Every sales team should have an effective sales strategy in place to boost sales performance. Sales strategies exist to align the entire team and provide sales reps with the tools they need for success, helping them achieve their goals and quota attainment. When determining the right strategies for an organization, hiring a sales consulting firm can help with implementing new sales strategies and strengthening existing strategies, leading to increased sales and revenue growth.
Sales consultants help to standardize, improve, and streamline existing sales strategies, creating a consistent process across the board. Consistent sales processes can decrease sales cycle time by 7-10%, and increase win rates by 10%. Thus, hiring sales consultants is one of the best ways to optimize sales strategies for top performance. Let’s dive into the top 4 sales strategies and how a sales consulting firm can help you leverage these strategies to boost revenue.
1. Base Your Sales Strategies on Data-Driven Insights
The key to getting the most out of a sales strategy lies in making decisions based on data-driven insights. By measuring a few KPIs, it’s easy to see whether the sales team is on track to meet sales and revenue goals. According to research, data-driven sales can increase profits by 8% while decreasing costs by up to 10%. Here are just a few good KPIs to track:
- Quota attainment
- Productivity
- Customer acquisition
- Lead-to-close ratio
Tracking KPIs indicates what is and isn’t working within the sales strategy. A sales consultant can look at KPIs objectively and help build a strong sales strategy based on the data. Since sales consultants are able to look at KPIs more objectively, they can look at a metric like the lead-to-close ratio. The lead-to-close ratio represents the number of leads marketing gives to sales in comparison with the number of closed deals. This metric demonstrates how effective the sales team is at reinforcing marketing’s messaging to the buyer and pushing interested parties to a purchasing decision. Outsourced sales consultants can monitor and track this over time — helping to identify any weak points in the sales approach and developing a data-backed strategy to increase the lead-to-close ratio.
2. Leverage Individual Sales Rep Performance Data to Guide Effective Sales Training
Effective sales training leads to better sales outcomes and higher revenue — in a study by CSO Insights, companies whose sales training “exceeded expectations” had a 3% increase in sales reps achieving their quota. One of the best ways to get the most out of training is by identifying the habits and traits of top-performers, then training the rest of the team on top-performing best practices. Monitoring key metrics like win rate, quota attainment, time spent selling, and more demonstrate which reps are top performers. These reps can then be looked to as examples to model best practices after.
A sales consulting firm can assist with sales training. Sales consultants can help identify top performers, and even introduce new tactics and behaviors to elevate sales rep performance. For example, sales consultants can leverage KPIs from individuals within the team, and notice where each team member is behind. Consultants can then create individualized training plans to help individual reps (and the team as a whole) perform better. By building up skills within the team, productivity, win rates, and revenue all improve.
3. Create Sales Enablement Content to Keep the Buyer Engaged
Sales enablement content encompasses all of the materials marketing creates to help sales reps communicate value to the customer. This includes everything from demo videos to customer testimonials to blogs and guides. This content is important for driving revenue — for instance, a customer testimonial describing how the product helped them can be the final piece that convinces a buyer to make a purchasing decision.
When creating sales enablement content, a sales consulting firm can boost your sales strategies by helping you understand what types of content are needed, when to share it with leads, and how to track the impact of each piece of collateral. Sales consultants are able to view current sales strategies objectively. For example, sales consultants can evaluate current strategies and determine what content is most effective. If the data shows that buyers are consistently making purchases when shown ROI content, sales consultants are able to help reps learn how to best harness ROI content during the sales process by explaining the best times to introduce this content during the buyer’s journey.
4. Adopt and Implement the Right Technology
In the past few years, sales have become increasingly digital — Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales will occur digitally. With an ever-changing landscape of digital sales, adjusting to the new normal is crucial. A sales enablement platform is needed to adjust sales strategies to the digital world. The right sales enablement platform will boost your sales strategies by helping with content management, sales training, coaching, and more. There’s a reason companies with sales enablement have a 49% win rate compared to 42.5% in those without.
Along with a sales enablement platform, your sales strategy needs a customer relationship management (CRM) system. A CRM helps marketing and sales manage prospects, from lead nurturing all the way through to the purchase. In fact, 64% of companies say CRM tools are impactful for their sales strategy.
When looking for the right sales enablement and CRM tech, sales consultants can help you find and implement the right technology to fortify your sales initiatives. Sales consultants can evaluate what technology, like Salesforce, could help reps better organize their resources. Consultants can then train reps on how to utilize a CRM to their advantage, strengthening sales strategies with the right technology to give reps the tools they need to drive sales.
Final Thoughts
The right sales consulting firm can help identify what your sales strategies need, building upon existing strategies to bolster win rates and drive revenue. Sales consultants can:
- Tailor training to your team
- Empower reps to perform at their best based on data
- Drive revenue and improve win rates
Learn how to find the right sales consultants for you with our blog, The Top 4 Criteria to Look For in a Sales Consulting Firm.