How to remain confident in a challenging and unpredictable environment.
As a sales (professional) representative, you’re naturally expected to have a level of confidence in what you’re doing. From building customer relationships to pitching to prospects, confidence is seen as an art in sales. The fact is, the importance of confidence in sales can’t be understated. You can know everything there is about selling, but if you don’t know your customers or product well enough, you’ll likely fall short of success.
But how do you remain confident in such a challenging and unpredictable role?
The secret weapon is knowledge, and with knowledge comes power, which guarantees confidence. However, it’s having this knowledge that separates a good salesperson from a great one. But, as you may already know, extracting this knowledge isn’t easy – especially if you’re interrogating information from endless spreadsheets or working with an unsophisticated data tool that is more of a burden than a benefit.
Having the right information, at the right time, for the right customer about the right product is crucial, and if you aren’t confident that your current processes are supporting those requirements; you may as well cancel your meeting.
For example, you could spend hours analyzing a specific customer account before a 2PM meeting, but because you’ve dedicated this time sifting through an Excel spreadsheet, you haven’t had the chance to catch up with three other customers that you were hoping to contact that morning, plus you now have to stay later to complete your reporting and admin tasks. By the time you’ve arrived at your 2PM meeting, the data you spent valuable time finding is now out-of-date, you don’t have all the answers your customer is asking questions about and your confidence levels are dropping more and more by the minute.
However, you can reverse all of that and start your 2PM over again with a data analytics software that automatically generates that information for you, and within seconds. Not only can you guarantee that you will deliver a confident pitch – with accurate up to date figures to your audience – but you will ultimately get back your time by eliminating the hours spent searching for this information.
sales-i has been developed with the salesperson in mind, you can take advantage of insights into customer purchasing behavior and product trends and spends, all with the click of a button.
With the 2PM meeting – but now supported with sales-i – you can completely rewrite your day, or even week and month, as having access to multiple functionalities within one platform allows you to tick off your current to-do list whilst planning for the future. So, how exactly does sales-i allow you remain confident in such a challenging and unpredictable role? There are three key functions that help you do just that.
1. Campaigns
Using the Campaigns functionality within sales-i the platform will automatically alert you of any new sale opportunities within your current customer base, based on their purchasing behavior. Whether they have dropped in spend in a product category or are purchasing one item without the obvious complementary product – you will be notified instantly so that you’re able to action the alert. Having this data instils confidence in a salesperson as they are no longer spending hours searching for that very same information, or even being able to identify it at all – now you have the actionable insight to turn into an opportunity.
2. MyCalls
Working alongside Campaigns, MyCalls will then extract those alerts and prioritize the customers that need contacting first, which you can then see in a pre-scheduled diary before you even start your day. With this prepared for you, you’re able to pull up your sales-i app, find out who to contact and what to discuss, and confidently do so before you even think about your 2PM meeting. You are already preventing loss of business and profiting from new opportunities without doing any extra work.
3. Snapshot
Snapshot is the reporting functionality within sales-i that creates customer-facing documents by using sales data from the system. It produces complete presentations in just a few seconds which you can use in your meetings to lead and structure conversations, as it gives valuable insights into your customer purchasing behavior. Having this high level of knowledge in front of you at all times is not only going to build your confidence – as you know you’re supported by accurate data analytics – but will give your customers confidence that they are speaking to an expert, as you will most likely know more about their spending habits than they do at that moment.
By leveraging this tool in sales-i, you’re able to show your customer that you know their business inside and out and have taken the time to truly understand their requirements moving forward – however, the truth is, you have asked sales-i to automatically create this customizable presentation moments before your 2PM meeting.
In sales, the secret to success is knowledge, and with knowledge comes power, which guarantees confidence and the importance of confidence in sales can’t be understated. With sales-i, you can unlock every key piece of knowledge available within seconds, ready for you to use to your advantage. It’s having this knowledge, power and confidence that separates a good salesperson from a great one.
Find out today how sales-i could help you sell smarter.
