The IT Behind the Sales Team

Today, sales teams depend on technology to gain and close sales. The better coordinated your other departments are with your sales team, the faster and more efficient your business will be. Let’s take a look at some of the essential technology sales departments use to keep business moving.

Customer Relationship Management

There are several reasons why the CRM is the base of nearly every single business management suite from manufacturing to retail. The ability to automate tasks, to the time management, to the marketing integration makes the CRM the most important piece of software a business uses

Essentially what a CRM does is gives the sales team a profile for each customer (or lead) based on the conversations and transactions the customer and the business have, and actions they can take to not only make the customer experience better, but also many other features geared at closing more sales. 

Today’s CRM will typically come with integrated automation options designed to help sales teams do more in less time. Successful sales teams typically put in a lot of work. If a business can automate a lot of the more tedious tasks, they can focus on interacting with leads and clients.

Lead Generation

Getting qualified leads can be troublesome and expensive. To ensure that your organization is giving yourself a decent chance of closing sales, you need to know that the potential customers you are targeting hold pain points your business can solve. Many CRMs have lead generation software built-in, but there are dedicated tools that can present more options (and thus opportunities) for sales teams. 

Sales Training

For most businesses, the sales processes are wildly different. The products and services of one company don’t have the same value propositions as others. This means training is essential. Today, companies can use what are called learning management systems (LMS) that work with new sales hires to help them understand the products and services their company offers and how to effectively find customers that will purchase them. This not only gives them the information they need to fit into your organizational sales strategy, it also provides them a strong baseline of knowledge about how to follow procedural demands you’ve created.

Project Management

Unfortunately, a sales team is only as effective as the production and support allow it to be, so when a sale is made it is important that any promises that were made come to fruition with as little consternation as possible. The most effective sales teams have direct and continuous communication from other departments of the business. It not only puts them in the position to sell more products and services to customers already working for the company, it allows them to understand what products and services are moving and which aren’t. 

Communications

Of course you couldn’t mention sales tech without mentioning communications. Today’s businesses have several modes of communication they use. The telephone, email, social media, text messaging…sales use them all. This means finding solutions for every situation. 

There is Voice over Internet Protocol, a full-featured business telephone option that uses Internet bandwidth rather than the telephone lines to provide communications. This can shrink costs and also make available a lot of other communication technologies including text messaging, video conferencing, and more. 

Speaking of video conferencing, with so many people working remotely, it has not only become essential for the sales team’s ability to interact with clients, it also has benefits for internal communications too. 

Your sales team uses technology to make your business possible. Ensuring they have all the tools that can help them build revenue streams is essential. Give BNMC a call today at (978) 482-2020 to learn more.