selling and even personalized catalogs, among others).

• Have a good CRM:

As we have discussed, knowing our leads is the key to optimizing the sales follow-up process. Having a mobile CRM program and a customer management app that adapt to the needs of our sales force and focus on users will be of great help, not only to improve the service and meetings, and to track sales visits, but also to streamline sales efforts and strengthen business results.

Benefits of implementing a customer management software

Sales quality is a synonym of a perfect service and of the purchasing experience. We need to close sales, true, but even more than that, we need our buyers to be satisfied with our products or services and, above all, with our customer care.

New technologies and sales apps are constantly being updated toward this goal. Buying a software that offers sales management and supports sales tracking, such as inaCátalog, will imply a number of benefits for our sales and marketing departments, as well as a number of competitive advantages in relation to customer management:

• Full information control, permanent access to data and its centralization.
• Time optimization as a result of eliminating administrative tasks, monitoring sales tasks and thanks to the geolocation system, which plots recommended routes.
• Reporting system fine tuning thanks to the addition of sales reporting templates and the ability to make reports from anywhere and at any time.
• Improved internal communication and synergy between the marketing and sales departments, by having a tool that is useful for both teams, from which they all can draw relevant conclusions for strategic purposes.
• Lead management progress. inaCátalog’s client records allow the user to detect in which phase of the purchase each customer sits and when the right time to close a sale is.
• Shortening of the sales cycle for complex products.

These and other benefits can be obtained thanks to a sales and Mobile CRM application such as inaCátalog, which takes advantage of mobility in order to shorten response times and streamline the flow of information. The result is an improvement in sales management and a significant boost to the sales force, which is provided with a tool that allows it to effectively manage customers and enhance all sales processes.

Do you want to know more about how inaCátalog works? Ask for a free demo and improve your customer management.

La entrada Guidelines to improve your customer management from the start aparece primero en INACATALOG.

In order for you to do so as well, we bring you our selection of 10 sales blogs to stay updated. A true repository of wisdom for you and your teams to constantly learn and get enriched with new sales management ideas.

Sales blogs to get inspired

1. Vender es mucho más

One of these sales management blogs belongs to Alejandro Sánchez and Alejandro Luján, two highly experienced salespersons that share tips to sell more and faster. Their goal? To help the sales profession since, as they say, “without sales there is no company.”

With highly educational articles on Sales Coaching, Sales Tools, Productivity and Sales Techniques, they are a source of inspiration on current issues and subjects for sales directors and CEOs.

Want to take a look at their blog? Start by “El ciclo de venta que todo comercial debería conocer”.

2. Vendedor Ninja

Vendedor Ninja should be among the sales blogs visited by any industry professional. A very thorough network, with articles on coaching, personal development, strategy, neuromarketing, communication, and practically any aspect of concern to a sales team, a sales representative or a sales director, as well as interviews with experts in different fields.

Its author, Josué Gadea, is a consultant, trainer and international speaker whose goal is to help multiply business yields in any sector.

Recommended content: Neuroventas, estrategias de ventas persuasivas para vender más.

3. inaCátalog’s Sales and Sales Management blog

InaCátalog has a blog on sales management and sales which publishes the latest technological innovations; sales, marketing and CRM tips; and the latest trends and industry tools to be more effective.

Its entries aim to become a complete guide on business and sales management, supplemented by downloadable learning resources and success stories for inspiration.

One of its articles you cannot miss: Sales KPIs: 30 business indicators to monitor sales.

4. Developing the business

Educational contents on tasks and problems usually faced by sales representatives. Its many sections are related to needs of the management department and sales team activities: Business Development, Customer Experience, Excellent Companies, Sales Books, LinkedIn Social Selling, Sales Pipeline & CRM, Sales Process, Productivity, Customer Prospecting and Sales Management.

Popular post: Guía de 10 Pasos para Prospectar en Frío.

5. El blog de José Puchades

José Puchades’ is another sales blog made by an industry expert who offers all of his passion and experience in digital transformation, marketing and sales organization in his publications.

In this site you will find ideas on business management, entrepreneurship, marketing and digitalization, as well as interviews, presentations and other related sales management blogs.

One of its most-read entries is “7 tendencias de marketing y ventas en 2017”.

6. Dirección Comercial

In this site we find various subjects that range from sales dashboards, goal achievement systems, structuring and business organization, to training and company experiences across all sectors.

With a track record of over ten years, Dirección Comercial is a go-to site for sales directors, professional salesmen and innovative managers.

One of his posts that got the most attention is “Ejemplos reales de venta B2C avanzada (de cómo se venderá en 2020, pero que ya podemos usar en la actualidad)”.

7. El blog de Javier Heredia

Javier Heredia’s goal is to pass his knowledge, share his experience – over 20 years in sales – and ideas and create a network of sales, marketing, human resources and coaching professionals and colleagues.

In addition to getting his work published by industry media, universities and business schools, his sales blog is recommended by portals and expert marketing & business publications, such as Observatorio de la Blogosfera de MKT or the Marketing+Ventas magazine. In it he posts content on the subject of excellence, leadership, employees and customers, as well as several tips related to sales skills and techniques.

Here you can see his latest article: “La venta personal; Funciones del vendedor”.

8. Formación & Ventas

Formación & Ventas intends to offer ideas and resources about training, sales and team management. Written by Ángel Génova, professional trainer and coach to executives and sales teams, he helps evaluate, lead and develop a sales department, as well as improve sales skills and customer prospecting.

