Perhaps a decade ago, organizations would typically use outsourcing to improve back-office operations through cost cutting and performance improvement. However, the situation has completely transformed and evolved in today’s rapidly changing business landscape.
Read MoreDropping dead leads and prioritizing high-value and sales-ready ones can help you gain more efficiency
The more control you have over your sales pipeline, the better your revenue generation
Combining your sales and marketing teams can pave the way for your business’s growth
To increase sales, provide more relevant content to your product/service and business
Identify and cross out possible bottlenecks in your pipeline to keep your potential customers moving through the sales pipeline smoothly
Are your sales declining or not growing as you expected them to? The issue could be in your sales pipeline.
Your sales pipeline is the backbone of your overall sales process and is vital to your business’s success. It delivers a stable feed of qualified leads and enables your sales team to convert those leads into valuable customers.
However, if you’re unsure about how your pipeline is built or are looking for the best practices to build your sales pipeline – don’t worry; we’ve got you covered!
Before we get moving, you must be clear on understanding what a sales pipeline is.
“A sales pipeline is a visual way of tracking a potential client’s status in the sales process. It is a set of actions taken by salespeople to convert a lead/prospect into a customer”.
According to Harvard Business Review, “there was an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that didn’t. Businesses that adhered to best pipeline practices saw 28% higher revenue growth.”
It is imperative that your company, B2B in particular, has a healthy sales pipeline as it enables you to:
Improve the entire sales process
Predict your business results
Analyze the best sales strategies for your business
Evaluate your company’s progress
Close more deals
We’ve listed below six best practices to help you transform the way you manage your sales pipeline. These tips can help improve your sales process and generate more revenue. Let’s explore.
The first step to follow in managing your sales pipeline is to break your pipeline into stages and then define them. Each stage needs to be clearly defined with actionable steps for the sales reps to take.
If you haven’t created a yet, our experts can help you create one.
Map your customer journey by understanding how a lead moves and makes its way through the sales process.
Also, understand what your sales team is already doing. Modify the existing approach if needed and build a new pipeline for better management.
“Never put the cart before the horse while building your sales pipeline.”
One of the biggest mistakes most sales managers and teams make today is they don’t put their customers’ thought processes first. Instead, they just build their pipeline around arbitrary decisions.
But your product/service exists only because of your customers. So, build a customer-centric sales pipeline that runs alongside your buyer’s journey.
We recommend you break your buyer’s journey into the following stages:
Recognize the problem
Realize the economic impact
Specify decision standards
Check alternatives
Select the vendor
Each of these five stages require a specific action to be taken by your sales reps.
For instance, let’s say your potential customer has reached the fourth stage (checking for alternate sellers/vendors). They might be weighing up your product/service against your competitors. This is the right time for your sales team to quickly jump in and send a brief comparison video or a similar asset to them, which can help them sway back to your side.
Remember, these stages need to be flexible so they can be tweaked later per the customer journey.
Bridging the gap between sales and marketing may sound cliche or like an adage, and you just shrug it off. But, you might want to reconsider your thoughts as it is crucial for your sales team to be aligned with the marketing.
Yes, their main objective is to forward good and qualified leads. What if they don’t know what a good lead or SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is? The very thought haunts you, right?
However, the good news is that it can be fixed by working closely with experts who can help you identify the problem, fix it, and overcome your lead generation challenges.
It takes about the same time to close each deal in every sales process. It is best practice to avoid getting distracted by leads that won’t move the needle.
Instead, concentrate your time and efforts on high-value and sales-ready leads. View the activity of your leads, identify the most engaged ones, and focus on them.
It is equally important to drop a lead when you need to!
After spending weeks or even months nurturing a lead, letting it go can be hard. But, when they are not interested and can’t be pushed through to the next stage, it is better to drop them and focus on others.
Don’t waste your time trying to convince leads that simply aren’t interested. Identify dead leads quickly so you can concentrate on the following opportunities in the pipeline.
Top sales companies know that a technique that works today may not work tomorrow. So, they review their sales process and strategies regularly to ensure things are on point for maximum efficiency.
