5 New Year Resolutions for the Sales Team

While 2022 saw a V-shaped recovery for most companies, 2023 is set to be the year of resilience needed to maintain the momentum. With economic headwinds looking likely to hit projections this year, sales leaders must set new targets to increase productivity and cut costs, helping contribute to overall efficient business growth.

Looking for inspiration? Here are some 2023 resolutions for sales leaders to get you started.

Let 2023 be the year when you truly implement best practices for time management to boost efficiency. Standard to-do lists and calendars aside, here are some new strategies that will ensure you remain at the top of your game:

Easy wins:

• Streamline sales activities through automation: Begin by identifying inefficiencies in your sales processes- client calls, follow-up methods, and research. Explore if you can automate the repetitive steps in the sales process like running outreach campaigns or analysing engagement metrics and save time on certain activities.
• Use automated workflows to maintain/compile sales records and run data transfers in the background.
• Use communication templates to save time when following up on leads, answering queries, or sending meeting invites.
• Automate and consolidate the capture of data from customer interactions so you can efficiently access all the data you need on one unified platform.

Storing data, generating leads, creating in-depth customer profiles, tracking campaigns, analysing performance, setting up appointments, enabling cross-selling and upselling- a CRM like Salesforce Customer 360 is truly a magical tool. However, to make best use of all the rich features available, you must keep learning and exploring the solution continuously. Considering the long ‘to-do’ checklists of salespersons, this might have slipped off your priority list.

Easy wins:

• This year, make a resolution to explore five features of your CRM that you have not used before, and leverage them to improve your sales process.
• Redraw your sales strategy to make it more data-driven, putting more emphasis on using insights from your CRM.

Every customer should be more than a statistic in your sales pipeline – treat them as case studies that you need to keep delving into. This year, resolve to create experiences that will wow your customers; for example, offering long-term solutions instead of standalone, quick-fix tools. All to build long-term relationships with your customers.

Easy wins:

• Combine AI and ML-powered predictive analytics with customer data to accurately predict future requirements and make personalised recommendations.
• Listen more than you talk. Making efforts to know your customers better not only makes them feel valued but also gives you a deeper understanding of their needs. Ask questions and share anecdotes or personal examples to forge a genuine connection.
• Keep communications simple and easy to understand. Use a template like “who to help + why + how” to refine the way you interact with customers.

Understand the reason behind the success/failure of every sale. It allows you to hone your sales skills, be better equipped to manage upcoming customer queries and find better ways to sell. A key process here is to listen to feedback at every step of the sales cycle and understand how you can improve the customer experience.

Easy wins:

• Keep a close watch on customer perception of your products as well as your competition.
• Track online conversations in real-time, monitor social media mentions and analyse positive/negative vocabulary focused on your brand.
• No matter how small the sale is, ensure customer feedback is taken to address unnoticed pain points and teething issues.
• Prospect rejections and failures matter! They help you fine tune your messaging and value proposition for future conversations.

Starting the year by refreshing your product knowledge and brushing up on recent updates seems a great idea! This can help you better position your product, connect with the customer and sell, upsell or cross-sell more efficiently.

Easy wins:

• Stay updated on recent innovations on your organisational announcement channels/news groups/newsletters.
• Collaborate with the marketing team and get your messaging aligned with organisational goals.
• Forge meaningful relationships with partners to get an outside-in view of current industry trends.

Inspire your sales team to do more with less

Listing out relevant resolutions for salespeople is only the first step. The real test is to ensure you and your team are equipped with the right tools to keep these resolutions.

With Salesforce Sales Cloud, sales reps are empowered with the tech and data-driven intelligence they need to sell faster and smarter.

Powered by data-driven AI, the end-to-end sales management platform helps:

• Scale SDR productivity with automation
• Accelerate deals with insights at every stage of the buyer journey
• Maximise customer touchpoints across channels
• Grow predictable revenue with detailed reports and real-time pipeline and forecast management
• Unify account and contact management, opportunity management, lead management, and more