Closing sales means bringing in business and, hopefully, lasting customers. However, moving from initial contact to money in the bank isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. Aside from having the drive to close a deal, a good salesman must also have the right tools.
With so many tasks and responsibilities circling you from day to day, it’s easy to feel too overwhelmed to do a good job. To make your sales jobs more manageable, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sales tools at your disposal.
You’ll need tools that help you become more organized, stay on task, communicate better with clients, and leave work at work when you head home. If that sounds attractive to you, here are some essential sales tools that you should be using.
1. Personality Traits and Skills
First and foremost, being a good salesman goes beyond the technical. You must also have certain personality traits and skills to handle this difficult occupation. As you work to close quicker deals and to increase your success in this field, here are some personality traits on which to work.
Patience: Let customers make decisions at their own speed. Some sales will take longer than others.
Commitment: It may take 99 phone calls dropped or doors slammed in your face to get your first sale, but if you’re committed to the job, you’ll get it done.
Integrity: Shady sales people always have a more difficult time connecting with consumers and maintaining lasting customers than those who approach the process with honesty and transparency.
Flexibility: You have to be available for customers, even when it’s not convenient. You may also need to adjust your initial goals to work with difficult customers and extenuating circumstances.
Enthusiasm: The more excited and confident you are in a product, the more you’ll be able to convince consumers of its worth.
Motivation: Most of the time, you’ll set your own goals, hours, and quotas, so it’s essential to stay motivated if you want to achieve success.
2. Mobile Apps
It’s hard to be a good salesman today without a smartphone loaded with useful apps. Some apps will help you to communicate better with your customers, while others will improve lead storage. You likely already have a few apps in your mobile library, but here are a few that you can add.
CamCard: Save a sales lead instantly with this accurate note-taking and storage app.
Square: Retain the ability to accept payment at the door.
GoToMeeting: Tune-in to conferences with your sales team, even when you’re traveling.
Dragon: Take notes on your phone by using tech that translates voice into text.
SpotHero: Stop looking for affordable, nearby parking when you travel to meetings. This app instantly shows all of the parking places in the vicinity around your meeting.
Pocket: When you find a timely and educational article or video on the web, bookmark it for later.
3. Cloud Collaboration
Everything is moving to the cloud these days, and you should too. It’s the easiest and most efficient way to store your sales files accurately and securely. You no longer need worry about accidentally deleting files or losing everything when your desktop crashes. If it’s in the cloud, you can almost always retrieve it.
In addition, the cloud makes it easy to collaborate, both with team members and your clients. When using cloud-based productivity platforms and file sharing, you can communicate relevant information with anyone, no matter where you are. As a salesperson, you’re likely required to travel often, and tools like Google Drive, iQuoteXpress, and other productivity sales platforms will keep you constantly connected.
4. Email Tracking
Understanding the effectiveness of your emails will show you where to improve and which habits to continue. Features in a good email tracking software will include email templates, monitoring of outgoing emails for the entire team, integration with other software, the ability to see when messages are opened, consistent online support, email analytics, comprehensive email reports, and other key email marketing tools.
With the ability to track emails across your entire sales team constantly, communication becomes increasingly more attainable for both teams and clients. Your sales will improve, and your quotas will be easier to reach.
5. Quota Tracking
Every sales person has a quota they must reach on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. The best sales people stick to their quotas religiously and hold themselves to a higher standard each time they achieve their goals.
Reaching these quotas is difficult, but it gets easier when you use software to improve the process. Cloud-based productivity software, for example, can help entire sales teams collaborate in order to work toward both individual and team goals. When team members see their own progress and the progress of others, it can motivate them to achieve even higher goals and to improve their sales in the process.
6. Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) Software
Many salespeople will tell you that managing proposals is one of the most difficult aspects of staying organized and productive as a salesman, particularly those with complex sales processes. Businesses with a variety of products and services to offer have a much more difficult time giving an accurate quote than small businesses, a process that can drag down the proposal process and reduce the professional quality.
When you have CPQ software, you’ll begin to change your tune. This tool allows you to manage proposal by proposal accurately and quickly, rather than getting caught up in mounds of files to approach.
Essentially, CPQ software is a tool that enables more efficient sales processes through increasing deal size, scalable accuracy, and cloud convenience. iQuoteXpress, for example, is a resource specifically designed for teams looking for more professional, accurate, and timely proposals. It can be customized to your unique objectives and offers a variety of features.
When you’re faced with complex sales quotes, this software can integrate your catalog to minimize and eliminate errors; deliver accurate quotes; and create striking, branded, and complete proposals.
Aside from that, once the proposal is created, you can track your leads, monitor and manage activities, and ultimately close more deals. This incredible sales tool seems too good to be true, but it’s not. In fact, you can contact iQuoteXpress now for more information. We’d be happy to hook you up with a free, no-obligation online demo of our CPQ software today!