Every sales pipeline changes constantly – new leads come in, move from one stage to another, and finally, deals get closed. If you are not prudent, your pipeline can get helter-skelter and lead to lost deals. You must keep your details and information in your pipeline reviewed and updated for each process stage.
Emails and phone calls are indeed the pillars of sales communication. However, people require more in-depth information that can help them better understand your product/service and is helpful for their business.
Create content that showcases your brand, product/service, and offerings. Send them to your prospects – this will enable your team to take your potential customers to the next stage. A study byMarketing Charts reports that only 27% of sales reps who talk to prospects collaborate with the marketing team on content creation. But, the sales and marketing teams need to work together to create content your potential customers want to consume.
Not heeding your sales pipeline can negatively impact your business growth.
The six sales pipeline best practices can help you drive your sales process, focus on sales pipeline growth, gain better control over sales data, and boost your profits.
You need the right sales pipeline management tools, technology, and expert guidance to achieve this, close more deals, and gain more revenue.
Customers expect a good experience when they pay for a product or service. This makes customer onboarding the most important stage of the customer lifecycle. When you get new users started with your product on the right foot, it sets the tone for their relationship with your company.
Read MoreCustomer Success teams are at the forefront of helping customers achieve their goals. It is through them that a company optimizes its value in the eyes of their customers.
In the dynamic marketplace we are in, customer success teams have become even more critical in the business growth of an organization.
It can also be a challenging task to establish an effective customer success function.
The demand for good CSMs far surpasses its supply. And unless organizations understand the core capabilities they require, the process will not bear fruit.
When software-as-a-service became popular in the mid-2000s, vendors focusing on the business model faced a major problem- customer dissatisfaction. The product in question was complex, and many customers were unable to find value in it.
This resulted in low adoption rates, which eventually led to greater churn.
To counter the problem, companies began building customer-centric initiatives. Many created formal customer success functions with a unique set of tools and methodologies.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, customer success services face a new sense of urgency around protecting and nurturing customers and enabling them to find success with the product or service.
According to a Salesforce research, 89% of consumers are more likely to make a repeat purchase after a positive customer service experience.
With the growing importance of retaining and maintaining long-term relationships with customers, customer success teams have become an indispensable function of any modern subscription-based enterprise.
It’s undeniable that customer success has become the growth engine, with the potential of becoming a company’s most powerful asset.
Deeply engaged with accounts, a skillful customer success manager (CSM) along with the entire team combines extensive product knowledge and domain experience with an intimate understanding of each customer and their objectives.
But the backbone of a well-planned customer success framework is a talented staff. It’s the foundation of any robust customer success initiative.
However, strong customer success leaders are in short supply.
With an already stiff competition to recruit and retain the best in the field, many organizations are also unclear about the necessary skills for customer success management.
So, how do you create a team that will amplify your customer success strategy? Have you set any expectations in advance? And if you already have an established customer success function, are you gauging their efficiency correctly? Let’s get started.
There’s immense power in great customer service.
A company’s focus on customer success solutions heavily impacts its recommendations. It’s critical that 94% of consumers will give a company a “very good” CX rating and will be more likely to recommend it.
As you get down to hiring your talent cluster, it is always wise to start with setting your expectations. Which roles are you looking for, and which skills will help you drive your customer success methodology? What reasons should you keep in mind? Some reasons have been listed below:
Customer Retention: Customer success is about taking every step to ensure that your customers see value in your product or service, making customer retention a critical component.
Consistent Customer Feedback: In this, your customer success manager can help the organization get regular and detailed feedback from your customers. This can help other BUs such as sales, marketing, and product management teams to better align their strategies.
Further Expansion: Upselling and cross-selling are an essential part of any customer success framework. By tapping on these opportunities, your customer success function will drive business growth.
Brand Advocacy: While customer advocacy is usually a company-wide initiative, the customer success manager is responsible for guiding the customer throughout the journey, turning satisfied customers into loyal brand advocates.
With the why behind setting up a customer success function, let’s look at how you can make it a reality.
As a first step, organizations should examine their current team.
Link this information to the desired customer success outcomes, such as adoption, satisfaction, and growth. The insights you achieve will help you to transform your hiring and talent attraction processes.
