Author: Mathan Kumar J

How to write follow-up emails that buyers rave about: Leverage these proven strategies to skyrocket conversions
Why generic follow up emails don’t work?

Sending a generic, “just checking in” follow up email typically isn’t good enough. You’re probably feeling suspicious!

After all, sales sequences, automated templates, and check-in emails are the gold standard. They’re adored by every seller prospecting and managing a pipeline of SMB-size deals.

Akin to how crutches help a physically challenged person to walk, automated follow-up emails serve as a support system to sellers as they rise through the ranks to tackle more strategic deals.

However, the fact remains that the higher the contract value, the higher the bar for a thoughtful follow-up. The reality is that prospects don’t forget to follow up with you but rather de-prioritize the people who don’t help them get their job done and personalize their interactions.

The reason why most follow-up emails go straight to the spam folder is simply because they read like a series of reminders. When a buyer reads a follow-up email, they automatically run a mental calculation: “Is the value that I’m getting from this interaction worth the time I’ll invest into it?”

So, how do you write a sales follow up email that actually converts your leads?

When should you follow up? How do you maintain contact without being pushy? What exactly should you say in your follow up emails?

We’ll answer all of these questions and more in this blog. Let’s dive right in and explore what it takes to master the art of following up!

Tips to craft forward-worthy follow up emails

The mark of a truly helpful and engaging follow-up email, is that its forwarded around and not deleted.

Use these six tips to help your buyers accomplish their tasks and capture their attention.
1. Always introduce new information
Go back to the emails you just reviewed. Were you rehashing what’s already been said or actually introducing new information?

You have a unique vantage point. You see where customers struggle, where the industry’s heading, and what top performers do differently.

All of these insights give you an opportunity to share a new point of view. Use your follow-up emails to create curiosity and a feeling of, “Every time I hear from ___________, I discover something new.”

Think of a kid on Christmas morning, ready to open a present and see what’s inside. That’s the feeling you should strive to create in the minds and hearts of your buyers!
1. Use data and insights
Augment everything you say up with third-party statistics and anecdotes from industry thought leaders.

You should also leverage social proof like testimonials and case studies, showcasing the results you’ve generated for clients just like them.

3. Leave them better off

Will your message help your buyer do their job better than they could do it before?

Most times, value to buyers is delayed until the point of purchase when they can start using a product. But there’s an incredible opportunity to make the buying process valuable, too.

People go where value is, so make your process that place. Introduce a template, feedback, data source, or other resource that’s hard to find.

4. Craft a clever subject line

Your subject line should be given more importance than the actual content of the email. After all, one of the first things your prospect lays their eyes on is the subject line.

A well-known research study unearthed the fact that 47% of all emails are discarded by recipients due to uninteresting subject lines! That is a huge percentage you cannot afford to risk.

Your subject line will determine the success or failure of your cold email campaign. Here are some spam triggering words and phrases that you would be well-advised to avoid:
- Exclusive Deal
- Hurry up
- Instant
- Once in a lifetime
- Take action
- Please read
- Urgent
- Pure profit
- 100% free
There are three key rules to adopt while writing follow-up email subject lines:
- Personalize wherever possible!
- Keep it short and to the point
- Include intriguing questions
Optimize the length of your subject line, keep it at 9 words and 60 characters, and ensure it is readable for mobile users. Also, don’t forget to A/B test your subject lines to figure out what’s resonating well with your audience.

5. Add adequate value

As an email recipient yourself, you understand the importance of valuable content. If you receive an email that adds no value to your life then you will most likely ignore it.

The number one reason why sales emails do not elicit responses is because they lack value. Do not send a follow-up email without adding in more value than you did previously and demonstrating your worth.

Sending ‘generic’ follow-up emails will not work in your favor either. The whole ‘catching up’ strategy is antiquated and outdated, and prospects deserve much more than that.

Find ways to delight your prospects in every interaction and make it worth their while. Here are a few ways you can provide value to your prospect:
- Share customer testimonials
- Offer solutions for specific pain points
- Blog posts
- E-books
- How-to guides
- Video guides
- Case studies
- Webinar
- Personalized offers
- Extended free trial
Whatever way you decide to add value, ensure it is relevant to them. In order to open the lines of communication you need to incentivize your prospects and push them to respond.

Additionally, you can also ask them for their opinions about certain things, for example, you can ask your lead if the pricing doesn’t work for them? Or if your product/service is lacking a feature that they need?

This will create a positive business relationship and will make them feel that they are valued and respected, which is extremely important. After all, the fundamental purpose of any business endeavor is to add value and earn goodwill while also earning reasonable profits.

6. Enrich your emails by adding your personality

People do business with people they like or respect. You should always be yourself during the entire sales process, but especially during your follow-ups.

Above all, people bond with people who have a life beyond work, avoid being pretentious and maintain vibrant emotional and mental states of experience.

Nobody wishes to do business with a monotonous, profit-oriented and narrow-minded drone who lacks a larger perspective of life and has nothing to converse about beyond deals, deadlines and financial matters.

Conduct in-depth customer research and dig deep into your customers’ hobbies, pain-points, dreams and aspirations. Invite them for lunch or take them out for a game of golf and build a relationship that transcends work.

Talk to them about movies, music, poetry and any other mutual interests that you share without coming across as desperate. They will not only be willing to do more business with you but evolve into trustworthy friends who will stand by your organization through thick and thin.

In a nutshell

In this article, we’ve only scratched the surface of what it takes to craft perfect follow-up emails that will transform your prospects into brand advocates for your business and organization.

In the next article of this 3 part guide, we’ll explore follow-up email templates that you can use to enchant your prospects and elicit a positive response.

Until then, stay tuned!
August 10, 2022
Field Sales: #4 Tips to Boost Your Sales Team’s Weekly Productivity

Be it a small, medium, or large company, and if your sales team is not performing to the mark, then there are chances that your competitors will outsmart you.

Effective sales operations are critical for the success of every business. And, it is a must to understand the sales team’s needs to improve their efficiency.

