Ask any business owner or sales manager what their most important asset is, and chances are they’ll say, “our people.” Chances are equally good that they’ll say it even more loudly when they’re talking about their sales people.
It’s the sales people who are on the front line, making first contact with potential customers, representing your brand and your values to the general public, and nurturing prospects through your sales processes — from intro to demo to signed quotes.
Want to get the best from your people? Ensure they have the best tools: the best devices (mobile and desktop), the best working environment, and the best tech, from the best email platform to the best proposal software.
Here are just a few ways sales proposal software (also known as configure price quote software, or CPQ) helps bring out the best in your people.
If it walks like a pro and talks like a pro…
A sales rep’s most critical interaction with any prospect is sending them a quote. And while every sales relationship is built on a series of interpersonal exchanges — calls, meetings, meals, etc. — once the quote is sent, the interpersonal part is paused for a bit and the rep has to stop talking and “wait and see.”
Ironically, that’s probably when they’d like to say even more as that quote will likely get circulated throughout the prospect’s enterprise, and decision makers and stakeholders will “meet” your sales rep and your company through this document.
Sales proposal software like iQuoteXpress (IQX) makes the most of these “virtual interactions” by empowering every rep to send proposals that are professional in both design and content, and targeted to a prospect’s exact business needs. And this is regardless of any professional sales proposal creation expertise — or lack thereof — an individual rep may have.
But IQX ensures that every quote has a professional polish — that it “walks and talks like a pro” — which makes every rep look like a pro, too.
Getting the best from people means knowing how, where, and when to help
It’s not easy for a sales rep to proactively admit he or she has a problem and is behind their quota — and doesn’t have enough proposals in the pipeline to catch-up.
Which is why IQX, and most of the best proposal software solutions on the market includes reporting and sales analytics tools that enable a sales manager to monitor the proposal pipeline, immediately viewing what quotes may have stalled and where.
While a CRM system includes a multitude of tools for analyzing performance and forecasting revenue, it typically does not deliver granular reporting at the individual quote level, which is why integrating CPQ with CRM is quickly becoming a best practice.
Because when a sales manager can spot bottlenecks in the earliest stages, they can take corrective action sooner and ensure that all quotes in the system are moving along at an equitable pace. Which helps get the best from every rep putting quotes into that system.
Sales is a people-person’s line of work, and getting the best from every “people person” on staff is a sales manager’s prime directive. By providing professional tools and actionable insights at every step in the sales quote process, proposal software helps make that “best” happen in every quote.