26% of respondents highlight that the typical customer success manager at their company handles anywhere between 51-100 accounts, according to a survey by Totango.
The number of people you require for an effective customer success framework depends on how many customers you check up on a weekly or monthly basis. Many organizations divide their customer base into three segments: High, Medium, and Low-Dollar customers.
It’s easy to assume that the ins and outs of your product or service are easily understandable to an outsider. But not everyone works on it every single day as you do, which means that what is straightforward to you might not be so for others.
An effective onboarding process can help your customer success team have a thorough understanding of the product, which, in turn, they will proactively use to help your customers gain value from your product. This saves the customer’s time in the early stages of their journey, and you benefit from a reduced churn rate.
Equipped with the insights on your preliminary analysis of the team, you can deploy programs to build on capabilities.
Many companies have established “field and forum”-based training programs where employees alternate between classes and apply them in the workplace.
Ensure that you are creating personalized learning journeys since the strengths and weaknesses of each member of your customer success team will vary.
Segmenting your customers can help your division of labor.
When you divide your customers into groups based on shared features such as customer lifetime value (CLV) or geography, you deliver greater levels of personalized customer experience.
Additionally, your teams provide contextual and relevant information. This type of segmentation can help you determine high-value accounts which require dedicated CSMs.
How your customers feel about their interactions with your customer success team can help you assess their performance. This feedback is a simple yet effective way to boost engagement. Use this feedback to optimize your customer success framework.
Companies derive more value when they identify opportunities to deliver greater value to customers. But few organizations have mastered this mutually beneficial relationship.
Customer success management will only be effective when you have a team guided by the company's vision and mission.
Looking to make customers your best growth engine?
Benefit from a world-class CS strategy at scale with MarketStar.
It is easy to fall into the mindset that customer success is only about keeping customers happy. In reality, customer success is a vital domain that can help you reach your business goals
Between building internally and outsourcing, the right decision lies in having a solid grasp on your needs, as well as confidence in yourself
Take the time to make the right decision, and you will see a big increase in the lifetime value of your customers
Many customer-facing business functions get outsourced regularly. Outsourcing customer success is a standard practice wherein technical teams are used on a contract basis.
So, whether you are in the early stages of developing a customer success team or revamping your existing CS efforts, you may wonder this question: Is outsourcing customer success right for me?
Bringing in an experienced external partner has its benefits, but it is essential to keep your short-term and long-term goals in mind.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of each setup and evaluate which will be the best fit for your organization.
An in-house solution might work for you if you have an organization at scale and the resources who can focus their time and energy on this function.
Company Knowledge: Your people have complete knowledge about the company, its culture, your business goals, and every detail of the product or service. In short, you have a resource pool that has grown with you. Additionally, they share your vision and have been serving customers for years. All this knowledge is already in place when you get to build an in-house CS team.
Better Control: You can have complete control of the entire team when it is in-house. You have power over the goals, strategies, budget, and almost everything that has been etched out by the team. So, if your customers are not happy with your CS team, the responsibility unavoidably falls on you.
Ownership: You have complete ownership of the logistics. When companies sometimes break their partnerships with an outsourced partner, it becomes a daunting task to get everything under control. With an in-house customer success team, you need not worry about this.
Lack of Good CSMs: While it is one of the fastest-growing jobs in recent years, finding a good Customer Success Manager can be challenging. This is because the demand is much higher than the supply. It is also critical to keep in account that CSMs have a higher attrition rate, up to 20% year over year, according to TSIA’s State of Customer Success report.
Consistent Training: If you are building an in-house customer success team, you need to ensure that you have proper training and change management processes in place. Your training module must also match the job roles of the different members of your customer success team.
Inefficient Mapping: You have to segment your customers and then assign the relevant CSM for them. If this part is mismanaged, your customer success module will fail, as your managers will work on too many accounts. Consequently, your customers will be unhappy and might move to another organization with better customer support
An outsourced customer success model is a viable path for businesses that need to expand their customer base quickly. Let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of this model.