Mostly, defective planning, inadequate goal setting, lack of preparation, imperfect execution, and inferior team handling leads to sales rep’s production decline.

Also, not presenting them with the right tools and technologies can play a critical role in the decline of operational efficiency.

Let’s analyze each challenge in detail in the sections below.

Tip #1: Inadequate to near-to-perfect goal setting

Every sales rep must have a specific goal for the long-term and short-term to boost the business bottom line. In reality, what happens is the lack of goal setting or setting up unrealistic goals that are challenging to execute.

Goals should be realistic and should be discussed with the sales rep beforehand. Many factors like the number of customer meet-ups in a day, status updates, attendance, leaves, and reporting have to be analyzed ahead.

However, performing all the tasks manually consumes much time, and it might take a day or two to develop a realistic goal. This can affect the sales rep’s weekly productivity and impact overall sales goals and cycles.

How to set goals in a short period?

The best way to improve the goal-setting is by implementing field force automation solution. Mobile app-enabled automation software will simplify a sales manager’s woes in setting feasible goals.

The exact help the workforce to work on the goals, check the progress, and adhere to the deadlines to ensure that both the sales team and they are on the same track.

Setting up goals in the automation software is relatively simple, and you can easily do it without a sweat.

Another fantastic benefit of having field service software is the reward system. For every short-term goal achieved, every rep can be rewarded with a gift or incentive that boosts his confidence and morale to perform better for the upcoming weeks.

And, sales managers don’t have to spend much time assessing and rewarding the systems with the help of the software.

Tip #2: Defective to practical sales rep tasks and planning

Without a specific plan and action items, it is hard for any sales team to meet the deadlines.

With sales being the heart of the enterprise, having a defective plan for the week can quickly derail your entire sales process.

Defective task planning is primarily due to manual operations and status updates from sales reps. A sales manager can plan anything, but everything does not need to be executed by the representatives.

Starting from route planning to customer meetings setting up the right tasks for a day is vital to improving the customer service and business bottom line.

How do you improve defective task planning?

Leveraging the tools and technology is the best way to improve field sales efficiency. Setting up a realistic plan with a field sales tracker and mobile app is never difficult.

It takes only a few minutes for the sales reps to update their daily status about customer meetings and for managers to set up tasks and routes for the sales force.

The app simplifies both the challenges effortlessly. With the updates in hand, tracking the number of meetings and tasks closed is seamless.

It helps in long-term planning and task allocation. The field force tracker enabled with Google Maps can also help the reps identify alternate routes during natural calamities or avoid roads not destined for traveling.

Tip #3: Lackluster to well-defined preparation

Most often, the sales reps out for meeting customers don’t have the right tools to list their to-dos. With manual notebooks or pieces of paper, it is hard to track and stick to their plan.

Also, it is ubiquitous for humans to miss out on an essential piece of advice or suggestion from the management and customers. As they don’t have the right technology tool to capture customer feedback, satisfying them will be challenging.

How to improve lackluster planning?

On the other hand, if you have advanced field service management app with an inbuilt to-do-list feature, it is easy for your reps to prepare well in advance.

It won’t take much time to record the customer feedback/suggestions. Also, they can easily take notes using the mobile app, digitally authenticate customer signatures, etc.

With this approach, the sales reps can save time, won’t miss any details, and perform their best to their potential.

Tip #4: Inferior to the superior team handling

Handling a team of sales reps is always challenging for most sales managers. Without the right tool or system in place, managers have to deal with many papers to evaluate every sales rep’s performance and efficiency.

Every detail of the day’s updates from a sales rep must be studied before sitting with the representatives for a weekly meeting.

Inaccurate or missed data leads to chaos and creates disengagement between a rep and sales manager.

For sales managers, understanding the challenges of reps, day-to-day closures, and the progress of weekly planning is backbreaking.

How to improve inferior team handling?

A simple field force software powered by a mobile app can simplify the above challenge for your sales team.

The app helps the reps update every detail on the go, and the complete data is captured in the CRM without manual effort. The sales manager must process the data, discover the best rep of the week, and reward handsomely.

With this approach, handling the team becomes seamless and improves the operational efficiency of both the sales managers and reps.

Final thoughts

From the above discussion, it is evident that field service software can transform the way the sales crew works. By saving time and boosting your sales team’s operational efficiency, the business can experience skyrocketing outcomes with improved customer experience.

Is your organization facing the challenges above? Is your sales team performing to their potential? If not, it is high time to rethink your strategy.

Invest in the right automation software to improve your sales team’s efficiency.

Want to experience the power of our field force automation software? Start your free trial today.

July 25, 2022
A step-by-step guide to create ideal rep profiles: Create killer rep profiles and turbocharge your targeting

It is a common notion in sales circles that 20% of the reps generate 80% of the total sales of the concerned organization. This notion drives sales leaders to pin all their hopes onto top performing sales reps.

The fact however remains that sales is a science and not exclusively an art. There’s a clear cut recipe to nurture your salespeople into high performers and the recipe involves a holistic combination of knowledge, skills, and attitude.

While the recipe varies based on organization and role, the underlying method that defines the attributes that make sellers successful remains the same.

That being said, let us first define what the term Ideal Rep Profile means, and why you need one in the first place!

What is an IRP and why do I need one?

An IRP defines and benchmarks top competencies – a combination of knowledge, skills, and behaviors – that reps must possess in order to attain success on the field.

It is important to document and encode your IRP where you can measure skill development and its impact on business outcomes.

As you make your own IRP, keep these things in mind:

Knowledge: Reps need to have a good grasp of certain information and knowledge to be successful. For example, a seller needs to have solid product knowledge, as well as a great understanding of competitors’ products.

Skills: Sellers must master key skills to be able to close deals. For example, if a rep has strong discovery and objection handling skills, they’re more likely to be successful than those who struggle in this area.

Behaviors: Knowledge and skills are the foundation for success. But the real test is how a rep applies what they know when in the field.

Certain in-field behaviors can make or break a sale. For example, successful reps listen more than they talk and limit their use of filler words.

