Whatever the case may be, you’ve come to the right place!

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about field sales, including what field sales is, why it’s important, the duties field sellers are asked to complete, the challenges they face on a daily basis, and how to build your own field sales strategy.

What Is Field Sales?

Field sales, oftentimes referred to as outside sales, is the act of selling products and/or services from outside of a typical office setting. To do this, professional field sales reps travel to prospects and engage with them in a face-to-face manner.

The opposite of field sales is inside sales, where sales reps sell to prospects from a distance. These kinds of reps don’t meet with leads in-person. Instead, they use phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. to connect with prospects.

Both field sales and inside sales have their benefits. We’ll talk about the specific advantages of field sales in the next section.

Why is Field Sales Important?

So, why would you want to employ a field sales team? Because there are legitimate advantages to doing so. Here are four of the most important ones:

Higher quota attainment

Studies show that the average field sales representative has a close rate of 40%. This is much higher than the 18% close rate attained by most inside sales reps.

Because field reps are able to convert leads into paying customers at a more consistent clip, they hit their quotas more often. In fact, the average field sales rep attains quota 65% of the time compared to just 55% of the time for inside sellers.

Stronger customer relationships

Field reps are generally better at building relationships with leads and customers than their inside sales counterparts. It makes sense when you think about it — field reps meet with prospects for in person meetings. They can look them in the eyes, shake their hands, and communicate more naturally. Face-to-face conversations also minimize misunderstandings, which is another relationship booster.

Better for complex sales cycles

Does your company sell complex products? Are they expensive, often requiring multiple decision-makers to greenlight before you get a signed contract in hand?

If so, you should definitely consider building a field sales force.

Field sales allows reps to meet with prospects in-person as we’ve already discussed. This enables them to build stronger, more trusting relationships, which is mandatory when pitching high-priced goods and/or services.

You wouldn’t buy a $10,000+ product from some random stranger who calls you on the phone, would you? Of course not! But you might from the flesh and blood human sitting in front of you—especially if you’ve just been talking for 30 minutes and enjoy their personality.

It’s also much easier to demonstrate complex products in person than it is via video-conferencing technology like Zoom and Google Meet.

Valuable source of customer insights

Last, but certainly not least, field sales allows sellers to glean incredible amounts of customer data. What does your target market struggle with? What do your current customers like and dislike about your products? What new features do they want?

The answers to these questions are usually much easier for field sales reps to attain because they’re able to spend more time with customers and get to know them.

Field Sales Roles And Responsibilities

Now that we’ve covered what field sales is and why it’s important, let’s talk about what field sales representatives actually do on a day to day basis.

Your job description as a field seller will vary depending on the industry you work in and the company you work for. Still, there are common duties that just about every field rep must complete. Let’s take a look at what they are:

Perform daily sales activities

If you’re familiar with sales at all, you know that field sales reps have to identify leads, get in contact with them, and attempt to sell products and/or services. We’ll talk about all of these things in the following sections.

But first, let’s discuss the other things sales reps do on the regular—the less flashy stuff, such as planning routes and updating CRM software.

• Planning Routes: As mentioned previously, field reps spend a significant portion of their on-the-clock hours traveling from prospect to prospect. This allows them to build stronger relationships and close bigger deals more often. But every minute a rep spends in the car is a minute they can’t spend closing deals. That’s why field reps need to minimize windshield time, which they can do by planning efficient routes between prospects. Software like SPOTIO makes this super easy to do. Simply plug in the addresses you need to travel to and SPOTIO will tell you how to get there without wasting time.

• Updating CRMs: CRM software, which is short for customer relationship management software, allows reps to easily store and recall important customer and prospect information. What was that lead’s name and what’s the best way to contact them? Your CRM will tell you—as long as you update it with these details. The best field reps spend time every day updating their CRMs with new information so that it’s there when they need it.

• Scheduling Follow-Ups: Field reps are asked to find prospects, nurture leads, and close deals. To do all this, they have to plan routes, update CRMs, overcome objections, learn about their company’s newest products… It’s a lot! The only way to get it all done is to use technology. Tools like SPOTIO will let you schedule calls and visit reminders, automate emails and text messages to send at specific times, and more. That way nothing falls through the cracks and you can consistently meet quota.

For more information on daily sales activities, read our full article on the topic.

Identify prospects

How do sales reps know who to make sales pitches to? It’s simple: they take time to identify potential customers and then approach them with an offer.

So, if you’re interested in becoming a field sales representative, you’ll need to learn how to identify prospects for your company. There are multiple ways to do this. For example, you can use websites like LinkedIn to source leads. Or you can use SPOTIO Lead Machine.

Image: SPOTIO’s Lead Machine enables reps to filter prospects using 200+ different data points.

Lead Machine is great because it provides 200+ different data points to help users find red-hot leads in the specific territories they’ve already been assigned to work.

Qualify leads

Have you found a few prospects to contact? Great, now you need to qualify them.

Here’s the truth: just because someone can buy your company’s product or service doesn’t mean they will. They might be strapped for cash. They might already use one of your competitor’s products. Maybe they’re just too busy to listen to your sales pitch right now.

You don’t want to waste your valuable time on these kinds of prospects, which is why you should qualify leads before you devote hours to them.

You can qualify your leads by doing online research, having a quick conversation with them, or asking a junior rep in your company to investigate them for you. However you do it, you need to learn if they want what you sell and if they have the money to pay for it.

Engage with leads

Once you’ve found and qualified a lead, you need to engage them. You can do this by calling them, sending a quick email, texting or visiting their place of business.

At this point, your only goal is to build a relationship with the lead. Don’t try to pitch your company’s products or services to sales leads yet — especially if you sell high-end products with serious price tags. That will probably backfire because you haven’t earned the lead’s trust.

Instead, try to book a future appointment with the lead. That way, you can sit down with them, show them the details of your offerings, and, hopefully, start talking about a deal.

Set appointments

To succeed as a field sales representative, you have to make appointments with potential buyers. If you don’t, you’ll have a really hard time closing deals.

Fortunately, if you’ve done a good job identifying prospects, qualifying leads, and engaging with these people, setting appointments should be a walk in the park.

This is especially true if you use a tool like SPOTIO, which syncs with your Google or Outlook Calendar and allows you to easily take notes before, during, and after your meetings. With SPOTIO, all of your prospect data is in one place!

Prepare and deliver sales presentations

Now that you have an appointment booked, you can begin preparing your sales presentation. Make sure you personalize it to the specific lead you plan to meet with!

For example, let’s pretend you sell cutting-edge accounting software. The lead you’re meeting with next week once complained that their current accounting software is difficult to use. As such, the lead’s team wastes hours a week fiddling around with the program.

Address this during your sales presentation. Show the lead how easy your company’s software is and how it will boost the team’s productivity.

When the day arrives, travel to the lead’s place of business at the appointed time and deliver your personalized sales presentation respectfully and professionally.

Build client relationships

You just closed your first deal as a field sales representative — congratulations! But your work isn’t done yet. You need to develop a real relationship with this person so they continue to buy from you.

This is especially important for subscription-based businesses. However, other kinds of companies can benefit from client relationships, too. Once you’ve built them, upsells and cross-sells will become much easier and more frequent.

Challenges for Field Sales Reps

As we’ve just seen, field sales representatives do a lot. So it’s only natural that they run into specific challenges from time to time. Here are four common ones:

Wasting time on admin tasks

Field sales representatives are hired to close deals for their companies, but there are many other things they have to do, too. Administrative tasks such as updating CRM software are necessary but take time away from a seller’s true purpose.

Image: SPOTIO enables reps to automatically log prospect interactions and transfer the data to your CRM.

One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is to invest in SPOTIO, which automatically tracks user sales activities, automates many of their messages with prospects, and otherwise eliminates the busy work reps have to do.

Finding qualified leads

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you have to have access to qualified leads to close deals at a consistent clip. The bad news is. Finding qualified leads is tough.

Fortunately, there are plenty of software tools that can help.

SPOTIO’s Lead Machine is a powerful prospecting solution for finding potential buyers. You tell Lead Machine where your territory is, and it narrows down leads using 200+ filters.

Handling sales objections

What do you do when you know that a prospect will benefit from your company’s products and/or services, but, after giving them your pitch, they say, “No thanks.”

You have two options: you can cut bait. Maybe they weren’t that great of a prospect after all and you should focus on other leads. Or, you can dig deeper and try to understand why this lead is rejecting your offer. What objections do they have?

Option one is easier. But option two will help you learn more about your target audience and close more deals. Overcome this challenge, you’ll be more successful.

Optimizing travel time

Finally, we have the dreaded windshield time, i.e. the time that field sales reps spend driving from one prospect to the next. It’s completely necessary. But time behind the wheel is time reps aren’t closing deals, which can be really frustrating.

Once again, SPOTIO can help reps overcome this issue. No, our platform won’t help you teleport from lead to lead. But it will use technology to help you plan the most efficient route between them.

With SPOTIO, you’ll be able to hit all of your leads in the most logical order, saving you time and gas money in the process.

Challenges For Field Sales Managers

Field sales reps aren’t the only ones who have to overcome challenges to succeed. The folks that manage them have struggles, too. Here are six of the most common challenges for field sales managers that you should be aware of:

Mapping and assigning territories

Territory mapping and assignment is essential to success in field sales.

Make your territories too big and your reps won’t be able to adequately cover them. Make them too small and your reps won’t have enough leads to fill their time. Oh, and make sure your territories don’t overlap or your reps will end up fighting over prospects.

Image: SPOTIO helps reps and managers geographically represent CRM data on maps.

Does this challenge make your head spin? Try SPOTIO’s Sales Territory Mapping feature. With it, you can cut territories using geographic boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. This kind of precision will ensure your reps never double up and bump into each other.

Tracking sales activities

As a field sales manager, you need to know how your reps spend their time in the field. It’s not that you don’t trust them to do their work. It’s that you need to understand what sales activities are successful and which aren’t. That way you can plan more effective sales strategies in the future.

SPOTIO offers a rep location tracking feature, which will give you real-time data on where your reps are and where they’ve been. (Note: this feature can be turned off.)

SPOTIO also automatically captures sales activities for reps, which means management professionals can easily see what their reps have and haven’t done. They can then use this information to inform their sales plans.

Maintaining rep productivity

Every department wants to be more productive and field sales is no exception. In fact, one of the biggest challenges sales managers face is making sure their reps maintain peak productivity levels as often as possible.

This is easier to do with tools like SPOTIO. For example, you can use SPOTIO to track your reps movements and activities, as we mentioned in the section above. You can then analyze this information to look for areas of improvement.

Image: SPOTIO GPS rep tracking feature enables managers to track rep location.

Maybe the location data shows your reps crisscrossing their territories as they travel from lead to lead. You can suggest they use SPOTIO’s Route Planning software to make sure they hit each lead in the most logical order.

Preventing leads from falling through the cracks

Is your field sales team underperforming? It might be because your reps aren’t following up with prospects as consistently as they should be.

Fortunately, the solution is simple: help reps develop effective follow-up sales processes. We suggest using SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature for this.

With Autoplays, field sales reps can create customized sequences of events and then automate them. For instance, once a rep secures a new lead, they can create an Autoplay that looks something like this:

• Day 1: Call Prospect
• Day 2: Email Prospect
• Day 3: Visit Prospect
• Day 5: Email Prospect
• Day 7: Call Prospect

Once a sequence is created, Autoplays will do one of two things: either remind your reps to engage their leads in the specific way the sequence tells them to or, if your reps have created email and text message templates, automate the sending of emails and text messages to the lead at the predetermined time.

Tracking rep performance

Are your reps underperforming? You won’t know until you track their performance.

SPOTIO makes it easy to track rep performance. With our platform, managers can see which tasks their reps are performing and the result of each. This will help you determine if reps are underperforming due to a lack of effort or training.

Reducing turnover

The last challenge that field sales managers face is the threat of turnover. If you’ve ever hired a promising sales rep, only to have them bail on you three months later, you know this is true.

Employee turnover is an expensive problem. According to PeopleKeep, it can cost a company up to 213% of a departing team member’s annual salary to replace them.

The sales industry is known for high turnover rates. It’s a demanding job that requires a thick skin, and not everybody can do it.

Still, as a field sales manager, your job is to keep your team on your team. The best way to do this is to create an environment they enjoy participating in.

Building a Successful Field Sales Strategy

Whew, we’ve covered a lot so far. But we aren’t done yet! Let’s talk about how you can build a successful field sales strategy for your company. This is where the rubber meets the road. Let’s make sure you’re ready to ride…

Set attainable goals

First things first, define what you’re trying to achieve via field sales. Do you want to move more products? Improve your department’s close rate? Something else?

Every goal you set for your field sales team should be SMART:

• Specific: Your goals should be clear and completely unambiguous. For example, say, “We’ll boost sales by 20%” instead of “We’ll boost sales.”
• Measurable: You should know exactly how you’ll measure your goals when you set them. “We’ll boost sales by 20%” is measurable. “We’ll make our customers happier” is not, because you can’t accurately gauge happiness.
• Attainable: Your goals should challenge your field sales representatives without pushing them too hard, as this will result in low morale.
• Relevant: Every goal you set should tie back to company objectives. Wanting to “increase upsell opportunities by 15%” is great, but only if these upsell opportunities will help your company achieve its biggest aims.
• Time-Related: Finally, your goals should have set deadlines. “We’ll boost sales by 20% by the end of the fiscal year.” If your goals aren’t time-related, your reps might slack off because there’s no urgency.

Define your sales process

Have you chosen a few SMART goals? Now it’s time to define your sales process. That way you can actually, you know, meet your objectives.

Here’s the truth: when your field sales reps know what to do in each and every scenario, they’ll become much more efficient and effective. Your job, when building a field sales strategy, is to equip your reps for every situation they’ll be in.

So think about your prospects and what it takes to make a sale. Then build a field sales strategy that will help your reps turn strangers into paying customers.

Create a sales compensation plan

There are a lot of ways to compensate your field sales representatives for their efforts. We cover the 10 most popular comp plans in this article.