Streamlined User Onboarding: Increasing retention rate begins at onboarding. When you outsource customer success, your vendor will assign a CSM for each account, ensuring that your customers are comfortable and satisfied through their journey. Likewise, the Customer Success Manager will be instrumental in retaining a customer who is currently on a free trial by guiding them through the process.
Cost-effective: Building an in-house team involves more than just paying salaries. You need to consider employee benefits, ongoing training, software, equipment, and facilities. Add to this the high turnover rates of losing your customer success manager. You can save these costs with an outsourcing solutions provider that has already invested in these areas.
Expansion: Your customer’s lifetime value is primarily generated through renewals, cross-sells, and up-sells. When you work with an outsourced customer success team you will be better equipped to identify and convert valuable upsells and cross-sell opportunities. Consequently, you will create a more profound association between your customer and your product.
Consistent Experience: Customer success is all about the customer. With an outsourced manager, you can ensure your customer experience is always smooth, even if there are transitions between various points of contact. This is especially important when about 80% of consumers will leave a product after just one bad experience.
Trust: Establishing trust with an external organization can be hard. Your goal should be to find a solutions provider who is passionate about nurturing customer relationships and has established leading methodologies for customer success. Evaluating your ideal outsourcing agency will be a smooth process once you have done your homework.
Loss of Control: If you feel like you need to have visibility and control over every detail of running your customer success department, then an outsourced model might not be the right fit for you. Seamless collaboration can only take place when your outsourcing partner has control over how your CS module should work.
Between the in-house vs. outsource debate, don’t forget to look at the value of having a customer success function.
Long gone are the days when customer success was viewed as a ‘nice-to-have’ function. More than 90% of organizations have identified customer success as a dedicated function in their company.
The reasons to outsource customer success are umpteen and its benefits permeate throughout your organization and work at different levels for the overall success of your business.
Consequently, decide after considering how a particular model will affect you in the long term and the cost efficiencies that will come with it.
The world is going digital. And outsourcing solutions are no longer just a quick fix to achieve cost reduction
Global outsourcing is changing the game plan, ensuring that work happens at a place that does it best
Such an approach ensures flexibility in decision-making and operations
Businesses benefit by not getting locked into outdated or static processes but can change and evolve to meet new growth challenges
It’s a common assumption that outsourcing is a new phenomenon. This is far from the truth
Outsourcing dates back to the 1970s when manufacturing companies seeking process efficiency began hiring third-party vendors to manage their less-than-essential processes. This approach made its way to IT operations and entire back-office operations, including human resources, payroll, and accounting.
Outsourcing is at a crossroads today.
Businesses no longer outsource only vertical business units. Companies are seeking strategic advantages based on outsourcing alliances, operational efficiency being the driving force behind this.
With the disruptions brought about by the pandemic, virtual outsourcing solutions have become a competitive, strategic marketplace tool, allowing companies to improve response times and develop new products faster than ever.
Once focused just on reducing expenses, today’s outsourcing initiatives are likely to help companies do things they previously could not do.
On the verge of disruptive outsourcing and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), companies are turning to virtual outsourcing solutions. The prominence of titles like “Chief Globalization Officer” and “Strategic Services Manager” clearly highlights this shift.
Work from home outsourcing takes a long-term holistic view of the client enterprise and aligns its business goals to the outsourced service offerings, in contrast to tactical short-term contracts that take a piecemeal project-by-project approach.
Global outsourcing and virtual outsourcing solutions allow companies to find partners from any part of the world to execute some (or even all) of their work for either financial or operational reasons or both.
Global outsourcing solutions are quickly becoming the norm, and it brings numerous benefits:
Lack of funds to invest in additional resources is a big reason hindering business growth for many organizations.
Additionally, businesses often don’t dedicate the time required to recruit a new employee to leverage potential growth opportunities. This is where global outsourcing providers can have your outsourced team set up in as little as six to eight weeks.
That way, you will be able to free up funds that can be used to reinvest back into the growth of your business.
With the additional support of a globally outsourced team, your team is free to take up more tasks. You also get the ability to scale up or down quickly.
A study by Clutch found that almost 24% of small businesses seek global outsourcing services to improve their work efficiency.
Virtual outsourcing solutions and global outsourcing can help you in cost savings by having day-to-day tasks completed in a lower-cost economy.
