Your sales pipeline is a valuable business tool – it helps you to capture attention, maintain interests, and make more sales. But it can be hard to build and maintain an effective sales pipeline – that’s where professional help like outsourced sales support services can make a difference.
If your team isn’t converting as many sales as you’d like, your pipeline could be the problem. Every business has a sales pipeline, whether it knows it or not. For big companies, the sales pipeline is a treasure map – it’s carefully plotted, charted, explored, refined and revised to make sure it’s helping the team to find the gold.
For smaller businesses, however, a sales pipeline can be a scrap of paper; a kind-of-idea about how things are working; something that’s very much in the head of whoever is at the top. But your sales pipeline really is the way to business growth. So it makes sense to get some sales support. Outsourcing solutions can be anything from a dedicated sales consultant to an affordable virtual sales administrator – what you need is someone who can help you plan and manage your sales pipeline on an ongoing basis. This will help you to:
1. Free up more time
Are you devoting enough time to your sales prospects? Prospective customers can tell when you’re rushing things – you don’t tend to listen, you might send the wrong information or make mistakes in your communications. This will lead to your prospect going elsewhere. After all, if you can’t treat them well at this stage, where’s the incentive to be a customer?
If you don’t have enough time to sell to everyone on your list, get your sales support to go through and pick the ones that are most likely to convert, and concentrate on them.
2. Improve the quality of your prospect information
Good sales work relies on good quality information. Do you know how long a prospect stays in your sales cycle from initial lead to closing the sale? Do you know where the common sticking points are? Do you know why you lose prospects and when? The more information you have, the better able you are to see where your pipeline might be letting you down and you can start to make changes.
Make time to get together with your outsourced sales team support, look at your pipeline and see where the issues might be. As you go on, you’ll have comparable data that you can use to make the adjustments you need.
3. Employ a dedicated resource
If your business is growing, you may need help to manage incoming enquiries and prospects sitting in your pipeline. Otherwise, you won’t be able to move prospects through the sales funnel and you could lose valuable business.
You don’t need the expense of a dedicated permanent employee. Instead, look for flexible support that is available when you need it.
4. Follow-up
Your sales team can only do so much. A significant part of the sales process is the follow-up; sending out the right information, collecting details from prospects, arranging meetings and keeping your business in the loop. Your sales team is most valuable when it is in front of prospects, not when it’s knee-deep in paperwork.
5. Get advice on the right technology
It’s no longer good enough to manage your sales on paper. It’s quite often not good enough to manage sales on a spreadsheet. There are some great packages on the market that can help you to manage your prospects through every part of the pipeline – and continue to look after them once they become customers.
An experienced virtual assistant for sales support or administrative support can advise on areas to consider when looking into the types of sales package available and which might be best for your business.
6. Find better quality leads
It’s frustrating to feel you’re wasting time on leads that either don’t come to anything or are low value. If this is familiar, it’s time to look at the quality of the leads coming into your business.
Think: is your marketing targeting the right people? Are you using the right channels? What could you do to attract the attention of the high-value, long-term customers you’re looking for?
7. Improve your sales pipeline structure
Every business needs a strategic approach to sales. Having a structure that you and your team understands and that is designed to push prospects through a well-thought-through journey towards agreeing to buy will really help you to manage the process and to see more easily where things aren’t working.
Rather than struggling with your sales pipeline, why not get some help? After all, if you get this part of your business right, you should see a rise in sales, a smoother sales process and a boost to your corporate reputation. Outsourced sales support services are affordable and flexible, helping you to concentrate on growing your business through a focused approach to sales.
If you’re short on time and need help with your sales pipeline organisation, feel free to call us on 0800 994 9016 or use our contact form in the menu above.