His articles touch on the subjects of Sales Management, Training, Skills, specialized Books, Negotiation Techniques and other ideas that may solve problems seen in the sector and optimize customer service and results.

His most-read post is “Las 5 funciones clave del gerente de ventas”.  

9. La venta perfecta

La venta perfecta is one of the sales blogs you cannot miss. It contains educational articles on problems and needs of specialists, tips, announcements and seminars.

His site also includes book references, videos and some of its author’s experiences as a sales strategy consultant .

You can find a few interesting ideas in “Los 5 consejos más valiosos para vender”.

10. El blog de Celestino Martínez

Celestino Martínez, a professional with a track record of over 20 years, shows us how to sell more without wasting resources on his site. His main goal is to help other professionals to increase sales figures, develop their project and adapt to market changes and customers.

Specialized in the retail sector, with subjects that include consumer behavior, product strategy, added value, etc., it also has downloadable resources and collaborates with other sales, marketing, management and entrepreneurship blogs.

Among his most visited publications we can find: “Las 12 amenazas del agente comercial en peligro de extinción”.

Other sales management resources

In addition to these sales blogs, there are other publications on sales management that may be of great help to you to stay informed and learn how to lead your sales force toward excellence. Besides media such as El Mundo Financiero or Puro Marketing, we recommend that you follow your sector’s LinkedIn groups, where you will be able to contact other professionals in your field and exchange experiences and opinions.

Do you want more resources for information on managing your sales team? Download our latest eBook, What should a sales dashboard look like? Analyzing sales KPIs with inaCátalog, and learn to optimize your sales strategy with the right tools.

La entrada Ten sales blogs to stay updated aparece primero en INACATALOG.

There are a myriad of software options and means to obtain them. Some have many features that, while at first may seem useful, further down do not truly accommodate the needs of a sales team. Others fall short and do not offer optimal features. But there are also apps for salespersons that are capable of accommodating every type of client and offer a scalable and functional technology.

When our goal is to increase sales, the first thing to keep in mind when choosing any order management app is that it should be developed by a professional team that has the necessary know-how and experience in the industry and offers the highest guarantees when it comes to safety and adaptability, especially when accomplishing a proper integration between the app and the company’s current ERP. In short, the application should be reliable, useful and adaptable, since this being the case, results will start to be noticeable since the first year of use and implementation.

During our search process, once we have a set of candidates, it is the time to select the order management program that our sales team will include in their day to day. If would be ideal for this sales app to also be useful to our marketing department and executive teams. That it is capable of analyzing and displaying data in a fast and strategic manner, with the purpose of facilitating decision making. With this in mind, there are a series of characteristics it should have.

Ten features a sales app should have

• Usability and versatility

The application should be intuitive and simple to use, versatile and scalable, to facilitate its adoption by the entire team. Only in this way will you be able to get the most out of it, and have all agents use it correctly.

In addition, it should be interactive and offer the client an optimal performance to convey a great brand image and provide the highest possible amount of data (where the prospective customer clicked, which pictures were best liked, which advertisements worked best…).

On the other hand, it should be cross-platform and multi-language, capable of being deployed on all kinds of operating systems to guarantee their proper operation on any device owned by the company.

Lastly, the app should be able to be used offline. Your salespersons often encounter 3G signal issues. Avoid hanging them out to dry due to service problems.

• Geolocation

Every sales app should make a proper use of this feature. Not only to geolocate the salesperson, but also to optimize sales routes and offer onsite report geolocation, registering the place (latitude-longitude position), time, customer, type of action and report contents.

This feature also facilitates the analysis of reports at the central office, and ensures access to the management of customers and products anytime, anywhere.

You might be interested in: Mobile CRM vs. Traditional CRM: streamline your sales force

• Analytics and statistics dashboard

Having an Advanced Statistics Dashboard that facilitates data analysis and is customizable. Tools such as inaCátalog include:

• Sales KPIs for per agent, company, customer, catalog and period
• Sales TOPS per agent, company, customer, catalog and period
• Overall sales graph per agent, company, product, customer, customer-product, catalog and period
• Sales performance per agent, company, product, customer, customer-product, catalog and period.

Properly managing performance data will allow for a proper budget management, tracking of goal accomplishment, improving decision making and many other advantages that you may find explained more in-depth in this article.

• Personalization

The sales app should have a set of designs and a structure that facilitates the addition of products and items to each personalized catalog, as well as offer the personalization of certain aspects of the platform (login image, language, login video, order printout, possibility to add additional information, etc.).

• Integration

A tool that has this feature will offer key data regarding customer behavior and will allow their needs to be predicted. A sales app such as inaCátalog displays key information for each customer, allows goals to be pinpointed and streamlines customer management.

• On and offline synchronization

Not only is it a necessary feature for any app in order to accomplish efficient sales, but it is also one of the mobile CRM software trends for 2018. Getting disconnected from our database in the middle of a visit will hinder the successful closure of a sale. Therefore, having an application that is capable of working offline and online will prevent any loss of information.

• Autonomy

The software should make it easy for all of our sales personnel to access all information about a customer with just one click. In order to provide autonomy to the sales force, the application should have a local data exchange service or back office – Mobility Server in inaCátalog –, client synchronization with each device’s contact list, and an unlimited number of clients and products in their databases.

• Customization

This feature should be related to several aspects. First, the sales app should be flexible and customizable to the corporate image – this is what we know as the Look&Feel setup in inaCátalog. Second, it should be able to customize certain features or create them from scratch depending on the specifics of each customer. Lastly, it should provide a connection to any ERP in order to achieve an automated integration, with the resulting savings in management times, since no piece of data will have to be entered manually.  

