The world of sales has changed hugely over the past decade, and even more so during the era of a global pandemic.

As customers are bombarded with sales and marketing messages on every channel, competition is rife. Sales teams must think outside the box, as well as ensure that their team runs like a well-oiled machine to optimise every opportunity.

But without confidence in your technology, it’s difficult to empower or enable your sales team, workflows become convoluted and cumbersome, and your team become frustrated with archaic, time-consuming tasks and processes.

Empowering your salesforce is about streamlining your sales cycle, building better practices and protocols and using tech to fine-tune your team’s workload.

In this post, we outline how sales managers could make use of tech to make life easier for sales execs and reps.

How to harness your tech to empower your team 

The life of a sales executive is busy. Whether it’s navigating a new sales region, compiling reports, or managing multiple diarised meetings, getting quality time with customers becomes increasingly difficult as teams are time poor.

But one way to make life easier, and free up more time for your sales executives is to audit your technology and harness your IT to make sure time-consuming admin tasks take as little time as possible and more personalised, client-facing experiences take precedence.

Here are a few of the initial steps you could take to make sure your tech is progressing your sales performance.

Key features to look for 

There’s no need to struggle with the same IT solutions if they aren’t right for your team, and don’t drive you towards your business goals. Tech is built and designed to make your lives and daily work routines easier, so now’s the time to step back and make sure your tools, platforms and solutions are working for you.

When it comes to making life easier for your sales team, it’s important to look out for the technology that offers the following features and functions:

Mobile compatibility: 

Chances are, your sales team will travel to trade shows and events, off-site meetings and customer visits on a daily basis. Having tools that only function via on-site servers on desktop computers no longer make the cut. Tools such as Toucan’s Mobile Sales app and Analytics platform are designed to work across multiple devices and operating systems so your sales professionals can access all the customer information they need from wherever they are on an iPad, laptop, tablet or mobile device.

Accessible customer context in one place:

Context is key when it comes to having more personalised, valuable interactions with your customers. Whether it’s having access to your CRM or being able to access the customer’s purchase history or your product catalogue and stock information, having the right information at your fingertips is essential if you want to improve your team’s efficiency.

Faster order taking: 

Without mobile order taking and digital processes for confirming and logging customer orders, customer purchases can be time consuming and prone to human error. A reliable mobile sales app should allow you to view the latest stock information, as well as deals, discounts, and up to date, accurate pricing so that there’s no room for error when customers make a purchase. Likewise, your mobile ordering system means your orders are processed automatically, and executives save time contacting the head office or submitting orders manually.

Choosing the solutions that drive success 

Your sales technology needs to align with the bigger picture and wider team and business goals.

Streamlining your sales processes is about using intelligent automation and integrations so that execs don’t have to switch between multiple different apps and platforms or wait until they’re back in the office to close a deal.

Arming your sales professionals with the right software empowers them to optimise every opportunity and spend less time on time-consuming administrative tasks.

Toucan’s Sales Analytics solution and our handy Mobile Sales App provide your execs with all the information they need at their fingertips, whether they’re working from home, at a tradeshow, or out meeting new prospects.

Our mobile sales app enables orders to be confirmed and imported directly into your back-office system, eradicating the need for manual interventions along the way. That means less time waiting on office support, and more time delivering slick, personalised customer interactions that leave an impact and drive advocacy.

For more information on Toucan Sales Analytics, click here to request a demo.