How HubSpot helps drive sales effectiveness across teams

The more a company relies on a few sales stars, the more indebted it gets to them. It’s exactly like being reliant on a couple of crucial clients to manage growth and survival. The bigger the customer base, the easier the cash flow and the possibility of sustained growth.

Most sales reps submit weekly reports on their sales outreach. They broadly cover the number of calls made, the progress made with promising prospects and the ones most likely to convert.

If a large number of sales come from a few star performers, it’s time to check why the rest aren’t being as effective. Or find ways to make them more productive.

Sometimes, it could be a few simple things like automating the frequency with which sales people reach out to customers. There are points in a sales cycle where the prospect only needs reminders from time to time.

Then, there are stages when sales people attempt to get a commitment. Knowing when the customer is ready for this conversation is crucial. That’s where HubSpot’s CRM can help recall previous deal histories and highlight the points when conversions happened. Providing great reference points that the rest of the sales team can work with.

Sales effectiveness is a goal to shoot for across the organisation to improve conversion rates and performance

Help customers succeed

The stages in any sales process are not advanced by feature comparisons alone as much as the way customers feel about the initial interactions. The more helpful and responsive customers feel about the people they interact with, the more they’ll shift towards purchase.

In products with a long sales cycle, a purchase is as much of a commitment from the customer’s side. And that is reflected in the conversations as well as what’s not being said.

Everyone prefers to deal with responsive companies, whether it is in receiving a proposal, the way in which a demo is approached and conducted, and quick product or feature clarifications.

HubSpot helps to move the needle with customers. Staying in touch, providing updates and responding to customers can be automated for commonly asked questions.

Continuing a conversation is essential to staying top of mind. The longer the gap between touch points, the less likely a customer is to convert. At the same time, there is a point at which customers feel as if they are being hounded. In each industry or even in each company, the optimal level needs to be arrived at – and then sales reps need to follow that as a disciplined practice.

Effective sales people are not those with the most charm. Sometimes, it is persistence. Or the ability to sense what customers want even without them articulating it. Even while some sales people are lone operators, helping them through the intermediate stages can drive up the conversion rate.

Why is sales qualification important to effectiveness?

When done well, sales qualification is important to organizations because it significantly improves close ratios. Without sales qualification, the company risks pursuing leads who aren’t a good fit for the product due to budgetary constraints, organizational challenges, or other factors.

The better the qualifying parameters, the better the conversion percentages. This needs to be assessed and updated from time to time

It allows sales teams to pursue the leads who are most likely to purchase the product, saving time and energy.

Here are more reasons sales qualification is so important:

• Spend more time on the prospects who are more likely to buy.
• Focus on a smaller, specific segment of buyers, which can help the company deliver a more personalized selling experience.
• Learn the ins and outs of the buyer’s challenges and deliver a better solution as a result.
• Guarantee that most sales activities lead to a positive impact in revenue.
• Create different sales qualification processes for different verticals and keep a list of pitches that still feel personalized.

By intentionally qualifying prospects through a discovery call, the sales person can deliver a highly tailored solution that improves post-purchase satisfaction. 

The discovery call needs to be done by a perceptive and experienced caller who knows how to get relevant information out of companies by speaking to people who matter and who can provide an insightful overview.

When these details are included in HubSpot’s CRM, they provide several openings that sales teams can capitalise on.

This step alone can help to build much better traction and ensure that more members from the sales team hit their targets.

Improving Opportunity management 

HubSpot defines opportunity management as the practice of gauging sales effectiveness. By HubSpot's own definition, it's "the process of tracking and managing sales opportunities — contacts who have entered the sales cycle with a demonstrated interest and ability to do business with the company — as they move through the pipeline."

Committing energy, scrutiny, and resources towards opportunity management efforts allows a company to better understand potential customers and prioritize interactions with them based on their business potential.

It also helps determine the best way to approach them based on the interest they've demonstrated and the stage of their relationship with the company. At the same time, it exposes flaws in the existing sales processes, allowing them to consistently improve interactions with potential customers.

By taking the proper steps to improve how the company manages its opportunities — including firmly establishing a pipeline, encouraging extensive research on opportunities, maintaining and tracking contact, and keeping a holistic view of the sales pipeline to identify room for improvement — can set sales teams up for success and improve sales effectiveness.

Talk to our experts at Blueoshan to increase sales effectiveness across teams by putting in place processes and workflows and to plug the gaps.