Saturday, May 23, 2015

CRM semakin berkembang, kata Gartner

CRM Is Mature and Growing Nicely, Gartner Claims

The customer relationship management (CRM) market is well-established, mature and growing at a healthy clip. That's Gartner's headline finding in its latest global analysis of this software category.
Specifically, it found that worldwide CRM software investments grew to $23.2 billion in 2014, up 13.3 percent from 20.4 billion in 2013.
And it was the best kind of growth of all: organic expansion into new markets. "Large vendors leveraged their acquisitions to extend their position in new markets and to enrich the depth of their current feature sets in 2014," said Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner. 

Market Leaders

In 2014, the top 10 CRM vendors accounted for more than a 60 percent — or $14 billion — of total CRM spending, Gartner reported. The biggest of the big are Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, which hold the top five positions.
2015-22-May-CRM-Market
However, there is increasing competition, both among the large vendors and from the endless supply of start ups focusing on niche CRM areas. "We saw market consolidation continue," Correia added, "and price wars started quickly as large vendors fought to keep their installed base from moving to other vendors and to stop the descent of their maintenance revenue."
Despite that, it appears that CRM's overall course will remain set for the foreseeable future. In other words, any disruption in terms of a new technology or a new player will be sudden and unexpected. Growth will continue, but along the trends already in place.
But there's one big caveat: As R Ray Wang, the principal analyst, founder, and chairman of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, astutely noted in a blog post two years ago, estimates of CRM software market share are only educated guesses
"In reality, the market sizing game for enterprise software is both an art with some science. Having played this role as a vendor in an Analyst Relations capacity in a past life, one knows that executives can not disclose such financial information directly to a research or market sizing firm," he wrote.
The research analysts must play a guessing game with the software executive and ask 100 questions to zero in on a number. Unlike hardware, where individual counts are more obvious, software revenue sizing requires analysts to dig deep into financial statements and any conversation where growth rates have been discussed. Revenues are hidden in bundling, suite sales, discounting schemes, channel revenue deals, OEM arrangements, and inter-company transfers. To complicate matters, SaaS revenue calculations can differ from how on-premises revenues are calculated. Analysts must also determine the truthfulness of vendors who are trying to indirectly guide analysts to the “right” numbers. In short, this is hard work."

Driving Forces

Suffice to say there is some subjectivity involved when it comes to the market leaders. However, there is more alignment about bigger issues, including overall market trends. In this report, Gartner identified several of interest. For example:
SaaS reigns: Software-as-a-Service is a big reason why companies embrace these CRM applications and will continue to be so in the near term. Gartner reported that SaaS accounted for almost 47 percent of total CRM software revenue in 2014.
"This is driven by organizations of all sizes seeking easier-to-deploy and faster-ROI alternatives to modernizing legacy systems, implementing new applications or providing alternative complementary functionality," Correia said.
Pure-play functionality is in demand: Companies are still interested in pure play functionality, at least where it lines up with the own needs. SaaS makes adding on such features and applications easy and relatively cheap. That trend as well was reflected in these numbers, as pure-play vendors generally saw strong revenue growth.
CRM is global: Emerging markets have been a source of growth of in the CRM market for some time and 2014 proved no exception. Gartner found that emerging Asia Pacific countries formed the fastest-growing region with 18.7 percent of spending in 2014. Europe and the rest of Asia, greater China and Latin America also experienced good growth, albeit in the low double digits. Here, Gartner noted that growth was slower than in 2013 due to economic issues. The Middle East and North Africa and mature Asia Pacific markets had the healthiest growth, Gartner found, while Sub-Saharan Africa posted the lowest growth.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

4 Aturan Customer Satisfaction & membangun Customer Loyalty

If sales are the engine that drives your business, then good customer service and building a high level of customer satisfaction is the fuel. Your ability to satisfy your customers to gain customer loyalty is the critical determinant of your success in driving sales and growing your business. There are four levels of customer satisfaction, all based on the degree to which you meet customer expectations. The higher the level you achieve, the more you will build customer loyalty and the greater will be your success.

RULE #1: BUILD CUSTOMER SATISFACTION BY MEETING THEIR EXPECTATIONS

The minimum requirement to simply stay in business—to survive—is to meet the expectations of your customers. At this level, your customers have no complaints. They are satisfied for the moment but at this point, customer loyalty doesn’t exist. If a competitor demonstrates that it can and will do more than merely meet their expectations, your customer will very quickly become ex-customers. Moreover, if you fail to meet their expectations, perhaps only one time, they will leave and give their customer loyalty to someone else who will. It can be instructive to observe your local merchants—true entrepreneurs.

