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Faced with this situation, some employers end up resigning themselves and abandoning their recruitment project or choosing profiles that do not fully meet their expectations. However, there are alternatives to recruiting a new salesperson, and they may even be more profitable for your company. Here's what they are.

1. Improve the commercial efficiency of your current team

Did you know that the average conversion rate of salespeople in the B2B sector is around 10%? This means that 90% of the time spent by sales staff is on business that is destined to be lost!

The good news is that it is entirely possible tosignificantly improve this result, as we prove daily in the field.

Aiming for an average success rate of 30% on commercial proposals is quite realistic, even in BtoB, and is a desirable minimum.

If your sales staff are not at this level today, there is no need to recruit new ones to stimulate your growth: you already have a good margin for growth with the same human resources (and therefore salary costs)!

We generally manage to improve our clients' success rates very significantly by supporting their sales teams in their progress, particularly in two areas: the quality of targeting and the quality of the sales actions carried out with their prospects.

The advantage of such an approach is that it not onlyincreases your turnover, but also, and above all,optimises your profitability, which would not necessarily have been possible with a new recruitment.

2. Opt for a more segmented commercial organisation

This is what we see most often with our clients in terms of sales organisation: the sales person is a multi-tasker and takes charge of the entire sales chain, from lead generation to closing, including making appointments, finding out what the needs are, drawing up the sales proposal and following up.

This organisation has several disadvantages:

On the one hand, multi-skilling can lead to a certain "scattering" between the various tasks and therefore to a loss of efficiency.
On the other hand, it is rare to find sales profiles that are good at all of these tasks, so this makes it difficult to find the ideal candidate.
Finally, not all of these tasks offer the same level of interest to a "seasoned" salesperson, which can lead to talent volatility.

Formalising and segmenting the sales process into different phases, and then dividing these phases between several people according to their skills and competences, is often much more effective.

This usually leads to a considerable gain in productivity, as each person is concentrated on one type of task, for which they will gradually gain in experience, speed and efficiency.

We generally recommend breaking the sales process down into at least four phases (e.g. identifying prospects, making appointments, conducting interviews and preparing the sales proposal), and then assigning each of these phases to a team member, with no more than two phases per person.

This type of organisation can in some cases "save" you from having to recruit more people, thanks to the productivity gains achieved. Otherwise , it simplifies your recruitment by restricting the range of skills required for each position.

Discover the KESTIO webinars, where we discuss

all topics related to business performance with our experts:

Fabien Comtet, CEO

Dominique Seguin, DG

Nicolas Boissard, Marketing Director

Access our webinars

3. Use of substitute or replacement sales forces

Another alternative to recruiting multi-skilled salaried salespeople is to use an outsourced sales force: a company specialising in telephone prospecting, for example, or a freelance business developer.

The use of external sales forces has several advantages: it is less expensive than permanent recruitment, can be terminated more easily and is usually accompanied by a commitment to results.

It also offers more flexibility: external sales representatives can be involved on a permanent or occasional basis, on a part-time basis, as back-up during a busy period, or even be dedicated to a particular target...

Compared to permanent recruitment, it therefore represents a financial saving and a controlled risk.

Another advantage of this formula is that the outsourced tasks are generally those that are the least complex (generation of contact files, telephone prospecting, etc.), which allows the permanent sales team to concentrate on the "higher added value" tasks.

Beware, however: to be effective, the use of an outsourced sales force must :

Concern a well-defined perimeter and follow an established process, controlled internally
Regular monitoring of key performance indicators via a CRM or ad hocdashboards
Rely on sales tools designed and validated intern ally: salesbook, standard emails, references and sales pitch by target, etc.)

It therefore requires a well-documented sales cycle, but also a certain degree of agility to ensure a smooth handover between external and internal sales.

For one of our clients, this strategy enabled them to optimally manage an activity marked by strong seasonality, by reducing the number of permanent recruitments initially envisaged from 5 to 2, in order to achieve a higher objective!

4. Retain your current sales staff!

The three alternative solutions we have just presented are designed to respond to situations of business development, which motivate a large proportion of sales recruitment projects. However, another part of these recruitment projects is linked to the sometimes high turnover observed in these positions.

With demand for experienced sales profiles far outstripping supply, market conditions are conducive to talent volatility: 38% of salespeople have received job offers without having actively searched for them, according to a Stepstone study on sales employment.³

To retain your sales people in general, and the best of them in particular, it is therefore essential to value the sales function as such.

The remuneration lever is obviously important, but here too, competition is tough: sales salaries are 57% higher than the average salary in France, according to a study by the firm Uptoo4...

To stand out from the crowd, make sure that your sales staff's daily work is interesting and stimulating: a quality working environment and conditions, effective tools, a clear and relevant sales action plan, a management style that encourages personal development, opportunities for internal growth, recognition of initiatives and successes, etc. These are all elements that count in the eyes of your staff and encourage their long-term commitment!

By working on some or all of these four areas, you can significantly reduce the number of sales hires your company needs to make, while effectively meeting your growth and business development objectives.

