7 ways to help your sales be more effective

Every organization wants its salespeople to be successful -- that is, close more sales. Yet ask many salespeople and they will tell you that their organization often makes it difficult for them meet their quotas, requiring them to do lots of administrative work (e.g., enter data into a CRM system) or not providing them with mobile tools.
So what can organizations do to better support and free up their salespeople, so they can close more sales? Here are seven sales strategies for success gleaned from sales and marketing experts.

1. Employ a sales-friendly CRM system.

"A good [sales-focused] CRM system can help your sales force stay organized and focused," says Mack Dudayev, CEO and cofounder, InsureChance, an online life insurance marketplace. "With features such as lead prioritization, automatic reminders, lead nurturing and notes, you can expect to see an increase in your sales team's closing ratio and improved productivity." Another benefit of CRM: "You can see how fast leads are being contacted, amount of attempts made, total sales and idle time."

2. Qualify leads.

"Define your target audience and recognize that people outside of that definition are more likely to be wasting your time than resulting in sales," says Al Huizenga, managing director of product at Sparkroom, which specializes in higher education performance marketing. "Third-party demographic and behavioral data from sources like Neustar can be appended to inquiries in real time to quickly evaluate how well [prospects] fit a defined target profile."
"It is counterproductive to hand leads to sales when those people are not ready for a sales conversation," says Katy Keim, CMO, Lithium Technologies, a provides social software to companies. Therefore, it's important to "take the time to understand the buyer's journey. Provide them with useful content. Then hand them to sales only when they demonstrate they are ready for a sales conversation."

3. Arm your sales force with the mobile communication and collaboration tools.

"Salespeople can spend the better part of their days in the field, so you need to provide them with easy, remote access to timely and critical customer and sales information through a mobile CRM solution or app," says Anthony Smith, CEO and founder, Insightly, a small business CRM and project management Web app. "This allows them to always work with real-time data and to update a prospect's information immediately, rather than wait until they're back in the office, enabling managers to effectively track data through the sales funnel."
You should also "make it easy for your salespeople to have instant access to the latest product specs and contracts from any device -- laptop, tablet or phone," says Bill Carovano, senior director, Product Management, Citrix, a provider of cloud, mobile, virtualization, collaboration & networking solutions. "And since they're going to need to be able to draw up or edit documents, say a contract to close a deal at the end of a quarter, ensure that they can easily do so without jumping across multiple apps and devices."
As for signing contracts, consider using a service such as DocuSign. "This is a wonderful tool that lets your sales team get sales orders and agreements signed electronically," explains Dudayev. "When out in the field, the salesperson can make changes as necessary, using an iPad to get a digital signature."
Finally, because "communication is crucial, if you don't already have an enterprise-level communication app in place, it's time to get one," says Michael DeFranco, CEO, Lua, a mobile messaging provider. "Instantaneous communication coupled with data security and privacy lead to better [sales and] customer experiences, fewer errors and employees that work as one cohesive force."

4. Offer regular training and opportunities to share best practices.

"Top performing sales organizations invest in the development of their teams," says Mark Donnolo, a sales compensation strategy/design expert and founder of SalesGlobe, which helps sales organizations be more effective. "From technical training on products and services to sales process training, or gathering regional teams together once a year to share best practices, a well-planned training and development program provides a measurable ROI," he says. "In addition, training helps to retain top performers and shift critical middle performers into top performers."

5. Minimize time spent on administrative tasks.

"Almost all sales roles have non-selling administrative or customer service aspects," notes Donnolo. "But too often, those activities take up more time than the selling activities," he notes.
"Organizations that understand how to minimize the amount of time salespeople spend doing administrative tasks, such as data entry, win by helping them be more productive," says Somrat Niyogi, cofounder & CEO, Stitch, a sales automation app.
So what can organizations do to minimize the amount of admin work for salespeople? They can hire sales support personnel and/or make sure non-sales issues get routed to the right department, be it marketing, tech support or customer service, says Donnolo. They can also provide tools that make it easy to enter customer data from a mobile device, says Niyogi.