RULE #2: EXCEED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

This higher level of customer satisfaction is reached by surprising your customers, going beyond what they expected. Fast, friendly, and good customer service, followed up by a phone call to make sure everything is all right, might put you into this category. So does a product or service that is a cut above that of your competitors. The second level of customer satisfaction moves you beyond mere survival, building a measure of customer loyalty and giving you an edge over your competitors. It can also increase your profitability. Customers who experience the kind of service that exceeds their expectations are often willing to pay for it, enabling the supplier to raise prices and thus improve profit margins.

RULE #3: REMEMBER, DELIGHT BRINGS CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Have you ever experienced a level of good customer service that not only exceeded your expectations, but actually brought a smile to your face? A customer served at this level is truly delighted. Not only have the customers’ basic needs been met, or even exceeded, but they have truly been touched on an emotional level. And once customers have enjoyed this experience, you will gain customer loyalty and it will be very difficult for a competitor to pry them away. When you delight your customers, you are on the way to creating an exceptional and highly profitable business. There are countless cost effective ways to delight your customers and build your customer loyalty. Consider the difference between first-class and coach service on most airlines. To delight your customer is to show that you care—about them. NO wonder it brings a smile to their face! The greater your success in delighting your customers and providing good customer service, the greater success you will enjoy in your business.

RULE #4: AMAZE THEM WITH GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE

This fourth level of customer satisfaction is what will propel your business into the stratosphere. It requires you to, not just meet or exceed your customer’s expectations, nor to simply delight them, but to truly amaze them. When you are able to accomplish this on a regular basis, you will be in a position to dominate the marketplace and achieve remarkable rates of revenue growth and profitability. Examine your business. How might you amaze your customers? The only limit is your own imagination.

5 Hal yang bisa mengganggu proses Inside Sales

Inside sales is an exquisite ground for sales reps to prove their sales mettle. It takes a unique personality, and an intense drive, to take on the most intimidating tasks in an organisation, cold calls – and turn it into a pipeline. The struggle of inside sales representatives is clearly visible by the organization, but the intense pressure and complexities of the inside sales leader is usually looked over.
 Inside sales managers find trouble in defining business protocols, lead management policies, workforce management, training structure, etc. And moreover, few managers face adversities in the technology or tools adopted by the organization, since they do not properly align with their sales operations.
Here are 5 gaps in your Inside sales process that you should not ignore at all costs.

1. Missing Inside Sales KPI metrics and Sales Leaderboards

Monitoring the right sales key performance indicators (KPI) enables managers to predict performances and determine whether the reps’ are on course to hit the desired targets. Sales activity metrics, pipeline management metrics, and sales results metrics are key broad categories of metrics the sales managers should have their eyes on. Sales managers should shift from evaluating rep performance solely on Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), to metrics like Reach rate, Pass rate and Pipeline rate, as stated by Outbound Index, QuotaFactory. This paradigm shift will help sales managers to identify the actual performance and weak links of reps, rather than letting them loose to sink or swim. 

However, you should make sure these KPIs are clearly defined and made visible to the entire inside sales team in the form of a sales leaderboard. This encourages transparency and instills motivation. 


2. Manual Calling and Predictive Dialing - both don’t help Inside Sales

Manual calling by far has widely known to be both unproductive and frustrating for inside sales. Inside sales team needs a communication solution that can empower them to be more effective and productive in their outbound campaigns. Down the line, some organizations tried replicating B2C models and adopted Predictive Dialer solutions that created a big bang, but are unfortunately Predictive Dialer is not suitable for inside sales operations which requires engagement with multiple stakeholders of organizations through multiple interactions. Moreover predictive dialers can results in dead air for the customer if more than one connect was made. This infuriates the customer. 

What you really need is a sales engagement hub that determines the optimum day and time to contact a customer, and allowing sales reps to be in control of every call, giving them time and all the information needed to prep before starting a conversation with the prospective customer.

3. Treating all leads as equal

All leads are not created equal, and they should not be treated the same either. Did you know Web Leads that responded within 5 minutes have a 40% more chance of conversion? Hence it is important that a Web Lead should be addressed before a Cold-Call (Outbound). Once the lead turns up in the reps’ pipeline it’s his/her decision on when to follow up and usually they are not equipped with the adequate tools to prioritize. 

You as Sales manager along with your marketing team should define priorities for each type of lead generated and deploy automatic lead scoring and assignment to make sure Hot leads have get addressed first.

4. Coaching Tools

Usually Sales Reps are trained on products once, given a prospect list with a phone, and are expected to generate revenue magically. They are let loose to sink or swim. Inside sales representatives need to be trained and coached consistently to do better objection handling, getting past the gatekeeper, out-maneuvering opponents, and pitch better. Sales managers understand this but feel constrained by incompetence of the Sales Coaching tools, or worse, the absence of it.
5 Inside sales gaps you better not ignore

Sales managers should have necessary quality management and assessment tools to monitor, analyze and give feedback on performance of each rep by gauging the quality of rep-customer interactions, identifying points for improvement, etc.


