How can you focus on sales without bogging down your already busy sales team with more tasks and tools? Check out this post for techniques to elevate your customer experience, boost your lead follow-up processes, and shorten the sales...

As we wrap up another year, you’re likely looking for fresh ways to increase business revenue in 2024. After all, with rapid inflation and the tenuous state of the economy, many business leaders are being more conservative with their spending. 

For B2B companies, this means you need efficient and effective tactics to close deals and continue growing in the coming year! And you’re not alone—70% of sales leaders report their companies taking fewer risks now than pre-pandemic. Instead, 55% of them prioritize low-risk strategies with modest guaranteed growth. 

But how can you focus on sales without bogging down your already busy sales team with more tasks and tools? Sales reps already report spending only 28% of their week selling, with more than two-thirds of their time spent on admin tasks and working through inefficient processes. Plus, 66% say they’re overwhelmed with tools.

Don’t worry, we’ve got some valuable, cost-effective insights and business growth strategies you can implement to help drive revenue year-round! Keep reading for techniques to elevate your customer experience, boost your lead follow-up processes, and shorten the sales cycle with sales acceleration.

Elevating Customer Service Through Employee Training

To increase business revenue, prioritizing high-quality customer service is an absolute must. Exceptional customer service comes from thorough employee training, ensuring employees have a game plan for every customer scenario, and staying organized throughout the process. 

How? Because they’ll be equipped to understand customer needs better, they can address their pain points and convey the solutions and value you offer! 

Ongoing training will give them the knowledge and skills to handle challenging sales cycles, overcome objections, and enhance relationships with prospects and customers. More knowledge = more confidence = more success! 
Not to mention, reps constantly sharpening their skills will be more savvy at spotting gaps in your sales process and identifying new opportunities to drive revenue growth. Constant opportunities for development also foster a positive corporate culture, which clients can sense!

Your clients want more advanced relationships with their sales reps, too. In fact, 80% of B2B buyers want pros they can turn to as trusted advisors for unique industry insights. So, how can your team fill that role for clients? You can: 

Identify which metrics and KPIs you’ll use to measure performance, like pipelines, sales cycle length, closed deals, and cross-sells/upsells Create collaboration between marketing and sales so everyone knows how to have aligned, authentic sales conversations Start by training sales managers first, providing them with resources to coach, strengthen, and measure their team’s skills and performance Equip your sales team with a library of content and sales tools they can automate and deliver to customers at just the right time, creating a personalized experience and speeding up buying decisions Encourage peer review and coaching in areas like pitches, wins, and losses—team members across departments can always learn from one another!  Invest in multilingual salespeople and training to accommodate a more diverse audience 

Strengthening Lead Follow-Up Processes for Revenue Growth

Another critical strategy to drive more sales is lead follow-up. A lead rarely commits within the first few contacts, that’s why it’s so important to continuously follow up with prospects.

Yet, many salespeople are simply not persistent enough. Forty-eight percent never even follow up once, although 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes, and 80% of sales require five follow-up calls. So yes, prompt and continuous lead follow-ups do lead to conversions—it just takes time and patience! 

Effective lead follow-up not only closes the deal but strengthens the relationship between the business and the customer. This begins with a solid lead management system, the process by which you monitor and move leads through the sales cycle. You can develop a reliable lead follow-up system by:

Automating as many tasks as possible with a client relationship management (CRM) platform to save time and money, reach more prospects at various times, mitigate errors, and lower your costs Following up with prospects quickly—contact them while it is still fresh in their mind to get the conversation moving in the right direction Not ending a conversation without scheduling a follow-up call if the prospect is not saying yes Training salespeople to refresh their pitch or offer for each follow-up

So, as you consider how to drive revenue in the coming year, remember that developing a strong lead generation and follow-up process should be at the top of your list! This ensures opportunities don’t slip through the cracks and fosters a positive customer experience.

Moving Leads Through the Pipeline With Event Follow-up

On the topic of lead follow-up, have you evaluated your event planning and follow-up processes lately? If you host or attend events regularly, this can be a crucial part of lead generation and increasing business revenue. 

Whether your company attends a conference as a vendor or hosts a seminar, there are many moving parts. Yes, they’re all critical to your overall strategy, but following up with attendees after the event is the most important step—after all, the whole point of an event is to generate leads! 