6. Employ gamification strategies.

"Gamification taps into the natural competitive streak in reps and delivers positive results as reps strive to climb to the top of the leader board," says Leslie Stretch, CEO, CallidusCloud, a SaaS provider of sales effectiveness technology. "Give points not just for customer wins but also for sales activity -- getting a new lead or face-to-face meetings with senior executives," he advises. "According to a report from Aberdeen Group, companies do better on their quotas with gamification: with it 85 percent of reps attain their quota and 51 percent of new hires achieve their numbers in their first year. While in the absence of gamification, only 78 percent of reps make quota and only 42 percent of new hires meet their numbers."

7. Track performance and identify areas for improvement.

"The most important thing you can do to improve your [sales team's] performance is to figure out how well [they're] actually performing now and then make a plan to [help them do] better," says Huizenga. So you need have a system in place that tracks sales performance throughout the sales cycle, so managers can analyze and measure how each member of the sales team is doing -- and then determine where he or she needs help.

5 Tips To Creating A More Usable E-Commerce Site

E-commerce is a very competitive field because your rival is no more than a click away. If a customer doesn’t like your site, he simply looks for another e-commerce site to buy products from. If you want to gain more customers and attract attention, you want to make sure that your website is as usable and as customer-friendly as possible.

It doesn't matter if your prices are very low or you have the best products in the market because if customers get confused navigating your website, reaching a preset target will likely be difficult.

Usability means that you have to make the buying process as quick and as easy as possible. These tips will let you create a more usable e-commerce website that can create higher conversion rates.

1. Call To Action & Sign-Up Buttons

Avoid lengthy sign-up forms that can take a few pages or so before visitors can successfully register to your site. As an e-commerce site, you don’t actually need to know their address, phone number, what kind of work they do, etc. A simple email address and a password are just all you need. That being said, never underestimate call-to-action buttons as this help in building higher conversion rates and improving site usability. Make these call-to-action buttons stand out.

2. Buying Without The Need To Register

One thing online shoppers hate the most is the long and tedious sign-up process before finalizing a purchase. What if you go about allowing guest users to checkout products without the need to register, then ask them afterwards if they want to sign up, to make the next purchase on your site easier? This kind of method is known to increase sales (up to the tune of $300 million), improve customer retention, and reduce cart abandonment.

3. Search Function

Search functionality helps customers to find what they are looking for, making their shopping experience more satisfying than frustrating. Who would want to go from one page to another, read the description of every product you have in your online store, just to find what they are looking for these days?

4. Breadcrumb Navigation

When placing orders, customers have to know where they stand in their purchase process – how many steps have they accomplished, and how many more to go. Without breadcrumb navigation, customers will easily get bored and think your shopping procedures take forever, making them more likely to just abandon their purchases, halfway through.

5. Shopping Cart

No e-commerce website is complete without proper content management and personal detail security. Shoppers should feel confident in buying products at your e-commerce site, so you need to assure them that your site is a reputable site that has features to protect the privacy of your customers. Get a trust certificate like Hacker Safe or VeriSign and an updated SSL certificate to build up customer trust and offer better shopping security.

Suggest Related Items

The way Amazon.com suggests related items, like batteries, accessories and peripheral products when a buyer is purchasing a laptop, not only help save the customer’s time but also helps increase revenue and customer retention on your e-commerce site.

Hidden Charges

Customers hate agreeing to the price of a product only to find out that it is going to cost them 2% more when it is time to share their credit card details. Make sure that you display prices, taxes, shipping charges, discounts early, so that buyers know the final sum they will be forking out.

If you present your customers with a lot of unexplained costs, they will more likely to abandon their purchase, and even worse, their trust in your site will be broken.

10 Ways to Deal With Upset Customers Using Social Media

1. You Can’t Respond to Conversations You Don’t See

Great response starts with great listening.

Set up Google Alerts for your brand and industry keywords.

Keep a close eye on your Facebook page.

Listen on Twitter.