To stay competitive and maximise your chances of converting leads into future customers, it is important to optimise the return on your sales assets. Find out how by watching this webinar:

1 : D’après l’enquête 2018 sur la pénurie de talents menée par ManPowerGroup : http://www.manpowergroup.fr/penurie-talents-recrutement-2018/

2 : Source ParisJob : https://www.parisjob.com/actualites/commercial-chiffres-paris.htmls://www.parisjob.com/actualites/commercial-chiffres-paris.html

3 : Citée par France Info : https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-radio/c-est-mon-boulot/la-grande-penurie-de-commerciaux_1766077.html

So what's up? Is there a danger to the performance of salespeople in fighting routines at all costs?

Not sure! Although they sometimes hide a lack of motivation, a loss of confidence or a lack of skills, certain routines also serve to structure and mark out the business activity. They become fixed points of reference in an activity that is by nature mobile, obligatory passages that you must know how to identify in order to remain in control of your time.

There are generally two types of routines. Firstly, there are those to be combated, those that lock salespeople into counter-productive logics, which slow them down in their sales actions. Then there are those to be maintained, which must become markers, those that lead to greater efficiency in customer relations. The challenge for the manager? To identify them and make them a management tool!

Be aware of "negative" routines!

Among the routines that are counterproductive for salespeople's performance are the little rituals that everyone likes to follow at the beginning of the day or during the day: having a coffee, checking email, surfing on favourite websites, etc. These are recurrent, but they do not really penalise the activity. Rather, they should be seen as a way of moving from a personal to a professional environment.

On the other hand, other habits can be adopted and clearly become counterproductive. For example, staying in a timetable of back office tasks. Have you ever experienced this?

A salesperson who is locked into an overload of quotations, who systematically accepts all his incoming e-mails and manages them in the process, who solicits his manager and colleagues at every turn... Result?

The essential job is not done: routines over-invest the time available and there is nothing left to exploit business opportunities, to look for prospects, to sell.

Another example with the telephone...

The salesperson is a routine telephone caller, which has become a reflex to make progress on his or her files and generates many negative routines linked to communication methods. Who hasn't seen a salesperson remain in a purely reactive logic, i.e. wait for incoming calls to propose an appointment or an action?

The salesperson then locks himself into an attitude that prevents him from leading and steering the relationship in the interests of the customer and the favourable development of their business. He then optimises neither his time nor his performance, and he also increases the risk of seeing the relationship disintegrate. Telephone routines prevent them from taking a step back from their actions. Worse! They give them the illusion that they are fully active and contributing when they are not.

Encourage efficient routines!

Fortunately, there are beneficial routines that salespeople can and should incorporate into their work: consulting the CRM on a daily basis, monitoring their activity indicators, keeping up to date with customer news, etc.

The effective salesperson knows how to set up these routines. Not to fill gaps in activity, but to ensure that nothing is missed and, more importantly, to maintain the lead in the conduct of relationships and the successful completion of opportunities. Repeated like the protocol before a plane takes off or the athlete's warm-up before a competition, it guarantees performance.

Other positive routines can be activated in the case of difficult cases, for example. They allow us not to run away from the problem, to remain in a positive, efficient dynamic.

It doesn't matter whether you ask an internal expert or your manager, or consult the intranet, as long as a reflex routine exists to overcome the difficulty. If it is not in place, it opens the door to counter-productive behaviour!

Developing these routines means capitalising on knowledge, planning and optimising time, and relying on simple and reliable benchmarks to control performance.

This is why a coach must intervene to ensure that these structuring routines are well known to the teams and effectively in place.

We can consider that everyone is potentially under the influence of positive and negative routines. The challenge for the manager is therefore to be able to identify them in order to act in the right way and at the right place.

Counter-productive routines will provide an opportunity for rich managerial action, first with dialogue to raise awareness and then to see how to abandon them or replace them with better ones.

For example, get the salesperson used to asking the right questions before taking action: What is the best action to take now? How much time should be spent on it and in what way?

As for positive habits, they enable the salesperson to establish the elements of his or her autonomous management of the portfolio and his or her schedule, to move towards a virtuous attitude and practices. The manager can thus create points of convergence with his team, routine and shared benchmarks that create common references to be even more effective, individually and collectively.

It is a strong line of work for the manager and his team. It is a positive way of getting together and making progress. Getting employees out of their solitary routines also means creating a dynamic of shared practices and fuelling the development of skills.

KestioLive collaborative coaching enables the manager to work efficiently in this direction. Helping the manager to question his or her real knowledge of the routines of his or her team at a collective and individual level. Find out how to identify and break negative routines over time and facilitate awareness of their impact on results; highlight positive routines, encourage their sharing and appropriation by everyone for the benefit of collective performance.

Did you know that 95% of your success is linked to your state of mind? To learn how to manage your emotional charge more effectively, discover the Triad method in this webinar: How to manage your emotional charge effectively?

How to develop a multi-channel approach while strengthening your brand?

The multi-channel customer experience should reflect the brand identity

A real challenge, at a time when customer behaviour is changing and becoming more complex with the advent of the multi-channel customer journey !

This trend is forcing companies - customer relations and/or marketing departments - to define the desired customer experience precisely , in line with the identity and values of their brand.

Today, at every stage of the customer journey, companies need to put in place everything that will create a successful customer experience to maximise the chances of building loyalty.

Faced with all the parameters on which companies must act to ensure a high level of quality for this customer experience, it is sometimes complex to prioritise efforts. The equation is even more complicated since the advent of digital and the generalisation of the multi-channel customer journey, which multiplies the points of contact and the actions to be implemented... We are now faced with really heavy decision matrices.

