Raise your hand if you’ve crooned the lyrics of Amanda by Boston, “and tomorrow may be too late.” If you haven’t, no worries. You don’t need to have amazing taste in music, but to be a rockstar in sales, you must be informed and relevant in the moment, or your competitor will swoop in and drop the mic. Enter real-time sales, powered by AI.
“No matter the company, or industry, all sales teams have one thing in common: they want to sell more,” explained Shalini Mitha, Global VP of CX Solution Marketing at SAP Customer Experience. “In the digital economy, agility becomes key. You need to arm your sales team with what they need, when they need it.”
“Many CRM systems contain a wealth of information, but the data contained is useless if does not provide actionable intelligence,” Mitha continued, “by utilizing cloud solutions, you’re empowering your sales teams with the information and insights they need, in real time. Having this powerful tool at their fingertips, anywhere, on any device, allows sales professionals to keep the customer at the center of their focus, which is the secret to customers becoming loyal advocates of your brand.”
Modern sales means real-time sales: No matter the challenges, cloud offers solutions
The pace of sales today is faster than it’s ever been. Paired with the requirement of being incredibly knowledgeable, sales professionals are also tasked with needing to know the customer, or potential customer, inside and out. A sale can be made or broken if the customer doesn’t feel their representative understands them and the unique challenges facing their particular industry.
Of course sales isn’t just about gaining new clients, it’s also about keeping the clients that you do have happy – because more than likely, your competitors are knocking on their door, hoping for a way in.
Your sales force needs to:
- Keep pace in an ever-changing world
- Utilize multi-channel in real-time
- Have simplified collaboration among multiple stakeholders
- Track all customer interactions
- Leverage those interactions as part of the conversation with the customer
If a sales rep isn’t keenly aware of issues their customers face, the relationship is on the line.
Contextualization is also crucial. Today’s velocity of business means the difference between a contextual conversation, versus having to say I’ll get back to you tomorrow, and tomorrow might be too late.
Break free: Out of the silo
Created with mobile in mind, cloud takes customer information from various divisions and places it in the hands of those who need it, allowing your sales team to adjust and forecast in real-time. Sales are never one to one, but are one too many. Throughout organizations, you could have multiple people engaging in the process of assisting customers, and all need to be on point, understand the status of opportunities, and the status of your relationship with customers.
Sales professionals are discovering that silos are barriers to real time conversations with your customers – either the information is incomplete, or it takes much longer to get, thereby slowing down customer conversations and agility.
