Sales Managers play a pivotal role in every part of lead management. From strategies for lead generation to managing opportunities, the sales manager is an imperative bead to the sales management chain.
Despite having a highly competent and self-driven team, lead management can still collapse. Not due to the team’s skillsets but factors that are blind spots to the managers and their sales team.
According to CSO insights, 45% of sales reps need help figuring out which account to prioritize. In such a case, Lead Conversations come into play, through which the sales manager can direct the sales team about the opportunities and challenges while handling a particular deal.
Here, we will discuss the top 6 challenges that make it truly difficult for the sales manager to get through the effective lead conversation with the sales team.
Inadequate Understanding of Deal Forecasts
The Sales Manager needs to have an in-depth understanding of the difference between opportunity forecast and order forecast. Opportunity forecast can show a $100K deal when the client has an order of $25K only.
Whereas order forecast is very different from what is projected and is more accurate. The sales manager should have a data-driven approach while guiding the sales team in handling the deal.
With the use of real-time data for lead conversations, the sales manager can identify the risk and opportunity and create an action plan towards closing the deal.
Lack of Objective Data
The main prerequisites that have to be in place to have a lead conversation are usually missing from the action plan. The sales manager needs a clearer view to answer these questions:
- Have we talked with all the stakeholders at the prospect (Account Coverage)?
- Are these stakeholders well-connected with the salesperson?
- Do we know the competitors on this deal?
- Does the solution match the customer’s needs? If yes, how well does it?
- Where does the customer stand in the buying cycle?
While scrutinizing these prerequisites on the opportunity in a lead conversation, we must also ensure if the prospect has the required budget and timelines for the solutions provided.
It will not only strengthen the deal approach, but also help the team from falling into deals that will ultimately not work.
Objective Analysis Approach
Most salespersons have outlooks that are generally based on subjective analysis. The lack of objective analysis is necessarily the one thing that’s blocking the team from targeting the deals in the right way.
It’s common for salespeople to make forecast assumptions on subjective data. If it has potential, it must be closer to close. The lack of objective analysis is necessarily the one thing that’s blocking the team from targeting the deals in the right way.
In objective analysis, the sales manager needs to have insights even beyond the number of stakeholders. The sales manager must consider:
- To what extent given sales processes are being followed?
- How many critical success factors have been achieved?
- For a similar type of client, what are the typical parameters considered?
- What are the conclusions of this comparison and analysis?
Having lead conversations based on the clear and precise objectives for the given target can potentially achieve the maturity of the deal.
Executing the Dynamics of Deal Maturity
The sales managers and their teams presume that the deal maturity is based on one-dimensional parameters, but the dynamics keep changing in a case where the new and the existing customers are being compared. The sales manager must consider these dynamics when executing deal maturity:
- Does the salesperson have the needed account coverage?
- What is the competitive landscape of that customer?
- Other dynamics about their budget vision and their current growth status.
The answers to these questions can be found through a lead conversation and help find your progress through deal maturity.
Actions with Data-driven Approach
The inadequate sales processes lead to complexities instead of initiating action-based work by the sales managers and their team. Hence, they run after the unprioritized targets while minimizing the utmost utilization of their skills.
The required inputs and data for understanding the dynamics of deal maturity must be analyzed and demonstrated in an easy-to-understand and implement manner. The absence of crucial data leads the sales manager to an unclear vision and a cluttered action plan.
Lead conversations supported by data-driven sales procedures can evaluate the efforts to be put into a particular target.
Right Sales Automation
To hit the right targets with full potential, it is important to implement the sales process automation for the sales team. The automation must require the minimum entry of manual data and yield more accurate insights for the action plan.
The majority of the companies have their 80% sales come from existing customers.
For example, doing upsell and cross-sell analysis requires a lot of time and energy. But if we automate the process in such a way that the system identifies prospects within your ideal customer profile and puts the analysis reports front and center to the sales team. Simplified execution will close more deals.
The customer 360-degree view can automate sales processes and provide insights on:
- Tracking progress by customer support.
- Growth on customer satisfaction perspective.
- The number of cases and resolution time for the cases.
In the effect of lead conversations, the sales team can effortlessly keep track of the products the customer has been using. This gives the sales team more chances to both upsell current clients and accurately time prospect’s closing decisions.
A lead conversation with a 360-degree analysis process can improve a sales manager’s understanding of what is happening on the ground with the sales team managing the deal. The objective and precise data of 360-degree perspective will show the sales team their weak points in front of the competition.
Lead conversation can help the sales manager to expedite the information into actionable strategies with the sales team and grab the right target deal.