• Omnichannel

Omnichannel mobility solutions are particularly useful in trade shows, events and showrooms, where they make it easy to have customer data and contact information on all devices, and a centralized printing service that is compatible with any printer, while guaranteeing data safety.

• Security

Of course, the data we have will need to be safeguarded. Security is paramount in a sales app, since we have a lot of information about customers and other confidential data. In any case, in order to guarantee security, inaCátalog includes a long list of features. Among them, we can find:

• Automatic software updates
• Application information protected against device failures and more extreme events.
• Encryption.
• Program disabling and remote supervision.
• Protected access.
• Send prices and catalogs filtered per agent
• Data fee protection.
• Tools for incident resolution.
• Recovery system.

Why should I adopt a sales app?

As we have seen, an order management program provides a set of features that, in addition to making our sales force’s day to day easier, can offer an excellent sales process management.

Technology and mobility are two powerful elements offered by inaCátalog that help optimize your salespersons’ performance, and aids in accomplishing business goals. Why? Because it adapts to the needs of the sales team; allows products to be showcased; orders to be taken and stored; onsite reports to be made; the brand to be strengthened; and allows sales, customers and the sales team to be managed. All of this using one same tool that is much more than a sales app.

Do you want to know more about how business intelligence can benefit your business? Download inaCátalog’s success story in the pharmaceutical sector and find out, based on its results, why this is the perfect tool for your sales force.

La entrada 10 basic features every sales app needs aparece primero en INACATALOG.

The essence of competitiveness of companies and sales departments lies in the ability of offering a fast, personalized, quality and reliable service at the lowest possible cost. This can be accomplished through an efficient and automated order and stock management. Any other competitive advantage (prices, technology, etc.) may be affected by not having an adequate stock control in place.

What is stock management?

According to Friendly Business, stock management is “the activity and use of assets and resources to plan, organize, control and track stored products and materials with the purpose of offering a constant service to the existing demand with the maximum reliability, speed, versatility and quality, at the lowest possible cost.”

And what are stocks? As stated by the Macmillán Profesional publishing house, a company’s stock is the “set of goods that are in it, stockpiled at a specific place, in transit or in production, whose objective is their business-related application in industrial or commercial processes.” Therefore, a proper stock management guarantees an adequate control, and catering for demand.

In business activities, stock has three main purposes:

• Ensuring the constant and plentiful supply to carry out business activities.
• Catering for consumer needs when he requires the product or service.
• Facilitating the generation of personalized offers tailored to each customer to facilitate cross-selling and/or upselling.

Benefits of real-time stock control

In order to offer quality sales services and being able to cater to demand at all times, it is necessary to have a sales tool that helps maintain and professionalize stock control.

Applications such as inaCátalog automate warehouse information, allow for a direct management of orders and provide any data regarding stock levels in real-time. Thanks to all this information, the sales force arrives at each visit with the certainty of knowing in real-time the available stock quantity, avoiding any error that may affect the quality of the services rendered. Among the benefits of working with an order management software or an order management feature included in our ERP, we can mention de following:

1. Speed

These mobile tools allow us to be aware of each stock movement at the moment they take place, increasing the response speed to information demands. This speed can also be achieved by the reporting system, since these reports can be made at any time, anywhere, preventing the loss of important information.

2. Personalized, quality service

Having all stock information up to date, as well as that of related products, limits sales lost due to out of stock products. In addition, it elicits a greater loyalty among customers when they see all of their needs fulfilled with custom-tailored offers and related products.

3. Increased performance

The fact that the salesperson has all stock information at his disposal results in more effective sales, and increases cross-selling and upselling. The outcome: selling more and better, improving the return on investment of each visit.

Related reading: How to speed up the sales cycle for complex products

4. Error reduction

When the sale takes place in mid or large-sized companies, where several salespersons perform operations at the same time, it is common to see errors and time losses when locating articles and managing orders. Mobile tools keep all information updated in real time, preventing stockouts and any administrative error.

5. Identification and planning

Using inaCátalog not only allows us to manage stock in real time, but also to collect data for each sale on-site in order to analyze it and draw long-term conclusions. Thanks to this, we can detect seasonal peaks for specific products, locate slow moving (or stagnant) inventory, and plan sales campaigns and stock resources based on sales.

It also enables sales and marketing traceability in order to determine which marketing material works better when selling and readjust sales strategies.

6. Greater sales force autonomy

Sales representatives need no longer depend on calls to the central office to get product stock information. As a result, visit times are reduced and performance and independence increase across the entire team.

In order to provide the sales force with autonomy, the tool should have a local data exchange service or backoffice (Mobility Server in inaCátalog) that allows for synchronizing customers with the contact list of each device, as well as products in their databases.

Do you want to know more about the features a sales app should have in order to enable an efficient stock management and guarantee security and adaptability? Take a look at the following article: “10 basic features every sales app needs”.  

Choosing the right order and stock management system

If you want your sales team to provide a quality service and accomplish sales goals, you should be able to offer your customers updated information on your stock.

In order to accomplish this, it is paramount to have an adequate order and stock management system. Which one should you choose? The one that meets the needs of your sales force, offers constant data updating and tracking of sales activities, and offers a fast connection to your company’s ERP.

inaCátalog offers this and much more – an all-in-one sales and Mobile CRM application that will let you optimally handle your stock and manage and personalize the dashboard, so that all information is always available and you can properly track and monitor KPIs.

