Motivate, Measure and Manage for Increased Sales

The great thing about doing business in today’s world, is that technology is changing and giving you new opportunities to streamline your sales operations. With so many great sales tools out there, it’s no wonder that field service businesses are using a range of software tools to help their sales team perform at their best. 

In this guide we will examine how you can drive sales by using technology that will manage your sales team, keep them motivated, and help them to deliver

Keeping Your Team Competitive

Field service industries are competitive and, as a business owner, you know the importance of a strong sales team to ensure your business continues to grow. Your sales team also plays a key role when it comes to building trust and loyalty, not only with your customers, but also within the community you service. 

It’s no secret that motivation is key to keeping your employees productive. According to Forbes, if employees “ … have a real-world understanding of how they’re touching and improving people’s lives, they’ll work even harder and smarter, seeking out new solutions and generally improving your company’s efficiency and bottom line. Knowing how to motivate your workforce will help ensure they’re enthusiastically bringing their best efforts each day and helping the company meet its sales and performance goals.” 

This is especially true when it relates to your sales team. Of all your employees, if your sales team isn’t performing, it directly impacts your bottom line. But, it’s not always easy to keep them motivated. Salespeople are naturally outgoing, competitive creatures and thrive on challenges. This is why you should consider buying software that includes a sales leaderboard. Establishing a leaderboard drives your sales through competition, increases morale, and gives you the ability to track performances.

Competition 

As previously mentioned, most salespeople tend to be pretty competitive. According to best-selling author and international speaker Anthony Lannarino, “As a salesperson, you must be competitive because sales is a zero sum game. To win, you have to be competitive. You have to want to win over your rivals.” 

A healthy dose of competition can have a positive impact on your sales team. A sales leaderboard will rank your top sales reps throughout the day, month, and year. Your top reps will be motivated to stay in their high-ranking position, while your underperforming team members will be motivated to step it up. 

Morale 

Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “The best morale exists when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.” As with competition, it can be challenging to make sure the morale of your sales team doesn’t decline. 

Sales leaderboards can help turn things around. When sales teams experience highs and lows together, they form a bond. Low performers can see that goals are achievable, while top performers can see those who are struggling and help them out, which builds camaraderie 

Performance Tracking 

If you’re managing a sales team, you know that measuring and tracking their performance is the best way to gauge if you’re going to meet your sales objectives for the month. With a sales leaderboard, you can see where sales are closing and where improvements can be made. 

Another good thing about sales leaderboards is the transparency they create. Your sales team can visually see who is on top and who needs improvement, which keeps the team accountable.

Streamlining Your Sales Team

In the previous section we explored how you can use technology to implement a sales leaderboard, but there are other tools to streamline your sales as well. For example, using sales apps to track your door-to-door (D2D) sales. 

While most people think that knocking on doors is an antiquated way of selling your goods or services, the reality is, it’s not. According to the Direct Selling Association, “Person-to-person selling continues to lead other approaches accounting for more than two-thirds of sales.” In other words, door-to-door sales make up 74% of all sales and continues to increase. 

Door-to-door selling continues to be a profitable way to sell because it works. Door-to-door selling is hard work. Getting rejected face-to-face is much harsher than getting rejected over the phone. In addition, door-to-door salespeople must deal with the extreme weather and unruly pets. There’s no question that door-to-door selling is challenging, but the good thing about selling in today’s world is that technology has come a long way, especially for businesses in the field service industry. With a mobile selling app, there’s no need to manually write down information about every door you’re knocking on. Besides, that wastes paper and, more importantly, your time.

A mobile selling app makes the door-to-door selling process much easier. First, it provides a visual knocking sheet on maps, so there is no need for you to manually track where you have been. Second, it provides real-time payment processing, scheduling, and digital contracts so you can sign customers on the spot. And last, but not least, once the contract is signed, the home office receives an automated sales notification and reporting. 

With a mobile sales app, you can view key performance indicators (KPIs) for office staff and technicians and compare teams. Other benefits include the ability to:

• Easily convert leads to a customer 

• Create customer-specific notes for technicians 

• Set service subscriptions 

• Securely collect mobile payment 

• Manage custom billing or autopay setup 

• Receive property details through online real estate databases 

• Provide access to sales and marketing materials

Measuring Your Results

In the first two sections, we examined how technology can help motivate your sales team by implementing a sales leaderboard, and how mobile selling apps can streamline your team while they are in the field. The third piece of this, and probably the most important, is using technology to measure your sales results. Peter Drucker, author of The Price of Management said it best, “What gets measured gets managed.” 

Understanding how your sales team performs is crucial to the success of your pest control business. In addition, an overwhelming amount of data is entered into your sales system every day. When you combine both of these situations, you need a tool, like a sales dashboard, to make sense of it all. 

Sales dashboards are most effective when they give you a high-level overview but also allow you to drill into the details. An effective sales dashboard for pest management will include a combination of activity-based and sales-based metrics including but not limited to:

• Knocking Activity – This will allow you to view total doors knocked, doors to pitch, pitches to sale, and doors to sale. Knocking activity can be drilled down further into the following metrics:

  • Made Sale – This metric will determine the number of closed sales won. 

  • Not Home – If your “Not Home” metric is high, you will want to determine what time your salesperson is knocking on doors. It may be that he or she needs to adjust their schedule for that territory. 

  • Call Back – If you have a high number of “Call Backs,” you may need to train your salesperson on how to close the deal immediately. 

  • Gave Pitch – This is metric is important because it shows how many prospects your sales team has spoken to. If your salesperson closed five deals out of five pitches, that’s a great salesperson! 

  • Not Interested – If your “Not Interested” number is high, then you may have a training opportunity for your sales rep.

• Total Serviced – This is important because once you close the business, you want it to be serviced immediately so you can start collecting the revenue. If you’re seeing that only half of the accounts are being serviced after the deal has been won, then you need to hire more technicians to keep up with sales. 

• Serviced Autopay – You want your customers to autopay for a number of reasons. For example, it’s convenient for the customer and you get paid faster. If a customer says they will pay each time you make a visit, it’s easier for them to cancel and/or go to a competitor. 

• Total Sales – It’s essential to know how many sales your team is making throughout the day. The Total Sales metric will show you the combined dollar amount your entire sales team has sold. 

• Top Objections – As a business owner, you want to understand the reason why prospects are not interested in your services. For example, it could be price, or they may be using a competitor. 

• Top Competitors – It’s always important to know who you’re competing against. Even if your salesperson doesn’t close the deal, they can collect information about your competitors. 

Other than finance, few teams are as data-driven as your sales team. Thankfully with technology, you can manage, motivate and measure your sales team for success.

Your Partner in Growth

We hope this guide has been helpful. Whether you’re looking to add efficiencies, make things easier for your employees, improve your customer experience, increase sales, or anything in between, FieldRoutes is committed to helping your business reach its full potential. 

The platform automates all aspects of field service operations for enterprise and small business customers that span office management, advanced route optimization, payment processing, digital sales, marketing, and customer acquisition solutions that accelerate growth, streamline operations, increase customer retention, and maximize revenue. Our operations and sales and marketing suites were built with your customers and employees in mind and can help you grow quickly, scale intelligently, and serve customers relentlessly

Call for a Demo at 972.702.7156

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