The right compensation plan for your field sales force will:

• Motivate Your Reps: Are your reps inspired to make more sales? If the answer is “no,” you should consider choosing a new comp plan.
• Boost Rep Performance: Motivated reps are more productive than unmotivated ones. And productive reps generally outperform their unproductive counterparts. Make sure your comp plan motivates reps to perform their best at all times.
• Decrease Rep Turnover: The right comp plan will also help you attract top sellers to your field sales team and keep them employed by your company.

Improve your entire sales department with a quality field sales representative salary and commission structure for your team.

Set and track activity-based KPIs

Field sales is all about action. The most successful field reps are always doing something to close deals and move their careers forward. Help your team out by setting and tracking activity-based KPIs, such as visiting prospects, making calls, and sending emails.

The more of these actions your reps take, the more success they’ll have. And the more success your reps have, the more money your department will generate.

Image: Managers can track sales activity metrics across reps and territories in SPOTIO.

As a sales manager, you can track field sales activities with SPOTIO. With our tool, you’ll be able to tell how many prospects your reps contact on a daily basis, the communication channels they use, and the success rate they have with each one.

You can then use this information to adjust your field sales strategy when necessary.

Prospect with ICP data

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, ICP stands for ideal customer profile. Your company’s ICPs are the people most likely to buy your products and services. These are the folks your field sales reps should spend the most time on!

Your field sales strategy should include detailed ICP data. Your reps can use it when prospecting, preventing them from wasting valuable hours on prospects who will never make a purchase.

When you know your ICPs, you can use SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool to find ready-to-buy prospects who fit your company’s exact parameters.

Automate tedious admin tasks

In decades past, field sales teams had to manually log prospect interactions, transfer notes to CRM databases, and perform other tedious administrative tasks.

No longer! Tools like SPOTIO allow field sellers to automate many of the “shoot me now” activities that every salesperson hates. This means field reps can focus more of their time on revenue-generating tasks that help them hot and exceed quota.

Assign sales territories strategically

We’ve already discussed how SPOTIO helps field sales managers cut territories. But your field sales strategy needs to cover how territories are assigned, too.

In general, we recommend assigning the most valuable territories to your top performing reps. This will ensure your department, as a whole, closes more of the highest-value deals in its collective pipeline.

Automate sales sequences

You’re building a field sales team. But that doesn’t mean your reps can’t utilize inside sales strategies. If your field reps aren’t using phone calls, emails, and text messages to contact leads, something has gone very wrong with your strategy.

The best thing about emails and text messages is that they can be automated. Imagine how many more sales your department will make when your reps don’t have to manually type out every email and text they send. WAY MORE!

When creating your field sales strategy, build sales sequences that include every communication channel your reps use. Then look to automate your sequences with a tool like SPOTIO’s Autoplays, which will simplify the entire process.

Once your department is set up with Autoplays, your field sales representatives will be able to close more deals in less time, leading to greater success.

Use a consultative selling approach

Consultative sales is a sales strategy where reps take an advisory role rather than a traditional sales role. As such, consultative sales reps recommend solutions to potential customers based on their needs.

Consultative selling helps field reps build trust with their prospects, ultimately allowing them to close more deals.

To adopt a consultative selling approach, simply teach your reps to:

• Actively listen to their prospects’ needs
• Asked questions about their prospects’ challenges and pain points
• Focus on finding solutions for prospects rather than repping products
• Offer insight to prospects without expecting anything in return

If your field reps can learn to do these things, their sales numbers will improve.

Map efficient sales routes

Yes, we’ve already talked about route planning. But it’s so important we need to mention it again in the context of building your field sales strategy.

Windshield time is the Achilles heel of field sales teams. Productivity levels and sales numbers go down when reps spend more time in the car. To minimize this issue, plan your reps’ sales routes in the most efficient way possible.

SPOTIO’s route planning software makes this tedious task a breeze.

Create a healthy level of competition

Salespeople thrive on competition. The trick is building a competitive work environment for your reps that also fosters teamwork and camaraderie.

You can do this with SPOTIO Leaderboards, AKA a digital scoreboard of sorts that displays important metrics such as knocks made, meetings booked, and revenue generated for every field sales representative on your team.

Leaderboards allows reps to see how their efforts stack up against their peers. It can also be used by management professionals to create fun competitions that motivate field sales reps to perform their best at all times.

Align the sales and marketing teams

Sales and marketing aren’t enemies! These two departments should always work together to help propel their company to new heights.

So, when creating your field sales strategy, look for ways to align your organization’s sales and marketing teams. You can do this by increasing communication.

For example, when marketing knows what kind of prospects sales needs, they can pursue more of these leads. And when both departments communicate on goals, they can help each other achieve them rather than fighting against one another.

Track performance metrics

How are your field reps doing? Are they meeting quota? If so, what’s the secret to their success? If not, why are they underperforming? You need to be able to answer these questions! Once again, SPOTIO can help.

Our platform will enable you to track field sales activities for each rep, as we discussed earlier, and the result of each activity they perform.

Want to know which team member has the best close rate? Interested in learning which communication channels work best for your reps? Maybe you just want to make sure that your reps’ pipelines are full. SPOTIO’s new My Reports feature allows reps and managers to quickly and easily build custom reports so that you are only looking at the metrics that matter most to your business.

The information inside SPOTIO will help you adjust your field sales strategy when required, and forecast future results more accurately.

Invest in continual training

Lastly, make sure your field sales strategy prioritizes training.

Field sales training can come in the form of annual conferences, employee events, internal cross-training, job shadowing, department mentorship programs, etc.

We won’t tell you how to train your team because every team is different and should be trained in a different way. What we will say is this: the best field sales departments are always looking for ways to improve their reps’ skill sets.

Boost Field Sales Productivity and Performance

Field sales is an exciting opportunity! Companies that employ these kinds of sellers will be able to sell complex and expensive products more consistently. They’ll also benefit from the stronger client relationships and detailed data these reps dig up.

Field sales representatives have it good, too, as many field sellers make a very healthy living for themselves and their families.

If you’re looking to build a field sales team for your organization, or want to start your career as a field sales rep, you should definitely invest in SPOTIO. Our platform is the ultimate tool for field sales and has been proven to boost revenue by 23%!

Contact our team today for a free demo of our software. See you on the inside!

In this post, we’ll explain how to create a winning sales territory plan, share 10 best practices for sales territory management, and finally, we’ll introduce tools that are helpful for managing sales territories of any size.

What is Sales Territory Management?

Sales territory management is the process of organizing and managing customers and prospects and sorting them by segment (such as geography, industry, or role). It helps sales teams stay organized, evenly distributes workloads, and improves sales productivity.

Types of Territories

In addition to geographical area, territories can be based on other sales data such as:

• Account type
• Industry segment
• Market potential
• Number of customer accounts

Many field sales teams don’t prioritize sales territory planning; even when they do, they often have trouble adapting and revising based on sales performance.

Why is Territory Management Important for Outside Sales Teams?

An effective sales territory management plan helps sales managers allocate resources and improve opportunities for sales teams. These are some of the key advantages of territory management:

Cover territories more strategically

Sales territory management helps your reps be more productive and ensures your best reps work the top territories and accounts. When reps have clear territories, routes, and objectives, they can spend less time planning their days and more time selling.

Assign balanced workloads

Defining territories can help you distribute work evenly across your sales team. Keep in mind, though, that sales territory management is an ongoing process. You may need to realign territories based on new objectives, personnel changes, or other factors.

Build stronger customer relationships

You can plan your territories to match reps with prospects and customers based on specific characteristics, such as personality or customer lifecycle.

8 Steps to Create a Winning Sales Territory Plan

1. Analyze Your Customers

You can plan your territories to match reps with prospects and customers based on specific characteristics, such as personality or customer lifecycle.

Some points to note about your customers are:

• Their locations
• Their budgets
• The products or services they purchase from your business
• What types of problems your products or services solve for them
• What types of events lead customers to buy (or not buy) your products or services
• When was the last time they purchased from you
• How often they purchase products

It’s also important to identify needs within the market that aren’t currently being fulfilled. This can help you to develop targeted messaging about your products or services.

2. Analyze and Develop Your Team and Resources

The next step is to analyze your business’s resources and personnel. You should have an accurate picture of the type and volume of customers that your business can handle.

Note the strengths and weaknesses of your team so you can develop and utilize strengths while simultaneously working to improve any weak areas.

3. Set Measurable Goals

Using the information you gathered about your customers, team, and resources, you should develop goals for your business.

Some goals to consider are:

1. Income generated per month
2. Number of sales attempts per week or month
3. Number of closed sales per week or month
4. Ratio of leads to sales closed per week or month

After identifying goals for your sales territory plan, you should create a measurable strategy for meeting each of these goals.

Each goal strategy should include:

Goal statement: Putting a goal on paper transforms it from abstract to concrete. The goal statement should address what you’re planning to achieve with various sales activities and what’s at stake.

Key milestones and deadline: The road to achieving a goal is much clearer when you break it into several smaller milestones. For example, if your goal is to attain $9k in monthly revenue for a given product, you can track progress by breaking the goal into smaller milestones, such as $3k by day 10, $6k by day 20, etc.

Metrics for measuring success in the field: Metrics such as leads created, leads contacted, and leads closed, available on the SPOTIO sales dashboard, offer great insight into productivity and can reveal how your sales team is working toward goals.

Goals should be realistic and manageable, but at the same time, they should push your sales team to expand and grow.

Need help hitting your goals?

4. Define Sales Territories

Based on the work you performed in the steps above, you should have an idea of how to divide territories.

It’s important to define the details of each territory, such as:

• Geographic boundaries
• Industry or segment boundaries
• Revenue boundaries
• Product boundaries
• Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization

SPOTIO’s mobile Route Mapping feature.

5. Use A Territory Route Mapping App

Sales territory mapping ensures your sales team has time to visit all accounts in their territory. Planning routes used to be a manual process, but the most efficient sales teams use a route mapping app for this important function.

6. Assign Reps to New Sales Territories

Once you’ve determined your new sales territories, you’ll need to decide which reps will cover them. Start this process by looking at the workload of your current team — you may already have the people you need to cover the new territories, or you might need to hire additional staff.

Ensure reps have the right experience for your new territories. For example, if you have a new territory that includes several warm leads, you might want to assign your best closer to that territory.

7. Monitor Rep and Territory Performance

To ensure you have the right people covering your new territories, you’ll need to review certain sales targets, such as:

• Sales per client — the dollar value of each rep’s sales per client
• New contacts — the number of contacts your sales reps are bringing into pipeline
• Client acquisition rate — the percentage of leads that sales reps are converting into customers
• Event rates — this could be the number of appointments or calls scheduled, follow-up visits, etc.
• Average deal size — this is the average dollar amount per deal

8. Use Field Data Entry – “Notes as you go”

As you implement your sales territory plan, keep an accurate and up-to-date record of its outcomes using your CRM. This record will help you to track successful aspects of your plan, in addition to what parts of the plan are ineffective. Using this information, you can adjust and optimize your best sales territory plan as needed.

Often, reps have multiple meeting blocks and forget valuable nuggets of information they learned from each meeting. With a sales tool like SPOTIO, reps can jot down/add voice notes using their mobile device and sync them directly into Salesforce.

These mobile field notes are immediately available to your entire team, so reps have complete insight into all communication with prospects and clients.

10 Sales Territory Management Best Practices

1. Set Territory-Level Sales Goals

Using the data you’ve gathered about new sales territories, you can define sales goals. These may be specific, quota-based goals — like closing a certain number of deals within a specific time frame or number of visits — or open-ended goals, such as building relationships.

Setting goals is important because it will keep your reps on track. They’ll always know what to work towards next, and you’ll better understand the sales activities they complete every day.

Goals will also help you evaluate your sales department’s efforts. Is your team succeeding? Compare how successful your reps are to achieving the goals you’ve set for them. (Note: to properly track goals, you need to establish specific metrics and KPIs you can use to evaluate individual performance.)

Finally, goals will help you diagnose problems within your department. Are reps failing because they don’t have the necessary skills? Or are they slacking on the job? The right metrics will help you answer these questions. You can then implement a plan to help your reps achieve more team-wide objectives.

2. Prevent Territory Conflict

As a manager, how can you fairly assign territories? And once assigned, how do you ensure reps aren’t poaching accounts from fellow reps? To reduce the risk of territory conflicts, consider the following:

Number of accounts. The reps who perform better with smaller businesses need more accounts than reps who work with large accounts. Although the number of accounts varies, the total possible revenue goal for each rep should be equal.

ZIP Code. Make sure sales routes include a reasonable number of stops, in an order that minimizes travel time between appointments.

Vertical. Some people connect better with specific industries. Once you identify each rep’s strong suit, give them more accounts with the business types they prefer.

3. Prioritize the Most Valuable Territories

Assign your top performers to high-priority territories.

Keep in mind, the term “top performer” is relative. Your rep with the highest sales-per-client may not be right for a territory containing several small businesses that are slower to make purchasing decisions.

The question is how do you match reps to territories? Start by evaluating your salespeople. What are they good at? How much experience do they have? If you were to rank each rep in terms of ability, how would they stack up to each other? And which products do each individual sell the most of?

Next, consider the customers in each territory. Who are these people? What kind of businesses do they run/manage/work for? What’s their potential budget? And are they able to buy right now?

Finally, take what you know about your reps and the potential customers in each territory and find ideal pairings. For example, you might put your most prolific seller in a territory with buy-ready leads because the short sales cycles will help them close a ton of deals in a minimum amount of time.

Then you could put your second best seller in a territory with the highest-value prospects. They might not close as many deals as your top rep, but they’ll come close. And this configuration will allow each of your top sellers to excel, which will maximize overall revenue numbers for your organization.

4. Track Mileage and Expenses

Outside reps with a lot of ground to cover should receive some degree of compensation for their travel expenses (gas, meals, and basic vehicle maintenance).

Not sure what reimbursement plan is best? We’ve got you covered:

Mileage as a tax deduction

Full-time sales reps and independent salespeople can claim mileage as a tax deduction. The mileage works as an expense, and those with intensive sales routes can write off the standard rate for every mile they drive for work.

Standard mileage reimbursement

Mileage rates are subject to change in each tax year. The standard rates are determined based on market research that determines normal expense ranges for using a vehicle. The 2024 IRS rate for normal business use is 67 cents per mile.