5. Marketing Automation and Sales CRM both were not designed for the Inside Sales Rep

This is my personal favorite. Your marketing team just invested in a Marketing Automation system (hubspot, marketo, pardot, etc) and your Outside Sales team is showing off the Salesforce CRM which you would have been forced to use in your Inside Sales team. This might come as a shocker, but these tools were not made for Inside Sales. Inside sales is a communication intensive, fast-paced activity where phone, email, lead management, coaching, recording and real-time decision making is needed. 

The actual need is for a Sales Engagement Hub. With cloud based applications gaining ground it is worth experimenting with such a tool. This could be the biggest gap that you can address.

15 Hal yang Anda perlu untuk marketing di tahun 2015

Planning next year's marketing mix is never easy, especially if you've allowed yourself to get a bit behind on the latest in technology, practices and trends. Use this list as a benchmark for where you need to ramp up and where you can deepen your dive for next year's marketing growth.
This list is organized in two ways: 1) Marketing activity needed to drive results, and 2) Technology necessary to drive that activity. This way, you can easily see how marketing and technology must play a significant role together to help you tackle business strategy.
  1. Big Data – Growing your understanding of data in 2015 is top of the list because nothing in your toolbox will tell you as much as you can learn about your audience than data. The technology here can be equally as simple by getting to know Microsoft Excel really well. The latest version comes packed with extras for digging into the data and making it present very well visually.
  2. Landing pages – Flexibility in offering a new service, a competitive overview, or building out a page for a specific offer means you need the ability to create landing pages on the fly. You must create content that speaks exactly to the audience that needs your offer and landing pages help you do this. WordPress and Microsoft SharePoint come to mind as viable products to help you achieve this critical tactic.
  3. Content library – Your company should have multiple content creators (anyone can write and contribute, and should be!) and then you need a place to store all of that content so others, particularly your sales team, can easily find and use your work. Get organized once and for all and make sure you're making it easy for everyone to leverage your content assets. Microsoft SharePoint offers this feature as well as many CRMs, like Salesforce.
  4. Email – No, it's not dead. It's alive and well and still one of the main tools to reach your audience and track their engagement. If your current tool needs dusted off for 2015, consider finding one that will be so fun you want to use it every day, because you may just want to depending on your strategy. Lots of SaaS models make it easy and fun, like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
  5. Analytics – It does pay off to go back and revisit your traffic, the goals you set for downloading content, the pages visited, etc. and it will take time to get this all built out if you're creating your program from scratch. It's worth it and you shouldn't simply rely on the straightforward Google analytics tool. Tailor it to your needs and send yourself reports frequently. Digital technology like this allows you to adjust the rest of your work as needed based on the numbers – take advantage of that flexibility and constantly improve your work over time. Most of the programs you use have analytics and insights tools, start there and perfect your processes.
  6. Social – Decide what you want this channel to do for you this year; each can have different goals. For example, Facebook may be great for recruiting new talent while Twitter is best for driving website traffic. Decide how your channels fit, make a commitment to consistently posting and work this little gem into your overall plan for the best impact. For lead generation, make sure you're following and engaging, where it makes sense, of course, your partners, clients and prospects. Most of the technologies listed above pull in the contact's social links or allow you to push your content via a social channel. Use those efficiencies and teach your whole company to go social.
  7. Webinars – First and foremost, take your 2014 webinars and turn them into an on-demand channel for lots of leveraging for 2015. Next, go to those insights or analytics and determine what topics held the most value, then decide how you can increase that value in 2015.  What blog post performed the best in 2014? Make that your first 2015 webinar. There's likely lots of good stuff here you can reuse for 2015. If you're sticking with the Microsoft suite, Lync is a good tool; otherwise Cisco, ReadyTalk and BrightTALK could be your go-to product.
  8. Collaboration – Most of the marketing on this list could be created via collaboration with your partners, clients and inside teams. Don't allow your marketing to find itself in a silo next year – collaborate! Microsoft SharePoint, mentioned above, it a great tool for this as well as Yammer, Wrike, Basecamp – lots of options here.
  9. Proposals & RFPs – In my many years of work I've yet to meet someone who said they love to sink their mind into a great proposal creation process. Not one! Technology can really help here, if nothing else to help you keep organized, automate a few steps in the process and build templates you can leverage for the next hairy RFP. Tinderbox and Proposable are potential options. Don't forget some of your other tools may have similar features you can leverage for this important sales support activity.
  10. Presentations – Creating a presentation for your team to share with an audience, whether it's an audience of one or many, isn't likely your 2015 challenge. Figuring out how to leverage that deck for lead generation is likely your goal. More SaaS options come to mind here, like SlideShare, or leveraging your company profile on LinkedIn. Make it your goal to use, and then reuse, your small group presentations for the larger audience you want to reach.
  11. Training – Making learning part of your culture should ultimately be your goal, but if that isn't going to happen, add in a healthy dose of training and sharing to your team's regular cadence. Using technology for delivering or creating this training is possible with platforms like Lessonly and Lynda. Most of the products you buy, like Microsoft's, also come with training opportunities to help you work smart.
  12. Mobile – Don't let this word trip you up. What it really means is that you allow someone to connect with you wherever they are on the device they have. That's it. So when you're building out your super sweet campaign, think of how your audience may be clicking from their mobile device instead of their laptop. Translation: keep it simple. Extra technology not necessary unless you're ready to build an app.
  13. Automation – This one can get the best of us. Before you're able to tackle any automation, your processes have to be spot on; otherwise, you'll automate a hairball (very not cool). Take the time now to walk through each step and validate the value each brings to your experience. Once you're there, tap into many of your above tools for fluid features, or, look at Oracle or Marketo if you think your current mix lacks what you need.
  14. Video – What story can video tell for you in 2015? As a foundation, you need a video about your brand, your product, your client or case study, a demo and to round things out, a video about your culture. Remember, people still do business with other people and likability ranks high when it comes to that very important buying decision. Don't miss your opportunity. I'm very biased and basically rely on Adobe products for our team's video needs. 
  15. Design – Don't skimp here. I've seen it all too often where a brilliant strategy completely fails because the design missed the mark. Design is important, worth the investment and can sway buying decisions (emotions!). The Adobe suite wins again here, but also services like Veer and finding a talented infographic designer can help tell your story and reach a deeper level of understand among your audience.
  16. Podcasts - OK, I lied, there are 16 technologies you need to know and 15 just sounded better for a title. While flying under the marketing radar for the last few years, podcasts have been increasing in popularity partly due to breakthrough podcasts like Serial. You can upload your podcasts to SoundCloud or Podomatic (which lets you record your podcast directly to the site as well) if you don't have the resources to get on the iTunes store.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Apakah tim Inside Sales Anda sudah orang yang tepat?