Do you want to know what this tool can do for your business? Do not miss inaCátalog’s results in the pharmaceutical sector and find out how technology can help you accomplish and improve your goals.

La entrada Benefits of real-time stock management aparece primero en INACATALOG.

According to the Data Warehouse Institute, Business Intelligence is “the combination of technology, tools and processes that enable the transformation of stored data into information, this information into knowledge, and this knowledge into a business plan or strategy.” It is therefore not a technology as such, but rather a set of information systems.

The use of these systems allows data to be turned into effective actions to generate a competitive advantage for a business. Among them we can find data querying and reporting tools such as inaCátalog, which allow for solving sales team problems and enable a better strategic planning for their entire activity.

These applications foster a more efficient real-time customer data management. As a result, not only is key information obtained at the right time, but these bits of data are used more effectively to make strategic decisions.

How business intelligence helps the sales team

Process automation and business intelligence help solve a set of common problems in sales strategies: order automation, sales offer management, customer vision, stock control, etc. Taking advantage of useful information is a great resource both for improving sales KPIs or productivity, and to:

• Improve the pre-visit planning: sales teams have the client’s history at all times, which enables them to perform a better pre-visit planning based on his tastes, needs, or even his interaction with catalogs in previous visits.
• Facilitate prescriptive sales: offering products to the customer and suggesting solutions that are the best fit for him. This results in a type of sale that is more enjoyable and improves the buying experience and the relationship with the consumer, who sees his problems understood and solved effectively.
• Increase cross-selling and upselling: being able to offer solutions that are really tailored to the customer helps the seller suggest related products and apply better upselling and cross-selling techniques.
• Automate orders or reports related to the sales action without the need for additional administrative tasks, and with real-time data updating.
• Deal with objections: the possibility to make onsite sales reports makes it easier for all kinds of details to be reported, including customer objections. This results in great opportunities for our business, since objections offer high-value information to get a better grasp of our consumers’ concerns and tastes.

If you want to know more: Report sales objections to create new opportunities

• Perform an optimal tracking of visit types: planning visits is essential to efficiently manage the sales schedule and obtain optimal results. With inaCátalog it is possible to view all types of customers in different colors for fast identification. In addition, additional customer information may be accessed by clicking on the label at his location on the map.

In addition to all of these advantages, inaCátalog allows for an automated synchronization of all data with the company’s ERP, so the exchange of data is automated and unassisted. The fact that salespersons have a sales Mobile CRM tool that is fully integrated with the company’s system at their disposal will imply a significant boost in sales performance.

Related article: Marketing intelligence: improve your ROI using sales data

Business advantages of adopting an automation tool

As we have seen, the benefits for the sales team of using an app that allows for automating sales network processes are many. These features translate not only into an optimization of our sales force, but also into a series of competitive advantages for the company:

• Cost reductions: mobile tools get rid of large quantities of information on paper and unify it in a single platform, which implies cost savings in materials and comfort for agents.
• Increased productivity: salespersons have useful information at the moment of the sale and can perform the sale itself on-site, avoiding calls to the central offices and allowing for a greater number of visits per day. And not only that – as we have seen, visits and pre-visit planning also have a higher quality, and as a result, the chances of successfully closing a sale increase considerably.
• Sales work monitoring: real-time business intelligence registers every movement and associates it with a specific moment, terminal and user. It is therefore easier to analyze data collected by agents and their devices, visualize them in statistics and properly managing results. Tracking also improves thanks to onsite reports, which guarantee a strict, effective and organized sales tracking. Through the use of process automation tools reports can be made anywhere and at any time, obtaining better feedback.

You might be interested in: Why you should add mobility to your 2018 sales action plan

Report analysis as a customer relationship booster

Effectively managing the portfolio of clients and consumer databases is paramount to improve the relationship with them. Improving the obtainment of customers and their conversion through the application of segmentation, optimizing customer service and identifying and nurturing those with greater potential are some of the capabilities offered by the analysis of the portfolio and business intelligence.

Knowing the tastes and needs of our users and not simply adapt to, but anticipate, them, offering a custom-tailored and interactive sales experience and providing them with all the information they may require are some of the goals you will be able to accomplish with inaCátalog.

La entrada Business Intelligence: planning at the service of your sales force aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Motivation is the “cause for motion”; in other words, the reason why we move. Dictionaries define motivation as the “set of internal or external factors that partially determine a person’s actions.”

For a sales team and a salesperson to stay in line with company goals, most of the motivation should be internal. However, actions to boost motivation could, and should, be undertaken, and it is important for sales management to establish a method to develop and maintain that motivation in salespersons. In this regard, incorporating the best technology to make their work easier allows sales goals to be attained faster and more efficiently. 

How to motivate a sales team in six steps

Regardless of a company’s size and structure, there are certain negative circumstances that are common among all sales teams: frustration, overwhelmedness, negativity or demotivation. There may be cases in which this situation escapes the company’s reach, but there are a series of resources dealing with motivating a sales team that help in maintaining motivation and cohesion in salespersons, always in relation to the commitment of accomplishing strategic goals .

The following are a few guidelines for how to motivate a sales team:

1. Set attainable and realistic goals

The objective of any company is obtaining higher profits, and in order to do that, it needs to sell more. But one should be realistic. It is common for sales teams to have goals that are usually exorbitant and unattainable.

This is demotivational, because, how can a person start a race with a positive outlook if he knows he will not reach the finish line? When setting the strategic goals for the next quarter, maintain that vision of growth and aspiration, but set realistic goals that your sales force can achieve.