Reimbursement based on sales routes

Salespeople are often reimbursed for mileage using the standard rates or a rate increase based on individual company policies.

Tracking mileage

Diligent mileage tracking is critical for reimbursement. Sales reps must document every mile to receive reimbursement or claim a tax deduction.

A spreadsheet that lists the date, starting mileage, ending mileage, total miles, and notes is easy to store on a clipboard and update daily. Mileage-tracking phone apps are also convenient; they track trips and allow sales reps to make notes about each trip. The best way to track mileage, however, is to use an automated feature — like SPOTIO Mileage Tracking — that records all trips without sales reps needing to remember to log their miles.

5. Create a Rotating Schedule for Contacting Customers

Your reps should contact customers regularly to ensure that their needs are being met. Create a schedule that defines when to contact prospects and customers, and specify the medium — phone call, email, or in-person visit.

SPOTIO’s scheduling and status view.

6. Meet Needs of Current Accounts While Finding New Leads

The best sales territory management plan should have a dual focus of providing services to high-value accounts while developing relationships with potential new accounts.

High-value accounts are those guaranteed to bring in a higher volume of sales in shorter amounts of time, compared to other accounts. While high-value accounts require attention, it’s also important to cultivate new accounts that will help your company grow.

7. Consider the Seasonal Needs of Customers

Depending on the type of products or services your business provides, your customers may have more seasonal needs. Consider this when deciding when to contact customers and prospects.

Identifying Seasonal Trends

Does your business change based on the calendar? If you’re in solar sales, for example, sales might dip in the winter months, though this likely depends on where your customers are based.

A potential customer in Montana, where the days are short and the snowfall is measured in feet, might not see the benefits of solar in January. But a customer in Arizona, where the sun always shines, will.

This is just one example. There are plenty of other seasonal trends you should watch out for. When you find one or two, apply them to your sales process to see how it affects your bottom line.

Strategic Planning

Identifying season trends is one thing. Adjusting your sales strategy to accommodate your findings is another. You need to get strategic and put your sales reps in the best position to succeed.

Don’t be afraid to change tactics, reconfigure sales territories, or even abandon certain areas altogether if they don’t produce sales. Sales reps can always revisit old territories in the future when they have a better chance to close a deal. Put thought into where your reps should be at all times.

8. Ensure Reps Can Access and Update Data In Real Time

Use technology that allows your sales representatives to update and access customer data in real time. That way all reps can view the most current customer information when needed.

Benefits of Real-Time Data

For our purposes, real-time data can be described as immediate information related to sales activities. Once you and your team have access to real-time data, you’ll enjoy a few benefits:

• Better Engagement: Real-time data will tell reps when prospects take specific actions, like visiting a website or clicking on a link in an email. They can then cater their sales tactics accordingly. This will lead to better prospect engagement, and eventually, more sales. Speaking of which…
• Increased Revenue: Real-time data allows sales reps to engage with prospects at opportune moments. This will help them close more deals, which will produce more revenue. Reps can also use real-time data to take advantage of upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Improved Forecasting: Real-time data will give you the information you need to make accurate sales forecasts. You’ll always know which stage of the pipeline prospects are in, and crucially, how long it typically takes prospects to progress to later stages. This will make forecasting easier.
• Sales Coaching Opportunities: Finally, real-time data will tell you how your reps perform in the moment. You can use this information to adjust your coaching efforts. A rep might generate tons of leads, for example, but close very few of them. If so, you can teach them new closing techniques to help them make sales at a consistent clip and increase revenue for your company.

9. Keep Thorough And Up-To-Date Customer Notes

Any communication with customers should be documented and accessible to sales representatives. Notes may include personal information such as the customer’s favorite food, in addition to more sales-specific information such as the customer’s budget.

SPOTIO’S note-taking function.

10. Monitor Sales Territory Performance

Frequently review the performance of sales territories and look for trends that might indicate adjustments are necessary. A territory that’s not performing as expected may be a sign that some fundamental factors about it have changed (such as businesses in the area closing or relocating), or that the territory quality is not ideal.

6 SPOTIO Features For Effective Sales Territory Management

1. Customer Mapping

What it does: Customer mapping software allows you to create a map of your territories. You can drop pins on specific locations, which allows you to track routes within territories.

SPOTIO’s territory management view with colored map pins.

Why it’s important:Customer mapping software can help you optimize sales routes. With SPOTIO’s Precise Location Tool, you can drop pins on a map, creating a visual way to design the most logical sales routes. This saves valuable time and money and helps your reps introduce more customers to your product or service.

2. Sales Tracking

What it does: Outside sales tracking enhances the sales process by providing real-time updates about the locations and activities of sales representatives in all your different territories.

Another view of SPOTIO’s sales tracking feature.

Why it’s important: This feature saves managers time by providing a quick and easy method to map out and assign territories to sales reps. It also helps managers quickly recognize areas where sales reps may be struggling and highlight any need for additional coaching or training.

3. Territory Manager

What it does: The SPOTIO Territory Manager enables managers to create custom maps of different territories for assignment to sales reps.

SPOTIO’S color-coded sales territory management view.

Why it’s important: The ease with which territories can be created, assigned, and viewed means that managers will no longer have to spend hours reviewing physical maps and manually drawing out territories.

4. Route Planner

What it does: SPOTIO Route Planner simplifies routes, making each day in the field as efficient as possible.

Why it’s important: This tool lets reps focus on driving and what they’re going to say in their next meeting. In addition, it can help them avoid unexpected delays by automatically rerouting to account for street closures or heavy traffic.

5. Lead Machine

What it does: Lead Machine is a lead management tool that organizes information related to leads and provides it to users in an easy-to-understand format.

Why it’s important: This tool helps to generate more sales by ensuring that leads are organized and easy to access.

6. My Reports

What it is: My Reports is a SPOTIO feature that lets managers and reps easily create reports using a variety of metrics. Once you set up your reports, you can store them in the cloud and share them with team members.

Why it’s important: This new feature allows users to zero in on the KPIs that are most important for sales territory management and access reports via mobile when in the field. Create reports by sales territory, by sales rep, or for specific metrics across your entire organization.

FAQ

How should I divide sales territories?

While managers generally consider geography when splitting up territories, you may also want to consider factors such as prospect company size, number of opportunities, and short-term versus long-term potential. Also, consider the strengths within your sales teams. One sales rep may be a great closer, while another is best at fostering new relationships.

How do you manage territories in Salesforce?

Managing territories in Salesforce is easy, with SPOTIO’s integration features. (See our blog post on this topic for more information).

Will SPOTIO integrate with my CRM and essential business apps?

SPOTIO integrates with more than 2,000 apps, including Zoho CRM, HubSpot CRM, and Netsuite ERP.

Our business has national, regional, and local territories. How would I set up those territories in SPOTIO?

With SPOTIO, you can set up territory hierarchies, giving managers access to all territory data, but restricting sales rep access to any parent territory data.

Simplified Sales Territory Management

Sales territory management can help your business grow by collecting and organizing all information and automating administrative tasks.

SPOTIO’s cloud-based territory management software gives you the insights you need to effectively manage your sales team and helps reps keep track of important information when they’re in the field.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and territory management app to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity in just 2 weeks.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

But generating more sales is only part of the equation.

While sales effectiveness does well to improve conversions, there’s another component that should be a priority: sales efficiency.

Sales efficiency is the key to not only generating more sales for your business but also streamlining your sales processes so that you get more sales, faster.

In this guide, we’ll cover what sales efficiency is, why it’s essential to your business, and 12 ways to make your sales process more efficient than ever.

What is Sales Efficiency?

So, what is sales efficiency? How is it different from sales effectiveness?

Let’s dive into the definitions.

Sales Efficiency vs. Sales Effectiveness

Sales effectiveness refers to your sales team’s ability to convert prospects into leads — and eventually paying customers or clients — at each stage of your sales funnel. If your sales process is effective, you will experience more “wins” than losses every step of the way.

Sales efficiency refers to the speed of your sales operations. That is, how quickly you are able to convert users into leads/sales and while still generating the highest return on your investment. It is the revenue your sales team generates relative to the cost.

A sales process that is both efficient and effective will help reps close sales in a reasonable time frame, at a sustainable cost, and on the right terms.

Why Sales Efficiency & Effectiveness Should Be Your #1 Priority

Your sales team closing the majority of new prospects isn’t always an indication of success.

While sales quotas continue to rise, only 47% of B2B sales organizations hit their targets. The fact that the average sales rep only spends 39% of their time selling. As such, sales efficiency is key.

Calculating your sales efficiency is the best way to determine whether your business is on track. If there’s room for improvement, you will need both sales efficiency and sales effectiveness to move the revenue needle.

How Do You Calculate Sales Efficiency?

Here’s a simple formula you can use to calculate sales efficiency in a specific period:

$ Value Of New Revenue / (Sales + Marketing Costs)

For instance, if you earn $8,000 in new Q2 revenue and spend $4,000 on sales and marketing in that quarter, your efficiency score is 2.
Your sales process is efficient if your score is 2 or higher. A score of 1 indicates that your company is essentially breaking even, and a score of less than 1 means you’re spending more than you’re earning.

What is a Good Sales Efficiency Ratio?

A good sales efficiency ratio is between one and three. In other words, it should take your company 4 to 12 months for revenue to cover sales and marketing costs. If your company’s number is lower than this, you need to increase efficiency. If it’s higher, your sales team is on fire. Keep doing what you’re doing!

12 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency

If your business is struggling with sales efficiency, just know that you are not alone. Many business owners are making sales efficiency their #1 priority, and you can too.

Here are 12 ways sales managers and sales teams can improve sales efficiency in your business.

1. Set Business Goals and KPIs

The first step in laying out your sales efficiency plan is to clarify your goals and how you will measure success.

Are your sales reps expected to close a set number of sales per month? A certain amount per sale? Make sure those expectations are set from the beginning.

We highly recommend using the SMART goals method to set goals that are measurable and realistic.

For example, your goal could be: Increase sales by 17% by the end of the next quarter.

Once you are clear on what your goals are, and what KPIs you’ll use to measure success, make sure you track sales activity closely. Identify any bottlenecks and fix problems in a timely manner to improve sales efficiency.

2. Identify Your Ideal Customer

Half of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.

To make sure you’re going after the right prospects, you can use sales intelligence tools like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine to pull from 200+ data points, including demographics, location, and contact information.

Building your ideal customer avatar consists of four main components:

1. WHO they are (demographics)
2. WHERE they are (location)
3. WHAT they want (pain points and needs)

With this information, your sales team can focus on pitching exactly what your potential customers want to hear without wasting time on specs that won’t be of interest to them.

3. Create a Repeatable Sales Process

If you want your sales team to be efficient, you must outline a repeatable, consistent sales process. Having a go-to guide for qualifying leads, selling at the right moment, collaborating with the team, and other important sales tasks will help reps work better and faster.

The key steps in sales processes are:

1. Preparation & Research. Know the scope of your product, your ideal customer’s wants and needs, and your company’s unique selling point.
2. Prospecting. This includes the search for potential customers with the goal of moving them down your sales funnel. Detailed customer data can help you identify promising prospects.
3. Needs Assessment. This is a way for your sales team to dig deeper into what the prospect needs and what issue(s) they are trying to solve. That way, reps can custom-tailor a solution for them.
4. Pitch & Presentation. This is where your sales rep communicates the value of your product to the customer. It’s best that your rep establishes trust and hones in on what benefits your potential customer is looking for. Then they present your product as the ideal solution.
5. Objection Handling. The customer may have questions or concerns. Addressing objections presents another opportunity to establish trust and communicate how you are different from your competitors.
6. Closing. This is when the sale is made or the proposal is sent.
7. Follow-Up. Referrals are the highest converting lead source. Follow-up with customers to encourage referrals and repeat business.

Creating a sales process and tailoring it for each prospect can be rather time consuming. But with Autoplays, you can create automated outreach sequences for each prospect and funnel stage to ensure no lead falls through the cracks.

Creating a clear sales process ensures that reps are following the same step at every stage, and it can help you identify holes in the process. If leads are dropping off right before the close, you will be able to see this issue and address it quickly.

4. Define Daily, Weekly and Monthly Sales Activities

Sales activities are routine steps that bring new leads into the pipeline. Some examples include:

• Contacting new prospects
• Pitching your solution
• Following-up
• Creating awareness about what you have to offer
• Assigning territories
• Route planning

5. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Often, miscommunication between marketing and sales teams causes inefficiency.

In fact, only 35% of salespeople think that the marketing team knows what content they need, and only a third of sales and marketing teams talk regularly. This is obviously a problem.

When marketing and sales teams are on different pages, the entire company suffers. For example, sales reps might not understand how marketing talks about products. And the handoff from one department to the other often lacks context, which enables sales reps to make sales at a consistent clip.

Fortunately, aligning both teams can solve these kinds of issues. Here’s how to do it:

• Create Shared Goals: Marketing and sales teams should work towards common objectives. A single objective, such as company revenue, will help ensure marketing and sales alignment.
• Build Personas Together: If your marketing and sales teams have different buyer personas, you’re going to have issues. Ask both departments to create unified personas. That way marketing produces the kinds of leads that sales can actually close on a regular basis.
• Commit to Communication: Finally, make sure marketing and sales professionals talk every month—if not every week. Is marketing able to generate the right kind of leads? Does sales need to change their approach based on marketing’s strategy? These are important questions. By communicating on a regular basis, you’ll be able to answer them and improve revenue.

6. Train Your Sales Reps Effectively

Did you know that 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared?

Without proper training, sales reps may waste time and resources on approaches that don’t work, pitch to a customer too early, or draw out the sales process.

Sales managers should require new hires to go through in-depth training about effective prospecting and selling. It should address any common questions that sales reps may have during the process, as well as tips on how to handle objections from customers.

Providing ongoing training will also help your team stay sharp and up-to-date on the latest selling techniques.

7. Assign Sales Territories Strategically

Image: Screenshot of the SPOTIO territory management interface.

Strategic rep assignment is one way to prevent redundancies in your sales process. That is, it ensures that no sales reps are selling to the same areas/leads at the same time.

We recommend assigning your top reps to the most lucrative territories to ensure a better close rate on those high-ticket offers. Check out our guide on Sales Territory Management for tips on how to create your own efficient rep assignment strategy.