Sales is a very important function within every organization. Hiring right salespeople can lead to a steady increase in sales. And an inappropriate selection can lead to eroded profits, damaged customer relationships, and a bad brand image in the market. Keeping these warnings in mind, it's important to not only grow your sales force, but to grow it appropriately.
Evaluating a candidate for inside sales would be different from examining for a face-to-face selling job. The sales hiring procedure would also depend on your company’s stage and the products or services you sell.
An inside sales representative must possess the following 5 traits to get through the selection process and outlast in the corporate world. Check out how you can judge a prospect on these required traits.
 1) Hunger to Achieve
An inside sales rep must have the desire to work tirelessly towards a high and distant goal (which revolves around selling obviously). He/she needs to put intense and repeated efforts to accomplish those goals. They must do what it takes – from making a certain number of outbound calls to boldly networking to reach the decision maker. A recruiter might find it hard to recognize those who are high in the need for achievement and those who are not. But with the help of a few questions, you can detect it. Have a look:
  •  What are your standards of success on your job and how do you measure them?
  •  When setting a high standard for yourself and/or others to follow; what kind of examples do you try  to set, and what are you trying to demonstrate?
  •  What do you consider to be your greatest achievement so far and why?
  •  What kinds of sacrifices you made to become successful?
2) Competitiveness
A great inside sales rep has to be competitive. This quality is marked by a person’s strong desire to exceed and intense determination to win. While being excessively aggressive is definitely not encouraged, a healthy balance between ambition and determination is required to be successful. The questions to diagnose if the candidate is truly competitive could be:
  •  How do you act when you encounter competition?
  •  Give me an example of when you competed hard and won.
  •  When was the last time you were competitive, and what were you doing?
  •  Where do you rank on your sales team?
3) Optimism
The best inside sales reps are the ones who have a positive attitude and are optimistic.They should not break down when they get a “no” for an answer. If they lack the optimism to overcome hurdles like these, then they aren’t likely to last very long. Look for evidence by asking questions like:
  • Tell me about a time when you experienced a setback at work. How did it impact your confidence and what did you learn from it?
  • When was the last time a customer annoyed you and how did you respond? 
  • When was the last time you kept going while everyone else was giving up?
4) Persuasiveness
Great inside sales reps must know how to convince the prospects and clients and adapt them to their way of looking at things. It’s not about getting others to acknowledge your arguments; it’s about making them engulf your message and believe that it is in their best interests. The questions to check if the prospect is persuasive could be:
  •  Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way?
  •  By providing examples, convince me that you can adapt to a wide variety of people,situations and environments.
5) Integrity
A sales rep should possess great integrity. They should be endowed with strong moral values and should be honest with their superiors, coworkers and clients. Ask these questions to judge the prospect on integrity:
  • We are often confronted with the dilemma of having to choose between what is right and what is best for the company. Give at least two examples of situations in which you faced this dilemma and how you handled them.
  • Give me an example of an ethical decision you have had to make on the job. What factors did you consider in reaching this decision?
  • Have you ever had to bend the rules or exaggerate a little bit when trying to make a sale?
There is no perfect way to predict the outcome of a new hire. However, you can always evaluate the individual based on the above-mentioned personality traits and form an opinion based on the experiences and accomplishments shared by them.



