We've all been there: out in the field, a potential customer asks a question you've never been asked before and don't know the answer to. You are not sure if one single person would know the answer, so you end up emailing the entire marketing team. But who knows how long it will take for them to get back!
You're certain that this information could make or break the sale. But they can't wait any longer. As you wrap up the conversation, you can tell from the look in their eyes that you've lost the sale. You kick yourself—if there was a faster, easier way to communicate with your team, you know your close rate would skyrocket.
Does this sound like you? Whether it's out in the field answering prospects' questions or within the office about major company initiatives, inefficient communication can take a significant toll on your company's success. For salespeople in the field, quick access to the right information at the right time is essential for selling the product.
Here's the deal: email just doesn't cut it anymore. There's an enormous amount of money, productivity and transparency on the line. So to help you facilitate faster information flow with your sales teams and across multiple departments, we've outlined some of our top communication strategies.
How your sales teams can sell more by communicating better
- Add collaboration and communication software solutions to the mix
- Create a repository for all sales enablement content
- Hold regular training sessions on communication soft skills
- Create a culture of communication
Add collaboration and communication software solutions to the mix
With your sales team spread out across departments and locations, it's impossible to effectively collaborate. Big projects are delayed when team members miss emails or forget to check their inboxes. Major decisions may slip through the cracks without a reliable written record of conversations. Salespeople in the field, unable to ask their peers for more information, may miss huge opportunities.
It's obvious: for the success and survival of your company, you can't continue to allow outdated communication tools slow you down. Empowering your employees to connect with each other via communication technology boosts their productivity by 20 to 25 percent.
That means no more slips, miscommunications or major delays: a modern, integrated communication tool means increased transparency, more accountability and faster, more effective conversations on a larger scale.
Create a repository for all sales enablement content
Let's go back to our opening example: our crestfallen salesperson wants to build credibility and close the sale. Our potential customer wants an immediate response. But a remote salesperson is all alone in the field—they can't just go back to the office to ask a coworker for the information they need.
Accessing the right information at the right time is key to sales success. Luckily, this is possible with a comprehensive communication tool.
By sourcing content from engineering, product marketing and other departments, you can create a cross-functional central knowledge repository where teams can update their documents, check to see the latest news within the company and read FAQs when they come up. Mobile access to this repository ensures better context, speed and accuracy — key factors that could've saved our salesperson from losing that sale.
Hold regular training sessions on communication soft skills
Studies have shown that continuous training can boost net sales performance by 50 percent. If you're not already conducting regular training sessions for your sales team, that statistic should kickstart you into action.
Depending on your sales cadence, team leads should set specific times each day, week, or month to bring salespeople together to communicate or give updates on important company information. This is a great time to remind your team about the importance of transparency and encourage them to make communication a priority.
But don't worry—these meetings don't all necessarily have to be in person. While it's important to bring everyone into the office for quarterly company-wide meetings, field sales team members can participate in the more mundane weekly meetings remotely. With the right communication and collaboration software, this can easily be done over video conference calls or messaging apps.
Create a culture of communication
No matter which tools or techniques you try to improve sales communication, it won't help without an institutional drive to make communication a necessity. Create a culture in your company where communication is a top priority, and openly reward people who participate.
Remember, great ideas come from the team—so don't miss out on the opportunity to encourage creativity throughout your organization. Sales leadership may be there to make decisions, but with effective communication across the board, in the field and in the same office, you'll find that ideas will flow, project management becomes much easier and your time and energy is freed up to focus on driving results.
Boost Your ROI With Modern Communication Methods
Admit it: your sales team is losing money, wasting time and creating major bottlenecks due to slow, unreliable communication methods. The days of tracking down team members, overlooking emails buried in full inboxes and letting great ideas fall through the cracks are over.
It's time to empower your sales team with the right tools and techniques for effective communication—so the next time you're alone in the field with a potential customer looking to you for an answer, you don't feel stranded on an island of limited information. An enterprise communication tool will allow you to tap into the sea of knowledge shared by your coworkers at the mere click of a button.