8. Reduce Windshield Time

Driving from meeting to meeting has a huge impact on a rep’s daily efficiency. Mapping efficient routes maximizes the amount of time reps spend selling and reduces their time on the road.

Route planning software is the best way to reduce driving time for reps when they’re in the field. You can use it to:

• Cutdown windshield time
• Easily find the most efficient route to one or multiple meetings
• Map and plan your day in a single tap

9. Sell to Customer Needs

The research you conducted around your ideal client persona will tell you what issues your potential customers are struggling with, what they need, and what they want.

Understanding their needs and articulating how your product is the best solution is the surest way to win them over.

While your competitors are hitting on all the features of their products, you will be speaking directly to your target customer’s strongest pain points. If you are able to drive home the benefits, it should be a straightforward sale for you.

10. Manage and Nurture Leads Effectively

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

It’s always easier to sell to a “warm” lead — someone who is familiar with your brand and has been primed for the sale — than a “cold” one. That’s why it’s essential to have a lead nurturing process.

The best system for doing this is a centralized CRM or lead management system. This software allows your sales team to see where prospects are at in the sales cycle so that they can follow up with them in the right way at the right time.

A CRM tool will increase sales efficiency by:

• Notifying your team when to follow up
• Helping your team tailor communications to where prospects are in the sales cycles
• Assigning priority to prospects that are farther down the sales funnel

11. Work on the Basics

Sometimes the easiest and fastest way to improve sales efficiency is to brush up on the basics. No matter how long you have been in business or how precise your processes are, there’s always room for improvement.

Fine-tune your sales process by considering new ways to find prospects, present sales pitches, or conduct follow-ups. Don’t be afraid to look at your existing system from a different perspective.

12. Maximize Rep Productivity

A recent study found that sales reps spend just 28% of their time on selling. That means that the rest of the time is spent on non-selling tasks like traveling, attending meetings, or data entry.

There are many handy tools that you and your team can use to maximize your time and efficiency. For example, reps can use the SPOTIO app to create notes when they’re in the field, and the information automatically syncs to your CRM. That eliminates the need for time-consuming data entry at the end of the day.

Look for opportunities to automate routine sales tasks that free up more time for reps to focus on sales.

4 Sales Efficiency Metrics To Start Tracking

The goal of a sales team is to be selling for as many hours in their working day as possible. With the sales efficiency metrics below you can learn just how efficient your current sales process is.

1. Customer Acquisition Cost & Customer Lifetime Value

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way. Here’s the formula for calculating CAC for a specific period:

CAC = Total Marketing Spend / # Of New Customers

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way.

Next, you’ll want to calculate your customer lifetime value (CLTV). The closer these two numbers are, the more unsustainable your sales process is. It also goes without saying that your CAC shouldn’t exceed your LTV.

A good LTV:CAC ratio benchmark is 3:1

CLTV = Avg. Value Of Purchases x # of Sales x Contract Length

Tracking your average customer acquisition cost over time also helps your company make smart decisions.

2. Lead Response Time

How long does it take sales reps to respond to new leads? According to recent research, 88% of customers want an email response within one hour. So, efficient follow-up can be crucial to a sale.

If you find that certain sales reps are falling behind in response time, it may be time for retraining. If lead response times seem to be gradually increasing, that could be a sign that the workload per sales rep is too much, and you may need to hire additional help.

3. Number of Sales Calls Per Rep

While analyzing sales efficiency on a team-wide basis is useful, it only tells a partial story. You also need to track sales metrics such as the number of sales calls or visits per week per team member.

Taking into account pre-call research, the actual call, and post-call CRM updates, you should allow an average of 7.5 minutes for each cold call.

60 Minutes / 7.5 Minutes Per Call = 8 Cold Calls Per Hour.

This metric helps you assess performance, as well as team member strengths and weaknesses.

4. Frequency of Customer Contact

Building trust with the prospect is an important aspect of an optimized sales process. By tracking the rate of client outreach, you can make sure your team is putting in the right amount of time to create a long-lasting relationship.

You can also use this data to understand what sales tactics work best with your customers.You may find that more touch points convert better for certain customer personas.

Boost Your Sales Efficiency

Sales efficiency is the #1 priority for businesses that want to close more sales and get the best ROI for their sales investment.

Close rate alone is not an accurate measure of sales success; there are many metrics to track and steps to take along the way to ensure that your sales productivity is at its highest.

Is your sales team as efficient as it could be?

See how SPOTIO can boost your company’s sales efficiency, qualify prospects, and develop better processes. Request your demo today.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

More companies are investing in B2B sales teams — inside and outside — across a range of industries.

The B2B buying process now has more decision-makers and touchpoints than it did just a few years ago. This growing complexity is creating longer sales cycles, which present fresh challenges for all B2B sales stakeholders.

In this article, we’ll explore B2B sales in detail, covering a range of the most effective sales methods and tools, so you can learn how to get the best results with your sales strategy.

What Is B2B (Business-to-Business) Sales?

B2B sales is the practice of one business selling products or services to another business. One sector built exclusively on the B2B sales model is software as a service (SaaS).

These are a few examples of B2B SaaS companies:

SPOTIO – This field sales acceleration platform helps outside sales teams build pipeline, increase sales, and boost productivity.

HubSpot – This all-in-one platform helps sales and marketing teams attract more site visitors, convert more leads, and close more sales.

Salesforce – This customer relationship management (CRM) software helps businesses connect and communicate with prospective customers in a more efficient, effective way.

B2B sales is distinctly different from B2C sales, otherwise known as business-to-consumer sales, where companies sell directly to end users instead of to other businesses.

Inside vs. Outside B2B Selling

B2B sales consists of two interconnected teams — inside sales and outside sales.

Inside sales representatives sell products and services remotely, so they usually work in an office. Outside sales reps are “out in the field,” connecting with potential customers at their business premises, conferences, and trade shows.

Studies from SPOTIO indicate that outside B2B outside sales have a close rate 30% higher than inside sales. Furthermore, outside sales teams also clinch deals that are over 130% larger than inside sales deals.

The B2B Buying Process Has Changed

Digital transformation has been shaking up global business in many ways, and the B2B sales process is certainly not immune.

Here are three reasons why B2B sales have changed so much in recent times:

Number of stakeholders

You already know B2B sales involves more people. The thing is, that number is growing. In 2015, an average of 5.4 people were part of the typical decision-making unit (DMU) in the B2B sales process. Today, as many as 10 stakeholders may be involved in weighing purchase decisions.

Buyers are more educated

Research from Forrester found almost 74% of B2B buyers conduct about half of their total research online before they make an offline purchase. The B2B customers of today have greater access to information online and offline – and they’re putting it to good use.

(Source)

Alignment between sales and user intent

Understanding the customer journey is a critical aspect of B2B sales, especially in a highly competitive field. Ultimately, the companies that map their sales process to the customer journey will have more success targeting the right people, with the right offer, at the right time.

9-Step B2B Sales Process

Now let’s see how to sell B2B.

This process starts from scratch, and if you do every step comprehensively and correctly, you should be able to close with a sale. Best of all, this B2B sales process works for both for inside sales and outside sales teams.

1. Create your personas

A HubSpot study found that about 50% of prospects won’t be a good fit. In order to execute an effective B2B sales strategy, you need to know your audience. The most effective way to do this is by creating customer personas.

Just remember that with B2B sales, your customer personas should be based on decision-makers that have the authority and budget to negotiate and close deals with your company.

An example B2B customer persona may include the following details:

Demographics – Age, gender, income, education, etc.

Company role – The current position at the company, and an overview of their authority, such as, “VP of Sales, controls $500K budget for the sales department”

Goals – Such as, “Wants to increase sales by 20% in the next year”

Challenges – The problems they need help with, like, “Sales reps don’t know how to prioritize prospects”

Interests – Favorite websites, magazines, news sources, software, apps, etc., that help you understand how you connect with prospects

Note that personas are not the same as ideal customer profiles (ICPs). An ICP is a fictional company that might be interested in your product, and a persona is a fictional employee of that company.

(Source)

2. Research

Research the market to gauge demand for your products or services, determine who your competitors are, and assess your competitors’ marketing efforts.

Once you have that information, you’ll need to:

Map out the buyer journey

In the simplest terms, the buyer journey includes three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. But in B2B sales, you may need to further break down each stage. For example, buyers in the decision stage might move onward to an evaluation stage, in which they’re comparing pricing options for different solutions.

Establish lead qualification criteria

Almost 80% of leads never turn into sales.

It takes time to build trust, and for people to move through the B2B sales funnel to the point of purchase. But you can improve your B2B conversion rates with a structured approach to analyzing your leads.

Classify your prospects by how willing and ready they are to make a purchase by considering the following: need, interest, budget, timing, and role.

By devising a solid lead qualification framework, you can fill your sales pipeline with quality leads.

3. Prospect with ICP data

Based on your persona information and market research, you can develop an ICP that helps you know which businesses to target.

A sales rep could use a sales intelligence tool like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine to map a target geographic location, filter by prospects in that area using different persona data points, and then export the finished list and import it into their lead management tool. This strategy ensures reps are only working leads in target areas that meet defined ICP criteria, which can improve sales efficiency and close rates.

4. Make Initial Contact

After prospecting, you can approach potential customers to introduce yourself, and start building a relationship. Traditionally, relationship-building may have begun with a cold call to follow-up after mailing a brochure, but sales management software has transformed how reps build rapport with prospects.

Use sales software to create cohesive communication across every channel. You can automatically collect every text, email, phone call, or other communication, and sync it to your CRM for a 360-degree view of each contact. You can also define your communication cadence and get notifications when it’s time to check in with a prospect.

If you’re having trouble reaching prospects, check out this in-depth guide on how to get past the gatekeeper.

5. Assess & Qualify Your Leads

Studies show that while most B2B marketers send all their leads directly to the sales team, they only qualify 27% of them. That means sales reps may waste time chasing leads that won’t convert.

An effective way of doing this is by using the Sandler Pain Funnel.

This strategic series of questions helps you discover your lead’s real needs. Better yet, it goes beyond the pain points to reveal whether they have the budget and the decision-making authority to do business with you.

The eight questions in the Sandler Pain Funnel, in order, are:

1. “Tell me more about that…”
2. “Can you be more specific? Give me an example.”
3. “How long has that been a problem?”
4. “What have you tried to do about that?”
5. “How did that work?”
6. “How much do you think this has cost you?”
7. “How do you feel about that?”
8. “Have you given up trying to deal with the problem?”

When you size up each prospect with these qualifying questions, you’ll develop a better understanding of how your products or services can assist them. This will be instrumental in the next step.

6. Pitch

Today, you can make pitches through video content, such as a webinar, live video conference, or even in a private video meeting.

The latter is best for maximum personalization. Indeed, it’s best to tailor the pitch for every single prospect, and if possible, do it in person. If your product is quite technical, you can bring an engineer or developer to the meeting to field any technical questions.

In any case, the pitch requires considerable effort and planning, as it’s such a crucial stage in the B2B sales process. On the upside, you’ll only be doing pitches for prospects that are already qualified.

Want more inspiration? Check out these sales pitch examples.

7. Respond

It’s easy to think the B2B sales process is all about selling. However, listening to your prospects is an important part of the process.

Act as a guide, steering the conversation and letting the prospect fill in the gaps. Ideally, you should only do around 30% of the talking, so prospects feel like you’re hearing and understanding them.

Another technique is to teach rather than sell. By offering advice to help someone improve their business without any expectation of a sale, you’ll quickly earn that person’s trust.

Learning to adapt your sales process in this way takes a little practice. However, when you get it right, you’ll forge stronger relationships with prospects.

8. Follow Up

A survey of 1,000 B2B buyers shopping for complex solutions revealed that 43% preferred to not interact with salespeople.

For B2B sales professionals, that poses a dilemma:

Should you follow up?

The answer is yes. That being said, timing matters.

If you follow up too soon or too often, you may annoy your prospect and lose the sale. If you’re too nonchalant, you won’t close many sales.

The art of following up requires a delicate balance of personalization, persistence, and perception. You have to understand how your prospects like to be approached, and what they may be worried about.

9. Close

The final step in your B2B sales funnel is the close. Reps often see this as the most difficult stage of B2B selling. However, if you’ve completed the rest of the B2B sales process correctly, your close should come easily.

When you get this far, your prospects should be ready to purchase. If you get the sense that they’re still hesitant, it may be best to discuss their concerns again to address any outstanding issues.

Ultimately, if you and the prospect are aligned, the sale is much more likely. Some prospects may need a little more time, so the sale isn’t always dead if you don’t get it the first time around.

9 Strategies to Improve B2B Sales Performance

Now that you’ve got the basic steps to the B2B sales process down, here are nine B2B sales strategies to get the needle moving in the right direction.

Identify ALL Decision Makers

The sooner you identify key players in your target companies, the better.

When you start researching prospect websites, check pages like “Meet the Team” or “About Us” for information about the big players, and gather additional intel about them on LinkedIn.

Utilize PAIN-Based Selling

Almost 70% of B2B customers claim their business needs aren’t being addressed during the first contact. If you don’t meet your prospect’s needs, they aren’t likely to stick around.

By embracing solution-based selling, you can target a prospect’s pain point, then tailor your pitch to demonstrate how your product would resolve it.

Here are some example questions that can help you drill down and discover the challenges your prospect is facing:

“What are your company’s short-term and long-term goals?”
“What do you believe is your company’s greatest strength and greatest weakness?”
“What aspects do you like best about your current supplier? What don’t you like?”
“Name one thing you would change about your business.”
“What deadlines are you facing now?”
“Which resources do you want to use more?”
“How does [pain point] impact your business?”

This sales strategy is successful because it is all about the prospect and their problem, which is a more welcoming proposition than a pushy sales pitch.

Strategically Assign Sales Territories

Sales territory management means assigning prospects and geographical areas to specific salespeople depending on the industry, location, or account size. This strategy ensures that there is no overlap between your sales reps.

You can use a tool like SPOTIO’s Territory Manager to quickly map territories and assign them to different reps. Managers no longer have to spend hours reviewing physical maps and drawing out territories for assignment by hand.