7 alasan mengapa Inside Sales Anda gagal..



Growth of Inside Sales can be attributed to various factors such as changing buyer behavior, budget cuts, technological advancement and so on. According to a study, Inside Sales is growing 300% faster than traditional field sales.
But setting up an Inside Sales department is not easy. You need to do a lot of trial and error to find out which processes create the best results for your company and what is not working at all. Management should be very careful and ensure that they are not setting up the team for failure.
Below are the 7 Reasons why Inside Sales Organizations Fail:
Not having a Clearly Defined Structure
Inside Sales is not just about cold calling leads and offering your products/services to them. The sales cycle must be clearly defined with clear processes, best practices and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and everything should be continuously monitored by the management. Inside Sales representatives should follow a clear path right from the time they engage with a prospect for the first time till the time they close the deal.
No Training or Coaching
Many companies don’t provide the required training or coaching to the inside sales reps. They might educate them about the solutions offered but do work on coaching them to become better salespersons. Ideally sales reps should undergo training on:
  • Sales development skills
  • Buyer’s persona
  • Tools like CRM and teleconferencing technologies such as WebEx, GoToMeeting etc.
  • Product
No Agreed-upon Qualified Lead Definition
The stage when the lead can be called “qualified”, usually creates a conflict between the sales development, marketing and sales teams. The management should make sure that the qualified lead definition is agreed upon by all the teams involved in the process. Expectations should be set accordingly for all the departments once the first qualified lead is passed. However, the definition can be revised over time.
Battle with the Outside Sales teams
Many field sales reps perceive the inside sales rep as someone who will assist them in completing their daily tasks and other back-end operations. The role of both the teams should be clearly defined and both of them need to understand when to hand over a lead and how to engage with each other to produce best results for the company.
Setting Unrealistic Targets
Because the work style of Inside Sales team does not include travelling and that they can sell remotely, organizations sometimes set harder and unrealistic goals for them. However, sales cycle could be long and can take time. So, ideally, management should set the targets for each member that looks realistic and motivates them to achieve those goals.
Hiring Wrong People
Hiring an inappropriate person for Inside Sales role can lead to damaged customer relationships and eroded profits. Hence, it is crucial to select the right person and examine him/her carefully based on his past experiences and accomplishments. Also read 5 Traits to Look for When Hiring an Inside Sales Representative.
Measure Wrong KPIs or Metrics
Inside Sales Managers often measure a Rep based on the volume of calls made by them or the number of opportunities they got or the number of deals closed. They emphasize more on the quantity than quality. However, a manager should make sure that the team spends their time wisely by making smart dials which will lead to more quality conversations and higher qualified opportunities. Availability of CRM solutions and Intelligent Dialers can enable sales reps to access more data within less time leading to fruitful conversations with the leads.

10 tips untuk Inside Sales Anda


Ramping reps faster is top of mind for all inside sales managersbecause it can shorten sales cycles, accelerate revenue growth, and help launch products more quickly.
Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist of The Bridge Group, Inc covered 10 Tips for Inside Sales to ramp productivity in a video titled “10 Tips towards Inside Sales Productivity.”

Inside Sales Tip #1. 10 by 10 Rule

The 10 by 10 rule means that you make 10 calls by 10AM. What we see is that reps often come into their offices in the morning and waste a lot of time on email, most of which have got nothing to do with your profession. So next time you come to your office, open up your email, respond to not more than 3 or 4, and save the rest for later. And really focus on making those 10 calls by 10AM. It is really going to set your day up for productivity. An average Inside Sales repmakes roughly 50 calls a day. If you make 10 of them before 10AM, you’ve achieved 20% of that metric before most of your peers are out of neutral.

Inside Sales Tip #2. 4×4 Strategy

What we are seeing inside sales reps do today is sort of a high-level qualification of an account. They pick one or two functional areas to target and they go after them. When you implement a 4×4 strategy, it means you pick 4 functional areas with an account and you target each one of them 4 times within 10 business days.”Call, Call, Email and Call”. People typically respond to touches 3 or 4. But you do this for 4 contacts until you have either qualified or disqualified the account. This 4×4 methodology takes you deep into an account and ensures that you are talking to all the people possibly can and will yield you the best results.

Inside Sales Tip #3. Voicemail is your friend

There is a raging debate about whether or not leaving a voicemail is an effective tactic. Trish Bertuzzi gives a simple analogy about not leaving a voicemail  “You go to a party all dressed-up, you drive to the location, you walk up to the front door, you stand there and don't ring the doorbell. Nobody is going to let you in. If you do leave a voicemail, you are going to ring the doorbell, they’re going to let you in, and you get to join the party”. In short, voicemail is your friend, make it interesting and relevant to your buyer, and it will give you those conversations you are looking for.

