Managing your sales process during a crisis is difficult. First, you may not have a process for doing so. Second, you may find that the process you do have isn’t working as well as it used to. It’s time to look at how to map RisePath CRM to your sales process during a crisis.
Keep in mind that every business experiences a downturn in sales at one time or another. The key is to stay calm, take a deep breath, and then evaluate what is happening both internally and externally. This will help you determine what needs to be done differently.
Identify Sales Process Gaps
You need to know where the bottlenecks are in your sales process. You also need to know where improvements can be made so that you can keep moving forward with your sales strategy. When you identify gaps, you’ll be better able to close them quickly and efficiently. To do this, start by evaluating your pipeline and where deals are currently sitting on it – as well as where they’re going wrong.
We wanted to write a quick article on how we are mapping our CRM to our sales process during COVID-19. This will help us identify challenges, opportunities and the best ways to sell during this time of the pandemic.
We first started by looking at our sales process, which we have outlined here. Then, we mapped it to RisePath CRM with each step in the Sales Process being represented as a status in our sales CRM software. Then, we mapped out all of the reasons for moving from one stage to another. We also defined what an opportunity should look like at each stage so that any salesperson can come into Opportunities and see at a glance where they are at with each deal.
Thoroughly Document Processes
If you’ve never documented your sales processes, the first step to mapping RisePath sales CRM software and incorporating your sales process is to get everything down on paper or into a digital file. If you find this daunting, don’t worry. The best way to do this is to simply start with the most important process and break it down into its component parts.
That could be:
- Setting up a phone call with a prospect
- Sending a follow-up email after the call
- Sending another follow-up email a week later
- Sending materials that explain the product’s benefits in more detail after the second email
- Setting up another call based on those materials
- Closing the deal
- Recording payment information for bookkeeping purposes
Avoid Unnecessary Metrics
It’s important to track the metrics that matter and avoid the ones that don’t. One metric we encourage sales teams to track in our sales CRM software is opportunity to close rate. It tells you your win percentage for each stage of your sales process, which can vary from stage to stage. If your opportunity to close rate is low (say 30% or less) in a certain stage, you need to investigate why it’s so low at that particular stage. What’s causing this? Is it because the deals are not qualified properly in the early stages? Or is it something else? Whatever the reason, you need to fix it.
Another metric that’s important to track is the average time-to-close deal length. Time-to-close deal length can help you compare different stages of your sales process and identify bottlenecks. If one stage of your sales process takes much longer than others, you might have a problem with that stage. For example, if the “Proposal” stage takes 90 days compared to other stages, which take less than 30 days on average, then you know where to focus your attention when looking for ways to speed up your sales process.
Plan for Change Management
As we begin to imagine the future of work, it’s important to remember that this is a process. No one is going to wake up one day and have everything be “back to normal.” Organizations will need to make changes in how they manage and engage their workforce as well as how they remain connected internally and with customers.
While many organizations struggled with change management pre-pandemic, it’s inevitable that even more organizations will face challenges as they adapt. It’s imperative for every company to plan for change management and prepare employees for the transition back into the office or the next step of a remote work environment.
Change management can often be a tricky subject for organizations, so the first thing any business should do is create an internal team dedicated to managing change communication. Employees are likely to have many questions during this process; therefore, it’s important that they feel heard and supported.
The best way to support your employees during this time is through transparency. The more transparent your organization is about the process ahead, the better prepared your employees will be and the less anxiety will be present throughout the transition period.
Look Outside of Sales
Before starting the process of mapping RisePath sales CRM software to your sales process during a crisis, take a step back and consider which departments should be involved. The best way to ensure that everyone has access to the right information is by involving all relevant departments from the very beginning. This means that marketing and product development need to work together with sales in order to create an effective plan for navigating through a crisis – such as COVID-19 or any other natural or man-made disaster – as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.
With a crisis comes uncertainty, and that causes some people to want to go into their sales process and make changes. While this may feel like the natural thing to do in a crisis, it is a mistake. In fact, you should be doing the opposite–you should be looking outside of your sales process for anyways your business can adapt.
What we mean by this is that your sales process should actually stay the same during a crisis. It’s possible that some tasks may get moved around or removed because of social distancing, but if you don’t need to change them, don’t. However, there are parts of your business that are likely to change in a crisis–those are the parts you need to focus on right now. Visit RisePath CRM for more information.
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