2. Put in place a method to achieve them

Company sales models may improve sales team productivity, or they may conversely result in a waste of time and resources in menial matters. This frustrates your sales force, which feels misunderstood and neglected.

Your sales personnel are the ones who are in contact with the customer and know better than anyone how to deal with him. Ask them questions, listen to them, and address the main objections they receive during visits. Next, jointly define the strategy to follow with your team, as well as company goals established by the company. Lastly, recurrently review this business process to analyze whether it is optimal or it needs adjustment.

3. Provide your team with the right technological tools

Providing the sales team with the right technological tools is paramount to help them successfully undertake the sales process. In this regard, an app for salespersons that includes catalog sales and mobile CRM to automate processes and facilitate report making guarantees working with the right information at all times. As we will see below, if you are answering how to motivate a sales team, technology is the best ally.

Keep learning: How to speed up the sales cycle for complex products

4. Help and encourage personal development and training

Training is usually a major aspect that gets left behind. Salespersons need to learn more every day: new sales techniques, using new tools, being more independent, new ways to deal with customers… Learning should take place constantly, and training is a powerful driver of motivation for salespersons, since they see their personal knowledge increase and feel more useful. Furthermore, this will also affect their productivity and performance.

5. Align personal goals with those of the company

Salespersons should be aware of the value their work offers to the company, beyond the fact that a sale may imply a commission. It is important to make our sales team feel part of the company’s vision & mission, and see that corporate values are in line with their own. It is necessary to stress the value that each piece of data or sales report offers to the marketing department and management.

6. Stimulate, motivate and reward

These tips on motivating a sales team should always be present and applied to every action, because motivation should be built day after day and is an process of constant improvement.

The sales department faces a task that is difficult at times, and it needs to feel supported, understood and recognized. In order to accomplish that, a simple gesture such as a “thank you” may be decisive. It does not need to always involve huge compensations or economic incentives. Be creative, aim for individual balance and your team will be thankful.

Keep reading: Boost the commercial profitability with a sales report

Technology at the service of motivation and success

As we have already discussed, providing technological tools to our sales force is a great ally to make the team more efficient, turn its weaknesses into strengths and feel more capable and motivated to accomplish goals and excellence.

You want to know how to motivate a sales team with technology? Learn how a sales tool that include a Tablet CRM as inaCátalog can help your team be more efficient and independent, offering solutions such as:

• Deeper customer knowledge: as our sales department has a deeper knowledge of the customer and his tastes and needs, it will be able to perform a better pre-visit planning and increase its probabilities of landing a sale.

• Possibility of making onsite reports: inaCátalog offers the possibility of making onsite reports, which means the sales personnel will not have to wait to get home or the office to write visit reports. Thanks to this competitive advantage, they will save time and prevent the loss of important information along the way.

• Automation: thanks to sales process automation tools, salespersons will be able to dedicate more time to the sale and less to performing administrative work. In addition, inaCátalog works both online and offline, which means this information is automatically updated and always available to any user of the app.

• Interactivity: inaCátalog’s interactive catalogs can be tailored to any customer based on his needs, which means the visit will be more efficient, by offering each user products that fit their tastes. Furthermore, they allow sales representatives to have all stock information just a click away, providing greater independence from the central office.

• Geolocation: by using the Tablet CRM, a salesperson can be geolocated, routes can be better planned, and the location where a sale is being made can be known.

• Performance Indicators: it is important to have indicators that let us know the performance of sales processes and thereby identify areas to be improved.

If you want to know more: CRM online or offline CRM: streamline your sales force

Whether you feel your sales personnel is demotivated or you see everything works apparently well in your sales team, it is important not to know how to motivate a sales team.

To accomplish this, show them that they are important to you, establish a method and processes that are in line with their work, attainable goals, and provide them with technological tools that, like inaCátalog does, not only offers them an operational improvement, buy also more and better sales. Optimizing visits and increasing sales options are the best motivation to keep accomplishing goals.

La entrada How to motivate a sales team with methodology and technology aparece primero en INACATALOG.

At the time there is still a large gap between the marketing and sales teams. However, they are two faces of the same coin whose goal is none other than to increase business profitability. Knowing that both head in the same direction, it is time to establish strategies that help supplement both departments and increase sales. Including the sales report in our business intelligence is the best starting point to accomplish this.

Exploiting data through marketing intelligence allows, among other things, to generate value offers and personalised, segmented messages for each type of customer; working on new products or services that yield higher revenues; improve customer loyalty and increase the ROI of marketing campaigns.

What is ROI and why is it important?

ROI (Return on Investment) is one of the most widespread metrics of marketing teams. Calculating how much we have disbursed on each campaign and platform and how much each spent euro has yielded is the best indicator to know whether our marketing actions are working or not.

As pointed out by Google, it tends to be the most important metric for advertisers, since it is based on their specific advertising goals and shows the actual effect of the advertising strategy on the business. The exact method to perform the calculation depends on campaign goals.

Why is it important? If we calculate the ROI we will be able to find out how much money we have obtained via the marketing campaigns, which actions are working and which are not, and to what extent. With this data we will be able to better decide how to invest the budget on future campaigns in order to do so effectively, with more specific campaigns and over the channels that are working the best. We can also use ROI data to improve the yield of less successful campaigns.

And, how does sales data improve our ROI? Using sales data, combined with mathematical and statistical models, allows us to move from analytic methods to predictive methods, as well as take better advantage of marketing campaigns.