Decision-makers are then torn between meeting the basic needs of all and offering a personalised experience with a few priority segments. How to choose? What criteria should be considered?

Ensure the consistency of all your action plans, broken down by target or channel

For KESTIO, the answer to this dilemma lies in the brand, its promise and its values.

By integrating brand specificity into the customer experience, it is possible to move beyond basic needs and make the customer experience specific and attributable to that brand.

In the same way that a customer recognises a product or service from a brand to which he is loyal, he will recognise the experience he will have with it! The brand: the foundation of a strong and differentiating customer experience.

This is why, at KESTIO, we support companies that are developing a strong customer approach to help them achieve coherence between the Customer Journey, Customer Relations and Customer Experience.

Through the definition of identity markers, we deploy a methodology that provides, regardless of the complexity of the paths, channels and segmentation, a strong coherence in the experience.

When asked to do so by Marketing Departments and/or Customer Relations Departments, we assist companies in defining and deploying their brand's relational identity .

If for many years, brands have understood the need to guarantee the coherence of the signs emitted in communication through a graphic charter, they now wish to go further, and guarantee the coherence of the signs emitted through an identity charter of the customer experience .

This work not only strengthens customer loyalty but also enhances the value of the BRAND, an intangible asset that is the basis of value creation in the company.

Would you like to know more about this subject and receive feedback? Leave us your contact details, we will be happy to answer your questions.

Discover Kestio System in 2 minutes!

To become a real lever for improving results, the sales management must not only be based on the right key performance indicators, but also be used as a decision-making tool and a trigger for action.

Here's how to move from the traditional "meter reading" to a dynamic and useful exchange, in real time, allowing you to concretely improve the performance of your salespeople.

Measuring sales performance: a major challenge

To begin with, it is useful to recall the importance of monitoring salespeople's results for your business, and to return to its very purpose.

I observe in the field that in many cases this monitoring is carried out according to a frequency and modalities that have been designed essentially to ensure that the quantitative objectives will be achieved over the next period.

However, while this is a major point, the challenges of commercial follow-up go well beyond this, and they are multiple. If carried out properly, it allows you to :

To have a complete vision of the commercial situation at a given moment, and reliable forecasts for the coming months
Identify any adjustment needs in relation to the defined business strategy
Identify individual and/or collective points of difficulty and understand the underlying causes
Analyse success factors to duplicate them and pass on good practices internally

In other words, tracking sales performance, when done well and used wisely, allows you to make informed decisions and act in real time on the levers that will produce sales results for your business.

The importance of choosing key performance indicators...

To achieve this, however, a simple rule must be kept in mind:

In business performance, you can only improve what you measure!

This is an obvious point that is sometimes useful to remember, as the general tendency is to focus on quantitative indicators of results (turnover, margin rate, new customers acquired, etc.) which have the merit of being the simplest to measure and monitor, sometimes to the detriment of qualitative indicators that are just as essential, relating to the "means" of achieving these results (volume of leads and opportunities detected, etc.).) which have the merit of being the easiest to measure and monitor, sometimes to the detriment of equally essential qualitative indicators relating to the "means" of achieving these results (volume of leads and opportunities detected, adequacy between the "commercial effort" desired by the customer segment and what has been achieved, adequacy of the opportunities detected in relation to the targeting criteria, transformation rate, etc.).

I once observed this situation with a client who did not understand why his salespeople's conversion rates were low, because he had not taken a closer look at the quality of their targeting: his salespeople, whose objectives were set in terms of the number of appointments to be made, were conducting interviews with prospects who did not correspond to their target, thus causing their overall effectiveness to drop!

In the field of commercial management, the main risk is therefore to "miss" key information or to misinterpret the results obtained due to a lack of global vision, and to draw erroneous conclusions that will lead you to make bad decisions later on.

... to that of monitoring and analysis

In addition to the choice of KPIs (key performance indicators) as such, the frequency and methods of monitoring are also important:

If you simply "read the meters" at the end of each month or quarter, for example, this is tantamount to taking note of the situation after the fact, depriving you of the possibility of changing the observed results if they turn out to be negative.
Similarly, if you analyse the results of a given period without putting them into perspective over time, you risk having a false, or at least partial, view of the actual performance of your salespeople.

A sales pipeline with very few new opportunities can put into perspective a monthly objective that a salesperson has achieved "with flying colours", for example, or, conversely, a pipeline "full of promises" can offset a monthly result that has fallen short.

Use sales follow-up as a real performance improvement lever

So, what are the best practices for monitoring the performance of salespeople?

Here are six that seem to me to be decisive:

1. Define "quanti" and "quali" indicators for each stage of the sales cycle:

Sales is a process. When setting up your dashboards, take the time to identify all the relevant indicators to be monitored for each stage of the sales cycle (lead generation, opportunity qualification, sales proposal, negotiation and closing), both in terms of quality and quantity.

For example, here are the KPIs you can monitor:

On the lead generation stage: Volume (number of new leads generated) + Quality of leads (correspondence with the criteria of the defined target)

On the opportunity qualification stage: Volume (number of opportunities detected) + Potential gross value of the opportunity + Forecast transformation rate. This will allow you to obtain a "Weighted Net Value" for each opportunity (Gross Value x Forecast Transformation Rate).