The competencies included in an IRP aren’t simply a laundry list of what sales leaders think reps need to be successful.

Rather, they’re the competencies possessed by the best sellers – and those correlated with positive sales outcomes.

How to create an ideal rep profile: A 3 step framework to build your IRP

Determine IRP roles

The competencies required for success vary based on the role of the individual. For example, while discovery skills are very important for an account executive, they’re less important for customer success teams.

As such, it’s a best practice to create a separate IRP for each key role. The first step is to determine the roles for which you’ll create IRPs.

Typically, companies define IRPs for their go-to-market (GTM) or customer-facing roles. According to a popular research undertaking, the top 5 roles for which organizations define their IRPs include:

Account executives

Business development representatives

Channel sales

Customer success

Sales engineers

Identify goals and competencies

After identifying key roles, the next step is to identify the goals for each role.

For example, a goal for a sales engineer is to perform structured demos, while one for a customer success manager might be to minimize churn.

Then, it’s time to determine the required competencies for each role. These should be the knowledge, skills, and behaviors each role needs to possess to meet their goals.

This list shouldn’t be created based on gut feeling. Instead, it should be a list of competencies possessed by the best sellers and each competency should be correlated with sales success.

According to a popular study, organizations with an IRP define at least 15 competencies per role, and you would be well-advised to emulate the same in your company.

Rank key competencies

The typical IRP includes several competencies that are crucial for sales success. However, some carry more weight than others.

After identifying the knowledge, skills, and behaviors for each role, it’s important to assign a rank to each.

Harness the power of IRP to supercharge sales rep performance

Of course, simply creating an IRP doesn’t guarantee better sales results across the team. However, it should serve as the north star of the organization’s sales readiness program.

Once there’s alignment on the knowledge, skills, and behaviors necessary for sales success, sales and enablement leaders can strive to develop onboarding, training, and content programs that focus on these key areas.

In addition, organizations can measure each rep’s competencies against the IRP on a regular basis to nurture the reps’ growth. Completion of training modules and performance on assessments and quizzes can enable you to gauge the progress of your reps and throw light on the kind of support they require in order to reach their full potential.

But, organizations must dig deep to measure how their reps are actually putting their knowledge and skills into practice in the field. Gaining this intel might involve sitting in a rep’s call or leveraging conversation intelligence to see where reps are shining, and where things need improvement.

By regularly benchmarking the performance of reps against the IRP, organizations can identify competency gaps early on. This allows managers to deliver targeted and personalized coaching to close these gaps.

Then, they can measure improvement on key competencies and analyze how these improvements are impacting sales outcomes.

In a nutshell

By establishing an IRP, you can overcome the limiting belief that 20% of reps generate 80% of the sales results in your organization.

You can ensure that all your reps reach their full potential and drive sales success for the organization. If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, stay tuned to find out more!

We will be publishing a host of illuminating articles over time to help you optimize your sales and drive growth. If you’d like us to shed more light on a particular topic, feel free to reach out to us by mailing sales@happisales.com!

July 15, 2022
Field Sales: Simple Solution to Engage and Drive Your Team
Of the many factors that decide a business’s success, employee productivity and efficiency are skyrocketing top of the list. Managing the field sales team and tracking their efficiency can be a headache.

Making the complete sales team (sales managers and field sales) focus on the tasks and work efficiently doesn’t rely only on the CEOs and CTOs. Giving them the right tools and technical assistance can help them overcome the challenges and deliver their best.

Before getting started, let’s dive deep into understanding the challenges and factors distracting or annoying the sales team.

Top challenges that disengage field force
1. Attendance/permission/leave approvals
2. Task allocation/collaboration
3. Route planning/task switching
4. Meeting customers at the right time
5. Reporting to managers
The same can happen to the heads of your sales as well. It doesn’t matter whether your field force or sales heads get annoyed/disengaged. The result remains the same, a drop in productivity.

Top challenges that disengage sales managers
1. Monitoring field sales executives away
2. Assigning routes, tasks
3. Following up for updates
4. Updating reports at the end of the day
5. Tracking efficiency of field sales executive
6. Reporting to management with data
What should businesses do to engage field sales and accelerate productivity?

Most field sales teams of different companies confront the above challenges. The ONE reason for all the challenges is either lack of complete automation or partial automation software implemented by the businesses.

Even today, many field sales executives report to the managers in the morning and start their day-to-day activities. The process takes some time, and the sales executives have only a few hours to meet the customers on time.

After completing the daily chores, they report to the sales managers in the evening to provide updates on the customer meetings.

On the other hand, the managers are clueless whether a sales representative has met the customer at the specific location until he updates/reports to the office. The process lacks transparency and results in a productivity loss for field sales executives and sales managers.

The total productivity loss from the sales team hits the business’s bottom line hard and leads to the de-branding of the company.

If your sales team faces the above challenges, you’re not alone. The above-shared challenges can be mitigated with the help of field service management software.

Top benefits of leveraging field sales app
- Transparency to the entire process
- Seamless route planning and task allocation
- Live-tracking app
- On-the-go reporting
- 100% accuracy/faster decision making
- Peace of mind
Let’s discuss each benefit in detail in the sections below.

6 Ways field service automation helps your sales team to boost productivity

Brings transparency to the sales cycle

A significant problem most sales team faces is the communication between field sales executives and sales managers. Often, sales managers don’t get any updates from the field sales team.

Similarly, the field sales team is let down by managers sometimes. Lack of transparency in the process hurts the sales performance and customer experience.

With field service management software in place, sales managers can quickly discover where the field sales executive is and can instantly communicate with sales managers regarding customer meetings.

Often the software comes up with a field sales app. This simplifies the communication and eliminates the communication block between field sales and sales teams, improving operations and efficiency.

Seamless route planning and task allocation

Assigning tasks and planning routes for field sales is often a headache for most sales heads. Even more challenging is tracking the field sales team when they are out. On the other hand, field sales face challenges if there is a problem in the route assigned to them.

