For the salesperson, the goal is a straight line between them and the customer. Their job is to engage prospects and guide them through the sales cycle, from nurturing to consideration and decision-making, and eventually close the sale.
For sales managers, though, the goal is not a straight line. They have to invest a significant amount of effort in sales reporting, managing the performance and enabling the team to ensure deal closure.
“Managing can be defined as planning, directing, and controlling the activities of other people in the same organization in order to achieve or exceed desired objectives.”
It seems like the core role of a sales manager has changed little since 1964, as this comment by Raymond O. Loen substantiates.
Here we have detailed out the statement to identify the core elements of a sales manager’s role.
- Training sales staff and allocating resources appropriately
- Creating pipelines and allocating budgets
- Setting goals and objectives for the sales team
- Motivating personnel and improving performance
- Planning and implementing sales strategies
- Tracking sales activities and employee productivity
For the sales manager, what this means is hitting sales targets consistently by maintaining a line of sight into the sales process, sales strategies and implementation, the performance of the sales team, and demand forecasting.
While the job may seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be.
Sale has become extraordinarily complex since 1964, and yet, simpler in many ways because of technology.
In this article, we look at why sales managers and salespersons need to maintain a line of sight into sales complexities, and the role CRMs can play in helping simplify sales processes with sales reporting
The need to maintain line of sight in sales
When managers and employees have a strong line of sight, decision-making improves. Tracking and measuring sales performance is the most aspect for any sales manager.
A line of sight into sales performance helps the salesperson stay motivated towards common goals they share, defined by the sales manager. This helps all stakeholders understand not just their goals, but also how their efforts are helping them achieve them.
Maintaining a line of sight doesn’t work only for those working in sales. It helps frontline employees like nurses and doctors, chefs, construction managers, and even professionals manufacturing, identify valuable insights be engage customers purposefully.
How does this principle translate to sales?
When inside sales interact with customers, they know a fair deal about their target audience’s requirements and pain points. This helps them develop empathy for their customers.
They not only address the needs of their customer comprehensively but also develop deep insights into decision-making and motivational identifiers to guide them through sales processes effortlessly.
In essence, they know:
- What to deliver
- How to achieve it
- How to keep track of sales performance
- How to keep track of changing customer behavior
- How to maintain high customer experience standards, and in turn
- How to keep revenue engine running
The benefits are clear. However, sales teams today need uncomplicated ways to manage and track multiple goals, which increases their workload. Sales CRMs can help sales managers and salespersons keep things simple.
Back in 1964, sales managers had to run around trying to gather all the right sales and productivity/performance numbers, crunch those numbers at a business- and employee-level, and then move to define strategies and their implementation.
In contrast, sales teams today have the convenience of technology to help them do all of this.
This is where Sales CRM software comes into play.
Most Sales CRM software allows on-demand generation of reports based on specific outcomes.
Sales data analysis and reporting provide sales managers with an overview of sales activities, help them track customer behaviour, and offer sales forecasting based on historical data gathered by the CRM.
Reports generation and sales reporting
Sales CRM reports are designed to help sales teams monitor performance, quickly identify problems, and sell smarter.
To meet business challenges and understand the changing demands of customers, businesses today, especially Growing Businesses, need deep insights.
Discover how different sales reports can help Growing Businesses perform better:
Sales activity reports
Sales Activity Reports provide an overview of the sales performance of multiple pipelines by measuring against historical data, helping provide a basis for sales managers to create and/or modify sales strategies.
Moreover, activity reports understanding those customers drive the business in terms of product-fit revenue.
Customer behavior and account management report
This report pulls all revenue generation, orders, and inventory data to provide insights into demand generation and variations, and account management per stage in the sales cycle, to provide sales managers and salespersons with visibility to course-correct quickly.
Moreover, the report can help narrow down the reasons for the change(s), to which sales managers can modify or create sales pitches and offers, negotiation tactics to improve the sales pipeline and customer engagement at each stage.
Sales forecast reports
Granular sales forecasting delivers an understanding of probable scenarios that the sales team may face.
Based on the culmination of current and historical data from the business itself, demand forecasts help sales schedule tactics that can impact revenue generation with activities like promotions and offers, and connect it with cultural activities like festivals, to engage prospects better.
Takeaway for sales teams
Today, sales reports can be generated on-demand and are customizable, a process poles apart from the environment sales teams found themselves in decades earlier.
As all the sales data and analysis is already stored and tracked in real-time, data crunching by sales CRM software will benefit Growing Businesses in multiple ways.
With on-demand sales analysis reports, Growing Businesses, like yours, can cut down efforts, errors, and costs, while improving productivity with reports that showcase relevant information in an engaging and visual manner.
Ready to create better sales reports?
Sales CRM software help bring convenience and transparency into business management, a necessity for any business that wants to scale at ease.
A comprehensive solution like Kylas Growth Engine can help your sales team direct sales strategies based on proper data by maintaining a line of sight into your business growth.
