Sales Automation

Field effectiveness can be enhanced by focusing on automating certain tasks which in most cases I have found to be a drain on salesperson’s resources. I have seen that time spent on these activities often take up valuable time leading to salespeople getting frustrated, such tools would increase selling productivity and, at the same time, lower selling costs. 

I have gone ahead and identified certain tasks that help us in achieving the main objective. I will focus on tools that support such tasks by giving screenshots and samples in some of my future articles (also when I have more time to write in detail on that …;-))).

Some of the tasks that can be easily automated are:

• Reducing the amount of time a salesperson devotes to administrative tasks such as the preparation of call reports.
• Tracking sales leads.
• Managing time and territory
• Developing proposals and persuasive presentations

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com

Campaign ROI Reporting

Sales Leaders are usually under a lot of pressure to justify their marketing expenditures. Knowing that a campaign generated a certain number of leads is interesting but it doesn't help justify the marketing campaign expense therefore I have noticed that knowing a Campaign ROI makes a difference as it helps him understand if the Campaign is giving results or not!!. Usually first you have to identify the key success criteria that you want to focus on, for eg :

1. Total revenue,
2. Upsell revenue,
3. Percentage increase in revenue / percentage of new customers.

Then as you complete your marketing campaigns you'll be able to score the success of each campaign against your predefined success criteria using metrics that involve the following different stages:

•    Marketing deliverable
•    Prospect response
•    Lead capture
•    Lead qualification
•    Lead acceptance
•    Conversion.

Just make sure that you establish a success criterion for each of the steps in your marketing process.

All this while simultaneously calculating your campaigns' performance by return on investment (ROI) and average cost. For each campaign in the report: ROI, which is expressed as a percentage,it is usually calculated as the net gain (Total Value Won Opportunities - Actual Cost) divided by the Actual Cost.

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com

Components of a Project Feasibility report for a deal

Most of the Project Feasibility reports that I have created for the various deals that I have supported have used the following components mentioned below , which have sufficiently covered all aspects of the requirements of the prospective client in one report.

1. Cost of Implementation: Includes total costs all broken down into the fixed. Variable and other components – Operational Costs,  Projected Revenue & Projected Viability i.e. (Surplus  / Deficit)
2. Cost Derivation Method: Includes basic details and  also some extra details like if an escalation is required and what is the % increase required.
3. Value Assessment: Has details of the % of the returns it will give i.e  ROI, Also should have details if the cost & revenue is optimistic/moderate/conservative
4. Job Creation: An important aspect on how many jobs will be created (please remove if performance enhancing software)
5. Demand/Need for Software : Quite an essential component
6. Appropriateness Assessment: Is the project considered appropriate in terms of project type, cost and beneficiary need, as a seller for us it is usually a big “YES”.with all the details. ;-)
7. Sustainability Assessment :  Should include details on sustainability of the project

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com