This leads to a dilemma and slows down the sales cycle.

On the other hand, the field sales management software helps the sales team assign tasks and plan the routes without any discomfort. Even if there is a change in the route, the field sales team quickly updates the sales managers so that they can reengage another field sales person near the vicinity to get the meeting done.

This saves time and improves operational efficiency.

Live tracking of field sales activities

Tracking and monitoring the day-to-day activities of sales persons is a massive challenge for sales managers. Sometimes they don’t even know whether the scheduled appointment is made or missed until the field sales executive updates at the end of the day.

The lack of daily updates causes a delay in the sales cycle.

Sales managers can track every field sales person for customer meetings without using field sales automation software.

The live field sales tracking feature helps the sales heads to track the activities of the field sales team live. This gives them a quick update on the scheduled meeting progress.

On-the-go reporting

Updating the sales data from the field sales at the end of the day is one hell of a task for field sales managers and the field sales team. On the other hand, no matter how long it takes, field sales have to update their reports to the managers at the end of the day.

Both processes consume much time and bring down the sales cycle.

Field sales can use the on-the-go reporting feature of field service management software to update their activities from anywhere, at any time. Similarly, the sales manager doesn’t have to wait till the end of the day, saving their time.

The automation software for the field force simplifies the entire process, leading to faster sales cycles.

100% Accuracy and faster decision making

What if you have sales data updated daily, which is inaccurate? It doesn’t make any difference. Without automation, manufacturing errors are always possible, impacting the performance and efficiency of field sales activities and sales cycle.

Above all, with false data in hand, decision-making becomes an uphill task.

The field force automation software eliminates the possibility of errors in the data entered, which helps make faster and more formidable decisions. The accurate data depicts the exact picture of the sales activities and their impact on the business candidly.

Peace of mind

As most of the process is automated with the help of field sales software, the sales manager and field sales team don’t have to sweat out a lot when performing the day-to-day activities.

Both teams can complete the tasks well within the stipulated time, which gives much time to get a good night’s sleep and spend time with their families. This helps them to focus and deliver better.

Final thoughts

Providing the sales team with the right tools and technology is the best way to engage and delight them. With best-in-class field service management software, both teams can perform and deliver to their best.

Do you have the right tools for your sales team? Still, is relying on outdated systems disengaging your workforce and team’s performance?

It’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. The competition is brimming, and you must act fast before your competitor does.

Looking for suggestions or got queries about field sales improvement or software? We are all ears.
July 11, 2022
The ultimate guide to enhancing sales productivity: Deploy these mind-blowing strategies to supercharge your sales performance
Did you know that only 39% of a sales rep’s time is spent interacting with prospects and customers? This is the key reason why improving sales productivity and performance continues to be a key challenge for sales teams across the globe.

Rep productivity issues ultimately boil down to sales reps spending too much time on manual tasks. The challenge of increasing sales productivity is a taller task than ever before with the massive amount of additional tasks and distractions getting in the way of actual selling.

That being said, let us first understand what the term sales productivity actually signifies:

What is sales productivity?

Sales productivity simply means maximizing sales results while reducing the resources expended. Resources can include anything ranging from cost to effort to time.

Sales productivity can be measured by the rate at which a salesperson increases revenue for the company. In short, improving efficiency is all about finding ways to become more efficient with your time.

Adding structure and focus to their day allows them to keep the end goal in mind.

Decoding the sales inefficiency conundrum

Field sales professionals face an overwhelming number of obstacles that prevent them from operating at peak efficiency.

Before exploring ways to train and organize your sales team to ensure that they achieve their full potential, it’s important to recognize and understand the most significant factors inhibiting their progress.
- Excessive performance pressure to exceed targets
- Inconsistent sales strategies and processes
- Random, poorly planned sales coaching and training sessions
- Poor route planning and scheduling
- Ineffective communication resulting in siloed sales operations
- Inability to clearly define sales goals
- Resistance adapting to new and innovative sales tools and technologies
- Poorly established ideal customer personas
This list could go on forever. The factors that prohibit salespeople from taking advantage of their entire work day can be big or small.

Regardless of severity, only one thing is for sure, every member of your sales team will encounter several of these challenges. In a landscape that’s more competitive than ever, it is crucial to address these challenges early on to enable your business to stay relevant.

Hallmarks of sales productivity

Now that you have a clear idea of the roadblocks or bottlenecks that hinder your sales potential, let’s dive into the key pillars of sales productivity:

Consistency

A firm organizational sales structure is an essential component of consistency. There may be slight modifications unique to each salesperson, but the same sales process should always be followed.

How well a sales rep’s day is scheduled goes a long way in driving growth as well. Double down on strategies that work and share those strategies with the entire team.

Concentration

The number of distractions pulling us away from our daily goals seem to only ever increase. It doesn’t help that human attention span today is less than that of a goldfish.

Eliminate the things that distract you from your key priorities at work and create an office atmosphere that supports deep work.

Constant innovation

The majority of field sales managers will tell you that things are “really good” and “going well” when asked, purely out of natural instinct. These answers are the epitome of mediocrity.

Are their sales tools and processes as effective and efficient as they could be, or as their competitors?

Holding onto what’s working isn’t necessarily “bad,” but it prevents progress. The field sales industry changes at such a rapid rate, and innovation is key to sustaining a competitive edge.

Reduce pressure

The competitive nature of the field sales landscape leads sales reps and their managers to feel the added pressure to perform and attain their quotas.

Even the best sales professionals are bound to have an off-month. Low performance exacerbates the fear of missing targets in their minds.

Re-evaluate your sales quotas to ensure they’re challenging, yet attainable. Quotas that salespeople perceive as being impossible to reach are likely to prevent your staff from trying because they believe they’re going to fail regardless.

That being said, let’s explore two strategies that you can deploy right away to boost your sales productivity!

Automate your sales process

As we’ve mentioned earlier in the article, your sales reps waste a lot of their time on administrative or repetitive tasks, and that hampers their productivity significantly.

