Sales Teams: Become as Empowered as Your Prospects Are

Nancy Nardin shares how sales leaders can close deals faster with digitized sales processes.

Nancy Nardin is the founder of Smart Selling Tools, Inc. and a longtime sales influencer and sales technology expert. In this blog, she shares insights on how smart sales leaders can take advantage of digitalized sales processes to close deals faster.

Customers are empowered, sophisticated, and knowledgeable, no matter what industry you are in — and the competition is fierce.

It’s time for you as a sales leader to become just as empowered — and based on my experience, the fastest way to do that is to take advantage of a digitalized sales process. Using an automated process can help accelerate the closing of your deals right from the point of first contact through to signing on the dotted line.

Take advantage of a digitalized sales process — and win more

When sales teams use digital technologies like e-signatures, they lower acquisition costs, increase revenue, and improve profit margins. Further, when sales teams take advantage of automation, they gain process efficiencies and reduce the time they spend on a deal at every stage of the process. And buying from you becomes a much better experience for your prospects, too.

These are the five most important areas that sales leaders should be thinking about to accelerate the sales cycle and close deals faster with a digitized sales process.

1. Focus on the right prospects. Top-performing sales teams are using cutting-edge technologies, such as predictive and artificial intelligence-driven analytics, to identify the most profitable buyer profiles, customers, and accounts. According to Aberdeen research captured in the report “Modernize and Transform Your Sales Organization,” 48% of enterprises surveyed are supporting their sales departments with tools to identify the best customer profiles. Aberdeen also found that 90% of the most successful sales teams are using as part of their CRM, complementing other predictive technology to focus on customers with the highest closing rates. With the technology available to give better customer data collection, centralized access to agreements, sign-offs, and approvals, why wouldn’t sales leaders focus their efforts on customers that have the highest potential to close?
2. Create a personalized buyer’s journey. In today’s consumer-centric world, the prospects you’re calling on expect a buying experience that is tailored to their individual needs. CRM systems that are integrated with a digitalized sales process can provide a wealth of information to help you deliver the right information at the right time in the sales cycle.
3. Build deeper — and broader — connections. Another benefit of a digitalized sales process is that you can build a broad team of stakeholders and keep them all informed at every step of the buying cycle. You can bring in legal and compliance folks early so they can voice their opinions sooner versus later. And not only can you find out where a contract is in the signing process, you can also zero in on where it’s stuck, discover what the holdup is, and get it moving again.
4. Make it easy to buy from you. Using a digitalized sales process does more than just create a personalized journey for your prospects — it also makes each step of the process easier for them, with fewer errors and frustrating inconveniences. In essence, an automated sales process helps make buying from you as easy as it is to place an order with Amazon. Easy, frictionless processes will help you get ahead of your competitors while you create loyal customers for life.
5. Make it easier to sell. There’s no doubt that selling is a complicated process. But when you can make it more efficient and seamless with automation, it’s a win-win for everyone — especially for you as a salesperson. After all, the sooner you close, the quicker you can move on to your next deal.

If you’re interested in learning how you can make it easier for you and your prospects, download the full report “Five Ways to Accelerate Sales Cycles and Close Deals Faster: How to Take Advantage of Digitalized Sales Processes When Selling to Empowered Customers.”