Day in the Life: Sales

Sales productivity is the rate at which a salesperson acquires revenue for the organization.

Rather than pushing salespeople to work harder, an increase in sales productivity is primarily concerned with salespeople using their time more effectively.

Call it a typical day. One of your sales reps arrives in town to meet with his customer. And like too often, his flight was delayed. He’s travel weary and frazzled.

Even worse, he’s running blind. Dave is unable to effectively pull information from the SIX different data sources his company uses to keep him ‘up to speed.’ He quickly realizes he’s not fully equipped to close the deal on the table or completely satisfy his customer. What he needs is the right information, proactively delivered at the RIGHT time and RIGHT place.

But let’s face it, that’s only half the equation.

Dave juggled meeting after meeting … scribbling notes, action items, names, amounts, potential opportunities, things he’s learned about competitors, new contacts … a million details for his team and him to act on. In fact, he learned:

• An important service request had fallen through the cracks and needed immediate attention
• A team member was also actively working a deal within the organization

Exhausted, he must …

• Turn facts swirling in his mind into data points
• Log into those SIX separate systems
• Go through his notes and manually add data, all while fighting through clumsy interfaces and back-end systems

Like most days, much of his time is devoted to basic data entry, after he’s likely forgotten critical details. Notably, Sales executives spend 55% of their day on low-level admin tasks. To further complicate matters, he and others are also burdened by siloed, difficult-to-use business systems that drain productivity and eat at profit.

The Solution: Make Work Simple, Fast and Naturally More Humanlike

Now, consider the scenario if … your sales team(s) had a cost-effective ‘assistant’ – one that works 24/7, instantly performs tasks from simple text or voice commands vs. navigating numerous screen clicks and clunky interfaces, sidesteps delays via instant system-to-system access to fetch information/reports or enter data, and provides critical alerts from which they can take action.

And all without adding staff.

That’s Precisely What an Intelligent Sales Bot Does

• With their intelligent Sales Assistant that can keep up faster and easier via natural language, they can take the same actions just by texting the bot.
• The bot sees your rep has a meeting scheduled with a customer and sends the information they need, without forcing them to log into systems.
• Messages can include links to documents which can be opened on their phone for instant delivery.
• Information is delivered by text or through the channel of their choice. In fact, they can also complete tasks in one channel or start in one and finish in another.

The bottom line:

Less Time Wrestling with Technology Means More Time to Close Deals and Build Customer Relationships

With bots for Sales, businesses stand to increase sales productivity incrementally year over year. In many cases, within 4 years, teams can see rates grow as much as 20%, translating to an ROI potential of millions of dollars in savings. Bots keep teams in sync and productive when time and money matter.

Source(s): State of Work, ServiceNow. The Wasted Workday, The Atlantic.