How to Build an Online Sales Team
A winning smile and a charming personality aren’t enough in this new digital age. These days, companies can see even greater results when they focus on online sales. To do so, they need to find the right sales representatives to make up their online sales team. These reps will need different skills and experience from the sales executives of the past—they’ll need to know how to target and sell to online leads. Here are a few tips on how to build an online sales team. Also, don’t forget that you can always order booking system development.
In-Depth Content Marketing Knowledge
Your online sales team will not only work at selling your products or services but it will also work as a marketing team. Sales people no longer have all the power in the purchasing cycle—the customer is king. The way to get customers to notice you isn’t by going door to door, it’s by utilizing inbound marketing. With inbound marketing and selling, sales people use valuable, rich content to entice potential leads to your website. This is the first step in making a sale. An online sales team must have the knowledge needed to understand how to create and use content to their advantage—how to write valuable content, where to place it online, and how to target their core demographic. They need to think like marketers.
Team Players
In the past, sales reps were often left to their own devices. They worked alone and were always on the road making sales calls. But today, they need to work much more closely with other members of your team—with your website developers, your marketing team, your copy writers, and your other sales reps. They must rely on strong communication skills. Everyone works together when it comes to inbound marketing. It’s the best way to ensure the process goes smoothly and successfully, without any hiccups. When you build your online sales team, look for sales reps who can play nice with others—who aren’t lone wolves.
Social Selling Skills
Social selling is becoming an integral part of online sales. Your team must know the ins and outs of different social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. They must know the rules and etiquette of these sites and understand how they can best get their customers’ attention through social selling. They must know when it’s right to contact buyers and when to give them a little more time to come around.
The New Sales Cycle
Your online sales team will have to understand the new sales cycle, where the customer is in charge. They must also be able to identify where in the cycle any given customer is at any time. By knowing which stage the customer is at, the sales reps can more easily know which steps to take next—which steps will get them that sale. If a customer is still in the early stages, he’ll need more tailored email marketing content. If he’s already taken you up on calls to action, he’s ready to be sold to. Your sales team will be able to figure out this information by tracking and analyzing your website analytics by following the customers through their path on your site—where they go, how long they stay there, and when they leave.
Ditch the Pitch, There Are New Sales Tools in Town
Practicing the same old sales pitches and memorizing your pricing catalogue isn’t what sales is about anymore. You’ll see better results when you build an online sales team that knows the ins and outs of inbound marketing, social selling, and the new sales cycle of the twenty-first century. Blogging, email marketing, social media accounts, and website analytics are now the tools that your sales reps should be using to sell to your customers and increase your revenue. It’s the way of the future.