Marketing intelligence as a sales tool

Using marketing intelligence tools such as inaCátalog it is possible to study the activity of our sales agents, the duration of their visits, find the location from where orders are made, know their routes and learn about which products our customers are interested in and in which they are not.

Through the sales report features we will obtain the necessary data to better organise the work of our sales team and increase the profitability of marketing campaigns, in addition to:

• Create predefined and configurable reports: it has predefined, configurable templates to implement the joint strategy quickly and effectively, and you will also be able to customise your own reports, prioritising the data you need at each time.

• Define and parameterise any requirement: take any relevant information from the sales visit, the reasons for not selling and the handling of objections, and record the entire sales activity, study the competition and record anything from incidents to agent activities.

• Analyse orders: in the sales dashboard you will have the entire database on products and customers, as well as the sales performance history.

• Study visits: based on seller data for each period (day, week…), customer records, the relationship between orders and visits for each sales rep, as well as their average appointments per day or week.

• Professionalise the tracking of sales activities. inaCátalog displays the articles shown by each seller and how this relates with orders made. In this way, it is possible to know which are working better and which photo galleries or multimedia tools have been used, which articles help in closing sales, etc. In addition, comparing activities, order history, units ordered per view or the total per date, seller and article are greatly valuable for your marketing team.

The result will be twofold: one the one hand, we will effectively combine the methodology with technology in order for our sales force to have more resources at its disposal for an effective visit.  On the other hand, our marketing department will obtain a higher knowledge of the consumers, the products and the markets. 

How a business intelligence tool helps your marketing team

As we have seen, there are tools that enable you to take advantage of this duality, create synergies between the marketing and the sales teams and facilitate the mutual enrichment in order to achieve efficiency.

For example, inaCátalog, the enterprise solution that includes interactive catalogues, helps the sales team to manage sales, take orders and integrate them anytime and anywhere with the ERP. Furthermore, its ability for making reports onsite provides your marketing personnel with a valuable source of information. Among its features, what marketing teams value the most is:

• Its visual appeal. Graphically, product presentation is highly complete and attractive for the customer at first sight. Additionally, information related to the offer is highly detailed.
• Its ease of use and implementation. Both sales representatives and marketing teams learn to use it right away since it is a highly intuitive app.
• The fact that all of the information is accessible with a single click. This tablet CRM system offers access to catalogues, spec sheets, databases, etc., at any time and place, simply and even without an internet access.
• The harnessing of visits thanks to reporting. Sales reports and traceability (the information registered by the sales rep and the interactions of the customer on the catalogue or associated items on offer) allow sellers to better prepare for each visit and the marketing department to know the ROI of each of its marketing pieces.

La entrada Marketing intelligence: improve your ROI using sales data aparece primero en INACATALOG.

Even though the CRM market is one of the most mature and developed in the technological world, in Spain, with the exception of the ICT sector, it has not been as widespread as in other countries. However, starting 2016 and in 2017, this trend seems to have changed, mainly driven by cloud CRM, mobile CRM and social CRM solutions, which entered the technological landscape in 2013 to enable access to data anywhere and throw any mobile device.

CRM apps are a real necessity for companies, since current business strategies focus on customers and the relationship with them. In this regard, technology becomes a great ally to manage and enrich the relationship with our consumers, and the information we collect from them in relation to our commercial strategy. 

Do you want to know what mobile CRM can do for your company? Learn about the differences between CRM online or offline CRM.

CRM online or offline CRM: more than a management tool

When selecting CRM tools for our company, factors like customisation, price and technical support are key to decide for one or the other. However, we are forgetting about a key aspect: what is the use our employees will give to it?

The answer to that matter tends to be discouraging in many cases: employees do not take advantage of the program’s full potential and we do not accomplish our expectations. In order to prevent the CRM solutions from becoming a simple administrative tool, it is necessary for each worker to be fully aware and committed to the use of the application. And the best way for employees to use it is to transfer it to commonly used devices: mobiles and tablets.

Data supports the transition to mobile solutions

According to a study by the North American Clinchpad company, the high cost of implementing a CRM offline makes many companies opt for a mobile application. Among others, the differences between CRM online or offline CRM imply:

• Fast implementation: the study shows that implementing a offline CRM takes between 1 and 6 months. Why so much? Mainly due to a lack of training, a slow adoption by workers, excess of data and the software’s complexity.

• Result obtainment: obtaining a good ROI for a traditional CRM takes 3 to 5 years. With a CRM online, which is tailored to the needs of each team and used on devices that are familiar to them, implementation times can be reduced and the productivity of our workforce may be increased by up to 15%. In addition, according to a report by Innoppl Technologies, 65% of sales personnel who work with CRM mobile have reached their sales quota, a number that is cut back to 22% for teams that do not use one.

• Cost reduction: United States companies spend nearly 12 billion dollars a year in traditional CRMs, out of which 5.6 billion are lost to their adoption and the lack of use by employees. With a CRM online, whose implementation is simpler and takes less resources, that amount could be reduced significantly.

• Access anytime, anywhere: it is no longer necessary to get to the office or home to connect with a computer and access information. CRM tablet tools such as inaCátalog allow the management of databases, product catalogues and updated relevant information throughout the entire sales process. Important data just a few click away even when offline.

• System evolution and customisation: in such an ever-changing world in which clients increasingly demand a greater interaction and a more personalised experience, the capability to adapt to these changes rapidly may determine the success or failure of our sales team. Which is why mobile customer relationship management solutions are the best choice, since they are in a process of constant evolution and adaptation both to companies and their customers.