Create Content to Enable the Sales Team

According to the Content Marketing Institute, in 2022, B2B content marketing teams reported successfully using content to:

• Build credibility/trust (77%)
• Grow customer loyalty (63%)
• Generate leads (67%)
• Nurture leads (54%)

At every stage of the sales funnel, content can help support your sales team. It’s little surprise that over 90% of B2B marketers use content marketing.

Videos are the most powerful type of content for sales teams, as Google found that 70% of B2B customers watch videos when they are researching products before purchase. Video content gets more engagement, and it’s shareable, which makes it great for creating brand awareness. Better yet, video content is a powerful way to convey emotion in your brand messaging, which is useful when you are trying to sell anything.

Other types of content that can enable sales include:

• Blog posts
• Educational articles
• Case studies
• e-books
• Webinars
• Whitepapers
• Courses

Done right, this strategy can reduce the B2B sales cycle, and drive more people through your sales funnel, which will increase your leads, conversions, and ultimately, your profits.

Harness the Power of Social Selling

Social selling is all about using social media to identify key decision makers and joining meaningful conversations with them at the right moment. Research from LinkedIn shows that 78% of people who engage in social selling will sell more than those who don’t use social selling.

Some great B2B sales examples of social selling on LinkedIn include IBM, which drove a 400% increase in sales, and SAP, which increased revenue by 32%.

Social selling helps you leverage omnichannel marketing in a way that establishes brand recognition quickly, so people automatically think of your brand when they are ready to buy. This means you can bypass the awkward situation of cold calling to generate warm leads.

Implement a Lead Nurturing System

The nature of B2B sales means that companies are typically considering an expensive commitment, and several decision-makers need to discuss it and agree. That explains why up to 90% of B2B leads are not ready to make a purchase.

Research from Marketo indicates that companies with a solid lead nurturing strategy generate 50% more ready-to-buy leads, with a customer acquisition cost 33% lower than non-nurtured leads. The content that marketing teams create for B2B sales enablement can usually be repurposed for lead nurturing.

Assign Sales Activities

Sales managers should assign daily, weekly, and monthly activities to reps to ensure prospects and leads are moving through the pipeline. Defining goals also helps managers compare performance among reps, identify weak points in the sales process, and ensure reps aren’t working on redundant or overlapping tasks.

Prepare for Common Objections

B2B selling is all about presenting the opportunity for positive change. The problem is that not everyone likes change, and you’re going to encounter some tough customers that seemingly can’t be convinced.

The most common objections are related to:

• Budget – “I can’t afford it”
  
• Competitor – “I’m already using another product”
  
• Competitor at a lower price – “I see your competitor is cheaper”
  
• Timing – “Can you get back to us in Q4?”

In each of these scenarios, if you’ve prepared responses, you can turn objections around by focusing on the value your product offers.

Ideally, try to back this value up with social proof and case studies of similar B2B customers who had great results. Your prospects will see that what you’re offering is something truly unique, and they’ll realize it’s a long-term investment that delivers a great return on investment (ROI).

This guide dives deeper into some of the more common sales objections and how sales leaders overcome them.

Pursue referrals

Word-of-mouth is the cheapest form of marketing, and sometimes, the type that delivers the best bang for your buck. Research indicates that referrals close 70% quicker, and they deliver almost 60% more lifetime value.

Set up a referral program that offers an incentive, like a cash-back offer for anyone who refers a lead that converts. Then promote your program on LinkedIn and tell your customers about it.

Costly B2B Selling Mistakes to Avoid

Now that you’ve learned how to sell B2B the right way, let’s look at some common pitfalls. Here are four mistakes that can quickly derail your best-laid B2B sales strategies.

Ignoring Opportunities in the Field

Inside sales can be easier and cheaper to execute than outside sales, because there are no routes to manage, territories to monitor, or travel costs to account for. However, cheaper isn’t always better.

By ignoring outside B2B sales, companies miss out on a lot of leads and risk creating a brand identity that doesn’t have much of a personal touch. Outside sales teams, however, have more interaction with prospects and are effective at building strong customer relationships that can increase overall sales volumes, and also the customer lifetime value (CLV) of each buyer.

With savvy hiring and automated route management, you can strategically lower the cost of an outside sales team and build relationships that improve ROI.

Selling to Low-Level Buyers

Getting in front of C-suite prospects can be a challenge. While you could take the easy route to negotiate with purchasing managers, they’ll rarely have the budget or the power to sanction huge deals.

This is a common problem, with 39% of professionals in B2B sales saying the inability to reach the right people is their biggest obstacle.

B2B sales strategies that focus on low-level buyers can’t deliver the high-growth and huge ROI you may be targeting. It’s much better to seek out the top-level decision makers who have the authority to agree to bigger deals. It may take more work, but it’ll be worth it.

Focusing on Features Over Value

When it comes to B2B sales, your prospects don’t care about the fancy features or the latest buzzwords. All they want to know is whether your products or services can solve their problem.

Instead of focusing on the product, focus on your potential customer. Identify their pain points, show them you care, and prove that your product or service offers the solution they need.

Implementing a Single-Track Content Strategy

For many years, content marketers have sung the praises of using the Pareto Principle.

Also known as the 80-20 Rule, marketing experts believe that it’s best to only spend 20% of your time creating content, and the other 80% of the time marketing it.

The evidence suggests this a solid barometer, especially when you are just getting started and need to promote your online presence to attract quality traffic to your website.

Unfortunately, many marketers put all their eggs in one basket, and simply throw everything behind a single channel. While SEO is a great one to back, even it alone may not yield the B2B customers you want.

Now, omnichannel marketing is seen as the future of e-commerce.

To succeed, you must have a presence across multiple mediums, from your company blog to Facebook videos to paid ads to influencer marketing partnerships. There is a lot to explore, and the most successful companies are those who work hard to create a seamless, unified experience from one touchpoint to the next.

Not Following Up

It’s rare to close a deal with just one or two engagements, especially in B2B sales. SPOTIO research shows that 80% of B2B sales require at least five follow-up calls.

Businesses that are considering your high-ticket product will need to be nurtured through the customer journey before they decide to get the checkbook out. While they’re deliberating, you need to stay in touch.

A lot of B2B companies struggle with this, forgetting to follow-up regularly. But when you use software to automate a follow-up sequence, you’ll be able to keep leads engaged throughout the sales process.

B2B Sales Tools

Let’s take a look at three tools that can help you streamline your B2B sales.

SPOTIO

The SPOTIO platform is a go-to solution for outside sales teams. Highlights include:

Google Places Integration –This integration offers a map view and business information of every company within a territory. This feature helps reps sort and targeting leads, as quickly filter by aspects like name, email, and business type.

Route Optimization – This feature allows reps to plan the most efficient routes using many different data points, such as distance, scheduling and meeting lengths.

Territory Management — This feature lets managers assign territories by geographic boundaries or draw custom boundaries for territories.

Task Automation — SPOTIO integrates with CRM platforms and automates the timing of steps in the sales process, such as follow-up calls. It also automatically backs up field notes to the CRM, so reps don’t have to manually enter notes when they return to the office.

Performance Analytics — Sales managers can analyze sales performance based on a number of metrics, such as visits, leads created, leads won, and leads lost. This data helps managers continuously improve processes and sales techniques, as well as identify opportunities for team development.

My Reports – This feature lets users create custom reports based on the KPIs that are most important to them. Sales managers and sales reps can save their reports as templates, change the parameters, and share them anytime.

e-Contracts Web + Mobile – Reps can use the mobile CRM to manage their sales pipeline and close deals with B2B customers while they’re on-the-go.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

This is a good option for companies on a smaller budget. Sales Navigator lets you tap into the immense database of LinkedIn, which has 930 million users.

By using Sales Navigator, you can discover new leads in your market that suit your target customer profile. This tool allows you to track growing companies, keep tabs on developing trends and opportunities in the market, and gather data that enhances your outreach efforts.

The Google Chrome add-on also helps you find correct email addresses for leads, making it easier to connect. Without a doubt, this is one of the best B2B sales tools to have in your locker.

Salesforce CRM

There aren’t many lists of B2B sales apps that don’t mention Salesforce.

Setting the bar for CRM platforms, this robust system integrates with virtually every other service or app you could want in B2B sales.

Better yet, it has a vast array of cloud-based applications for marketing, sales, and customer service. These are easy to get started with, which makes Salesforce suitable for teams of all sizes.

Whether you’re creating a B2B sales funnel, managing leads or analyzing reports, this one-stop solution is perfect for inside sales teams.

Inside and outside sales teams have very different needs when it comes to CRM functionality. Sales teams already using Salesforce for their inside sales efforts can use SPOTIO to quickly bolt-on the functionality needed by field sales reps.

Ready. Set. Sell.

Now you know how to turbocharge your B2B sales process. Which sales strategy will you try first?

________

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement platform to increase your revenue, maximize your profitability, and increase your team’s productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Sales mapping software is an essential part of every field sales team’s toolbox. 

No more drawing and sticking pins in paper maps. Today’s sales reps rely on the latest technology to optimize their territories and increase sales.

A glance at several studies underlines the point:

• Optimizing your territory design can increase sales by up to 7%.
• Territory optimization can increase sales productivity by 10%-20%.
• Optimizing sales territory design results in 30% higher sales performance.

In this guide, we’ll show you what features to look for in sales mapping software and then highlight the best sales mapping solutions to consider in 2024.

What is Sales Mapping Software?

Sales mapping software is a business application that integrates sales data with geolocation. Sales managers use it for sales territory mapping and to visualize leads, customers, and areas on a map.

Field sales teams also use it to plan better routes and more effective schedules.

Managers can use sales mapping software to view:

• The locations of customers and leads
• The distribution of customers across target territories
• The distribution of territories among field sales teams

Plus, managers can verify whether their sales reps are where they say they are and work all the accounts they are supposed to during a given time frame.

Why Field Sales Teams Should Invest in Mapping Software

Territory mapping has been around for ages. A few decades ago, your typical door-to-door sales rep used a paper map with a hand-drawn outline of their territory. 

Each neighborhood had prospects with distinct characteristics, personas, and buying potential. Nowadays, sales mapping software has replaced paper maps. 

Sales mapping software does a lot more than help you create maps. It helps you manage sales territories, prevent sales territory overlap between members of your sales team, and identify underperforming territories at a glance.

Let’s take a look at the reasons sales teams should be using mapping software.

Assign Sales Territories Strategically

It stands to reason, you want to squeeze the most sales out of each territory. That means you need to assign your sales resources to match the territory strategically and help your sales team work each territory more efficiently. 

With sales mapping software, you can ensure sales reps have enough accounts to manage, and confirm your top reps are working the most valuable territories.

Uncover new opportunities in existing territories 

You want to expand and move into new territories, but you know your sales eam hasn’t covered all potential leads within their existing sales territories.

With sales mapping software like SPOTIO, you can analyze insights about your existing territories to uncover new opportunities.

Increase time spent on sales activities

According to CSO Insights, just 33% of inside sales reps’ time is spent actively selling. Similarly, SPOTIO also reports that 66% of outside/field sales reps’ day is spent on non-selling activities. With sales mapping software, you can eliminate manual route planning, which is an easy way to increase sales productivity.

Sales mapping software helps reps quickly identify new opportunities in their territory, as well as upsell potential in existing accounts. Also, integrated route planning features reduce windshield time, ensuring reps are spending more time in the field working their accounts and completing daily minimum sales activities.

Optimized sales routes can reduce travel costs, increase the number of clients sales teams can serve in their territories, and improve fuel efficiency.

Improve sales tracking and performance 

Sales mapping software makes mapping territories an intelligent process, using important sales and geographical data points to help managers place their reps strategically.

Sales leaders can use software like SPOTIO to place reps where they can make the most impact based on valuable insights like sales activity reports, plus KPIs for leads, opportunities, and revenue at the rep, org, and territory levels. 

Sales territory mapping software also offers the intelligence you need to realign your territories as your reps and opportunities change.

Whether you want to deploy high performers where they’re needed most, or you want to place average performers in an environment where they can reach their full potential, you can assign reps to a specific sales territory to improve sales performance.

Key Features to Look for in Sales Mapping Software

Not all sales mapping software is created equal, so here are the key features to consider for your business:

Customer mapping

Customer mapping brings your CRM data to life and finds gaps you didn’t know existed. For instance, you can visualize leads and opportunities on a map, filter by a pipeline stage, and find new leads around existing customers. 

Image: Field reps can use SPOTIO to visualize customers while out in the field. 

To make sure reps follow up as expected (and don’t annoy leads), you can filter by visit count/last visited date/days since the last visit.

Equally important, sales territory mapping also helps you segment territories by different demographic, firmographic, or industry data. For example, if you sell various products and services based on industry, then it makes sense to map your territory by industry data.

Territory management

Territory management lets you allocate your sales team to match the territory properly.

You can assign territories by state, county, city, or ZIP code, or by drawing an area on a map. Alternatively, you can assign your top performers to the highest value accounts and opportunities.

Image: Defining and assigning sales territories in SPOTIO. 

Additionally, you can clarify who owns which area, prevent unwanted territory overlaps, and ensure you have the optimal number of reps working a designated sales territory.

Route planning

Sales mapping software can cut the time your sales reps spend planning routes. For example, SPOTIO quickly finds the best route to appointments and plans the entire day, so your sales reps can focus on closing deals instead of working out how to get from meeting to meeting.

Route planning makes it possible for you to optimize your sales reps’ routes to include the greatest number of interactions with leads, prospects, and customers.

Rep tracking

One of the things that sales managers struggle with is not knowing if their reps are where they say they are, or if they are working all the accounts they should be.

Back in the office, it’s not always possible to keep tabs on each team member. But for those managers who want to track reps on the map in real time, SPOTIO’s GPS sales rep tracking holds everyone accountable, especially newer reps who you may want to monitor more closely. For sales teams that prefer more privacy, you can turn the feature on and off.

Permissions and controls

Sales mapping software like SPOTIO allows you to control who can access each lead’s data and keep everyone organized using parent/child hierarchies and permissions. 

No one wants their team to waste time arguing over who owns which leads. By using permissions and controls, you can prevent confusion and culture-eroding arguments, give ops and managers greater visibility, and keep reps focused on their allocated leads.

