Consistency Is Key: Set Your Sales Team Up for Success
Jan 30, 2024
8 mins
There's one universal truth about all teams: not everyone is equally good at everything. Mark is great at asking the right questions in a discovery call, but struggles with putting it all into a proposal.
Janice knows exactly what to write to get a client interested, but doesn't know how to make it visually appealing. John is great at making proposals look good, but tends to make typos that make your business look unprofessional.
The result? Inconsistent sales documents reaching your clients.
At first glance, this might not seem like a huge issue. After all, you can't reasonably expect every team member to have the same set of skills. The variety is probably why you hired them in the first place.
However, as time goes by, you realize you can't effectively track your sales success. Individual performance is muddled by team members jumping into other people's documents to make a few fixes. The contents of your documents differ from team member to team member and you have no sure way of knowing what works and what doesn't.
Before you know it, forecasting becomes a nightmare and you lose sight of what makes clients choose you over a competitor. And to think you could prevent all this just by adding consistency to your sales documents. Easier said than done? Not if you choose the right way to go about it.
Getting all team members to send equally good sales documents
First things first, you need to get your hands on document software designed for making your sales process smooth, consistent, and trackable. We'll put our own horse in the race and recommend Better Proposals.
Next, you want to look out for a few key features that make it easy to ensure consistency across your team. As luck would have it, you'll find them all in Better Proposals.
Set up document templates
The first step towards having a consistent document process is giving your sales team a starting point. Decide on the sections you want to see in different document types and set up templates for each one.
That way, your team has a framework for the document structure and you make sure no important information is left out. Besides making document creation less stressful, templates also speed up the entire process.
This means that your clients get to profit from a better sales experience. In addition to getting the information they wanted faster than they would before, your sales reps now have more time to focus on the client. It's a win-win situation.
Reduce room for error
When you're creating several documents a day, it's easy to go into autopilot mode and just go through the motions. As a result, you end up with typos, or worse, leave the wrong name in a new client's proposal.
Besides being embarrassing, oversights like this could land you in violation of privacy laws. Sounds expensive? That's because it is.
Thankfully, with Better Proposals, you can eliminate mistakes like this with automatic input fields. Simply load up your template with our merge tags and see the correct information automatically appear in your documents.
What's more, you can create documents directly from your CRM with our Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. That way, your client's information is pulled into the document and all you need to do is add project-specific details.
Create a library of pre-approved content
Have a sales rep who writes long-winded introductions or isn't very good at pointing out the benefits of your product or service? As a result, another team member needs to spend time editing and improving the content? Over time, this can result in frustration and resentment.
With Better Proposals, you can play on your team members' individual strengths while not making them do extra work. How? Simply take the best parts of their documents and save them into the Content Library. That way, everyone can access the best intros, project breakdowns, and pricing sections in a few clicks and add them into their documents.
Embed your pricing into the system
Speaking of pricing sections, that's one of the most important places you don't want accidental errors in. Picture this: a sales rep comes back from vacation, puts together a proposal, and sends it off to a client. The only problem is, the pricing is wrong.
How? While your sales rep was on vacation, you increased your prices by 2%, but forgot to tell them. Now, since the document is already sent out, you have two options:
- Reach out to the client, apologize, and send a new proposal
- Take the hit and do the work at the old price
Since the first one is embarrassing and might make you look like you don't know what you're doing, you'll probably opt for the second option. Now, you're losing money, all because of a communication issue.
This is again where Better Proposals comes in handy. In your settings, you can add a list of products and services you offer, complete with descriptions and pricing. That way, your sales reps simply add them from a pre-approved list with the correct pricing every time.
Lock sections you don't want to see changes to
There are certain document sections you won't want to change on a regular basis. For example, your terms and conditions or set timelines are unlikely to change from one project to another.
That said, accidental edits can happen before the document's been sent off and you might not even notice before it's too late. The solution? Lock the content you don't want to risk edits to and put everyone's mind at ease.
Give everyone the access they need
While each of your team members is a user in Better Proposals, they might not all need the same levels of access. For example, you might have one team member in charge of making sure templates are up to date, but don't want them to send any documents.
Or, you only let managers or legal edit locked content, especially if it's your terms. With Better Proposals, you can make sure everyone can access what they need and reduce the information overload.
Organize your templates into folders, your team members into teams, and give them access only to the parts they need. That way, you're making sure everyone has a smooth and enjoyable working day. No more wasting time sifting through huge document databases where 90% of the docs isn't what you're looking for.
Have a manager approve a document before it reaches the client
Whether it's high-stakes deals you want another pair of eyes on or a new sales rep that still needs a higher level of supervision, Better Proposals has got your back. For all the deals you don't want to risk, you can set up manager approvals and make sure they're perfect before they reach the client's inbox.
Know exactly which state your deals are in
When you send sales documents the old-school way (PDF in an email, anyone?), you have no way of knowing what's happening. You're stuck waiting for the client to make the next move.
A few days in, you send a follow-up email, but you don't have much to go on except for the fact that you still haven't heard back. Then, you wait again.
What if we told you there was an easier way? With Better Proposals, you get detailed activity tracking which helps take the guesswork out of the state of your deals. You'll see exactly when the client is reading the document, in which order, and for how long.
What's more, if you see a client spending a lot of time on one of your sections, you can jump right in in real time thanks to live chat. That way, you can handle objections and answer questions right away and make sure you close the deal.
Run reports to get performance insights
Let's face it, sales without data is like stumbling through the dark. You want to know how your sales team is performing, otherwise you can't monitor the state of your pipeline and you can't plan for the future. Better Proposals gives you this with company, team, and individual sales reports - and we take it a step further.
Besides team performance overviews, you also get to see which of your templates are performing best. That way, you can improve underperforming templates and make sure you're only sending out the best documents possible.
Getting consistency is easier than you think
At the end of the day, a great sales process is all about consistency. Creating a strong foundation for your team starts with investing in a solution that removes unnecessary noise and lets reps focus on what they do best - selling.
Better Proposals has everything you need to help your team send out beautiful, flawless documents that wow clients. But don't take our word for it. Take 14 days on us and see for yourself.
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