You might be interested in: Customer Management: Mobile CRM trends for 2018

Streamline your sales team with inaCátalog’s CRM tablet 

The differences mentioned above translate not only into benefits for your company in the mid-long term, but also into a series of competitive advantages and possibilities that will make the day-to-day of your sales force much simpler. The inaCátalog mobility tool offers all of these CRM features.

• Optimisation of sales routes

Use of devices’ geolocation system allows for easily finding customers and establishing a route for the seller before the start of his day.

• Speedy access to information and greater autonomy for our sales force

As already mentioned, using a CRM Tablet our sales personnel has access to all the information on the lead just a click away. They can therefore better prepare for visits and have any piece of data that may help them steer the sales process.

On the other hand, during the visit, additional brochures or catalogues will not be necessary. Your sales personnel will have all the products, their characteristics, their graphical supporting material and their availability on their tablet, without depending on central offices for a real-time stock update, increasing their autonomy and allowing them to close and report sales on-site.

• Data synchronisation and real-time analysis

Reports are essential to attain a comprehensive, effective and organised sales tracking. As we have mentioned above, mobile customer relationship management tools allow for reporting anywhere and at any time, thereby obtaining a higher-quality feedback.

Additionally, data synchronisation enables central offices to query and analyse the information, saving time and resources and facilitating the decision process.

• Sales process simplification

The use of mobile technologies and automation tools will be useful to streamline sales, simplify the sales process of a complex product and obtain higher profitability and growth for your business.

Keep learning: How to speed up the sales cycle for complex products

• Strengthen the relationship with your customers

As we have already seen, current-day corporate strategy is based on customer relationships. With this in mind, mobile Customer Relationship Management applications help us improve our customers’ experience, offering detailed information about their needs and allowing for comprehensive analyses to optimise decision making.

There is currently a wide selection of software, which is why it is very important to choose a good tool, easy to handle but at the same time complete and tailored to the real needs of our sales force. In order to accomplish this, at inaCátalog we include the best features on every version of our CRM tablet.

Ask for a free trial and strengthen the relationship with your customers through inaCátalog.

La entrada CRM online or offline CRM: streamline your sales force aparece primero en INACATALOG.

A customer that poses an objection is showing interest in what we are offering him. Learning to handle objections by prospective customers and take them in a positive light is paramount to generate new business opportunities and get a “yes”.

But not only that. Doubts and questions brought forward by the user may be useful for us to learn what the recurrent needs are and handle them in future visits even before the counterpart raises them. In order to accomplish that, reporting sales objections on-site is the best way to know and foresee doubts and concerns by customers about our product or service.  

Take advantage of sales objections to generate new opportunities

The possibility of doing sales reports on-site makes it easy for us to better report every kind of detail, including objections raised by the customer. This generates great opportunities for our business, because it allows us to:

• Compile and organise valuable information: the fact of being able to create reports in real-time, at the very moment a visit ends or even during it, allows you to write down even the slightest detail, including objections.
  If the sales representative has to way to get home to create his visits’ reports it is possible for relevant information to get lost or for data from various visits to be confused. This is prevented by using tools such as inaCátalog, which works both online and offline, allowing us to stay always connected. In this way, data collected by agents are visualised and analysed in real time.  

• Optimise sales performance: administrative work is reduced and made simpler, which leads to sales visits being shorter and data integration to be automatic. The outcome? Time and costs optimisation.

• Anticipate objections by other customers: the entire sales and marketing team may access visit reports at any time and place. Thanks to this agile access, your team may query prior reports in order to learn about recurring objections and pose sales strategies that help handle them. This translates into a greater knowledge, confidence and self-control for the seller himself, who will perform sales visits being more secure of himself.

• Create more attractive product presentations: product demonstration videos, more detailed spec sheets, related or supplementary products… Customer sales objections will be useful for your marketing team to create product presentations that are more attractive and efficient, focused on the doubts and needs of our leads and on how our services can handle them.

You might be interested in: Boost the commercial profitability with a sales report

Causes of customer objections

Once we have understood that objections are nothing more than a sign of interest in our product, we should learn how to deal with them. The first thing you need to keep in mind is that users are not interested in the product itself, but instead on what it is it can do to satisfy his needs and expectations.

This is the doubt that we need to handle. In order to do that, knowing its causes may be useful to guide us toward an optimal resolution. Based on this interesting article on the Foromarketing portal, there are eight reasons or causes that are the origin of objections for customers:

• Fear of giving in to the seller’s influence
• Need to look competent in a specific field or as a tough negotiator
• Due to interest or curiosity
• Looking for peace of mind. Distrusts the offer, the seller, the product or the company itself
• To manifest his indifference. He is not interested in our offer, his needs are covered…
• His own contradicting personality. He opposes by nature, his principles get in the way…
• Due to a logical reaction. He thinks the sales representative’s arguments are false
• He needs to get fully convinced. He believes our product or service can help satisfy his needs, but requires more information in order to make a decision and/or justify the acquisition

How to handle sales objections

There are a myriad of tactics and strategies to handle sales objections; however, all of them have something in common. In the first place, that you do not need to contest sales objections, but rather dispel them. Why? Because customers’ doubts should not imply a defiance, since that would be incompatible with closing a sale.

Instead, we should dispel and clear them up, in order to handle them optimally; which is to say, ending in a transaction. For this there are a series of sales objection techniques that may help you. Make a note of these tips:

• Listen to the other person:in order to properly identify the needs, expectations and doubts of a consumer we should listen to him proactively. Before answering, know the real objection and your customer’s point of view.