Don’t let your hard work go to waste by overlooking this phase. As Chameleon founder Dana Lariviere says, “Strike while the iron is hot!” Proving his point, research found that 50% of buyers choose the vendor that reaches out first. Contact leads right away when the event and your solutions are still fresh in their minds by: 

Sending an initial thank-you email inviting them to future events, requesting feedback, and offering additional information Calling guests who showed interest or had questions requiring follow-up Contacting those who signed up but didn’t attend, saying you’re sorry you missed them, along with details for your next event and a link to the recorded event if applicable

Of course, your team will have their hands full before, during, and after a corporate event, and lead follow-up can feel like another daunting task. That’s where a call center can take this part of event planning off your plate. They will learn your business, integrate with your CRM, and tee up those leads for your closers, who will enjoy shorter sales cycles and peace of mind knowing their prospects won’t be overlooked!

Exploring New Solutions and Technology for Sales Acceleration

We’ve mentioned the idea of shortening the sales cycle a few times. But have you contemplated making this a key strategy to increase business revenue? 

Yep, it’s called sales acceleration and focuses on streamlining your sales process by moving customers through the pipeline faster! You can do this with a combination of sales and marketing technology and methods that equip your team to convert leads in less time. 

Traditional sales strategies emphasize outbound methods, manual data entry and processes, individual tools, inefficient communication (i.e., numerous emails just to book a call), and getting the deal or quickly moving on after a loss.

On the other hand, accelerated sales strategies are centered on genuinely getting to know your customers and taking a highly targeted, holistic approach to lead generation. This entails a blend of inbound and outbound techniques and integrated software to automate processes and drive more sales, which we’ll explore below.

Lead Qualification

According to 40% of salespeople, lead quality issues are challenging when prospecting. So how can you improve this vital area?

Create a system to qualify their leads and ensure each fits your ideal customer profile. This allows your sales and marketing teams to target highly qualified prospects without wasting time on those who aren’t a good fit. Criteria typically include data points like company size, geographic location, budget, and timeline. You can ease this process with lead qualification software.

Lead Scoring

During lead qualification, your sales team should also score prospects with a predetermined point system based on their actions or behavior (e.g., visiting your site, engaging with your content, and opening your emails). The leads with the highest scores should be prioritized. You’ll want to implement lead-scoring software, which uses an algorithm based on the settings you provide.

Lead Routing

Do you assign leads to specific sales reps based on the prospect’s needs? If not, it’s an excellent opportunity to deliver a more efficient and customized experience. Lead routing software allows you to set rules and queues to automatically send a lead to a salesperson based on details like language preferences, location, industry, company size, and sales rep availability. This ensures that leads end up with the most qualified reps.

Sales Tech Stack

In addition to the lead management tools mentioned above, sales acceleration also means empowering your team with technology such as:

Sales enablement platforms: These include knowledge databases, training and coaching, and revenue platforms to help reps improve and do their jobs more efficiently. Sales engagement platform: Use a tool that syncs with your CRM to automate tasks and free up your salespeople to spend more time gaining leads and moving deals along. Outbound dialing software: Save reps the hassle of manually dialing one phone number after the next with an automated outbound dialing tool.

Customer Research

It may sound counterintuitive, but we promise it makes sense! Conducting thorough buyer research and gaining a deep understanding of your target client from the start speeds up the process and helps increase business revenue. Your team will be better equipped to identify who is a good fit quickly, address their pain points and goals, and convey how your product or service is the best solution.

Final Thoughts on Increasing Business Revenue Year Round

While you set your 2024 goals and put fresh strategies in place, remember you can increase business revenue by: 

Focusing on employee training to deliver an improved customer experience Strengthening your lead follow-up processes, including post-event outreach Implementing new resources and technology to reduce the time to close

However, these strategies can be time-consuming and costly to handle internally! Many require investing in various software, personnel to set up and manage, and training. Partnering with a call center allows you to leverage these areas without adding more stress to your team, giving your valuable sales and marketing employees more time to focus on their key responsibilities! Contact Chameleon to learn how we can help today.

The post Looking to Up Your Game in 2024? Key Strategies to Increase Business Revenue Year-Round appeared first on Chameleon Sales Group.

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