Shaping the pipeline funnel, meeting revenue targets, and maintaining margins have always been the pressure points for sales reps and CXOs. Sales and marketing teams are often busy hunting new prospects and nurturing Personal presence, opportunities relationships, personalized through digital marketing, and social selling. However, most of the time they lack following an integrated approach that improves sales productivity and effectiveness. Typically, sales and marketing organizations face below key challenges:
a) Sales Reps are spending significant time on managing sales operations: Sales representatives must maintain a chunk of documentation related to pipelines, meeting schedules, MOMs, lead management documentations, etc. This obstructs them from spending more time on the field, which can earn them good leads and better outcomes of sales. As per a Forbes report, nearly two-thirds (64.8%) of reps’ time is spent in non-revenue generating activities, leaving only 35.2% for functions related to selling.
b) Long sales cycle from hunting a prospect to revenue is a costly affair: To keep track of all the deals and proposals is essential and also a tedious task as the turnaround time (TAT) is may get out follow-ups on higher, and they of sight. Usually, these opportunities are not continued as it demands because of the long sales cycle; this creates a chance of losing the opportunity.
c) Disjointed sales and marketing teams lead to a lack of one voice: The sales and marketing operations are treated as different segments without interconnection between them. This creates much disruption in targeting the right audience and gaining prospective clients. Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and they go hand in hand. However, the preferential treatment of both creates a sort of mismanagement while approaching clients and applying a localized strategy and communications with the same.
d) Lack of insights on prospects’ behavior and connecting the dots: Each client is different from others, and it depends upon multiple factors like demography, industry, needs, etc. lack of insights on customer’s buying capacity and trends may make efforts of the sales team less fruitless. The missing insights help in strategizing and analyzing the customer beforehand.