Inside Sales Tip #4. Pre-call Plan - Once

Quite often when we discuss with inside sales reps on their productivity challenges they mention that they spend a lot of time pre-call planning. “Do pre-call planning once.” What that means is you create a system that works for you. That system means you identify 10, 11, or 12 pieces of data you need to know about a prospect before you pick up the phone and deliver the unique message to them. Put those pieces of data in a word document or in the CRM. You collect them once and use them many times. This negates the need to do pre-call planning every time you pick up the phone to call the same prospect. “7 Things you need to know about your leads Before Calling” will give you a better idea on the essentials that you need to arm yourselves for an effective conversation.

Inside Sales Tip #5. Bunch like calls together

If you have to make 50 calls in a day, in order to stay organized and to stay on message, bunch like calls together. So if you are doing introductory calls do your pre-call planning and make that first call. If you are doing follow-up calls to a campaign bunch those calls together. This helps in ensuring your messaging is cohesive.

Inside Sales Tip #6. Power Hours

We live in a highly interruptive society; email, instant message, internal meeting, field partners, etc. You get interrupted multiple times a day and that impacts your productivity. Dedicate two solid one-hour sessions a day to nothing but outbound calling. It will increase your productivity and if you do one of those power hours before 10 am, you’ve killed two birds in one stone.

Inside Sales Tip #7. Qualify the Company, not the Contact

Inside sales reps receive a significant number of inbound leads, but we see them making a common mistake and that mistake is to qualify the contact and not the company. If you know your decision maker is the VP of Information systems, and yet you get a lead from the network administrator. Don't call the network administrator, assume it's a signal that something is going on and call your decision maker. That way when you actually have a conversation with the network administrator you no longer have to bargain for access to authority.

Inside Sales Tip #8. Do the math to get to NO

Figure out how many ‘No's’ you have to hear to get to ‘Yes’. And if you setup No’s as your goals, they become milestones on your way to success, as opposed to milestones that make you feel rejected. Implement the strategy and walk away having a better day. Walk back to the 4×4 strategy, a lead comes in, the CMO says ‘No’, the Director of Demand Generation says ‘No’, the VP of says ‘No’, but the Director of Sales Enablement says ‘Tell me more’, and your sales process is launched.

Inside Sales Tip #9. It’s not the arrow, it’s the Indian

You can have all the technologies (marketing and sales automation software, sales acceleration tools, sales enablement technology etc,) and the shiniest toys at your disposal, but if you don’t have an effective process in place for how you run your day, you are not going to achieve your goals. Even before technology advancements struck sales, sales people were solid.

Inside Sales Tip #10. Stand up and be Counted

Inside sales is an amazing career nowadays. It’s the fastest growing profession and has been proved to be a great way to generate pipeline and revenue. And somewhere down the line Inside sales will replace Outside SalesAccording to a study, Inside sales teams continue to grow at 15% each year and are growing 3 times faster than traditional field sales.

Sales sudah biasa ditolak, tapi mengapa?


The most frustrating aspect of sales are Objections. I think we can all agree on this. But, we also got to accept the fact that sales objections are expected in every selling process. There are no sales without a few roadblocks. This goes for both inbound and outbound sales.
Picture this; you’ve done your research on your prospect, identified whom to contact, the best time to contact, made your initial contact, and even got an appointment. But just when you thought things are going real smooth and you are just a few seconds away from closing the deal. BAM!, you get hit with a ‘but’. Your product/service is great, but I don’t think we see an opportunity or, I think your product will do wonders for the company, but I don’t think the board would agree to this. You feel like you have hit a brick wall. After all the hard work, all the research you did, all the time you devoted for a single prospect, he just blows you away. It is frustrating, isn't it?