You can put their performance on steroids simply by embracing sales automation tools and allowing your sales reps to focus almost exclusively on the selling part of their job.

An effective Field service management software can put your sales email outreach on autopilot and allow your sales reps to easily create, schedule, monitor, and tweak their campaigns in real-time.

You can significantly boost your sales reps’ productivity through the use of triggered emails – these emails are automatically sent based on specific actions taken by your prospects.

So, basically, you’re utilizing your prospects’ behavior to send them the right message at the right time, and the best part is that you can automate the entire process.

An example of this is a “thank you” email.

When a prospect subscribes to your newsletter, signs up for a free trial, or makes a purchase, a personalized trigger-based email is sent, thus enticing their interest.

Using a CRM is also a must, as this tool can help your sales reps automate all their redundant and administrative tasks. One such example is data entry, which is a nightmare for all salespeople.

Opt for a CRM tool that has an in-built call tool, as well as the ability to easily integrate with other sales tools.

Invest in proper sales training

Most organizations believe that hiring top talent is the best way to ensure exemplary sales performance. While this may be true, it is inconclusive.

Apart from hiring top talent, you must offer proper sales training to both your new and seasoned team members. As the sales environment changes and the buying process evolves, ongoing training is required to keep reps updated.

Research shows that ongoing sales training results in 50% higher net sales per salesperson. Also, sales coaching improves sales productivity by up to 88%.

In a nutshell

Amidst ever-increasing pressure to meet or exceed quotas, many sales leaders struggle with sales productivity.

Especially now, as sales teams are transitioning to remote selling and managers have limited facetime with their reps, productivity seems to be more at risk than ever before.

This is where a field force automation tool like Happisales comes in. Designed to improve visibility into sales reps’ performance, Happisales allows you to streamline sales performance with a plethora of features such as automatic route planning, customer analytics, and more.

So, what are you waiting for? Deploy Happisales today to skyrocket your sales productivity!
June 22, 2022
8 strategies to optimize the performance of your field service team: Increase profits, enhance customer loyalty and boost productivity
If you wish to see a plant grow into a full-fledged tree, you need to set up the right atmosphere to nourish it. Simply wishing is not going to make things happen.

You need to till your garden and prepare the soil, add the right compost and fertilizer, provide protection from pests and diseases, water the garden bed regularly, and ensure ample sunlight as well as fresh air to help your plant blossom.

The same holds true for your field service team: simply bombarding them with goals and objectives isn’t going to transform your team. You need to create certain conditions to help your team thrive.

Before exploring these conditions, let’s explore the attributes associated with a high-performance team. High-performance team players consistently show high levels of collaboration and trust. They are also:
- Highly skilled
- Goal-focused
- Innovative
- Produce superior results
To empower your team to live up to these traits, you need to ensure the following conditions:

Process

A process sets up the foundation of how your field service team interacts with your business, office, and customers to transform an input into output. Field teams must be:
- Provided with a workflow that is well-connected, transparent, short, free from roadblocks, and designed to cover a wide spectrum of what-if scenarios. The workflow should support collaboration with cross-functional teams and internal users to ensure seamless performance.
- Equipped with essential resources at each milestone such as information, tools, and enough time at hand to complete repairs and simultaneously build positive relationships with clients. Field teams empowered with audio-visual communication and tracking and monitoring tools are highly likely to coordinate event logistics and perform jobs more efficiently.
Training

Field technician training encompasses three aspects:
- Skills: Your technicians should be trained to effectively diagnose the problem, determine the solution, and successfully perform installation, repair, maintenance, and test tasks.
- Communication: This aspect involves both internal and external communication. It could be properly communicating any foreseeable problems to the authorized personnel at the earliest indication. Likewise, communication with external stakeholders like customers or other teams helps build a positive brand experience.
- Safety: Your technicians must be trained to operate safely, following all the procedures and protocols in place.
With the advancement of technology, delivering such training isn’t cost-intensive and can be a fun-filled experience for your teams. Upskilling employees at regular intervals can also help you foster better relationships with them.

Hiring

There are many preferences that dominate hiring decisions. The most common one is that the candidates must have experience in a similar domain; the best is to have worked with competitors. Another is to have exact skills as required to fulfill the job criteria.

While these factors offer a shortcut to measure the candidates’ knowledge and experience, they are regressive and restrict the entry of fresh candidates.

Maintaining a fair ratio of fresh talent and those that possess deep technical knowledge has proved to be an effective hiring strategy for service businesses across industries. While training these fresh faces may seem daunting from financial and other perspectives, its long-term benefits far outweigh the efforts.

Tech Enablement

Empowering technicians with futuristic technologies such as IoT, AI, mobility, communication tools, cloud solutions, and data analytics can not only improve their efficiency and overall profitability but also nurture a positive brand image.

Purpose

High-performing teams are synergistic social entities that work toward the achievement of common goals—short-term and long-term. They often exemplify a total commitment to work and to each other.

Team members do better work when their roles are clear: They know how to do their jobs and why they are doing them. Each member must understand and support the meaning and value of the team’s mission and vision.

Clarifying the purpose and tying it to each person’s role and responsibilities enhances team potential. Consider setting up a goals meeting with the team as a forum to discuss key priorities. This allows them to have some input in the development of objectives, and they will likely be more committed to achieving them.

Leadership

High-performing leaders generally accompany high-performance work teams. Essential leadership qualities include the ability to:

a) keep the purpose, goals, and approach relevant and meaningful

b) inspire commitment and confidence

c) ensure that team members constantly enhance their skills

d) manage relationships from the outside with a focus on the removal of obstacles that might hinder group performance

e) provide opportunities for others without seeking credit

f) get in the trenches and do the real work required

Effective team leaders focus on purpose, relationships, and an unwavering commitment to results that benefit the organization and each individual.

Trust

Trust is at the heart of any successful team. Without it, teams will be unable to progress due to fear of conflict or lack of commitment.

Establishing trust between team members can help take the team from satisfactory performance levels to outstanding results.

Being open and honest about strengths and limitations in workplace behaviours is an excellent way to help generate trust between team members.

