5 Steps to Making Better Sales Decisions

Whether it is the ultra-modern products offered by startups or the evergreen traditional products offered by years’ old national and international brands, everyone is vying to get the largest share of customers in their industry. But it requires a lot of endeavors and some effective decisions. One such decision is Sales decision. Sales decision is like a trailblazer for the entire organization. However, there are many things to keep in mind to ensure the effectiveness of the sales decision. Here are 5 main things to consider while taking any sales decision:

1. Objective

It is very important to have clear objectives before you take any sales decision. If you have a clear objective before going through the decision process you can check the success of your decision making process. So you should ask yourself whether you want to increase the sales of a certain product/service, enhance the customer experience or improve the after sales services. At the end of the process of decision making you should also evaluate if the sales decision that helps in achieving the targeted objectives.

2. Defining the process

In fact, we would like to dwell on this topic at some length, even at the risk of being labeled as part.  The communication planning is one of the key factors to consider while defining the process. In fact, communication is the only way you can make others acquainted with your thoughts and the solutions. So you need to plan the communication very well. So this process contains 2 major points: designing he process itself and effectively communicating the same with the relevant audience. In no way we can separate the “process designing” and “communication planning” as it is one of the parts of designing the process, but due to its importance we need to define the communication factor separately. So, we have actually divided this point into 2 parts: process designing strategy and the planning the communication for the maximum impact. a.) The Process Sales Decision is a very broad topic and there are different aspects to it. Depending upon the sales aspect you want to address there can be a distinctly different process. For example, if you want to enhance the customer experience, then you should have the solid data of customer feedback over a particular period of time. Then you should have certain well-researched options and logical grounds to support their effectiveness in answering the issue. b.) Special Tip One common mistake that most people make here is going for uneven comparison. If you are, say, a start-up, you just cannot afford to compare the sales strategies that are adopted by fortune 500 companies without localizing it to your level. Before researching any example, you should match Budget, Scope of revenue and work culture of the organization. Either your company or the one whose data is forming a base for research should be in harmony you should be able to localize the strategies to suit your environment.

3. Communication

Communication is the most basic characteristic that separates human beings from animals. And in terms of sales decision, the effectiveness of communication decides the overall impact. In fact, the first impact of your company or marketing endeavor decides the end results. So it is extremely imperative to make sure that the very first communication with your target audience should instantly impact their mind. Not only that, an ideal communication plan should also keep your target audience engaged and effectively communicate them the existing challenges and the proposed sales decision. It should tell them in no uncertain words, the impact of the sales decision you are going to take. Here are few things to remember

• An ideal presentation should give an overview in the minimum possible sentences.
• Try to curtail the length of your presentation as much as possible. Too much of clichés, jargons and unnecessary words can affect the sincerity of the presentation

  4. Gather the data effectively

In fact, our CRM systems have many unused or rarely used features that can help us a great way to take the best sales decisions. These CRMs not only help in registering client details and database but can also help in preparing many reports that can show the effectiveness of our sales strategies and overall impact of day to day marketing and customer services. In fact, apart for the most common parameters that you can come up with, like weekly sales report and number of leads that are converted into sales every month, these CRMs can generate reports on many other parameters too like the quality of your customer service executive, number of satisfied clients, the words and best performers, etc.

5. Look at the larger picture

Various CRM applications like salesforce, Skyward CRM offer extensive reports: right from the number of qualified leads to the evaluation of the overall quality of your employees’ performance. However, you should also be able to consider the relevant points of 2 different reports before arriving at a decision. For example, if the success rate of employee A in converting potential into leads is, say only 25%, it boils down to the fact that he is an underperformer. But what if his attendance is, say, only 50%? If you will then readjust the facts, you will find out that his actual performance is 50% (do some basic math?) So, you should actually pay more attention to the attendance issue rather than improving their work performance.

Conclusion

So going by the above, the clarity of objective, having a well-defined process, effectively gathering the data by effective use of CRM software and last but not the least, looking at the bigger picture by considering multiple aspects of the research, you would be able to make good sales decisions.