Qualitatively, you can draw up an opportunity scoring grid specifying the information the salesperson must have at this stage to consider an opportunity sufficiently "qualified" (e.g. the customer's internal organisation, decision-makers, issues and points of tension, etc.).

2. Analyse the results in the light of the business model

Depending on your context, and more importantly, your business model, the results observed call for a different interpretation.

If you do most of your distance selling on a very standardised service, you are likely to have a low conversion rate, but a very high volume of quotations made online or following a simple telephone conversation.

The content of customer information gathering and quotation reminders will then be key elements to improve performance.

If you sell a complex and very specific service to a large clientele, there will be far fewer opportunities, but the work of qualification and co-construction with the client will be decisive in obtaining much higher conversion rates and an average basket.

In the first case, you may consider 25% to be a very good conversion rate, while in the second case you may consider it to be a poor one.

Pour aller plus loin, découvrez le webinar, animé par Laurence Bonhomme, sur les leviers de motivation des collaborateurs.

3. Take a dynamic view of results

Remember, too, that the results observed must be analysed and put into perspective over time, as mentioned above in the example of a salesperson with a poor monthly turnover but a very promising pipeline.

The notion of temporality also comes into play when analysing the stages of the sales cycle: these must be completed within a certain timeframe, otherwise the probability of an opportunity being realised will gradually decrease.

It is therefore important that your salespeople enter into your CRM the date they identify an opportunity and identify the transition from one stage of the sales process to the next, updating the estimated amount of the opportunity (which is refined over time) and the probability of the sale being successful.

The reliability of this probability rate must be based on objective criteria shared by the sales staff.

Theoretically, the closer an opportunity gets to closing, the higher the expected conversion rate should be. If this is not the case, there is a problem in the sales process and this should alert you.

4. Assess - and improve if necessary - the reliability of the data used

It is also useful to check over time how realistic the assumptions made by sales people are when assessing the projected value of an opportunity or their chances of winning it.

If the difference between the forecast and the actual situation is too great, this may distort your management and your decisions, sometimes with a serious impact (these forecasts are used in particular to plan stock orders or the production of goods).

5. Identify and explain differences in results between salespeople

In the same way, the differences in results between sales representatives (on turnover, average basket or transformation rate, for example) must be noted and studied: are they numerous or rare, significant or insignificant...?

When they exist, they must be analysed and explained: is the difference in turnover between two salespeople explained by a difference in seniority/experience? By the nature of their targets? Characteristics linked to the geographical area in which they operate? If not, you will need to ask yourself what difficulty or shortcoming this reveals for the salesperson concerned in order to find a way to resolve it.

6. Mixing individual and group trade journals

Finally, the situation that I most commonly observe in the field is as follows: the salespeople carry out regular individual reporting based on quantitative indicators (turnover, margin, number of appointments, conversion rate, etc.), and their manager leads a weekly collective sales review during which the results of the various salespeople are examined.

It is often much more productive to organise individual sales reviews to detect any difficulties a salesperson may be experiencing or to provide effective support in dealing with opportunities, and to reserve group time for recalling successes, sharing good practices or analysing the difficulties encountered on a deal when they can serve as an example to help resolve subsequent ones.

Monitoring your sales staff according to these 6 main principles will enable you to develop a global and precise vision of your company's sales situation in real time, and to make the most of it in terms of: decision-making, implementation of adjustment actions, and ultimately, improved performance.

How to manage your sales team in a difficult situation?

In this webinar, hosted by Dominique Seguin, Managing Director of KESTIO, discover the 4 keys to regain control of the situation

Découvrez également nos formations management pour aller plus loin dans la gestion de vos équipes commerciales.

Thanks to this white paper, you will be able not only to build an effective business model but also to implement it in the field thanks to your CRM and make it last over time. In short, a performance boost guaranteed!

What will you find in this white paper?

This white paper is the result of our collaboration with KOBAN.

You have probably followed our joint series of 6 articles published alternately on our two respective blogs. At the end of this series, we wanted to offer you a "compilation" in order to have a complete and integrated vision to build and optimize your business model.

Let's remember that a sales model describes the optimal sales organisation, i.e. how to achieve the best possible balance between priority targets, the actions to be taken towards them, and the resources to achieve them. In short, the sales model is necessary for the proper functioning of your company and allows you to increase the efficiency and ROI of your sales actions.

This white paper will help you build such a model and translate it operationally into your CRM tool. Everything you need to know to implement it on a daily basis and succeed in optimising it permanently.

As we told you last week¹A business model is not fixed in time. On the contrary, its ambition is to evolve and improve: indeed, your customers change, your working methods change, your company changes, your sales people change... Finally, as you will have understood, your whole environment evolves - and consequently so must your business model in order to remain relevant.

How do I analyse my model?

If you have followed our series from the beginning, you are implementing your business model to the letter in your CRM. This also means that all the hard-earned data collected during the period is centralised and usable.

And you just have to use this data!

After defining your business model, you have been able to define the indicators to be monitored in order to know the impact of the actions implemented, to make the relevant adjustments and to reinforce the success factors. You will therefore need one or more dashboards to have a precise view of these different indicators.

The ideal is to have a CRM tool that will allow you to customise these dashboards to bring out the analyses you need. With Koban, for example, you can customise your dashboards with the necessary indicators.