Sorting and filtering

It’s important for sales teams to stay organized, especially when their maps contain dozens or hundreds of pins.

SPOTIO enables reps to colorize and sort pins based on any data point, such as pipeline stage or the result of a previous visit. This level of filtering and sorting makes it easy for sales reps to distinguish between leads, opportunities, and existing customers while they are out in the field, and in the process, manage their days more efficiently.

CRM integration

Integrating your CRM and field sales data can save you loads of time and boost sales rep productivity by 46%.

SPOTIO’s sales mapping software tools let you send field sales data directly into your existing CRM. (No need to worry if you don’t have one, because SPOTIO comes with a basic CRM for field sales teams.)

The CRM integration automates those time-consuming tasks such as mileage tracking and routing, and automatically prompts every type of follow-up activity.

Performance reports

Without accurate sales performance reports, you can only guess whether your team is on track and if gaps might need plugging.

Image: Measuring leads and pipeline value by territory in SPOTIO. 

The best sales mapping software enable managers to track territory-specific sales activities and gather performance-based metrics. You can track territory performance across the organization and analyze what’s working and what’s not.

With SPOTIO’s My Reports feature, sales managers can set custom parameters so that reports only include the most important sales data for a user or territory, and then save the dashboard as a reusable template.

9 Best Sales Mapping Solutions to Consider in 2024

In this section, we’ll look at the best free, freemium, and premium sales mapping solutions. We’ve included a brief overview of each sales mapping tool and highlighted some of its key features.

Choosing the best sales mapping software will depend on many factors, such as your budget, goals, and business size. Although some sales mapping tools are free, most of them don’t have advanced features. 

Free sales mapping software typically has basic sales mapping features, so if you need a sales mapping solution that covers everything, you’ll need to consider a paid subscription. And if you need free sales mapping software for budget reasons, you should take advantage of the free trials that some of the premium tools offer.

When selecting the best sales mapping software for your business, evaluate all the features and integrations on offer, and check the “best for” section to see if it fits your niche. 

SPOTIO

Source: SPOTIO 

Best for: Field sales teams. SPOTIO is ranked #1 in the Field Sales category and is a 2023 G2 Best Software Winner.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales software because it enables amazing sales productivity, increases sales by 23%, and shortens sales cycles.

Key sales mapping features:

• Create sales territories by ZIP Code, city, county, state, or hand-draw.
• Automate reports on sales territory performance and maximize results.
• Make sense of field data at a glance by visualizing CRM data on a map.
• Organize pins based on different data points such as pipeline stage.
• Customize, filter and sort pins based on your preferred workflow.
• Increase accountability and find sales reps in the field when you need them.
• Integrate with any CRM, including Salesforce and HubSpot.
• Reduce windshield time by planning and routing each day.
• Create role-based hierarchies and measure sales territory performance.
• Locate, monitor, and manage the activity and progress of your sales reps in real-time.

See how SPOTIO compares to other sales mapping solutions here.

Get pricing

Mapline

Source: Mapline

Best for: Academics, banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail, and real estate industries.

Mapline is a web-based mapping platform and data visualization tool. You can easily display data from Excel spreadsheets to optimize logistics, enhance market planning, identify growth opportunities, or reduce market risks.

Key sales mapping features:

• Create a map from a spreadsheet in seconds.
• Add boundaries, create heat maps, and plan routes.
• Optimize sales territories by geographic boundaries or custom shapes.
• Assign customers to sales territories automatically.
• Improve performance reporting with dynamic charts, reports, and dashboards. 

Pricing: Request a price proposal or start mapping for free.

BatchGeo

Source: BatchGeo 

Best for: Data analysts, marketers, journalists, real estate firms, and sales teams.

BatchGeo is the fastest way to create Google Maps from your spreadsheet. Just copy and paste your data — such as addresses, intersections, cities, states, and postal codes — into the tool.

Key sales mapping features:

• Convert spreadsheet data into interactive maps of customers, leads, and assets.
• Find trends, hot spots, and cold zones.
• Drill down to discover insights geographically, such as the total sales value, the number of sales, and the revenue per sale for each state.
• Filter for a specific sales representative’s territories.

Pricing: Buy BatchGeo Pro for $99/month (limit of 10 users).

ZeeMaps

Source: ZeeMaps

Best for: Businesses of all sizes.

ZeeMaps allows you to create and publish interactive maps for analysis and presentations. You can color-code regions, show real-time traffic overlays, aggregate regional data, and more.

Key sales mapping features:

• Add unlimited markers per map.
• Select from 3-level access control for each map: Viewer, Member, and Admin.
• Highlight countries, states, counties, cities, ZIP Codes, or hand-drawn regions.
• Optimize multi-point routes for distance or time.
• Aggregate your regional data.

Pricing: Professional plans start at $19.95/user month. Free version with limited functionality available.

Geopointe

Source: Geopointe

Best for: Marketing, operations, and sales teams and executives.

Geopointe is a leading geolocation application available on the Salesforce AppExchange. It location-enables Salesforce so that you can geographically visualize and manage your accounts, contacts, opportunities, and CRM data. 

Key sales mapping features:

• Build territories visually from predefined boundaries.
• Plan, create, and optimize your routes from any mappable data.
• Distribute leads or manage territory assignments automatically.
• Access real-time field sales activity.
• Integrate with Salesforce CRM.

Pricing: Plans start at $74/user/month.

Maptive

Source: Maptive

Best for: Real estate, sales, supply chain, and more.

Maptive is a global mapping platform that lets you transform any spreadsheet data into a customized Google Map in minutes. You can create custom maps from your data, including heat maps, sales density maps, territory maps, store locators, and more.

Key sales mapping features:

• Draw custom sales territories based on your data. 
• Access important information like sales numbers, demographic details, and customer profiles for each sales territory.
• Create visual boundaries based on predefined regions like cities, states, ZIP Codes, districts, territories, and more.
• Draw a “lasso” around specific locations to create territories. 
• Map the most efficient route between multiple locations.

Pricing: Plans start at $250/user/45 days. Free trial available.

Maptitude

Source: Maptitude

Best for: Data analysts. 

Maptitude’s GIS software gives you the tools, maps, and demographic data you need to analyze and understand how geography affects your territory management. You can create maps and map images from spreadsheets, plus you can see external data on the map from various sources, including Google Maps KML/KMZ files.

Key sales mapping features:

• Find hidden opportunities.
• See where sales are highest.
• Know exactly where your customers are.
• Answer geographic questions that impact your operations.
• Spot geographic patterns and trends that you can’t see in database tables and spreadsheets.

Pricing: Maptitude’s cloud-based platform is $420/user/year. The desktop version starts at $695/user/year. Free trial available.

MapBusinessOnline

Source: MapBusinessOnline

Best for: Marketing, sales, and resource management teams.

MapBusinessOnline is a cloud-based mapping tool you can use to analyze and visualize business data, explore new markets, manage sales territories, and optimize logistics.

Key sales mapping features:

• Visualize customer locations.
• Access advanced sales territory mapping.
• Run market analysis with multiple drive time queries.
• Optimize multi-stop route planning with time windows.
• Share maps or conduct collaborative editing.

Pricing: MapBusinessOnline subscription plans start at $500/user/year. Free trial available.

GeoMetrx

Source: GeoMetrx

Best for: Franchise organizations, retailers, restaurants, commercial brokers, marketers, and sales teams.

GeoMetrx is sales territory mapping software that you can use for franchise territory map making, retail site selection, and territory building. Using the precision of mobile device GPS data, it can deliver expert analysis that provides a more accurate understanding of your sales territories or retail locations.

Key sales mapping features:

• Upload data appended to standard geographies to create reports and thematic maps.
• Select territories by market capture.
• Share data, report formats, and map templates.
• Compare different geographies, including radius versus drive time, or radius versus standard regions.
• Customize maps with increased thematic ranges defined by: Equal Value, Equal Class Counts, Class Percent, Means and Standard Deviations, Individual Values.

Pricing: Available upon request.

Which Sales Mapping Software Are You Going To Try?

All of these sales mapping solutions are good options for customer mapping, territory management, and route planning.

If you’re running a field sales team, then sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO to see how sales mapping software can help you optimize your sales territories, track your sales reps, and increase sales.

Sales contests are a great way to motivate the whole team. Beyond rewarding sales and revenue, they offer the ability to reward many different types of actions that align with your business objectives. 

 

This positive setting will lead to greater results in the contest and healthier competition that boosts the morale of the whole team and not just the usual top reps and reminds the team that there are many ways to make an impact. This is important because while sales reps are typically tracked and rewarded for their individual sales, the main goal of the sales team is to improve the sales for the entire organization.

25 Sales Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Team

Below you will find a list of 25 sales contest ideas managers can use to motivate reps and increase performance. You’ll see the goal for each one, as well as how they work.

1 | Daily Prize

It may seem that holding a daily contest makes the competition trivial because many of the prizes are small and not of great value. The key to this strategy is that it keeps the reps constantly engaged.

Since the prizes are given daily, the lead or sales tracker is reset each day so that there will be a wider range of possible winners.

2 | Raffle

A raffle is a good way to incentivize reps to achieve short-term goals while being able to win a larger and more lucrative prize. Raffle tickets are given to reps when they reach specific sales goals and the prize is generally only drawn after a long-term sales period has passed.

The secret to holding a good raffle is ensuring that every participant has a measurable and achievable goal that can earn them a chance to get a raffle ticket and enter the drawing.

3 | Customer Reviews

A customer review contest requires a little bit of front-end work from the standpoint that there needs to be an easy way for the reps to obtain a review whether it is good or bad. The easiest way to go about this is to set up a customer survey or take advantage of an already existing survey process.

A customer review contest requires a little bit of front-end work from the standpoint that there needs to be an easy way for the reps to obtain a review whether it is good or bad. The easiest way to go about this is to set up a customer survey or take advantage of an already existing survey process.

Besides receiving the always nice pat-on-the-back from a satisfied customer and the public recognition from upper management, this contest encourages reps to not just be good at selling a product but also be ready to get a review of their service for better or for worse.

4 | Salesperson of the Month

This one is a classic and is often ran as one. The winner is generally the sales rep with the most revenue in sales. But just because this contest carries the classic title doesn’t mean the item being measured has to be classic as well.

Get creative and aim for something unique such as the most individual sales, the most “Nos”, the most reviews good or bad, or the most helpful with coaching other sales reps. Either way you measure it and reward it, the winning sales rep will always enjoy having everyone else see their name and photo on the office wall for an entire month.

5 | Winner’s Choice

A winner’s choice is where the winner gets to decide what the prize will be for either themselves or the next month’s winner, with obvious monetary limits or choices set by management beforehand. It’s a simple way to not have to get too creative and the benefit is you’re less likely to have someone complain about the prize.

6 | I OWE U! (from the boss)

An I OWE U from a superior is always a fun sales contest and cause for excitement on the sales team. It’s best to set a structured timeline and goal well in advance. Since it will most likely be you or someone near you fulfilling the debt, it is best to make clear the prize or selection of prizes.

If you want to get a solid gauge as to what type of debt your sales reps are looking for, then have them submit their requests ahead of the contest and you can select one of the prizes as long as they are not too outrageous.

Common prizes for the winner may include eating/cooking lunch together, giving professional coaching sessions, washing and cleaning their car, or even more humorous things such as performing karaoke to their favorite song in front of the whole team.

7 | On a Boat (Boss for the day)

It is a pretty simple prize for whatever the contest may be. The winner gets to be boss for a day or some variation of it. You could let them take your position for the day, sit at your desk, pick the location for the next company lunch, or run a meeting. Either way the winner will be happy to hear all day long those two sweet words come out of your mouth, “Yes Boss!”.

8 | Sales Poker

This is another fun sales contest that requires each participant to acquire 5 cards out of a 52-card deck. Each card is earned by achieving an established goal. At the end of the sales period, the sales rep with the best hand wins the prize. It is an easy game that allows all participating sales reps a chance to win, even if they weren’t necessarily the best performing sales rep for that period.

9 | Lead Conversion

The premise of this sales competition is that leads are handed out randomly and evenly to the sales reps and the one person or group to convert the most leads into sales during a specific timeframe wins the prize. This sales game allows for a winner by chance since some reps might get more quality leads than others.

10 | The Whopper (or Top This)

What’s a whopper without its lettuce and tomato? The trick to winning this contest is to be the one to upsell the customer the most. The length of the sales period can vary and the prize along with it.

11 | Most Wanted

This is similar to the “Whopper” contest but differs in what types of leads are handed out. In this sales competition the manager identifies and hands out leads of the biggest leaders in the industry. No small fish here nor any random ones either. These leads are highly desirable targets and the sales rep or team that lands the biggest single sale wins.

12 | Upsell Contest

This sales game is designed to reward sales reps for upselling and increasing revenue from existing partners. Some options for measuring the upsell progress and determining a winner is to select either the largest upsell dollar amount earned, the largest upsell percentage earned relative to the client’s prior account history, or the highest amount of client’s that are upsold.

13 | Sales Bingo

Bingo is always a good time. Turn it into a sales contest by making the squares represent different sales goals. What makes this sales game fun is that it requires skill and luck. The skill to make the goal on each square and the luck to get them in the correct sequence.

14 | Most No’s (in a single week)

The Most No’s game is a fun and creative sales contest idea used to stir the sales team pot. The reason is because it seems so counterintuitive to be wanting more rejection. In reality, it drives an increase in sales activity and the likelihood of a rep getting a “Yes”.

The goal of the game is to see who can get the most No’s/rejections within a sales period whether it is a day, a week, or a month. Generally, the game shouldn’t last longer than a week since the longer the game continues, the less competitive it becomes. The gap between the lowest and the highest “No’s” counts gets wider.

15 | The Loser

It never pays to be the loser but sometimes the loser does pay. Simply put, the loser of the sales contest pays an amount towards a company party or something fun that in the end everyone will get to enjoy.

Be sure to make the amount somewhat insignificant, like $20, so that the loser won’t be too upset when they have to pay up. Some good ideas for where the money go are holiday parties, company picnics, team lunches, happy hour events, or even have a charity chosen by the team.