A popular model is the “managed operations” model.
In this, a third-party provider takes care of several processes, ranging from recruitment, human resources, payroll tax, to overall management supervision. Apart from the engagement costs in such an approach, you only need to sacrifice time to train new offshore employees.
Digital transformation has become a fast-evolving trend, amid the widespread disruptions brought about by the pandemic. The need for cybersecurity has never been greater.
The IT Trends Report by Syntax highlights that 83% of leading IT organizations are considering partnering with global outsourcing services to handle any digital threats that may come along with this unexpected shift.
According to statistics by Grand View Research, it will reach $405.6 billion by 2027. India and China are already leading the outsourcing bandwagon, followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, and the Philippines.
Similarly, new sectors–such as health care and fintech–are predicted to invest heavily in outsourcing in the coming years, along with IT which continues to remain the No. 1 sector.
Keeping these in mind, let’s look at the top trends for the virtual outsourcing and global outsourcing landscape in 2022:
Rather than pricing, quality and innovation will be the top consideration for remote working solutions. Until a few years back, cost-cutting and the availability of cheaper offshore solutions drove outsourcing.
But the trend is changing since companies are not just outsourcing non-core activities but tasks that demand quality.
The global outsourcing industry is set to grow in the coming years.
A report by GSA-UK highlights that 70% of buyers surveyed expect to increase their use of outsourcing, with 35% planning to do so significantly.
There is a strong belief that outsourcing is set to become more popular as a business practice over the next five years
With the world going digital, data protection laws and cyber insurance will be increasingly enforced.
Global businesses, industries, and countries are focusing on setting up stricter measures in their own capacities to curb cybercrime.
While data security was always prioritized for the outsourcing industry, the coming years will see greater enforcement in the form of better compliance with the laws of client-residing countries. Cyber insurance is one of its facets, a sector that is projected to grow to $20.4 billion by 2025.
From CEOs to local staff to consumers, global outsourcing, when done right, benefits everyone involved.
Organizations increase their efficiencies while having the flexibility to scale and grow – allowing many to invest in other business areas.
In the fast-moving, competitive world, it’s critical to make sure that you are not left behind. If you decide to incorporate virtual outsourcing or global outsourcing solutions, ensure that you partner with experienced and reliable companies and people to drive business growth.
This is the second installment of our series on Remote Outsourcing where we explore many ways in which work-from-home outsourcing is shaping the business landscape, providing innumerable opportunities for long-term growth.
Read MoreBuilding a strong sales process can help your team convert leads into paying customers
The Aberdeen Group found that best-in-class companies are 67% more likely to have a formal sales enablement strategy in place
Investing in sales enablement can help your team identify the most effective strategies and tools to improve sales performance
The future-proofed sales team will be composed of experienced human salespeople and AI-assisted technologies
Sales teams must be able to adapt to changing customer needs and trends to remain successful
In today’s fast-paced business world, companies need a sales team that can adapt and thrive in an ever-evolving landscape.
The future of sales is no exception.
With new technologies and changing customer behaviors, companies must stay ahead of the curve and future-proof their sales teams.
This article will explore the challenges that sales teams face and provide actionable tips to future-proof your sales team. We will also address the role of technology in sales and the importance of aligning your sales strategy with your business objectives.
And lastly, we will also discuss how MarketStar can help your sales team stay on top of the game and thrive in a constantly changing digital world.
A strong sales team is vital for an organization's success, as they play a key role in driving revenue, building customer relationships, shaping the company’s image, and providing valuable insights into the market and customer needs.
A study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that sales productivity can increase by as much as 14% with the use of sales force automation (SFA) technology.
Sales teams are responsible for identifying, cultivating, and closing deals with potential customers, directly impacting revenue and growth.
The sales team is also responsible for building and maintaining relationships with existing customers, which can lead to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Additionally, the sales team is often the first point of contact between the company and its potential customers, which means they play a key role in shaping the customer’s perception of the company and its products or services.
A strong sales team can also provide valuable insights into customer needs and preferences, which can fuel product development and marketing strategies.
Furthermore, the sales team’s performance can also be a vital indicator of the company’s overall health and growth prospects.
