At its most basic level, Sales ERP software integrates various functions into one complete system. The benefit is that this streamlines sales processes and also provides critical information across the entire organization. Additionally, it gives a global, real-time view of data that can enable companies to address concerns proactively, drive improvements, improve sales opportunities and reduce sales processing time from prospect to close.
Although it sounds fantastic to have one process, with all data in one location, it can be difficult to achieve. A Sales ERP system may require up to 50 integrations points with other partners and applications. I’ve met with company presidents over the past 17 years, and found one thing in common: difficult sales processes are run through spreadsheets and documents, and can be time-consuming and inefficient. With the processes I’ve seen, it takes hours and hours to complete a sales opportunity.
I’ve been in the office equipment industry for over 25 years, and have been everything from a down-the-street sales rep, to upper management, to software developer and founder of Compass Sales Solutions. I’ve been able to see what life is like without a Sales ERP system.
Then the dealership I worked for launched MPS in the 1990s—we were selling service and supply contracts on printers to bundling new equipment sales into one easy payment or cost per page contract with leasing companies. I spent hours processing cost-of-ownership analyses for prospects. My goal when approaching them was to “Capture All Clicks.” I found it to be very achievable and profitable, but time consuming to go through the manual processes required at the time.
I’ve struggled over the years trying to understand why a dealership would spend all efforts to make sure their business ERP system is utilized, but their sales follow a non-sales ERP system. With business ERP, financials are reconciled to the penny, and Accounting and Service Dispatch follow the process and adapt to the system.
However, sales teams are not tasked to a process. Does accounting ever send an invoice in an Excel spreadsheet that was not generated from the business ERP? Does the service department generate a service ticket in Outlook without entering in their service dispatch software? It seems that sales departments can follow a different rule, and that can affect your business. I’ve seen sales reps generate proposals that are unprofessional and misrepresent the company. In some cases, this could even cause legal ramifications. It’s time that sales processes are simplified, and dealers adapt to a process.
Let’s start with a basic sales ERP process workflow:
What is critical to your success in increasing sales and productivity? Your first step is a CRM that is easy to use while generating opportunities and tracking day-to-day activities. A CRM is often confused for a Sales ERP, but in truth it is just one component. Any CRM should be able to capture email communications with customers and prospects, so it’s vital that it can integrate with Outlook, the most common email and calendaring tool utilized.
When an opportunity is found, the next process is to determine whether a cost of ownership analysis is required.
In addition, your CRM should integrate with marketing tools and have the ability to generate leads. It provide you the information you need to easily find an opportunity, and then follow the rest of the sales process through the close of the sale.
When an opportunity is found, the next process is to determine whether a cost of ownership analysis is required. Over the years, I have categorized sales reps into two categories.
The first category is “Box Seller.” These sales reps can move equipment quickly. They are great at relationships, and their customers are loyal. They move boxes, but at times at lower margins. When in a competitive environment, they may struggle because more time and effort is required to provide an executive summary-type proposal to the prospect.
The second category is “Solution Seller.” These sales reps take a consultative approach to selling, usually have higher margins and focus on maximizing the full potential of the sale opportunity. A Solution Seller sales process can be time consuming, and limits the potential of opportunities these sellers can handle.
This category requires a process that automates the analysis process. However, because of the profit potential, many reps will do what it takes to complete a sale without a process, even if it takes hours and hours at work or at home to complete. A Solution Seller is adaptable, and if trained properly can determine whether a sale requires box selling or solution selling.
Providing a total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) tool in your Sales ERP is critical. A good TCO tool will provide a high return on investment, and give you the ability to capture data from multiple data-collection agents. Importing from all data-collection agents, along with connecting to a data source of equipment specifications, gives a Solution Provider an hours-long head start to complete cost analyses.
Gathering a baseline of a prospect’s equipment operation costs is vital to providing the best solution that allows the customer to potentially reduce costs and maximize profit potential. Reporting costs to a prospect in a professional format provides the cost validation of current spending, allowing a sales rep to move forward with a proposed solution. If the rep is a “Box Seller,” the TCO is skipped and equipment pricing and configuration is next.
Next up, your TCO tool should allow the ability to track all costs of operations, including customer lease payments and lease expirations. This should be required and monitored by sales management, both weekly and monthly, because of its importance.
Once the cost is determined, the financial data is ready to be presented. The sales rep can compare existing prospect costs to proposed costs and present in an executive summary.
A TCO module allows the opportunity to track competitive lease information. Most or all reps collect lease data from non-customers and keep this data on a spreadsheet or notepad, or in Outlook. However, seldom is this critical data collected within their Sales ERP system. If dealer management required each sales rep to enter competitive lease information in their system, could you imagine the number of opportunities this would generate in just a year’s time?
Competitive lease reports should easily be obtained, and activity follow-ups should be generated monthly to the CRM. Take this scenario: if just one sale was generated by tracking competitive leases in your Sales ERP, with an average sale of $15,000, that would equal $180,000 per year, or just under $1 million in new sales over five years. The ROI potential is huge with just this simple requirement of sales reps. The dealer, not the sales team, would then maintain this information in a database that provides unlimited leads for the future.
Without a simple process to calculate the total cost of ownership this is what it may be costing you in time and productivity. Based on a baseline of 10 sales reps, the processing time is improved by almost 70 percent.
After a prospect validates their current costs, the solution strategy is determined, and equipment configuration can be completed to determine dealer cost for the proposed solution. The tool should provide flexibility to maintain many price options and security of what sales reps are authorized to access. To prevent errors, direction is recommended to help sales reps choose the correct configuration, along with required items automatically included when the main model is selected. The configurator should maintain the ability to assign service rates and required fees for installation, and also maintain security of pricing and accuracy. Management should approve any variation from published pricing.
Once the cost is determined, the financial data is ready to be presented. The sales rep can compare existing prospect costs to proposed costs and present in an executive summary. Several options should be provided to sales reps for various proposal options, including multiple lease options, purchase options or cost per page (bundling). The dealer should provide sales templates for all opportunities. If the sale opportunity is validated, a forecast should be created and pushed to the forecast portion of your CRM.
Finally, it’s time to close the sale, complete the paperwork and move to the next opportunity. This is where it can become crippling to a sales rep. I have seen many sales packets that need to be completed to close a sale, and wonder how a sales rep has any time at the end of the month to close a sale. How much time is lost and how many sales are missed because reps are buried in paperwork instead of closing? Are you crippling your sales team with paperwork? Providing a simple solution for reducing the amount of time to process paperwork is welcome to any sales rep.
In this article, I’ve listed the basics and bare minimums that need to be part of your sales process: enable your sales teams, adapt to a sales process, manage your opportunities and improve your productivity. By simplifying your sales process, your sales team will focus more on selling than learning how to create and process the sell.