16 | Retention-Based Sales Contest

In most industries, the companies that are the most profitable aren’t usually making one-time sales but are instead focused on creating repeat sales with the same clients. Sales reps will often get focused on landing new clients instead of catering to the known clients that have already given them their business.

To create a more loyal client base, it’s recommended to have some sales contest ideas fixated on encouraging sales reps to garner loyal and repeat business. One way to do this is to hang up in the office a repeat business whiteboard. The goal of displaying their individual progress is to help them visualize their individual contribution to the company’s loyal client base.

17 | Enterprise-Level Sales Contests

Keep your team motivated and take away the focus on individual sales. Create a fun sales contest where offices compete against other offices or managers against managers. This is all about boosting team morale, creating a greater team cohesion and losing the emphasis on the individual.

A satisfying reward for the winning team or manager is often just bragging rights.

18 | Time-Reward Sales Contests

A high motivator and fun sales contest idea that gets the competitive juices flowing is a reward of time off. It suggested to use this reward near the end of a sales cycle because sales reps will sometimes hold off on making certain deals so when the next sales period starts, they have a deal ready to go in their pocket.

The rewards can range from leaving early on a Friday, arriving late on a low volume day, or even a paid time off (PTO) day.

19 | Buddy Up

Use the buddy system. Pair your top sales reps with the lower performers and reward the top sales team at the end of the month. The main result of this exercise will be greater team collaboration and the lower performers will have a chance to learn what makes their highly productive counterpart so effective.

20 | Pitch Contest

In this contest, top producers anonymously submit their sales pitch and the team tries to guess who’s each one is. At the end of all the submissions the whole team can vote on whose pitch they liked the most. All participants get to keep a copy of the pitches which they can learn from and use moving forward.

21 | Sales Team Scavenger Hunt

Frequently, a sales team has members that have become specialists in selling specific products or targeting certain clients. The scavenger hunt sales contest encourages your sales reps to team up and utilize their special talents to accomplish an objective.

The objectives can range from reaching a set revenue goal to selling a specific product to accomplishing a certain number of upsells. As the team members work together to fulfill their scavenger hunt objectives, they will naturally increase collaboration, boost morale, and drive sales.

22 | Surprise Salesperson Appreciation

Don’t let a team member go unnoticed even if they aren’t at the top of the charts. Choose a day when the entire team brings in a little gift or letter showing their appreciation for a chosen team member. Sales reps are notorious for being hyper-competitive and will often lose sight of keeping the overall morale high. Show every team member they are important to the success of the business and each other.

23 | Brackets

Much like college basketball’s March Madness, this sales game breaks the team into brackets. Each team member competes against a fellow sales rep and the one that out-sales the other during that week advances in the ranks.

As the weeks go on the competition gets more intense as the winning reps advance. At the end, the winning team member (and potentially the runner-up) gets a prize.

24 | Fantasy Sales Teams

Fantasy football teams have infiltrated the office water cooler, so why not take some of that competitive talk and let it infiltrate the sales team? Break your sales team up and simulate a random draft pick. Points are then awarded to each team’s “player”’ for their sales. The manager or team that earns the most fantasy points in the end wins the competition.

25 | Traveling Trophy (Floating Prize)

Each sales period the sales rep with the highest sales gets awarded a trophy to display on their desk. As long as they stay on top of their game, the trophy stays in their hands. When they are knocked off their highest sales pedestal, the winning rep takes the trophy and displays it at their desk.

As silly as it may seem, the flaunting of a decently sized gleaming trophy at a fellow team member’s desk can spark the competitive edge a manager is looking for in their team. Add a little more emphasis to the sales games and post pictures of each week’s winners in the break-room.

Benefits of Sales Contests

By nature, humans are very competitive beings. It has come from millennia of competing for resources and status. For those two reasons we compete with each other on almost every level and in almost every way possible whether it has to do with school, sports, work, or even the greenness of your lawn. Competition gives people a sense of pride and purpose.

With that in mind, sales managers and leadership can capitalize on human tendency through sales competitions. The main goals of sales competitions should be to increase individual performance, elevate team activity, and boost overall morale.

 

Tips for Planning Sales Contests

The best way to get everyone excited about a new sales contest is to ensure that no individual has an upper hand from the start. In order for a sales competition to guarantee a level the playing field between top and bottom performing reps, implement rules or mechanisms of:

1. Chance
2. Measurement of activity

With mechanisms of chance, the winners of the sales games are less likely to always be dominated by top reps because their normal strategies of making sales become irrelevant. Along those same lines, the outcomes based on measurable amounts of activity also inhibits the top sellers from dominating the games if they are unwilling to put in the effort that the bottom reps are able and willing to do.

The reason for applying these two characteristics to the sales games is that it makes every rep equal from the start and encourages healthy competition. Let’s face it, nobody is thrilled to compete in or win a game when the outcome is practically predetermined.

Common sales contest mistakes to avoid when setting up your contest:

While running sales contests can definitely boost morale, they do come with a risk. Be sure to avoid these common mistakes which can cause the opposite of the intended effect.

1. Your contest only motivates top salespeople and fails to reach your team as a whole.
2. It fails to hold your employees’ interest after the first few days.
3. Improvements in performance do not last once the contest is over.
4. It creates a competitive environment that hurts collaboration and employee spirit.
5. Scores are tedious and time-consuming to track.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

We reached out to our top clients and conducted extensive research to compile this list of the best sales apps. From medical to solar sales, and everything in between, these apps can help reps and managers across all industries boost productivity and hit bigger numbers.

Let’s take a look at the 41 best sales apps, key features, and use cases.

41 Best Apps for Sales Reps

There are a lot great sales apps out there, and each one has a specific use case. We’ve broken this list of apps into the following categories. Feel free to click the links below to jump to the apps you’re most interested in reviewing.

• Best Door to Door Sales App
• Best Mobile Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Travel / Route Planning Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Prospecting Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Appointment-Setting Apps For Reps
• Best Lead Management Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Productivity Apps for Sales Reps
• Best File-Sharing Apps for Sales Teams
• Best Note Taking And Recording Apps For Sales Reps
• Best Apps for Closing Sales
• Best Apps for Sales Tracking
• Best Expense Tracking Apps For Sales Teams

Best App for Door-to-Door Sales Teams

In some industries, door-to-door sales continue to be the best way to connect with prospects. And with the right technology, reps can zero-in on only the most qualified prospects before they begin canvassing.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO is the #1 app for door-to-door sales and canvassing. With SPOTIO, you can filter prospect lists by more than 200 data points, including credit capacity, home square footage, and median home income. B2B salespeople can filter prospects by job title, company size, and annual revenue.

You can also cut custom territories and create permissions and hierarchies for each territory.
Sales agents can add notes about prospects, transfer appointments to other reps, and manage their Google and Outlook calendars from within the SPOTIO app.

G2 ranked SPOTIO #1 in their Field Sales category, and awarded us 2023 Best Software.

Pricing plans

Best Mobile Sales Apps for Reps

Outside sales reps spend their days meeting with prospects and touching base with clients. That’s why applications that can streamline communication and organize one’s day are important.

Whether it’s supporting administrative needs, simplifying the act of taking notes, or automating follow-up actions, these mobile apps make life easier for sales reps.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO is an all-in-one sales engagement solution that offers a breadth of capabilities such as appointment scheduling, sales rep tracking, territory and customer mapping, CRM integrations, route planning, custom reporting, and more. SPOTIO eliminates the need to manually keep track of your administrative tasks, giving you more time to focus on selling.

A key feature in the mobile sales app is the appointment setting capabilities. SPOTIO makes it easy to schedule meetings, add and share notes, and see each appointment on a map.

Slack

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Slack is a handy app for messaging and collaboration. With more than 8 million active users, Slack is an easy way to reach prospects, colleagues, and customers and move things along with real-time communication.

CamCard

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With CamCard, you’ll never lose another business card. CamCard makes collecting contacts seamless by instantly reading business cards, converting them into a digital format, integrating the information into your phone contacts, and securely storing information. You can also export business cards to other members of your team.

Keynote

Mobile App: iOS 

Keynote is an app for creating professional presentations on iPad, iPhone, and laptops. Keynote’s features allow you to interact with and edit presentations in real time and present in-person or via videoconference.

Evernote

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Evernote gives users several ways to capture notes: speech-to-text, smartphone keyboard, smart stylus, and scanning. You can also upload images, add receipts, and mark up images and PDFs.

Quickvoice

Mobile App: iOS

Quickvoice is a popular voice recording app with over 5 million users. It makes recording ideas, notes, meetings, and presentations simple. You can also record and schedule voice reminders — a helpful feature when you’re driving to your next appointment and not looking at your phone.

Skype for Mobile

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Skype is one of the most widely used apps for making voice and video calls. Sales teams can use Skype for client calls, or for times when they need to communicate with each other internally.

Best Travel / Route Planning Apps for Sales Reps

For teams in the field, efficient travel is the key to closing as many deals as possible.

These top travel and route planning apps help users optimize their time and get around with ease.

SPOTIO Route Planner

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With SPOTIO, managers can dramatically cut down windshield time by enabling reps to quickly find the most efficient sales routes, no matter how many stops.

In addition to the advanced route planning functionality, SPOTIO also bolts onto your customer relationship management platform. As reps visit prospects in the field, take notes, set meetings, and update customer information, your CRM will automatically update in real-time. This helps cut down time spent on data entry, further boosting rep productivity and sales performance.

SPOTIO’s route planner also automates mileage tracking and integrates with a number of different expense tools. This feature reduces tedious and time-consuming paperwork and gives reps even more time to focus on selling to new customers and nurturing existing relationships.

TripIt

Mobile App: iOS | Android

For sales reps that travel by air, TripIt is an easy way to stay organized and avoid delays. Just share your travel plans with the app, and it will alert you if flights change, if better seats open up, and when it’s time to leave for the airport. TripIt stores every detail of your itinerary, from hotel check-in times to rental car reservations, so you never have to hunt for information.

Google Maps

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Google Maps makes navigating traffic stress-free by displaying live traffic patterns that help users avoid accidents and traffic jams. Google Maps also shows multiple options for routes and transportation, which creates flexibility, especially when navigating inner city traffic.

TripCase

Mobile App: iOS | Android

The TripCase app helps design your entire trip. With TripCase, you can book flights, reserve cars, and set up lunch meetings. When you’re in a new city and in between meetings, you can use TripCase to explore local tourist spots and find restaurants.

Parkopedia 

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Parkopedia is an app that helps users find the closest or most affordable parking. The app conveniently shows the price, number of available parking spots, and the distance to each lot. This instantly takes away the stress of competing for a spot in a busy city district.

Rome2rio

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Rome2Rio is an all-inclusive travel app that takes you from your doorstep to your destination. By train, plane, automobile, or even ferry, this app will cover any possible route to get to that sales meeting.

Best Prospecting Apps for Sales Reps

Prospecting is one of the most important aspects of sales. These top sales prospecting apps are designed to help teams generate, manage, and nurture leads.

SPOTIO Lead Machine

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Lead Machine is the top prospecting and lead-tracking app for B2B and B2C sales teams. It gives you the data you need to identify the right leads and disqualify bad prospects, saving time for your reps.

Just choose a territory to generate a lead list, and select filters to remove unqualified prospects.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Mobile App: iOS | Android

LinkedIn Sales Navigator includes sales tools that help you find the right prospects and build trusted relationships. You can save new leads to the app to begin receiving real-time sales updates and communicate with leads via InMail or messages.

Hunter.io

Web app

Hunter is an email verification tool that allows users to find prospect email addresses by providing a domain name. Hunter then searches its more than 50,000 domains on record, and verifies the deliverability of any email addresses it discovers.

SellHack

Web app

SellHack helps sales teams find email addresses for prospects and validate existing email addresses. You can bulk-upload contacts, and let SellHack do the work of finding and verifying contact emails.

BuiltWith

Web app

BuiltWith is a tool that scans a website and lists all of the tech powering the site. A sales rep can use BuiltWith to gain a deeper understanding of their prospect’s needs and determine how their product can help resolve those needs.

NerdyData

Web app

NerdyData is a search engine designed to find the code, backlinks, SEO tools, and licenses your competitors or your prospects’ competitors are using. This tool is great for SaaS sales reps to use before approaching prospects. NerdyData reports can be downloaded and shared with team members.

Best Appointment-Setting Apps for Reps

Appointment-setting apps can ensure a smooth handoff from prospector to closer, or reduce the amount of back-and-forth when trying to schedule a meeting. Let’s take a look at the two best apps for setting sales appointments.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s sales canvassing features let reps access shared calendars and schedule appointments for team members. Appointment assignees can then access any details, history, and files attached to the appointment, ensuring no information is lost in the handoff from one rep to another.

Pricing plans

Calendly

Mobile App: Android

Calendly connects to your calendar and provides a link that you can embed in an email or on a website. Leads can then click on the link to see your availability and schedule a meeting or sales call.

Best Lead Management Apps for Sales Reps

Prospecting activities provide the leads, but proper lead management is required to complete conversions The following apps can help you nurture and manage your leads for optimal success.

SPOTIO Lead Management

Mobile App: iOS | Android

The process and method of lead management is what drives the success of a sales team. SPOTIO’s Lead Management tool allows users to capture interactions across emails, texts, calls, and in-person visits, accessible via separate tabs in a single view. The SPOTIO Lead Management smartphone app connects with your CRM, giving reps access to sales CRM data, even when they’re in the field.

HubSpot CRM

Mobile App: iOS | Android

HubSpot CRM is an app for managing your sales team and their activities in an easy-to-understand dashboard. With the ability to see individual performance, sales quota progress, and other key metrics, you can evaluate your sales team in real time.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Salesforce has a wide range of products for different business uses. Its Sales Cloud is specifically for sales teams and includes features for the management of contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities.

Best Sales Apps For Productivity

As sales teams look to maximize their time, these productivity apps offer a way to make the most of every minute.

SPOTIO Territory Manager

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s territory management feature allows sales managers to track, assign/reassign, and adjust sales territories while in the field. SPOTIO shows managers precisely where their reps are and provides live information on their progress.

SPOTIO Autoplays

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO Autoplays is a tool that allows users to create automated and customized activity sequences (Autoplays) to help reps know what their next best action should be for prospects.