Conducting a daily analysis

As Kestio mentioned in the previous article, the goal is not to analyse your entire business model every day and make significant changes in the first week of implementation.

But still, we like to have a daily view of the main indicators (KPI), just in case.

These "flash figures", as we like to call them at Koban, are the right alternative. They represent, in reality, the KPIs that you decide to monitor on a daily basis: number of opportunities won, number of opportunities lost, time spent, conversion rate, opportunity costs etc. They are calculated automatically and in real time. And very often, it is at this precise moment that we are very happy to have invested in a CRM (people who have known pivot tables will understand me !).

The little bonus in all this? You can display these flash figures right on your homepage (among other things), giving you a direct view by tracking the successful execution of your business model on a daily basis and being very reactive to change low-impact items as needed.

These indicators can be both common and individual to measure the performance of each of your sales people. This is very important as a manager.

These indicators also allow you to monitor your sales model on a daily basis and to implement small corrective actions before it is too late. For example, you notice that your sales representative X is far from his objectives for the month. You can then schedule time with him to manage him and understand what is holding him back.

Performing a more detailed analysis - The "ANALYSIS" Module

In addition to daily monitoring, you can - or at least you should - monitor and evaluate the commercial efficiency and the commercial effort made by the company (in other words, your commercial model). To do this, your CRM will once again be your best friend.

Let's take the example of Koban and its specific analysis module. It allows you, among other things, to analyse all your data by creating customised dashboards: pie charts, curves, tables, histograms...

You can pretty much analyse everything and very easily. More complete than flash figures, dashboards really allow you to bring out relevant analyses: what worked in your model / what didn't work so well / which segment generates the most turnover / a summary table of the sales of each of your salespeople etc. Because just as "working hard" does not necessarily mean "making money", it is necessary for any company, large or small, to calculate the efficiency and profitability of its commercial actions in order to concentrate efforts on the best actions.

But let's remember that you don't just manage your sales activity in your CRM, but also your marketing actions to generate qualified leads for your sales people. And this data must be an integral part of your analysis in order to identify areas for improvement and optimisation: conversion rate of leads from marketing, number of leads from marketing, etc. The point is to be able to compare all sales and marketing data in order to identify areas for improvement.

Let's not forget that the point of all this is to evolve your business model.

It cannot be repeated often enough: a business model is forged over time and through feedback. It will never be set in stone. Hence the importance of having a tool that centralises all your data and allows you to keep the history in order to compare and challenge the data between them. This is how you will gain in performance, and consequently, in turnover.

Indicators not to be missed

Well, obviously too many indicators kill indicators. The risk is to get lost in a lot of useless studies and not to get any relevant analysis. With Kestio, we have selected the indicators that you must - at least - follow if you want to produce relevant analyses. Of course, other indicators will be added depending on your environment and your organisation:

THE COST OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

This one is really a must-have!

The customer acquisition cost is the average amount spent to turn a prospect into a customer. This investment can include the marketing expenditure as well as the cost of the time spent by the sales person to convert the prospect into a customer.

Your business model is largely based on which customer segments to focus on to generate the most margin. But to do this, you need to take into account the cost of customer acquisition.

Indeed, if I realise that my "Gold" customers cost me almost as much money as they bring in (because I have a high acquisition cost), this may lead me to review certain elements of my business model: if at the same time, my "Silver" customers are certainly less interesting in terms of "pure" turnover, but cost me almost nothing in acquisition compared to what they bring in (thanks to a low acquisition cost), this finally makes them more interesting than expected...

What do I do? Clearly, there is a temptation to switch "Gold" clients to "Silver" and vice versa.

Don't get me wrong, your "Gold" customers may have had a lower cost of acquisition when you set up your business model, but again, the environment changes and so do your costs... Hence the importance of analysing your model after a certain period of time and implementing the appropriate corrective actions.

COMMERCIAL EFFORT BY TARGET

This indicator allows you to optimise the time of your salespeople. Thanks to it, you can judge the effort of each salesperson on a type of target. You can also make a comparison between your salespeople, to see which one allocates its effort the best. This is not to "monitor" your salespeople. But it is interesting to know, for example, that salesperson A made an average of 10 physical appointments on a target while salesperson B made 15 for the same result.

Beyond that, it allows you to identify targets on which your sales people are putting too much effort for little result and, conversely, on which you are not putting enough effort. This way, you can adjust your sales model accordingly (if necessary).

THE COMMERCIAL TRANSFORMATION RATE

The conversion rate identifies the performance of a sales person or team in converting a prospect into a customer.

You can not only analyse the general transformation rate (i.e. of all your salespeople), but also the individual transformation rate (i.e. salesperson by salesperson). Once again, this is not to "spy" on your salespeople, but to identify the sources that are holding back development and thus implement appropriate actions.

AVERAGE BASKET BY ACCOUNT TYPE

The average basket definesthe average amount spent by each customer. This indicator can be monitored per order or for a given period of time, for the entire life of the customer. It can be used to identify which customer segment has the highest average shopping basket, for example, or conversely, which customer segment has the lowest average shopping basket.

THE NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES CREATED

The number of opportunities created is a simple indicator for monitoring the effectiveness of marketing and sales.