Create a culture of transparency, innovation, and collaboration. Encourage your team members to brainstorm and present new ideas, cultivate their problem-solving skills, and train them to make the best decisions in any scenario.

Incentives

Both monetary and nonmonetary systems that encourage high performance have a positive impact on the implementation of business goals.

Over the long term, intrinsic motivators such as personal satisfaction at work and working on interesting projects provide the greatest impact on performance.

In addition, a belief in one’s self and abilities encourages people to take more strategic risks to achieve team goals.

In a nutshell

Taking care of the factors mentioned above can turbocharge the performance of your field service team. Supporting your business with a robust field service management software is another excellent way to boost the performance of your field executives.

Happisales is a neat and elegant field force engagement platform that allows you to perform sales, collection, order, and service in a synchronized way.

Designed to enhance collaboration between managers and field reps, Happisales allows managers to assess and maximize the performance of field executives.

Schedule a free consultation and talk to our experts today! Take your first step towards field service transformation.
June 15, 2022
Top strategies to reduce Field Service Operation Costs
One of the paramount concerns for every field service organization is its high operational costs. In recent times, most organizations are striving to reduce them without compromising the quality of the services offered.

At the crux, to achieve a competitive position in the service industry, one needs to remain profitable while fulfilling customer expectations and keeping them satisfied.

To achieve this, it is essential to deep dive into these issues and address them. Let us look at some of the strategies that can be implemented to reduce the costs-
1. Improving the effectiveness of the technician’s first visit – A lot of the field technicians complain about the lack of proper information available to go in for the initial visit.
This leads to more follow-up trips, thereby increasing the cost of fuel expenses and resources. To prevent this, you should find out the customer’s issues along with their expectations in advance.

This way you can send the right technician along with the appropriate equipment to solve the issue in the first visit itself.

Further, a follow-up should be initiated with the customer to ensure that the task has been accomplished to the customer’s satisfaction thereby improving the trust and goodwill of your organization.
1. Optimizing the Inventory– It is never a good idea to overstock or understock inventory because holding too much inventory can eat away the profits whereas understocking leads to losing potential customers.
You need to strike the right balance between the two. To achieve this, you need to evaluate your business needs and requirements and find the right inventory management tools that provide the real-time status of the inventory.

These tools will aid in improving inventory management and cashflows, saving storage costs, and retaining customers.
1. Ensuring scheduling is up to date- Poor scheduling practices often lead to internal conflicts within the team, low productivity, and high field service operation costs.
To avoid such conflicts, you can employ a smart field service software that can help in assigning tasks based on the technician’s skills, in other words, putting the right person for the right job, tracking the location of the technicians on a real-time basis to improve efficiency, and optimizing the routes to save travel time and fuel costs.
1. Reducing costs of Training and Recruitment – Ideally, hiring new candidates and providing them with the necessary training involves a huge cost.
One of the effective ways to save such recruitment and training costsis by retaining the best talent. To do that, you should motivate the employees by recognizing them periodically.

This recognition should be data-driven and not be fuelled by any biases. By using the right software, you can build a performance evaluation profile for each technician based on the metrics such as the number of work orders assigned and finished in a day, type and current status of the task assigned, inspection, and validation of the task, etc.

You need to set optimal performance metrics to perform at the best productive level. The performance profile of each employee can be evaluated against these metrics to determine appropriate rewards and compensation.
1. Going Digital- About 50% of the field service organizations still operate using manual methods. Such methods are neither cost-effective nor efficient.
If you have hired people to perform tasks such as scheduling and planning the work, it is time to automate it. Using a filed sales management software tool allows you to gather important information such as invoices, billings, business contracts, attendance and leaves of the employees, etc leaving no room for errors.

This way the employees can now focus more on meaningful tasks. So, the first step is to identify the business processes that are redundant or dependent more on paper, examine the cost associated with people performing such tasks, and then plan to automate them in order to save on such expenditures.
1. Customer-centric support solutions: Customers often experience unnecessary wait times even for issues that can be resolved online.
Innovative solutions can be provided to handle such issues. You can implement AI-enabled Chatbots that can handle redundant customer queries.

Customer rating can be captured for all the AI-resolved issues. Technicians can further review the ratings and update the AI resolution mechanism on a regular basis.

A ticketing system can be used to report issues that are not resolved through AI support. All such issues reported by customers through tickets can be reviewed for online resolution by interacting with the customers.

Technicians can be assigned for field resolution only on a need and priority basis. In this manner, you can create a better customer-centric experience and also utilize the technician’s time more efficiently and effectively.

In a nutshell

Optimizing field service costs is imperative if you are running a field service organization. Digitizing and using relevant field service tools can help you achieve your goals while remaining at the top of your game.

The above-mentioned strategies are some of the ways that can help you cut down on costs, and focus on elevating customer satisfaction.
June 8, 2022
How to craft winning sales pitches: The ultimate guide (Part 2)

In the last blog, we uncovered the elements of a perfect sales pitch and highlighted 3 templates that you can use to skyrocket your conversions.

In this article, we’ll cover the process that you can adopt to craft ultra-effective sales pitches for your own business and explore a few other templates that will raise your sales pitches to the next level.

Let’s dive right in!

How to create a winning sales pitch – A step by step framework to earn the loyalty of your target customers

1. Research and do your homework

Great research will help build a foundation of value for your pitch, increasing the likelihood that your buyer will respond.

Try to understand to whom you are pitching. What does their company do? What goals might that company have?

Additionally, don’t forget to explore the customer’s profile — find out who they are, what their role is, and if you have any shared interests that might help you build rapport.

2. Highlight benefits and not features

Droning on and on about your product is the fastest way to get buyers to zone out.

Your pitch should be about the customer, not you. Think about what value your product creates for your buyer.

Are you reducing costs? Improving efficiency? Eliminating manual tasks? Buyers will respond more to benefits than they will to features.

3. Choose the right medium

There are many avenues through which a sales pitch can be delivered — email, social media, and over the phone.

