MANAGEMENT + SYSTEMS
Sales intelligence
Jayne Hill, VECTA business development manager
Jayne Hill of VECTA, the sales intelligence and CRM software specialists, looks at how sales software solutions can play a big part in boosting sales figures in an increasingly difficult economic climate.
T
he current challenging economic climate means that businesses are redoubling their efforts to retain market share and
profitability and are under constant pressure to perform and to seek out smarter means of driving growth. Of course, there’s no single solution
to beating the economy, the response will be different for each business sector and the solution will be highly dependent upon a multitude of factors. How can a business take action to gain the competitive advantage? There are a number of traditional options available when it comes to increasing your business growth. These options include prospecting for new customers – a task more difficult than ever before with competition for customer share being so incredibly fierce; acquisition of new leads by referrals or industry partnerships; and of course the most practical and shrewdest option, focusing on retention and resurrection of the current or lapsed client base. It doesn’t take a great strategist to
realise that the most cost effective and probably the most productive of the above is concentration on the customer base. The fundamental key to this ‘Holy Grail’
however, is developing a comprehensive understanding of your customers. Make it your business to have a complete grasp of their business model, seasonal sales trends, their ethos, buying patterns and of course the personalities within the organisation. This often requires improvement in the way information already held within the business is used and shared.
It all sounds very obvious and too
simplistic doesn’t it? The more complex issue is how you obtain that level of detailed information from each individual account contact, and do they be willing to provide it? Additionally, once you have that information, how do you organise and use that knowledge effectively to add value to your bottom line? This is where sales intelligence and CRM software can play a vital role without the need for large scale human resource. The development of sales intelligence and CRM software as a tool has opened so many doors, enabling management and sales teams to introduce proactive and highly focussed sales strategies. The ability to optimise customer relationships and get to the nitty gritty of buying habits and trends without spending hours and hours poring over piles of reports and spread sheets really appeals to most MDs and sales directors, and it’s all achieved by making use of the valuable, but generally anonymous data already held within each business. The ability to use selected data streams from within your current systems, ranging from account and contact details through to sales and transactional information will quickly and easily provide a continuous flow of powerful and extremely
102 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 81 May 2013
useful sales prompts, guidance and information for various departments within an organisation. The addition of an intelligent sales and CRM tool, such as VECTA, provides that much needed edge in the market place, it gives a faster and more practical visualisation of the sales operation from a management, sales, telesales, marketing and IT perspective by building a centralised, detailed and informed overall picture of the customer’s business. Most importantly it enables businesses to take immediate action when a sales opportunity arises. Consider this as a scenario: You run a
successful fastener and fixing wholesale distribution company. You have a product book stocking tens of thousands of product lines and an extensive customer base in the thousands, consisting mostly of independent outlets. You notice a decline in turnover in a particular line but can’t pinpoint why. By using an integrated sales and CRM software solution you would be in a position to respond instantly to the problem. A simple point and click would give an automated signpost to where action was needed to recover lost sales, fill gaps or simply to pick up the telephone and speak with the customer armed with the relevant information to deal with the situation. From that enquiry you would also be able to run targeted marketing and promotional campaigns and monitor the results. A stand-alone CRM solution would simply not be able to identify the sales specific gap analytics and to do this from the back office system typically is just too time consuming, so doesn’t get done. Protecting and increasing the value of business from an existing customer base is clearly the most cost effective and quickest way of improving sales results and profitability. The client relationship is in place, you know their business and
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