Indeed, a high number of opportunities created will reflect several things:

Marketing generates a lot of qualified leads
And / or your sales people have opportunities on existing customers or via another channel than marketing (word of mouth, customer recommendations etc)

In short, your sales and marketing people are well aligned and doing a good job!

On the contrary, a low number of opportunities created will force you to analyse other indicators. In particular, where do the opportunities come from?

Do they come from marketing or from the sales people themselves?

You will then know on which channel you should act to generate more opportunities.

Once again, this list is by no means exhaustive (we are thinking in particular of indicators linked to the margin!). These are "standard" indicators that any company can analyse to develop its business model. But there will obviously be other indicators to take into account depending on your internal strategy and your environment.

This is the end of this joint series between Koban and Kestio... We hope you enjoyed it and especially that these articles helped you! In any case, on our side, we had a lot of fun combining our skills and visions in order to offer you a complete and operational methodology.

And to get to the bottom of things, we have more surprises in store for you very soon, including a summary white paper and a webinar to discuss the subject with you and answer your questions live!

To find out more about CRM and to help you in your projects, find all our methods and tools here:

¹: Missed the previous episodes? Don't panic! Treat yourself to a little catch-up session:

Article 1: What is a business model and how to build it?

Article n°2 : Comment traduire sa stratégie commerciale dans un outil CRM ?

Article 3: 3 key points for building an effective business model

Article n°4 : Structurer et optimiser son modèle commercial dans son CRM

Article 5: How to deploy your business model effectively

KESTIO and KOBANKESTIO and KOBAN are a natural fit: KESTIO supports SMEs in their business development via an online business coaching platform for executives, managers and salespeople; KOBAN helps them to effectively deploy their business strategy and actions by generating maximum ROI, via a high-performance CRM solution.

From this meeting, an idea was born (which became a desire, then a reality): that of combining our skills and our visions to help you define and implement your business model!

Thanks to our previous articles, you have all the keys in hand to build your business model, translate it into your CRM tool and apply it on a daily basis.

This week, we continue our journey by discovering how to successfully structure your business model and your data in your CRM. Indeed, a good business model can only last if it is based on accessible, relevant, reliable and usable data! Here's how to ensure that it is.

Collect and structure data in your CRM

The problem with data is that it can change very quickly and often needs to be enhanced to remain relevant.

Let's take a simple example: turnover in a company.

How many responses to your e-mailing have you already received of the type "having left the company, etc...". This is why updating your data is ESSENTIAL and even VITAL to keep your business model alive.

COLLECTING DATA VIA CRM

We have already mentioned the importance of using relevant data for the proper functioning of your business model. Apart from centralising all your available data, your CRM tool will allow you to collect very interesting data automatically .

Firstly, there is data that is easily accessible and available but not worth filling in manually: "generic" data such as turnover, for example, is tedious and time consuming to enter manually. Fortunately, it is possible to automate the reception of this type of data via connectors with external sites (such as Corporama). In this way, you can retrieve a lot of information automatically and this frees up time for your sales staff to concentrate on more "sensitive" information.

In addition to receiving "external" data, you probably have internal data in your company present in other tools (customer invoicing, production tool, etc.). It may be relevant to "bring up" some of this information in your CRM to make the data accessible and usable.

In the same way, by synchronising your CRM with your information system, you will be able to import the information it contains into other tools and thus avoid all the tedious and error-prone double entries. The objective is that the relevant information benefits everyone.

Secondly, a CRM tool will allow you to collect so-called "personal" data on the behaviour of your customers / prospects. Thanks to the marketing part of your tool, your customers / prospects will be tracked in order to collect information automatically, allowing you to see for each contact :

Which pages of the site they visited - when - and how many times
If he opened your quote
If they have read the last email the salesperson sent them
If it is a return visit (i.e. if a prospect comes back to your site after X amount of time)
If they have opened, read or clicked on a button in an e-mailing
Etc ...

In short, this is data that you would not have been able to collect without a tool that does it automatically for you. And this data is very valuable for sales people. It allows you to judge the level of interest in a contact, its "potential", and thus to refine and enrich your customer knowledge. A "Bronze" customer who reads all your news emails, clicks on ALL your buttons and visits your service presentation pages may be worth re-qualifying as a "Silver" customer? Or at least it's worth looking into...

Finally, there is the data collected directly by your sales staff. They are an invaluable source for feeding the CRM with information that you will not find anywhere else (number of machine tools installed, internal validation process, etc.). This data is very heterogeneous in nature and will have to be made usable.

But, as we know, salespeople are often very busy and (sometimes) do not take the time to enter all the data in the CRM. However, they are the ones who know your customers best... To overcome this problem, you can easily add mandatory fields when a salesperson creates a new file. It is rather practical when it is an essential data for the good functioning of your business model and when you realise after 6 months that nobody has filled in this field!

STRUCTURING YOUR DATA WITH CRM

Once again, having data is good, but this data must be centralised, structured and exploitable. Without this, your business model may not last long...

That's a good thing, because your CRM is there to do just that: centralise data on a single platform and make it accessible.

The CRMs have a lot of handy tips to help you with this. Let's take the example of Koban (in all objectivity, of course! : ))

You have X contacts on an account card. Perfect, but not all contacts are equal... Indeed, you are not going to call the accountant for your estimate, nor the marketing manager for an unpaid invoice. To avoid this kind of bad manipulation, our CRM displays tags above each contact that tell you if it is the billing contact, the decision maker, etc. ..

