We’ve written before about how the right technology can boost your sales performance, but how can you tell if you’re using the wrong system? This simple checklist will help.
You spend too much time on reporting
A 2017 study found that the average worker loses almost 22 hours every week on dull tasks like reporting and administrative work. In a perfect world, we would all be 100 percent productive, but let’s face it: reporting and proposal building are necessary evils unlikely to go away any time soon. What many companies don’t realize is that many of these tasks, even when they need to be customized, can be automated.
If your sales technology hinders your reporting instead of helping, it’s time to reevaluate. Not only does manual reporting risk human error and take far too much time, but it fails to leverage data sources from across your business.
Read also: 5 Data Visualization Tips for Digital Reporting
Getting a proposal out the door takes too long
When it comes to automation, you must think outside the box. Thanks to the rise of Artificial Intelligence and highly-connected end-to-end systems, you can leverage your entire data ecosystem to save serious time and impress clients at the same time.
Imagine sending a customized proposal to a prospect in minutes instead of hours. This doesn’t just save you time – it helps you close leads faster and makes you easier to work with. With custom stationery and proposal building functionality, you can pull together a beautiful PDF, Power-point or Excel proposal in just a couple of clicks, solving an all-too-common headache and closing more deals.
Read also: Digital Signatures: Yes, They’re Legal, and You Should Be Using Them
You aren’t sourcing leads from within your database
High-quality leads are often overlooked – they’re not hiding; they’re right within your database and spend data.
While advertising spend data alone may not drive new business, it can unlock key insights that help your sales team uncover opportunities you might otherwise be missing. The truth is, the best leads are your past customers.
Re-targeting existing customers and working to maintain or increase their ad spend is every bit as important as looking for new leads, so if you don’t have the ability to leverage these searches, you may be missing an opportunity.
Read also: 8 Things Every Publisher Must Do to Make Ad Buying Easy (And Increase Revenue!)
You can’t bring your database on the go
Remember when CRM apps for mobile phones or tablets were a neat bonus, even kind of gimmicky? Those days are gone. Today, mobile apps for CRM platforms are no longer a fun bonus – they’re non-negotiable. If your sales technology is tied to your desktop, then so are you. Such a model is just not feasible today.
With a browser-based system, your teams can access market data, make notes and avoid double-entry all from their smartphone, saving time even when they’re out in the field.
Read also: Lineup Introduces Adpoint Go
Your team complains of annoying data entry
Perhaps the single biggest media industry trend is consolidation. As media companies are purchasing other brands and diversifying their revenue streams, they face the challenge of making multiple disparate sales systems work together. When your teams are using separate sales, order management, finance and analytics systems, the same account and order details must be entered multiple times. Let’s face it: copy and paste can only take you so far, and the time wasted manually ensuring all systems have the same data is as annoying as it is unnecessary.
Do you have to enter the same data into multiple systems for a single order? We understand your pain. The good news is, you can save time and decrease errors by switching to an end-to-end system.
Read also: 3 Time-Saving Tips for Digital Ad Ops Teams
Your team is spending time booking low-value ads
Every ad booking—even a classified ad sale to a customer who is unlikely to be anything more than a one-off buyer—is valuable and worthwhile. However, your salespeople have bigger fish to fry than investing a large amount of energy on low-value classified ads. They should be optimizing the impact of their sales time by courting high-value ads—not booking classifieds.
Most of the people buying classified ads from your publications don’t want to waste their time speaking with ad reps, either. Instead, they probably expect to be able to book classified ads Craigslist-style—right from their computer. Such a feature is user-friendly and ideal for deriving more value from classified listings. It also frees your salespeople from having to spend time on these straightforward, low-value ad bookings. Remarkably, many successful publishers do not have a self-service feature for classifieds for their websites.
Any modern sales platform for a media company should incorporate the self-service element. It is one of the simplest ways to save your sales team time without leaving money on the table.
Read also: 5 Signs You Need a Self-Service Ad Portal
Conclusion
Small inefficiencies can add up to big waste – and the easiest time-wasters to address are the ones that you can automate or simplify away. These time wasters (plus more!) can be eliminated with the right technology – and we can help. Contact us to learn more.
