How to Maximize Sales Effectiveness Through Your Sales Process

Sales effectiveness describes the process of finding the right sales tasks to produce the best possible sales output and outcomes. It refers to the average performance and output of each sales rep. Depending on your organization’s overall strategy and goals, output can refer to revenue or lead generation, or sales of a specific product.

Every organization wants their salespeople to be more effective - which means closing more sales in a shorter amount of time. For any salesperson to prosper in their career, they need to move beyond being good at building relationships - buyers want greater value from fewer relationships to achieve their goals and manage their risks. So, sales effectiveness is variable and unique to each company. Sales effectiveness is dependent on processes you set for every member of your team, as well as ongoing measurement of performance on a group and individual level.

Sales effectiveness is dependent on your team's sales process. Here are some useful tips that you can follow to maximize your team's sales effectiveness.

1. Free Trials

If you’re going to increase free trial signups, you must wow your visitors and make them sign up on your website through campaigns via email or social media. Your first goal is to increase the number of your free trial sign ups.

On your sign up forms, do note that the more information you ask for upfront, the more likely it is that the visitors will be turned off and not sign up for your free trial at all. That’s why it is useful to make the sign up process as simple as possible. You can collect more of the information you need later. A welcome email is a vital part of your free trial strategy. Let the user choose their trial experience by filling out a form, creating an account, and then receiving an option to tour the product (enter the self-product demo) or to set up a trial meeting with a salesperson to know about the product. This strategy allows your free trial user to choose their own path based on which part of the buyer journey they are in.

It’s what you do after the prospect signs-up for your Free Trial that determines whether they will immediately convert, wait until the end of the free trial, or don’t convert at all. Wait until after the trial period to attempt to convert customers.

2. Email Campaign

Majority of email recipients open their email based on the subject line alone. Your emails’ subject line should be concise and informative, giving the reader a reason to click through. Prospects don’t usually read through the content of emails if they’re unfamiliar with the sender, to just give yours a quick scan and in a few seconds, decide whether they will delete your email or not. That’s why you want your message to be short, sweet, and to the point. Focus on short messages that have a strong call to action.

Images help make your email look more appealing, and can help affect conversion rates positively. However, many email applications block images, so your prospects may never see them. Never send an email that contains only an image with all the information in it. Make sure to also include text in your emails and avoid using high resolution photos - it takes a while to load, especially if your reader is opening your email on a mobile device.

Send emails frequently to keep your prospects’ attention, but not too much that you end up being spammy.

3. Call Your Trial Sign-ups Immediately

If you’re selling a SaaS product, you need to be calling all your free trial sign-ups within the first few minutes to convert more of them into paying customers. By calling quickly, the chances of reaching the lead will be higher than calling after 15 minutes of sign-up. Your chance of qualifying the same lead will be higher. Calling within a few minutes of sign-up is probably the most effective thing you can do to improve your overall sales numbers.

4. Focused Demo

When you’re giving a demo about your product, always give your prospects the big picture first. A technical demo should provide an overview of the product and it should show the buyer's interest and get them excited about your offerings. If you start the demo too fast, you'll end it too soon and if the demo is too long, the buyer will lose interest on your product. Most people usually remain silent during presentations so when the buyer speaks up, you should take notice. Technical demos must be interactive as this keeps the buyer engaged in your presentation and gives them a better understanding of your product.

5. Follow-Up

Choose the right channel to communicate with your prospects (either through email or phone calls). Some salespeople go with an email while others prefer to just pick up the phone and talk. The follow up should be a sale pitch – the pitch must focus on your prospect and their industry.

Don’t follow up too often. Create a follow-up schedule and stick to it. At the end of every conversation, send a summary e-mail that summarizes what you talked about and ask for their confirmation. This is one way to help make sure your prospects remember your conversations.

6. Sell Prepaid Plans

A yearly payment plan option is important for SaaS companies. In general, annual payment plans provide customers with a decent discount, which is a good thing if your customer is confident that they’ll be using your service for the long haul. An annual payment plan also means you get funds up front, which will allow you to focus on providing service to your customers.

A monthly payment option is also common for SaaS companies. This type of payment plan works best for users who would like to first test your service for a few months, and don’t want to fully commit to your company yet.

At the end of the day, whenever trying new processes, don’t forget to take note of the numbers and track which ones work best for you, your team, and your business. Tracking the results allow you to test for effectivity, and can give you a snapshot of how your business is performing.