A high-performing sales team can drive revenue growth and help the company achieve its goals and objectives.
On the other hand, a struggling sales team can signal problems with the company’s products or services, market positioning, or sales strategy.
Sales teams are under immense pressure to perform.
They constantly seek new ways to improve their numbers and hit their targets. However, this pressure can sometimes lead to sales teams making mistakes.
There are several challenges that sales teams face that can prevent them from being successful. These challenges include:
Lack of leads and customer engagement
Long sales cycles
Missed quotas and low win rates
Not having a clear sales strategy
Not understanding their customers
Not having the right sales tools
Keeping up with changing technologies
Sales onboarding and training
If your sales team struggles to meet its goals, it could be due to one or more of these challenges. But don’t despair – there are ways MarketStar can help your business overcome these challenges and get your sales team back on track.
The sales landscape has undergone significant changes in recent years, driven by technological advances and changes in customer behavior.
Some key changes in the sales landscape include digital transformation, increased automation, remote selling, shift to inbound sales, emphasis on customer experience, increased focus on data and analytics, and increased use of AI and machine learning.
These changes in the sales landscape are driving companies to rethink their strategies, processes, and technology stack to stay competitive. Let’s discuss how to future-proof your sales organization amidst these changes.
Future-proofing your sales team involves preparing them to adapt and thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape. Here are a few key strategies that can help you future-proof your sales team:
This can include investing in sales pipeline management tools and platforms to manage leads, track customer interactions, and close deals. This will help your sales team work more efficiently and effectively.
Automation can help your sales team save time and focus on more strategic tasks. This can include using CRM software, marketing automation platforms, and AI-powered sales assistants.
According to a Salesforce study, companies with a well-defined sales process and using a CRM system see a 25% increase in sales productivity.
Remote selling will likely become more common in the future, and your sales team should be equipped to operate effectively in a remote environment.
Inbound sales, which focuses on attracting customers through content and building relationships, will likely become more popular. Your sales team should be equipped to adapt to this approach.
As customers become more empowered, sales teams must prioritise providing a positive and personalized customer experience to drive repeat business and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Sales teams will need to become proficient in using data and analytics to gain insights into customer behavior, identify trends, and make more informed decisions.
Investing in sales enablement can help your sales team stay up to date with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices. This can include training and development programs, mentoring, and coaching.
AI and machine learning can help sales teams in lead generation, customer segmentation, and predictive analytics thereby enhancing the sales process.
MarketStar helps businesses future-proof their sales teams. Here’s how.
We offer sales solutions and services that include – sales enablement, digital transformation, inbound sales, outbound sales, feet-on-the-street, pipeline management, and operations.
The sales enablement service can help businesses identify the most effective strategies and tools to improve sales performance.
Digital transformation helps businesses adopt new technologies to improve sales processes and customer engagement.
Our inbound sales service can help businesses attract and engage potential customers through various inbound marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Content Marketing.
Outbound sales service helps businesses reach out to potential customers through various outbound marketing techniques such as email, telemarketing, and direct mail.
The pipeline management service can help businesses manage their sales pipeline effectively to improve conversion rates and increase revenue.
The sales operations service can help businesses with sales process design, CRM implementation, and performance analysis.
These are some of the services MarketStar offers; we can help businesses improve their sales performance by providing expert guidance and support in areas such as lead generation, sales strategy, and technology adoption.
In conclusion, MarketStar can help businesses future-proof their sales teams by providing various services.
If your sales team is facing challenges such as generating leads, meeting quotas or staying current with changing technologies, consider reaching out to MarketStar today to help future-proof your sales team and drive success for your business.
The term ‘customer-centric culture’ might feel self-explanatory. While it does entail that you put your customers first, it only scratches the surface of “customer-centric”. To truly define its aspects, many researchers have spent a good amount of time thinking about it.
Read MoreThe more leads your venture generates, the better its business growth will be.
Read MoreA PwC research indicates that many outsourcing deals collapse even before the contract has concluded because of mistrust between service providers and customers.
Read MoreHave specific questions? Search our blog to quickly access insights that will impact your sales.
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