Sales change as fast as marketing. It used to be an art, but now it is a science and technology. Through advanced sales automation software, it becomes easier for sales to interact with prospects. Prospects are qualified. Sales score them through an informative process. Prospects are becoming new customers faster and more effectively than before.

No company is immune to sales challenges. Even the best-performing sales teams face obstacles in developing buyer relationships and communicating effectively with prospects and clients. What sets successful companies apart is their ability to strategically overcome these sales challenges. They have marketing and sales teams working together, and they have common goals, KPIs, and metrics.

Here are the most common sales challenges and how to better use sales automation software to overcome them:

1. Find qualified leads

Challenge:

Attracting lots of new leads is not always a good thing. If you want to attract qualified leads, you need to focus on quality over quantity. It does not make sense for sales representatives to spend time talking to people who are not ready to buy.

Solution:

CRM helps you differentiate between those who are researching and those who are ready to talk to salespeople. You should distinguish those who are in the early stages of the buyer’s journey and those who are in the later stages.

CRM’s Inbound Marketing is often a better way to include more qualified leads in your sales process as they go deeper in the buyer’s journey, and Demand Generation introduces your company to people who may be early in the buyer’s journey people.

Challenge:

No matter how you communicate with potential clients, your message needs to be compelling. For your potential customers to respond, you first need to develop a message that is impactful, compelling and contagious. An email or a phone call is not enough to grab their attention. Conduct a series of communications to address the challenges your prospects are facing. According to top performers in sales prospect studies, it takes an average of eight contacts to have an initial meeting with a new prospect.

Solution:

Automate  CRM. Sales representatives can focus on talking to prospects who are ready to buy, while workflow automation sends emails in the background and nurtures prospects who aren’t ready. Don’t tell them how great your company is. Instead, provide them with valuable and relevant information. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time will greatly increase your response rate.

3. Ask the right questions

Challenge:

Asking the right questions to potential clients is the best way to understand their needs and pain points. While you may be tempted to advertise right away, don’t do it. A rushed process will not get you very far. Instead, ask insightful questions to determine if and in what way you can help your prospect.

Solution:

Be prepared to ask the right questions. You can use  CRM to create a document with all relevant questions and use them as needed. This is a great way to match content to the questions you ask.

Challenge:

How can your company stand out from the competition?

Solution:

Build meaningful relationships with prospects and clients using  CRM. Know the enemy and know yourself. Use CRMs opportunity winning and losing records to clearly understand the competitors. With all of the above in place, the best way to stand out from your competitors is to provide your prospects with a better selling experience. You guide them more than you sell them; you advise them more than push them; you help them more than try to convince them, or you will destroy more relationships.

5. Spend too much time on administrative tasks

Challenge:

Today’s sales representatives spend less than 36% of their time selling, while administrative tasks such as entering data and generating reports take up most of their valuable time.

Solution:

Sales enablement tools and sales technology can automate most non-revenue-generating tasks. Using the right tool like  CRM gives you more time to focus on your core sales activities. For example, a meeting scheduler tool allows prospects to instantly book a time in a sales representative’s calendar, avoiding lengthy email chains. Email templates will also save representative time. While they will still need to customize their messages, having a template for follow-ups, restatement calls, etc. will help improve efficiency.

6. Maintain client relationships after-sales

Challenge:

A deal may sign a contract, but that does not mean your job is over. Once your prospect becomes a customer, you still have to work hard to maintain and build their trust. Otherwise, you risk losing your hard-earned business.

Solution:

Contact your clients regularly to discuss their experience so far and make sure they are satisfied. Track client engagement with  CRM and send them personalized emails. Use  CRM to nurture existing clients and make them invest in your brand. Upselling to satisfied clients is much easier than signing up for new ones. Upselling can actually bring in more revenue and spend less. Make the most of your money and build strong relationships with existing clients.

7. How to effectively sell as a team

Challenge:

The selling process works best as a team sport. Teamwork can help you develop innovative solutions to obstacles so everyone can benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience, but effective teams are not just made up of strong individuals and it’s about helping them get organized.

Solution:

Using  CRM, you can define the roles of each team member and their responsible activities and deliverables, and chain these activities into a project to achieve the team’s common goals. With the system, the team can communicate regularly to avoid a disjointed sales process.