Things I Hate on a Monday – Tasks Your Hunter Shouldn’t Do

Sales Professionals – I’d like to take a moment to get up on my soap box and talk to you about KILLING the effectiveness of your Sales-Hunters. Hate effectiveness? Here are a couple of things you can ask your sales reps to do to stop them from doing that whole “Selling” thing:

1. Data Entry – You ask your hunter to find deals and close them, however you apparently also ask her to sharpen her typing skills. Leads from your friends in the marketing department should be already entered into the CRM, with any supporting information related to that opportunity. Almost every marketing automation and e-mail marketing solution provide the ability to take a lead generated by Marketing and convert that information, along with all background data, and create that as a Lead within your CRM. And don’t get me started on Landing Page / Request More Information form on your website that creates an e-mail and sends it to your sales professional…There are a variety of marketing tools available which can capture form data and enter it into the Marketing or Sales CRM system without the rep having to copy / paste from an e-mail.

2. Composing and Sending E-mails – Marketers already have a message they are trying to convey about the organization’s products and services. Quickest way to water down this message – let the sales professional distill that information into an e-mail based upon her understanding. A couple of bullet points about e-mail:

• Templates are Key – Don’t hope that your sales team understands what needs to be said, provide them templates of the key components which can be customized to meet the needs of that particular customer. The positive effect is twofold: (1) The message is consistent and (2) the sales rep isn’t wasting time typing out the corporate message over and over and over and over…..
• Automate the Process – Marketing Automation (Prospect Nurturing, e-mail marketing) systems and most CRMs support the sending of automatic e-mails to prospects. Sending them automatically basically “sales proofs” the process, and utilization of the automatic features of many systems automatically enters the information into the CRM, preventing excessive copy / paste functions just to have a comprehensive customer history.

3. Calling Blind – Let me qualify that sometimes too much information leads to brain freeze where the sales professional overthinks things (reference “Sales Proofing” above), however Marketing Automation / E-mail Marketing solutions capture open rates, as well as clicking of tracked links within correspondence, and many solutions offer visitor tracking for your website / microsite. Using this information can differentiate between a customer who has responded to your message, and one who said “Send me an E-mail” just to get off the phone with you.

Keep your hunters productive by cutting out repetitive tasks and providing some clarity as to the customers who have an interest in your offerings.