When prospects are enrolled in an Autoplay, an automatic sequence tells reps who they should engage with, the best channel to leverage — call, email, text, visit — and when they should contact that person. It’s more than a task management app, because reps don’t have to plan and schedule their actions, thanks to SPOTIO’s automation.

SPOTIO Auto-Visits

Mobile App: iOS | Android

When reps have SPOTIO installed on their smartphone, the Auto-Visits feature uses geofencing to automatically log check-ins and check-outs, as well as the duration of the visit. With SPOTIO’s sales analytics, managers can see how time-on-site, new visits, and revisits impact close rates.

Any.do

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Any.do lets users create and share tasks and task lists, and remove them when they’re complete. Lists can be collaborative, so Any.do is a good app when teams need to brainstorm next steps, but reps are working remotely.

Best File-Sharing Apps for Sales Teams

Sales reps need to be able to share and access files in a secure, cloud-based platform. The following apps can fulfill that need.

Dropbox

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Dropbox lets teams share files remotely and protect files with passcodes, expiration dates, email verification, and approved viewer lists. Teams can also use Dropbox to collect digital signatures on service agreements.

ShareMe

Mobile App: iOS | Android

ShareMe is a file-sharing app that uses WiFi to transfer files between mobile devices and laptops at lightning-fast speeds. Only the person sharing files needs the app — recipients can access shared files via their web browser.

Best Sales Apps For Note-Taking And Recording

Note-taking apps and recording apps can save reps a lot of time and help them keep track of important information. Two apps are among the best for reps who rely on speech-to-text transcription.

Dragon Anywhere

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Dragon Anywhere is a mobile dictating tool with unlimited word input. It has a 99% accuracy in formatting and editing recorded notes. Documents made in Dragon are easy to share through email, Evernote, Dropbox, and other popular cloud-sharing services. You can also add client names and store them as custom words, so you’ll never have to worry about misspelling them.

Just Press Record

Mobile App: iOS

This sales app is perfect for the “idea people” on your sales team — they can push a button and record an unlimited amount of text, which the app transcribes into searchable text. Recordings are automatically organized into folders by date and time.

Best Sales Apps For Closing Deals

These sales apps help reps through the closing process, whether they’re looking to produce and execute a contract, or accept mobile payments.

SPOTIO (eContracts)

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s mobile app for eContracts allows reps to get documents and contracts signed from their mobile device. No emailing back and forth and wasting time — close deals on the spot with fully integrated e-Contracts.

HelloSign

Mobile App: iOS | Android

HelloSign is an app for remotely collecting signatures of up to 20 people per document Reps can import PDF documents and share them for signing right from their mobile devices.

DocuSign

 Mobile App: iOS | Android

DocuSign is another trusted sales app for collecting signatures remotely. Reps love it for its easy-to-use interface and its notifications about the status of every document.

Proposify

Mobile App: iOS

Proposify is a sales app that helps reps close deals faster by removing the tedious aspects of managing proposals. Create proposals using Proposify’s templates, save them to the cloud, and get faster sign-off with online signatures.

Best Apps for Sales Tracking

SPOTIO Sales Tracker

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO provides sales operations teams with real-time visibility into what’s happening in the field. Know which activities drive the best outcomes and troubleshoot sluggish sales or underperforming territories.

SPOTIO’s My Reports feature makes it easy for managers to quickly build custom reporting dashboards that include only the most important sales activity and performance metrics.

Pricing plans

SPOTIO Sales Rep Tracker

Mobile App: iOS | Android

As part of one of the best sales apps on the market, SPOTIO’s Sales Rep Tracking app gives managers full visibility into what’s happening in the field to better monitor performance and gauge rep efficiency. With features such as rep travel history, real-time location, and visit verification, SPOTIO provides the details managers need to improve sales processes and performance.

HubSpot Sales Hub

With Sales Hub, you can monitor how deals are progressing, organize all sales activity in one platform, and accelerate sales cycles. You can also schedule appointments from within Sales Hub and connect with prospects via live chat.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud has features managers need to drive growth, including forecasting tools, quick filters for managing pipelines, and automation for routine tasks. This app offers additional capabilities when partnered with other Salesforce sales apps and products.

Best Expense Tracking Apps for Sales Teams

Expensify

Mobile App: iOS | Android

From receipt scanning to reimbursement, Expensify automates every step of the expense reporting process. Reps on the go can snap a photo of their receipt using SmartScan, and Expensify takes care of the rest.

Rydoo

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With Rydoo, you can create policies — such as spending limits, or per-diem rates — and the app will automatically approve authorized expenses. You can also configure rules to allow for international travel/other currencies, and review Rydoo data to see where your team is spending the most money.

Which Sales Apps Are Right For Your Team?

With the right technology, you can automate processes, strengthen your sales pipeline, and close more deals. Once you start using sales apps, you’ll wonder how you ever functioned without them.

SPOTIO is the #1 sales app for outside sales managers that want to improve their processes and support their team’s sales goals. It integrates seamlessly with your CRM software, gives you actionable insights, and ensures leads never fall through the cracks.

See what SPOTIO can do for your team. Request a free demo today!

1. The Challenger Sale
2. Conceptual Selling
3. Consultative Selling
4. Customer-Centric Selling
5. Inbound Selling
6. MEDDIC
7. NEAT Selling
8. SNAP Selling
9. Solution Selling
10. SPIN Selling
11. Sandler Selling System
12. Value Selling Framework

What is Sales Methodology?

Sales Methodology is an element in the sales process that refers to the framework, philosophy, or general tactic that guides how a salesperson approaches each step within the process.

Sales Methodology bridges the gap between what needs to be done and how to do it.

The best sales methodologies turn goals into actionable steps that can be measured and monitored. There are a variety of sales models that can be utilized. Each sales method usually aligns to your company’s sales process, but not necessarily the entire sales cycle.

The best sales methodologies are relevant to one specific portion of the sales process, like qualification or discovery. Additionally, because each company develops its own sales process unique to their market and vertical, the sales methods that work for one company won’t necessarily work for another.

A sales methodology is put into place to help your company earn customers in B2B environments. The chosen sales model will dictate your sales process. Because there are so many different types of selling, all types of teams can actually implement and use the same sales methodology.

The 12 Best Sales Methodologies

1 | The Challenger Sale

The 2011 book authored by Matthew Dixon became an overnight sensation that transitioned into one of the most popular and best sales methodologies. It categorized sales reps into 5 profiles:

As I’m sure you guessed, the book states challenger-type sellers are most successful. Challengers make consumers aware of potentially game-changing challenges and opportunities in their market, then offer effective, tailored solutions. They use the “teach-tailor-take” tactic to close sales.

The Challenger Sale revealed some shocking performance trends:

40% of high sales performers primarily used a Challenger style compared to one of the 4 other sales styles identified
High performers were more than 2x likely to use a Challenger approach than any other
More than 50% of all-star performers fit the Challenger profile in complex sales
Only 7% of top performers took a relationship-building approach, the worst performing profile

2  |  Conceptual Selling

Conceptual selling was developed by Stephen Heiman and Robert Miller. This sales model believes that customer interactions are too important to leave to chance. Their approach is centered on customer-focused interactions to help salespeople better prepare for their time with customers, resulting in purposeful meetings and win-win outcomes.

Conceptual selling as a sales method encourages sales reps to ask smart questions broken down into one of five categories:

1. Confirmation Questions: Reaffirm information

Ex) I understand you’re in the solar installation business and are looking for a product to better manage reps and hold them accountable. Is this correct?

2. New Information Questions: Clarify the prospect’s concept of the product or service while also exploring the desired result

Ex) Can you tell me exactly what problem a field sales app would solve for you? In the big picture, how would solving that problem help your company?

3. Attitude Questions: Seek to understand and relate to prospects on a personal level by discovering their connection to the project

Ex) Why hasn’t it been addressed before? How are you currently doing things?

Commitment Questions: Inquire after a prospect’s investment in the project

Ex) How important to you is getting a product in place? What are your primary roadblocks to implementing our product?

Basic Issue Questions: Raise potential problems

Ex) Are you comfortable with the annual cost and required onboarding and setup fee?

3  |  Consultative Selling

This sales methodology established its roots in solution selling where an experienced salesperson’s expertise, industry knowledge and reputation is leveraged. Instead of telling prospects what they need, this investigative approach engages prospects through thought provoking questions, helping them identify their own pains.

Ultimately, prospects guide themselves into making their own decision.

The number one trait of effective consultative selling is the art of asking questions that dig up quality responses. Start by building credibility by demonstrating that you understand what’s going on with their business.

Consultative selling techniques are rooted in the selflessness of the salesperson. It’s not about proving that your product or service is the best, it’s about finding the solution that’s right for the customer.

4  |  Customer-Centric Selling

No shocker here – the focus of this sales model is on the challenge, goals and convenience of the consumer. The objective is to become a knowledgeable, trusted advisor to the client. Customer-Centric Selling (CCS) centers on defining and implementing a buyer-driven sales process that’s repeatable and scalable to achieve success and exceed goals.

The 8 components of this sales model:

1. Converse situationally compared to making presentations
2. Ask relevant questions as opposed to offering opinions
3. Solution-focused instead of relationship-focused
4. Target decision makers instead of users
5. Promote product usage to gain interest instead of the product alone
6. Focus on being the best seller instead of the busiest
7. Close on the buyer’s timeline instead of the seller’s
8. Empower buyers to buy as opposed to convincing them to buy

5  |  Inbound Selling

Inbound sales are sales that come to you. Outbound sales are sales that you went out and closed.

Inbound selling is fairly new as it’s become more popular with internet development. Marketing strategies are tightly intertwined with the processes and goals of sales. Inbound sellers attract consumers by creating messaging opportunities for them to actively engage the seller’s company.

It eliminates pushing “salesy” scripts to prospects by “pulling” them in. Inbound sellers utilize data and analytics to hyper-personalize messages and lead customers toward desired actions.

Note: Compared to inbound selling, outbound selling encompasses many of the traditional selling techniques where sellers initiate the conversation with prospects via cold or warm calls, chat sessions and email outreach.

6  |  MEDDIC

Metrics
Economic Buyer
Decision Criteria
Decision Process
Identify Pain
Champion

This sales method is a highly disciplined, tech-driven and tightly controlled approach the sales process. Through metrics and other relevant data, quantitative standards are established for lead qualification, which requires the search and nurturing for a “champion” in the prospect that advocates for the seller’s brand or solution.

Note: another version of MEDDIC was created called MEDDPIC that evolved from this original methodology.

7  |  N.E.A.T. Selling

N.E.A.T Selling is a modern spin on the BANT, ANUM, and AN methodologies.

BANT is a sales qualification process based on a prospect’s Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe. ANUM is based on a prospect’s Authority, Need, Urgency, and Money. And AN is tailored toward Authority and Need.

Using BANT, ANUM, and AN are approaches only good in the past. In today’s world, you will find much more success if you apply the N.E.A.T method to your sales process.

Need
Economic Impact
Access To Authority
Timeline

In this sales methodology created by the Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker Inc., sellers are required to do 4 things:

1. Identify “core” needs by probing deep into their customers’ challenges
2. Articulate the value of economic benefit of the solution in terms of ROI
3. Engage contacts who can influence DMs when direct engagement isn’t possible
4. Set a compelling timeline within which a buyer must make a final decision

8  |  SNAP Selling

Simple – Keep it simple by making it easy for prospects to change their current habits and adopt what you’re selling.

INvaluable – Your prospects (buyers) or overwhelmed. You need to be unique experts who stand out and showcase the value of your product.

Align – Make people want to buy from you by aligning your position with their beliefs and needs.

Priority – Focus on what the prospect is focused on to win deals.

Established by Jill Konrath in 2012, SNAP aims to speed up the sales process under the assumption that prospective buyers are busy and distracted. SNAP Selling is one of the best sales methodologies because of how it identifies three critical decisions involved in a sale.

The first is allowing access, second is the choice to move in a different direction away from the status quo, and the third is changing resources. The goal is to use these mini decision milestones in order to more effectively keep deals on the right path.

9  |  Solution Selling

One of the many unique types of selling is solution selling, which drives focus away from the product-centric approach and toward the benefits, impact and relevance of a custom solution.

Made popular in the late 1980s, this approach dives into each customer’s unique situation to accurately identify pain points and establish an agreed upon criteria set for an acceptable resolution. The technique has evolved to adapt to changes in buyer maturity and business landscape.

Solution selling includes supporting processes, tools and critical skill development. It helps salespeople provide higher and differentiating value to buyers by shaping how customer engagement occurs.

10  |  SPIN Selling

Situation:

How do you keep track of what’s happening in your sales pipeline?
How do you maintain an overview of how your individual sales reps are performing?

Problem:

What’s the biggest problem you’re facing so far when tracking/managing your sales reps?

Implication:

If you continue to have issues managing your reps, what does that mean for your business?

Need-Payoff:

If you could see rep activity at a glance, how would that help you achieve your sales targets?

The acronym in this sales model represents the 4 types of questions that sellers should be asking prospects. The questions are aimed at helping sellers do 4 things:

1. Assess their customer’s real situation
2. Isolate the core problem needing to be solved
3. Cite the consequences of not solving the problems
4. Guide buyers into reframing the situation had the problem been solved

11  |  The Sandler Selling System

The Sandler Sales Methodology reframes sellers as trusted advisors who are as invested as customers in their success finding a solution. There is a large emphasis placed on relationship building, lead qualification and deal closing.

The benefit of the Sandler System is that sellers forego continued engagement when the solution doesn’t exactly match the problem, which is determined through accurate analysis of a customer’s situation and an in-depth needs assessment.

Alternatively, transactional roles will be upended in an ideal scenario where customers attempt to convince sellers to sell.

12  |  Value Selling Framework

Value selling framework keys in on lead qualification and lead value assessment, enabling salespeople to close faster and engage only leads with significant impact on their portfolio.

Sales reps are encouraged to ask the right questions, communicate unique product value and demonstrate flexibility to formulate a mutually beneficial solution.

Which Sales Methodologies Will You Implement in 2018?

Before you choose, evaluate your buyer persona and select a methodology that best suits each target customer.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the customer’s needs are top priority. Implement the methodology that gives you the best chance to demonstrate how your product will address their needs.

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