Objection

But what if I say, objections are opportunities. Opportunities to influence and convince qualified prospects to purchase and weed out the prospects that are not a good fit for your offering. And to convert objections to opportunities, you will have to learn how to overcome them.
A simple way in tackling sales objections is by overcoming them even before your prospect gets a chance to voice them. It is not as easy as it sounds. Before you even think of tackling your prospect’s objections, you need to know what kind of objections he/she is going to voice. To get out of the frustrating rollercoaster of objections and move into a serene and positive addressal of objections, every sales rep needs to be apprenticed with the most common sales objections. This helps them in building tactics, and plan their counter-attack when the time comes.
So, here are the most common sales objections every Inside Sales rep come across;
Sales Objection #1: “We don’t have the budget to..”
This is probably the easiest objection a prospect could come up with. He/she would say things like they have no room in their budget to purchase your product, or they might be looking for a discount. The bottom line is always the biggest hurdle for clients, and you will be required to justify your cost. Cost is probably the most difficult objection to overcome, no questions there.
Sales Objection #2: “We don’t see the need for your services”
‘Need’ is especially the most prevalent objection observed in the sales of complex product or services. This is mostly because of unidentified needs of the prospect, value proposition, or if the prospect is overwhelmed with a lot of information. They are perplexed whether the product would be a right fit or not.
Sales Objection #3: “I can’t make a decision alone on this”
In many cases, prospects get off the hook with this. Because the person you are talking to does not have the authority to make an immediate decision. For larger companies, there would be committees involved in the buying process, which makes life even harder for the inside sales rep.
Sales Objection #4: “We are all used to things this way”
Your prospect might be comfortable with the things they are used to. That’s quite common. It is human nature to be complacent and fear change. If a prospect is complacent, it is because he is ill-informed about the opportunity or potential, so it is the sales rep that should take the extra step in explaining the over-arching problem.
Sales Objection #5: “I can’t make a decision right now. How about you call me next month?”
Prospects procrastinating is not new to inside sales. They would come up with non-committal responses to put the sales process on hold to buy them some time, or just object. But the chances of them coming back are really slim.
Understanding and being familiar with sales objections will help sales reps to arm themselves with the right counter-attack and inside sales strategies that will tip the scale in their favor. Strategising yourself to handle every objection will transform you into one of the best salesperson.


5 Tips sales Anda



Inside Sales Sell like a Pro
Sales is definitely the most challenging gig in professions, but it is not rocket science. Closing has always been a tough code to crack, but some sales reps are really good at it and others not so much. But with a solid game plan every rep could be a ‘Rockstar’.
If sales reps adopt effective processes to approach prospects, it becomes easier to qualify, prospect, and sign new buyers. The old school “ABC” strategy is one that needs to go away. ‘Always Be Closing’ was once a definite home run for sales reps, but times have changed and customers have become savvier to closing techniques. Customers don’t want to be hammered into buying. ABC strategy makes them feel that you are more interested in making the sale than meeting their needs. This strategy has been known to create a sense of pressure, which inevitably creates a resistance to the sale. You would be putting the possibility of a long term relationship with the customer at stake.

Here are 5 tips that will help you sell like a Real Pro:-

#1. Use a CRM:

CRM solutions can have a major impact on closing sales, by targeting the prospect base that really bring results. Customer Relationship Management software allows reps to manage the overall sales pipeline by registering leads, tracking interactions, creating targeted sales pitches, and analyzing success and failure rates. Incorporating a CRM with your sales process can strengthen your sales and marketing alignment by integrating the marketing, inside sales, and sales departments, leaving ‘no lead unturned’.
A recent study made by Nucleus Research states that CRM returns $8.71 for every dollar spent, which have increased from $5.61 in 2011.

#2. Always be Available and Knowledgeable

It is imperative that you always respond to prospects as quickly as possible and during a reasonable time. We have discussed the best time to call prospects in our previous post that will help in shedding some light to this tip.
You are 9 times more likely to convert a prospect into a lead by responding to calls/emails within 5 minutes. These odds would undoubtedly play in your favor. But how many inside sales reps actually follow through?
Sales reps should be equipped with the right kind of information. You should know how your product/service fits the needs of your prospect. But over 58% of customers’ report that sales reps fail to answer their questions effectively.

#3. Find a Common Ground

Do a little background research on the prospect’s industry and the prospect him/herself on social networks to help you personalize your sales process and communications. A common ground between you and your prospect is one highlighted tip on how to build instant credibility with prospects. Skimming through your prospects social life, alma mater, interests will help you determine on how to communicate. Always be personable and avoid boilerplate emails.
Personalized emails have proven to have a 14% increase in Click-through-rate and 10% increase in conversion rates.

#4. Never Answer an Unasked Question

It is easy to sink a sale by answering questions that have not entered the prospect's mind. Such behaviour surfaces when you are afraid of losing a sale that you start answering objections that exist only in your vivid imagination. 

#5. Negotiate and Follow-up

Give your prospect time to think about your offer and prepare to be flexible and negotiate terms on the prospect’s favor. Never negotiate in a manner where you succumb the prospect to pressure. Letting them know that you understand and relate shows that you are committed to not only their sale, but in addressing their needs.
Follow up on a regular basis, be persistent so that your prospect doesn’t go cold, but be careful on being too persistent because that might put you off the hook.  Majority of sales are made during the fifth to twelfth contact, so never lose hope on your prospect.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Mengapa sebaiknya CRM diintegrasikan dgn Marketing Automation



Modern marketing is evolving to meet new business-side demands for better attribution and ROI, as well as customer demands for less spam and an increasingly personalized experience. Technology advances—along with the shift away from spending marketing dollars on advertising, trade shows, and other interruption-based, one-size-fits-all marketing—have opened up entirely new options for personalization at scale, along with the ability to track and optimize marketing efforts in the digital world.
To take full advantage of today’s technology stack, companies must align sales and marketing on both a technical and human level; a 2014 report released by MathMarketing revealed that alignment between marketing and sales can help companies become 67 percent better at closing deals and generate 209 percent more revenue from marketing. With full business alignment and technology integration, CRM and marketing automation can enable closed-loop reporting, consistent sales attribution, and scalable 1-to-1 marketing.