In another case, it is possible that you wish to enter information that is specific to your environment and therefore does not exist in your tool as standard. Fortunately, all good CRM tools offer the possibility of adding custom fields or objects that you can add to your customer's file.

Let's take a very concrete example: you sell printers to your customers. Some of them have several machines in the company. It is therefore important that you have a clear and direct view of the machines on each of your customer files. In this case, you can create a custom field dedicated to this information and have it appear in your contact sheets, to collect this data via your sales representatives and make it accessible and usable for your future actions (marketing campaign, segmentation of your base, etc.).

Structuring your business model

BUSINESS PROCESSES

Your sales model must include the management of the sales cycle and the various processes. And that's good, because a good sales tool is there to help you generate more sales. and more efficiently.

In your CRM, you will be able to implement your sales process according to the segmentation defined by the sales model (by type of customer, by market, by type of offer, etc.). This process, built around the stages of the sales cycle, will enable you to group together all the commercial opportunities of the same nature, to follow their evolution in the sales process and to easily identify the opportunities that you need to prioritise (for example by classifying them by segment: Gold, Silver and Bronze). This gives you a clear and direct view of all your current opportunities, with their probability of success and their level of progress.

The CRM will be a real assistant for sales people, allowing them to follow all their commercial activity, not to forget any opportunity and to focus their efforts on the best ones (defined according to your business model of course).

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

The last important point is communication!

Yes, your business model is based on data, but it is also based on the proper execution of your teams.

The objective is for all your teams to work hand in hand and on the same wavelength. It is no longer the case that each salesperson is the only one to have (in his or her head) the knowledge of the customers he or she is responsible for, or that salespeople and marketers do not speak the same language!

Your CRM tool will help you overcome these difficulties and improve internal communication, making it easier to execute the business model on a daily basis.

Firstly, you obviously have all the history of your actions / appointments / calls, etc... on your customer files, as well as a "comments" field allowing you to add notes, or specific / important points that will be accessible by all users. You are on holiday for a fortnight?

A "Gold" client calls on you during this time? No problem, your colleague can easily take over thanks to the action history and your comments on the form!

But that's not all, there are many other features that allow you to improve data communication within your company. The news feed, which includes all the important actions to stay informed every minute of the day, the possibility of attaching documents to your forms...

In short, your CRM tool will support the deployment of your business model by allowing you to centralise and exploit all your data and by structuring your business processes.

All this obviously with one aim in mind: to facilitate the work of your teams, who will be able to rely on a relevant tool to monitor commercial activity on a daily basis!

To find out more about CRM and to help you in your projects, find all our methods and tools here:

¹ And for those who wish to (re-)discover the previous articles of this series, written in collaboration with KESTIO and KOBAN, it's here:

Article 1: What is a business model and how to build it?

Article 2 : 3 points clés pour bâtir un modèle commercial efficace

KESTIO and KOBANKESTIO and KOBAN are a natural fit: KESTIO supports SMEs in their business development via an online business coaching platform for executives, managers and salespeople; KOBAN helpsthem to effectively deploy their business strategy and actions by generating maximum ROI, via a high-performance CRM solution.

From this meeting, an idea was born (which became a desire, then a reality): that of combining our skills and our visions to help you define and implement your business model!

Last week, Kestio talked to you on the Koban blog about the importance of an optimised sales model to increase the efficiency and ROI of your sales actions.

But once this model has been well defined, it still needs to be translated into an appropriate tool in order to monitor the process on a daily basis. And this part may seem rather abstract to people who are not used to working with a CRM.

As you will have understood, this week we are going to talk about CRM and more specifically, how to translate your previously defined business model into a tool such as Koban.

1. A CRM tool for a segmented and usable database

You have defined your customer / prospect segments very well, but now you need to be able to exploit them. To do this, you need a tool that allows you to centralise your data and then carry out a clear and precise segmentation.

That's all very well in theory, but how does it work in practice?

A good CRM allows you to centralise your entire database on a single platform and segment it with "statuses" . The most common statuses are "customers", "prospects", "competitors" etc... The particularity of Koban, for example, is that you can customise your statuses according to your environment and your strategy, which makes your database clearer for you and your employees.

For example, you can create categories such as "hot prospects", "cold prospects", "former customers" or any other category that you think will be commercially useful.

TAGS: on each record, it is possible to add tags to segment your database more precisely. Tags are like labels that you place "on the head" of your customers / prospects. For example, you can create a "sector of activity" or "potential" tag category. In this way, you will be able to identify all the customers whose tag is equal to "Gold" or "Bronze". This is very useful for launching highly targeted and personalisedsales and/or marketing actions.

2. A CRM tool to organise your business

You have your strategy, you have your segmented and usable database. Now it's time to take action!

Indeed, you have defined a list of actions according to your segments, the objective from now on is not to forget to do them...

Any self-respecting CRM allows you to create customisable action types according to your strategy. You can create as many as you want: task, phone call, email, physical meeting, phone meeting, video conference, demo, customer visit...

The little extra at Koban: you assign a colour to each type of action. This way, once in your agenda, you have a very visual rendering that gives you an idea of what your day will be like! Of course, you have access to the agenda of your colleagues if you need to make an appointment for them or assign them an action.