Think about both the buyer and their industry. Mature, more established industries may respond better to more traditional forms of outreach, like a phone call.

On the other hand, a highly innovative company may prefer modern approaches, like a direct message over social media. If you don’t get a response from one channel, it’s totally acceptable to try again via another one.

4. Be empathetic and personalize your pitches

Next, think about personalization. Most reps work off a base template, but that template should change based on how you are delivering your pitch and who it’s going to.

For instance, you’d use different language based on whether you’re pitching a prospect via social media than you would via email.

You’ll also want to tailor your pitch so that the value and benefits you’re describing map to actual buyer pain points — after all, now two prospects are the same and you’ll have to customize your pitches according to the unique desires and needs of your target customers.

5. Include a clear call to action

What do you want the buyer to do? Call you back or respond with times to meet?

It’s critical that you close with a clear next step, so stay away from vague phrases like “What do you think?”

Go for strong, timely, actionable phrases instead: “Can we catch up on Zoom next week for a quick 15-minute call? I’ll show you how you can improve the elegance of your website and boost website traffic in just 3 steps.”

Now, that you have a proven process to craft powerful sales pitches that tap into the innermost feelings and desires of your target customers, let’s explore a few more sales templates that you can harness to transform your prospects into brand advocates.

Sales templates that will make your customers fall in love with your brand

The celebratory pitch

Occasionally, one of your pitches will coincide with an important moment in a buyer’s life. As long as it’s appropriate, leverage that moment to build a connection.

Hi <<>>,

Congrats on the recent promotion to Senior Program Manager! As you settle into your new role, I’m curious to see how you’re approaching project management?

Did you know that a simple reduction of two manual tasks can win you back five hours a week?

Our platform makes it easier than ever for you to focus on the work that matters. If it makes sense, I would love to connect more on what we could do for you to make your day more efficient.

Do you have time next week for a quick catch-up on zoom?

Warm regards,

____________

Don’t sell a product, sell an experience

Back in the early 2000s, billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban was the new owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The team was struggling to win games, which resulted in low ticket sales.

To get ticket sales back up, Cuban led the charge with his sales team by getting on the phone with former season ticket holders.

At the beginning of these conversations, Cuban was met with objections, like how bad the team was. In response, he would remind former ticket holders of their own experiences going to games as a kid—when it didn’t matter if a team was winning or losing.

The point was the game itself. The arena. The popcorn and cheering and time with parents, friends, neighbors, etc. It was a unique experience that cost only $8 a ticket and provided more value than going to the movies or McDonald’s.

His approach worked, and ticket sales began to climb. During a pitch, sell prospects on the benefits, and not the features.

Cuban didn’t promote good seats, talented team players, and tasty popcorn. Instead, he promoted a special family experience—something he and his team knew that former season ticket holders valued.

Tell a story

Storytelling is an excellent way to create a memorable connection. Our brains literally thrive on stories.

Stories trigger the release of a trust hormone called Oxytocin, which promotes connection and empathy.

Take a look at LISNR’s pitch to understand how effective stories can prove to be in capturing the prospect’s imagination and inspiring them to make a purchase:

“In 2012, one single belief brought LISNR’s founders together: ultrasonic audio is better. These individuals understood the growing need for a device- and platform-independent solution for sending short communication back and forth at the software level. They believed that companies shouldn’t have to spend on costly hardware or processes to drive more friction-less and connected experiences.”

Found on the LISNR website, this product pitch uses their origin story to explain both how their organization came to be and what they aim to accomplish.

This gives more context to their product, making purchasing with them more than just a transaction but also a contribution to a greater mission and belief system.

In a nutshell

Now that you know how to create compelling sales pitches for your business, go ahead and put what you’ve learnt into action. Write to us and let us know how these templates worked out for you!

If you’re looking to leverage a holistic Field Service Management App to maximize your sales conversions and optimize the performance of your field reps, try Happisales.

Happisales is a neat and elegant field force engagement platform that allows you to perform sales, collection, order, and service in a synchronized way.

It is a progressive solution that is equipped with advanced features like route optimization, customer analytics, and field rep monitoring, enabling your sales reps to create meaningful customer experiences.

So, what are you waiting for? Talk to our experts and schedule a free demo today!

May 31, 2022
How to craft winning sales pitches: The ultimate guide (Part 1)
The first thing that pops up in people’s minds when they hear the term sales pitch is an unwarranted phone call or an awkward email from a pushy and aggressive seller.

Thanks to these terrible salesmen, people around the world have grown wary of sales pitches and do their best to avoid them. But a good sales pitch is so much more than an intrusive phone call or email.

In fact, a great pitch should make a buyer’s life better by connecting them with products and solutions that solve their most urgent problems.

In this guide, we’ll decode the nuances of an effective sales pitch and discuss various strategies that you can use to optimize your outreach efforts. Finally, we’ll explore some exceptional sales pitch templates that will help you nail your conversions!

Let’s dive right in.

What is a sales pitch?

A sales pitch is a well-crafted sales presentation. Typically, a salesperson gets less than two minutes to explain how their business will benefit the prospect.

The attention span of people in this tech-driven world is ever shrinking. As such, salespeople no longer have the luxury of an hour-long presentation geared towards selling a specific product or service.

A good sales pitch needs to convey the intended message concisely in a compelling manner. If the sales pitch is on point, you are on the right path to making profitable sales.

The first few minutes of a business conversation determine the direction your interactions will take. Be sure to use this sales pitch as your attempt to convince the prospect about the superiority of the service you are offering.

If you are selling a product, a sales pitch is your chance to dispel a prospect’s belief about the product. This is when you reassure them of the benefits they will enjoy if they buy the product you are selling.

The anatomy of a successful sales pitch

Sales pitches can take on many different forms and use different approaches. But when you break them down, they almost always have these five key elements:

1. The open

The open is the introduction. It’s as simple as saying hello, introducing yourself, and asking the prospect how they are. It’s also your first opportunity to start building rapport and break the ice with your prospects.

