Optimise your sales process: stop paying your salespeople not to sell!

What if these hours were simply not used properly (at least in part)?

One of the causes to be considered is the lack of structuring of the sales chain, which can cause a loss of efficiency and sometimes significant hidden costs. We know something about this at Kestio, as we have been confronted with this problem internally, before adjusting our sales process.

This is how, and with what results.

1. What does it mean to "optimise your sales process" and why do it?

This means looking for the best cost/result ratio at each stage of your sales process, to achieve an optimal return!

There are at least two reasons to do so:

• The current economic context encourages optimising the return on investment of each action implemented: tense market, no "natural" growth and therefore a greater commercial effort to be made, tendency to lower sales prices and increase distribution costs... The companies that do best are those that manage to preserve their margins, and optimising marketing costs contributes directly to this!

• Many companies have not yet really organised their sales function. Studies show that on average at least 40% of the time spent by sales staff is spent "doing administrative work". ¹. In other words, 40% of your sales payroll is not focused on what creates the most value, namely exchanges with prospects and customers! When you know that a salesperson is (sometimes very) expensive and that he or she is difficult to recruit and retain, it is essential that he or she focus on his or her core business...

2. A (real-life) example of business process optimisation

Here is an example from our own experience at KESTIO, to illustrate how a seemingly trivial activity can quickly become very costly if this approach is not taken to reduce its impact.

THE STARTING CONTEXT :

•  For some time now, Kestio has been operating with 3 sedentary salespeople in charge of handling the first appointments (qualification of needs) with our prospects.
• Of their total telephone appointments, there is a rate of 'no appointments' by them of about 20% (which is a good rate, compared to averages elsewhere).
• With 10 appointments scheduled per day per salesperson, this results in a potential of 30 customers per week (2 per day x 3 salespeople x 5 days per week) to be contacted again, just to set up a new appointment...
• This represented (until we changed our process) 1 to 2 hours of work per week for each sales person, i.e. in total, for 3 sales people, up to 24 hours per month (or 3 working days, therefore) devoted to a task without added value!

When you know the salary cost of an experienced sales person and you calculate what this simple expense item represents annually, it makes you think... 

THE SOLUTION IMPLEMENTED :

This is why we decided to set up an automated workflow system: a prospect who is absent from an appointment automatically receives an email proposing 3 new slots, and if necessary a reminder a few days later.

This system now allows us to reposition 80% of missed appointments, and the remaining 20% are called by a specialist service provider.

The implementation of this simple workflow has allowed us to save several thousand euros per year, while at the same time creating better working conditions for our sales staff, who now spend most of their time doing the job they love and are good at.

And this example is just one of many that can be acted upon to achieve positive leverage!

In order to identify all the potential areas for improvement, it is necessary to ask, for each action implemented, what is the right level of effort to be made in relation to the expected result and the potential generated.

3. How to implement such an approach in your company?

To do this, start by reviewing each stage of your sales chain (prospecting, qualification, sales proposal, closing...) by analysing the tasks attached to them in the light of this key question: "For the same result, what is the most efficient way (the fastest, the least expensive...) of carrying out this task? ».

On this basis, you can build an effective business system, using this method:

1. Identify potential points of optimisation. For example: time spent by sales staff on administrative tasks.
2. Share best practices within the team. For example: sharing a tool that allows prospects to access in real time the slots available in the salespeople's diaries, without seeing the details of the contents of their diaries.
3. Define an optimised process. For example: construction of an automated workflow to follow up prospects who have not been able to keep their telephone appointments (including the use of the tool mentioned above).
4. Test and improve the defined process. For example: improving the wording of the standard reminder email. Note: only one element of the process is modified at a time, so that the impact of each modification can be analysed.
5. Generalise and disseminate the optimised process to the whole team, for implementation and feedback (continuous improvement loop).

Doing so for your entire sales process will allow you to build an optimised sales operating model and thus reduce any losses due to uncontrolled factors, ultimately improving your sales results.

Focus on high impact and easily achievable points of improvement (in short, optimise the optimisation process itself!) 😉

As you go along, you will improve the efficiency of your entire commercial chain to spend more and less, while increasing the interest of the missions entrusted to your teams!

Do you want to optimise the time of your sales staff? Thanks to this webinar, you will learn how to work on your targeting and to use adapted tools in order to multiply by 2 your number of sales meetings per month: