Many companies delayed projects in 2020, setting your team up for a potentially record-breaking year if the stars align and they can execute flawlessly. To that end, below are a few tips that may help you streamline your processes in order to reach even more prospects with your current team in 2021.

FIRST | Ensure Peak Productivity Across Your Sales Team

Are your sales reps focused, productive, and efficient enough to handle both their stalled 2020 deals and new 2021 opportunities? We predict many companies will see increased opportunities this year, but the sales cycle may be extended – and the last thing you need is for sales reps to only focus on the “sure thing.”

The Spiro platform was designed to help sales reps reach up to 30% more prospects daily, with the Spiro Assistant providing a daily to-do list that automatically prioritizes their activities. And thanks to our VoIP capabilities, a rep can instantly call or text anyone and Spiro will automatically capture notes and action items. We automate the time-consuming data entry and then provide recommendations on the most important next steps to keep sales reps efficiently working on the high-priority opportunities.

One major curveball we all faced in 2020 was suddenly being forced to work remotely. Whether you’re in the office or not in 2021, you need to make sure your sales team can be productive regardless of where they are.

The fundamentals of what made your team successful in the office continue to hold true while working remotely. Hold your team accountable to the same level of activity. The visibility that Spiro provides to sales managers has proven increasingly important in a remote environment. And for sales reps, having consistent access to their business phone via Spiro’s VoIP capabilities is a cornerstone to their virtual office.

THEN | Leverage Insights to Improve Sales Performance

Once you’re confident your sales team is set up to be productive, intelligent insights allow you to coach individual reps to improve success rates. For example, can you see call connection rates for your SDR/BDR team? Do you know who’s putting in a lot of activity without success, and who is moving the needle forward? And importantly, do you know what is moving the needle forward?

Additionally, when you’re trying to accomplish more with fewer resources, it’s important to keep your sales reps focused on the high priority deals. A proactive relationship management platform like Spiro goes beyond activity reports, showing a prospect’s engagement, and even the number of touchpoints per opportunity to help you keep your team focused on the most important deals. Once you’re confident in your processes and what works, you can better coach your sales reps to improve their success rates, and ultimately ensure that your sales metrics are scalable.

Another aspect of improving sales performance is building a strong partnership with marketing. When companies fully integrate sales and marketing activities into the Spiro platform, the two teams gain full transparency and can coordinate activities more effectively. This allows marketing to nurture stalled leads while sales reps focus on open opportunities, and provides sales reps with immediate insights when a prospect is engaging with the company – like visiting a pricing page, which typically shows higher intent.

FINALLY | Increase Visibility to Better Navigate 2021

The key to building confidence in your forecasting abilities is to know that you have all the data, not just anecdotal pieces that a sales rep enters after the fact, combined with an objective measure based on your sales process, not a sales rep’s optimism. Coming off of this past year, AEs have been battered and bruised – and are likely starting the year hoping that every stalled deal comes back. But we know that’s not the reality – you need an objective measure so you can plan accordingly.

Once you have full visibility into your pipeline, you can better understand where and when downfalls will happen. Importantly, that visibility needs to look at new customers as well as existing customers. A company’s survival right now is tied to keeping existing customers happy and engaged. Additionally, if you have a base of happy customers, you may be able to drive additional revenue from them.

By integrating with ERP systems, Spiro provides visibility into a customer’s order history and future pipeline. With this full context, Spiro helps spot changes in buying patterns, or potential business disruptions, and can alert the sales team to follow up to understand if it’s temporary or if something bigger is going on.