Boost Your Sales Journey Using These Resources

The American businessman and philanthropist William Clement Stone once said: 

‍“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.” 

 When an organization is staffed with a sales team with a positive and competitive attitude, there is enough and more that they can achieve. 

But how do organizations ensure such a pragmatic and productive sales team? How can salesforce maintain consistent performance and attain the quotas in a competitive market, while effectively managing sales team roles and responsibilities?

In this article, we answer these questions and more. We deal with sales resources, the various types of sales resources, maximizing their impact on company operations, and exploring the future trends of sales resources. 

So scroll down for more

What are sales resources? 

Sales resources refer to the repertoire of things and skills that will help a salesforce in successfully closing deals and achieving quotas. 

It can be anything from materials like brochures, and marketing content to data like sales pipeline, customer preferences to even the training provided to upskill their performance, helping them identify and convert various types of sales leads.

Hence, sales resources are anything and everything that will aid the sales reps in their sales journey. 

What are the types of sales resources?

A variety of material and non-material things can be categorized as sales resources. Some of the types of sales resources include:

• Marketing Collateral

Marketing collaterals are items that a salesforce makes use of to make their communication easier and more efficient. This includes brochures, blogs, whitepapers, and ads in the form of billboards, videos, etc. It helps in making a mark in the target audience's mind about your brand and thereby acts as a tool during salesforce introduction and communication to the prospects. 

• Digital Tools and Technology

The relevance of data in the current business operations is inevitable. Digital tools and technologies provide accurate data to help salesforce better understand their performance and areas of improvement. Data-driven sales management will ensure that sales teams make informed decisions and achieve their objectives. 

• Training and Development

Salesforce must be exposed to regular sales training resources and upskilling opportunities to ensure that they improve their performance consistently. With the fast-changing market trends and high competition, salesforce must ensure high performance and incorporate the latest tools and technologies that enhance their sales performance and management. For this training and development is important. 

• Sales Support Teams

Sales team alone cannot drive the organization to growth and success. There needs an organizational structure that ensures that the sales work is efficiently supported. This includes the marketing team’s effort in creating a good branding image for the organization, the CSM team’s seamless work in creating a smooth customer experience, etc. 

For more information on sales approaches, check Why Sales Approaches Are the Key to Your Business Success. 

Maximizing the Impact of Sales Resources

Every organization works to ensure that its sales team is efficient and that its sales force is high-performing. But these plans must not be restricted to mere pen and paper. 

Organizations must ensure that a system is created that will help in effectively managing the sales team and utilizing its resources, including maximizing the impact of OTE compensation plans. More than planning and building a sales resource repertoire, it is important to successfully implement it, consistently practice it, and eventually become a part of the sales routine. 

For example, strictly providing training sessions to the salesforce every three months, reevaluating the sales strategies every quarter, and giving and taking feedback are small steps that can have a huge impact on the sales team management and salesforce performance. Implementing a reliable 'sales commission calculator' can also play a crucial role in accurately compensating your sales team, motivating them for better performance.

Future Trends in Sales Resources

The market trends are fast changing and therefore the competition is becoming stronger. 

This means organizations must keep track of the newer incorporations, understand their relevance in the changing environment, evaluate their suitability in their business structure and operations, and thus decide accordingly. 

Here are a few trends that are going to define the future sales resources examples.

• Artificial Intelligence 

There is an upsurge in the use of artificial intelligence in today's business operations. Tomorrow it’s planning to take over sales management. Soon AI’s will be equipped to make cold calling and emailing that will create quality content to attract the attention of potential clients and generate leads. 

• Data-Driven Operations 

Many organizations make use of digital tools like CRMs, sales and marketing tools, etc. to make informed decisions. In the future, this will only increase as digital solutions become a part of every aspect of business operations like incentive compensation management. This ensures minimizing calculative errors and enhancing financial and operational management.  

• Customer Success Approach

For a very long time, businesses were focused on customer service management. Reacting to an issue after it has happened. But now organizations are taking a proactive approach where they take a customer success approach. Rather than selling their product, the salesforce approach must be enterprising by identifying the deficit in their client's operations and suggesting solutions to overcoming this lack and optimizing operations. 

• Personalized Experiences 

Even while preparing their marketing collateral, organizations had a general approach to their customer base who are varied at multiple levels. Rather than a one-stitch-for-everyone approach, salesforce must ensure that they make tailor-made content while approaching each potential customer, which is what is sales collateral. This ensures a personalized experience that can better tap their attention for future conversations 

• Responsible Business 

Apart from the market, trends, and competition, even customer behavior is changing. Salesforce must thus ensure that their product is value-based and their brand a responsible business. These factors are influential in today's decision-making process. Hence, organizations must build their brand around societal responsibility and the salesforce must ensure to highlight it.

Organizations are in a rush to keep up with the changing trends. However, the decision to incorporate any tool and technology must be based on valid reasons and purpose. Only then can a resource be of use and aid in enhancing the current operations. 

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For further reach, check A Guide to Optimising Sales Performance for the Sales Process. 

Key Takeaway

The crucial part that sales play in the overall running of the business is stressed time and again. Surely, organizations take those relevant steps to ensure sales management enhancement. 

But what shift in thinking are we to make now?

Most organizations keep coming up with newer ways of sales management than making sure that their existing system is running smoothly, particularly in terms of sales process execution. A better use of time, money, and effort will be to establish a system of running the existing way efficiently and effectively. 

Making the best use of the existing sales resources and judiciously incorporating newer technologies, such as sales territory planning, will help companies attain their business objectives. This will help enhance operations without extra investments and efficiently manage the salesforce. 

Kennect provides intelligent sales performance management software to create transparency and achieve operational efficiency. For more information, Book A Demo Now!