2. Identification of the problem, pain point, and/or goal

By asking a few meaningful and well-thought-out questions about their work, you’ll start getting a better understanding of what the prospect’s challenges and goals are.

Using active listening you’ll begin to understand how your product can help address the prospect’s issues in order to reach their goals.

3. Demonstration of value

Once you’ve established rapport and begun to understand the scope of their needs, you can begin to address each one using your product as the solution.

You should be able to speak to one or more of their pain points with how your product can solve the problem.

4. Supporting facts

If you want to build trust, you should be prepared to support your pitch with facts and figures. Consider using social proof, like positive results that show how you beat customer expectations or prove that your other customers derived value from your product or service.

5. The close

By now, you should’ve clearly shown your prospect the value of your product and how it’s going to make their job or life easier. The close is essentially the point where they say yes and the transaction occurs.

The best sales pitch templates ever

Having established the elements of a winning sales pitch, it is time to witness these in action. Here are some sales pitch templates which will supercharge your growth!

Data dump

Data is a great way to catch buyer attention, especially if it can help them make the case to their team for your product.

The bad news: marketing burn is all too real these days. The good news? Help is on the way. New research shows that our platform can deliver:
- 72% increase in buyer engagement
- 50% in open-rates
- 20% decrease in attrition
Show that you care

Highlighting your prospects’ pain points and offering personalized solutions is an excellent way to forge meaningful customer relationships.

G2 is one company that pulls this off really well in its pitch:

“G2 plays a huge role by providing unique, authentic peer advice in real time. We give buyers better guidance than traditional analyst firms, which can take up to 2 years to update and publish technology research. That timeline just can’t keep up with the pace of technology. At G2, we aim to be a trusted source that helps every business professional in the world make better technology decisions.”

When they discuss how you’re being told by analysts what to do, or people who haven’t used a product, they highlight a clear disconnect in the market between what you need and what you get.

The company allows verified users of products to write reviews and becomes an essential resource for their users.

Make a note of what really annoys your customer and pitch how your service can resolve this grievance. It’s another way of re-framing the customer’s needs, and it works because it’s a powerful way to describe the situation.

In a nutshell

We hope you have a clear idea of what an ultra-effective sales pitch looks like by now. An important note to make about these sales pitches is that they are all amazingly optimized for a short conversation.

Lack of brevity can quite literally break your sales pitch and ruin your chances of converting prospects into customers. So, keep your sales pitch short, clean, and simple! Your customers will thank you.

In the next article of this two-part series, we’ll list a few more sales templates that you can use and show you how you can craft your own pitches as well. Until then, stay tuned!
May 25, 2022
7 Time Management Strategies to get more Efficient & Productive during the day
It’s all about doing the right things in a shorter time. Perfect focus is like a workout for getting forward in your job, completing assignments effectively, or even getting a promotion with a salary raise. It may not be easy, but staying on track with the actions that assist your projects and clients is essential.

The superior you are at remaining focused and managing your time, the more you will be able to do and the easier it will be to leave work on time while still having time to live. Effective time management skills help you produce better outcomes at work, but they also benefit you outside of work. Your job will improve as more of you remain for the long term.

7 Time Management Strategies

It’s all about personal time management, which means taking control of your time instead of letting it dominate you. We have compiled a list of 7-time management ideas for Field Force Help for the initial start.
1. Start your day early
Ascertain what you want to do and what you definitely must complete as your first work-related action of the day. Then, before you read your email and begin responding to questions and resolving difficulties, start your day early and become focused on this goal. Setting a clear goal for your day may take five minutes, but it may save you hours of wasted time and effort.
1. Focus on high-value activities
Recognize the action that would have the biggest beneficial impact on your project, your team, and your customer if you dealt with it right now before you start something new.

This time management technique is implemented by successful businesses who recognize that there are both urgent and important things every day. Therefore, they try to find a fine balance and postpone the more monotonous tasks until later in the day.
1. Use a Planning Tool
Time management experts advocate adopting a customised planning tool to increase productivity. Personal planning tools include planners, calendars, phone applications, wall charts, index cards, pocket diaries & mobile sales apps.

Jotting down your to-do lists, schedules, and things to consider frees up your thoughts to concentrate on your most critical responsibilities. Auditory learners may prefer to dictate their views rather than speak. The key is to choose one planning tool that works for you and adhere to it.
1. Stop Procrastinating
If you have trouble remaining focused or procrastinating, making an external commitment to yourself may be beneficial. For example, plan a meeting in two days when you will show your work and by which time all of your actions must be accomplished. Completing the most disagreeable duties first thing in the morning and rewarding yourself with minor prizes once you’ve finished them is also helpful.
1. Learn to delegate
Take the time to interview and hire the greatest people so that you may have confidence in your team. Therefore, you may give some control and allocate responsibilities to individuals who work for you rather than attempting to accomplish everything yourself.
1. Apply the 80/20 rule
The Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) states that 20% of activities produce 80% of results. The remaining 80% accounts for only 20% of the outcomes. It translates to successful field force managers understanding that their top objectives will generate the most significant outcomes. The remainder is delegated.

Similarly, rather than completing many low-value activities, focus on some high-value jobs. Remember the 80/20 rule: 80% of your output originates from 20% of your inputs.
1. Assign time limits to tasks.
As per the psychological studies, Multitasking does not help save you any time. In many cases, the reverse is true. When switching from a different location, you might lose time and productivity. Multitasking regularly might make it harder to concentrate and sustain attention.

Setting time limits on tasks instead of working until they’re finished should be part of your planning approach. Also, close all doors demanding your attention to reduce distractions and get more work done!

Final Thoughts:

Take some time to assess the effectiveness of your time management tactics. If you make a determined effort to improve your time management abilities, you’ll discover that your days and tasks will go more smoothly!Organisations want to define, manage, and assess goals across the firm, not simply broad goals that only top-level employees know. Successful time management with a Field Sales Mobile App leads to increased personal satisfaction, more success at home, and a more fulfilling future for the company!
May 12, 2022