Aligning People and Technology to Close the Loop

Closed-loop systems allow marketers to understand where the content is connecting with customers—literally “closing the loop” to enable a consistent attribution model where revenue is tied back to the source. Before focusing on technology, sales and marketing teams have to first align on goals and cadence; decide which information is necessary and which is noise; and define a calibrated workflow based upon the following:
  • The important messages/offers by stage
  • Inbound content placement and progression
  • The type of date needed in both CRM and marketing automation applications
  • Lead-generation strategy: (a) When a lead is marketing- or sales-qualified; (b) cadence and volume of nurture flights; (c) best practices for automatically assigning prospects to different campaigns based on contextual data
  • The type of lead and action information each department needs access to
Once teams agree on what and when information is necessary, the next step is to integrate the marketing automation and CRM systems to ensure that the two systems, as well as the marketing and sales department personnel, have the data they need to function well and make better business decisions.

Connecting Your Systems

Every company has different integration needs and resources, so sales and marketing leaders need to align on an option that best fits their needs. Whatever the decision, companies must integrate their marketing and CRM systems on some level. Even with the best alignment and intentions, manually transferring data between systems will ultimately result in duplicated, missing, or outdated data. Businesses have a few options for connecting marketing and CRM systems:
1. Out-of-the-box integration is the common default when selecting a monolithic software suite (read: SAP, Oracle) with native integration to applications within the suite. However, this approach limits options to those offered by one vendor.
2. In-house integration should be considered via API when a developer can work with the marketing team to adjust integration points and ensure that software updates are compatible across systems over time. This method opens up the most flexibility, but also typically requires more resources and dedicated expertise in the long run.
3. Systems Integrators (SIs) are an option for companies with the means to outsource. Consideration should be given to a maintenance plan, and businesses should look for dedicated solution expertise. This option is a good middle ground, offering some flexibility without the overall resource requirements of in-house integrations.
4. Self-service integration platforms are a new way for marketers to take control of their applications’ environment and bypass the cost of outsourced development without giving up flexibility. Cloud-based solutions designed for modern marketers use integration-platform-as-a-service (IPaaS) capabilities to connect CRM and marketing automation solutions with simple step-by-step setup processes and Web-based management.

The Power of Integration

Integrating the right data between marketing and CRM systems gives teams the power to improve upon every process and customer touch point—the results include higher conversion rates, increased revenue, and the confidence to implement new strategies based on a deeper understanding of customer needs and behaviors at every stage of the sales cycle.
Closed-loop reporting by life cycle stage and revenue offers critical insights for sales teams to gain visibility into what messages, offers, and assets are effective at each stage in the funnel. By incorporating closed-loop reporting from marketing automation systems like HubSpot, employees can use joint marketing and CRM data to prioritize marketing and sales efforts that drive agreed-upon KPIs, leading to less time wasted on low-value efforts.
Consistent sales attribution relies on closed-loop reporting to shed light on every aspect of the sales cycle and attributes credit to the source of the revenue. With synchronized marketing and CRM systems, employees can see where market-qualified and sales-qualified leads differ in accuracy and targeting. Proper integration makes everything trackable, from what generated the prospect to what ultimately converted the sale, allowing companies to better meet prospect needs and increase revenue in future campaigns.
Personalized marketing at scale taps the potential of integrated CRM and marketing systems to automate inbound and outbound campaigns based on data like deal status in CRM; time elapsed since the last interaction with a sales rep; information on whether the contact is an active opportunity or a current customer; and more. Without using information from both systems, companies simply blast the same message to everyone without the context of where they sit in the buying process.
Integrating sales and marketing software is essential for inbound marketing and sales to work in tandem. Otherwise you’re just firing in the dark with limited knowledge of what you’re aiming at, or whether you’ve even hit anyone. CRM and marketing automation integrations have been made easy with a plethora of options, including easy-to-use self-tailored platforms made specifically for marketing and sales teams.
Today, the question isn’t just how to integrate your marketing and sales technology. Instead ask yourself: How can you align the two departments to take advantage of data-driven sales and marketing?
Peter Chase is the founder and vice president of business development at Scribe Software, an established global provider of data-delivery solutions. Daniel Lynton is the founder and CEO at LyntonWeb, an inbound marketing and technology agency that helps clients around the world grow their businesses with cutting-edge marketing strategies and solutions.