The name says it all: sales acceleration increases the velocity of sales moving through the pipeline. By cutting corners and simultaneously adding powerful tools that proactively jumpstart the process, sales acceleration adds efficiency that saves businesses time and money. When deciding whether or not to invest, managers may wonder exactly how much time can be saved.
The need for speed
The many individual tools offered under the umbrella of sales acceleration play a part in helping employees work smarter. Each piece of technology contributes its own benefits depending upon the extent to which it is utilized. When integrated harmoniously into the workflow, the accumulation of so many time-savers can cause sales to be closed weeks or months ahead of time – and not only close sales faster, but close sales that otherwise would not have been closed at all due to resources being stretched too thin.
Every business is different, and the manner in which they apply sales acceleration technology – a collection of smaller tools – to their existing sales structure will vary as well. Any organization considering the upgrade should survey the tools offered and decide which technologies are most beneficial before making any hard estimates of time saved by the overall process. Fortunately, the majority of sales teams will benefit from most acceleration techniques, as they cater to general sales inefficiencies across industries. Sales acceleration simplifies every stage in the sales chain, and businesses with more sophisticated sales processes will experience even greater benefits.
Acceleration in action
Sales teams can literally start trimming down transaction time from stage one. For example, when sales members initially reach out to qualified leads, they can select a pre-written customized template from a set of examples instead of spending time constructing every individual email. As communications progress, sales acceleration outshines traditional CRM measures by centralizing more relevant customer information and making it more readily available when following up.
While attending to more established leads, acceleration tools will help place more calls to new leads than originally possible. Salespeople sometimes have limited opportunities to call new leads, and there is no guarantee they will be available in the same time window. Sales acceleration increases flexibility by reaching out to leads at their preferred times. And instead of taking time to evaluate which leads are most likely to convert – and most worth the effort of following through – the technology will analyze the big picture and deliver actual statistics on each lead’s probability of purchasing. Aside from the time saved from achieving identical results, these measures will also increase the accuracy of sales efforts leading to more closed sales overall.
Push it to the limit
While the list of time-saving examples is lengthy, businesses will see the best results from truly incorporating as many aspects as possible into their already successful sales process. Time and time again, managers learn of the latest technological innovation and believe profits will effortlessly skyrocket after the investment is made yet fail to take advantage of its true potential. In the case of sales acceleration, some sales teams have installed tools that help make more sales calls at a faster rate than ever before – yet they make exactly the same amount of calls as without their new tools. The real boost in efficiency comes after seamlessly integrating these techniques into existing processes – especially once their functions become second nature to those operating them.
Sales acceleration is built around the needs of the end-user, helping them work smarter and faster while exerting less effort than before. By initiating its many tools in unison, the technology can better serve both sales teams as well as their leads. Time is money, and perhaps nobody knows that better than those working in sales environments.