3. A CRM tool to save time and automate low value-added actions

We all agree on one thing, the goal is to save your salespeople as much time as possible so that they can focus on the most profitable customer segments. To do this, CRM and marketing have their role to play.

Are you interested in automation?

SALES AUTOMATION

You have defined segments with high potential and others with lower stakes that you can easily identify thanks to your centralised and segmented database.

The aim is to let the sales people deal with the most interesting segments and leave the others to .... automation (or to marketing more precisely).

To do this, your CRM will allow you to set up automated scenarios (generally composed of a series of predefined emails) which aim to arouse the interest of your interlocutor, to maintain contact without pestering, and to engage in conversion.

This frees up a lot of time for sales people and above all avoids cold calls which are very often a waste of time (and therefore money). Not only do the responses arrive directly to the sales person concerned, but the results of your "prospecting" e-mails go directly to the prospect's file (when he read the e-mail, whether he clicked, etc.). So, if the user has shown enough interest, the marketing team can easily or automatically pass the lead on to a sales person, who will have the full history.

THE AUTOMATISMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

In addition to the automated scenarios, you can set up numerous automatic processes that save time and, above all, ensure that you don't forget to follow up on calls or appointments. Yes, a salesperson's brain is very full and it can happen to forget...

To give you an example, you can put an automatic action in the salesperson's diary at the end of each meeting, such as: "send product sheet". Or you can plan recurring visits to your "Gold" customers every 4 months. The slot will be blocked in the agenda, which reduces the risk of forgetting or constantly postponing!

LEAD SCORING

Well, now we're going to move on to some more advanced features, but they're worth it! To explain very briefly, you can track your website (record visits to your site) and assign points to each page of your site.

Thus, an Internet user will visit your pages and acquire points as they browse. The objective? To judge his interest and to know if he is "mature" enough to be passed on directly to the sales force.

Below a defined threshold of points, the Internet user will only receive e-mails via an automated marketing scenario. On the other hand, above the defined score, the Internet user will be entrusted to a dedicated sales representative because he has shown a strong interest in your products / services!

These are just brief examples of what you can do and automate in a CRM tool like Koban. These examples illustrate the importance of supporting your business model with features like these to increase your profitability and productivity on a daily basis.

To find out more about CRM and to help you in your projects, find all our methods and tools here:

¹: And for those who wish to (re-)discover the first article, written by KESTIO and published on the KOBAN website, it is here : What is a business model and how to build it?

KESTIO and KOBANKESTIO and KOBAN are a natural fit: KESTIO supports SMEs in their business development via an online business coaching platform for executives, managers and salespeople; KOBAN helps them to effectively deploy their business strategy and actions by generating maximum ROI, via a high-performance CRM solution.

From this meeting, an idea was born (which became a desire, then a reality): that of combining our skills and our visions to help you define and implement your business model!

1. Improve the commercial efficiency of your current team

Aiming for an average success rate of 30% on commercial proposals is quite realistic, even in BtoB, and is a desirable minimum.

2. Opt for a more segmented commercial organisation

Formalising and segmenting the sales process into different phases, and then dividing these phases between several people according to their skills and competences, is often much more effective.

3. Use of substitute or replacement sales forces

The use of external sales forces has several advantages: it is less expensive than permanent recruitment, can be terminated more easily and is usually accompanied by a commitment to results.

4. Retain your current sales staff!

To retain your sales people in general, and the best of them in particular, it is therefore essential to value the sales function as such.

So what's up? Is there a danger to the performance of salespeople in fighting routines at all costs?

Be aware of "negative" routines!

Encourage efficient routines!

How to develop a multi-channel approach while strengthening your brand?

The multi-channel customer experience should reflect the brand identity

Ensure the consistency of all your action plans, broken down by target or channel

Would you like to know more about this subject and receive feedback? Leave us your contact details, we will be happy to answer your questions.

Discover Kestio System in 2 minutes!

Measuring sales performance: a major challenge

The importance of choosing key performance indicators...

... to that of monitoring and analysis

Use sales follow-up as a real performance improvement lever

So, what are the best practices for monitoring the performance of salespeople?

1. Define "quanti" and "quali" indicators for each stage of the sales cycle:

2. Analyse the results in the light of the business model

3. Take a dynamic view of results

4. Assess - and improve if necessary - the reliability of the data used

5. Identify and explain differences in results between salespeople

6. Mixing individual and group trade journals

How to manage your sales team in a difficult situation?

Thanks to this white paper, you will be able not only to build an effective business model but also to implement it in the field thanks to your CRM and make it last over time. In short, a performance boost guaranteed!

What will you find in this white paper?

How do I analyse my model?

Conducting a daily analysis

Performing a more detailed analysis - The "ANALYSIS" Module

Indicators not to be missed

THE COST OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

COMMERCIAL EFFORT BY TARGET

THE COMMERCIAL TRANSFORMATION RATE

AVERAGE BASKET BY ACCOUNT TYPE

THE NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES CREATED

Collect and structure data in your CRM

COLLECTING DATA VIA CRM

STRUCTURING YOUR DATA WITH CRM

Structuring your business model

BUSINESS PROCESSES

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

1. A CRM tool for a segmented and usable database

2. A CRM tool to organise your business

3. A CRM tool to save time and automate low value-added actions

SALES AUTOMATION

THE AUTOMATISMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

LEAD SCORING

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