• Understand and clarify:repeat his objection in your words, make direct questions in order to better understand and clarify his actual issue. Do not just rely on your perception of it and do not take for granted that you have understood without inquiring.

• Look for common ground:once you have really comprehended what it is that troubles the person you are visiting, let him know that you understand his point of view. With it you are not confirming or rejecting his objection, but looking for a common ground that makes your customer feel comfortable and dampens the reply.

• Answer his questions and clarify his objections:it is the moment to dispel the objections. If it is false, express and explain that the information is incorrect. If it is true, acknowledge the problem and look for a solution that minimises its importance. At this stage it is essential to connect with the interests, motivations and purchase criteria of each buyer and relate them with our solutions and products.

• Conclude and continue the conversation:confirm that the obstacle has been overcome, that the customer is satisfied with our reasoning, and whether there is any other reason that prevents us from moving forward with the sale. If there is one, we should resume the process and try to handle it. Otherwise, we will be able to resume the main conversation and continue with the sales process.

The importance of listening to our customer lies not only in understanding his objection in order to handle it, but also in making him see that we understand his concerns in order to gain his trust

Learn from the results

Once the visit is over, evaluating the objections and classifying them will help us know what we have done wrong, where in our meeting we were successful and how to overcome future objections.

As we have seen, in addition to learning how to handle customer objections it is very important to learn from them. Based on this premise, onsite reports offered by mobile sales tools will help us outline future courses of action in order to learn how to deal with the problems of our prospective customers.

Optimise your reports and record sales objections in order to detect business opportunities using inaCátalog’s features.

Make the most out of your sales force and learn about the advantages of this sales tool and mobile sales CRM. Ask for a free trial and start converting objections into new sales opportunities.

La entrada Report sales objections to create new opportunities aparece primero en INACATALOG.

A product’s sales cycle includes the steps which a lead goes through before becoming a customer and purchasing the product. Its purpose is to define the steps to follow during a sale, in addition to guiding the sales and marketing strategy.

Correctly structuring these stages is essential in order to perform an optimal sales management and outline a strategy that helps capture our target audience and turn it into customers. One of the main obstacles in the construction of the sales process is identifying and determining adequate stages for each business and product on offer.

But, how do we know we are doing it right? Even though there is no single recipe for success, we can however find certain stages in the sales process that can help any company to reduce times and speed up the sales cycle.

Strategies to speed up the sales cycle for complex products

Tailor your catalogues to your customers

Your leads increasingly demand more personalised and detailed information. Which is why, at the time of the sales visit, having a catalogue that is tailored to each of our customers will be the difference that results on a positive and effective sales experience. One of the most important allies when personalising your catalogues are Mobile CRM tools, such as inaCátalog, which allows you to manage the relationship with your customers, by knowing their behaviour and anticipating their needs. 

On the other hand, having a catalogue of this kind, that is updated in real-time and has complete automated stock information, provides our sales force independence from the central office to offer available products, show more information of a product, know new products and services, etc.

Start with a quick sale

A good way to attract clients quickly is offering them some products specifically created for fast sales. The simple characteristics and the clear benefits that they provide to the user are a good way to get their attention and steer the conversation toward a more complex sale.

Boost revenue with upselling and cross-selling techniques

If your company has a wide range of products, cross-selling and upselling techniques will be of great help. Upselling consists in encouraging the lead to acquire top-of-the-range products, increase consumption of those they already use, or obtaining additional ones. On the other hand, the cross-selling strategy is based on recommending related items in order to supplement the sale of those that are already consumed by our customers.

Prepare and update your databases

Knowing our customers’ needs and interests in-depth is paramount both for detecting possible business opportunities and to successfully apply supplementary sales strategies. Having a solid and updated database will allow us to target prospective customers and access their records to know any detail that will help us improve our business relationship. 

Thanks to databases you will be able to effectively manage your lists, identifying the highest-qualified contacts in order to assign them to the sales department, and working with various segments of the lists to steer leads through the different phases of the conversion funnel.

Perform on-site data report

Once the visit is over, making a full on-site data report (at the very location where the sale takes place) implies collecting as much useful information as possible for future visits. In this way you can achieve shorter and more efficient sales visits and an automatic addition of orders at your company, which translates into a reduction of time and costs.

Once these strategies to speed up the sales cycle of a complex product have been implemented, our sales force will be able to apply certain techniques and pieces of advice for an effective sales management.

Resources for an effective sales management

According to Carolina Sanchiz, B2B marketing and sales expert and author of the Vender en Positivo blog, there are a series of resources to speed up sales that can be summed up as follows:

• Offer a differentiating value: ask your customers, co-workers or partners what they think about you and your products. This answer will give you an initial message; improve it and practice it in order to create your value proposal.
• Focus on the needs of your customer: the more information we have about our prospective customer, the better we will be able to connect his needs with our brand’s goals and try to satisfy them.
• Generate trust: driving a person toward a sale is a very important step that cannot take place if you haven’t yet built trust.
  Offering references, success stories and examples about how others have been helped by the product or service is a good way to demonstrate its benefits and lead to the purchase decision.
• Plan the visit: what is the goal of this conversation? Each customer is at a different point of the sales cycle, and therefore, needs a different response by our sales force. Outline a plan before each visit and obtain a clear conclusion afterwards will prevent the sales cycle from stagnating.
• Face feedback and manage objections: even though it may seem an obstacle, customers’ objections are useful when selling. Why? Because questions and feedback let us know what the user is interested in. Reply to inquiries as soon as possible to continue with the process.