Depending on the type of business you have, read reviews on sites such asYelp, TripAdvisor and Zagat.

Make a list of any forums or communities where your customers congregate andregularly check in on them.

Whether you’re paying attention or not, the conversations are happening. But a great listening program makes it easier for you to catch negative buzz and spot issues before they build momentum and become much harder to turn around.

Google alerts are free, easy to set up, and instantly help you keep an eye on key conversations.

2. Determine if it’s Worth a Response

Not all negative comments are worth a response, and not all critics are worth trying to win over. Sometimes, as hard as it can be, it’s best just to move on.

Avoid these situations:

• The criticism is on a really small blog or forum, and your response will only bring attention and credibility to an issue nobody saw in the first place.
• It’s a blatant attack that’s clearly rude and outrageous—and anyone who reads it can see the critic has a personal problem.
• A known crackpot who is only looking to pick a fight.

There’s just no way to win in these scenarios. So stay out, move on, keep your head up and focus on the wrongs you can right.

3. Act Quickly

When you’re facing negative word of mouth, time is not on your side. The longer you wait to respond, the angrier the customer will get—and the more likely others will pick up on the issue and spread the negative buzz.

At the very least, say this:

“Hi, my name is ____ and I hear you. We’re looking into it now, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If you have any questions, contact me directly at _____.”

A message like this does two things:

• The ranter knows he or she has your attention—there’s much less incentive to keep spreading the anger and
• It makes a real person with real contact info available, so if the person is still angry, you’ve at least specified a place to vent other than online.

4. Speak Like a Human

The only thing worse than ignoring upset customers is to respond with a canned corporate response. If you thought they were mad before, wait until you see how they react to an excerpt of your policy terms and fine print.

Show empathy, communicate in a friendly tone and use your real name. And if the forum supports it, it helps to include your actual photo.

It’s easy to yell and scream at an anonymous company. But when someone shows up and says, “Hi, this is Emily and I’m so sorry for the trouble…” it changes everything.

The critic now realizes he wasn’t yelling at a giant, faceless company. He was yelling at Emily. Quickly, the anger fades—and you’ll often get an apology.

Check out how Zappos replies to this fan. It’s human; it’s friendly. And even though they couldn’t immediately fix the problem, you can bet this fan will be back.

Check out Zappos’ Facebook page for a real-time guide on how to respond in a personable, friendly tone.

5. Offer a Real Apology or Don’t Apologize

A strong, direct apology will always earn more respect than a flimsy, “kinda-sorta” apology.

Consider the difference between an apology like “We’re sorry you feel that way” to “Absolutely, positively unacceptable”—which was the headline to FedEx’s blog postafter a delivery driver was caught throwing a package over a customer’s fence. The post included this straightforward video from Matthew Thornton, a senior vice president at the company:

And it doesn’t get much better or more direct than Jeff Bezos’ apology for how they handled pulling copies of 1984 and other novels off Kindles:

This simple, straightforward apology from Jeff Bezos drew more than 750 overwhelmingly positive responses.

6. Offer to Make it Right

Apologizing is part of turning around negative word of mouth, but to actually fix a problem is how you really win over critics.

We all make mistakes. It’s how we fix them that people remember.

At burrito chain California Tortilla, making it up to customers is part of every response they send when someone is upset. It’s this simple:

California Tortilla replies to every upset customer with a simple, straightforward offer to make it up.

7. Never Get into a Fight

Any time you win an argument online, you’re losing. All anyone really remembers is that you’re combative.

This doesn't mean you can’t respond, explain your side of the story and start a conversation. You just need to be in the right mindset:

Don’t get emotional.

Remember, it’s a real person. Just as they see you as a faceless company, it’s easy to see them as just another complainer.

The critic is actually doing you a favor. They’re helping you learn to be a better company. For every person who actually speaks up, many more walk away quietly, never to return.

For more on how to reply, check out this quick explanation from Jeff Diamond of Oakland’s Farmstead Cheeses and Wines:

8. Keep the Discussion in the Open

When a negative issue comes up, a common gut reaction is to ask to move the conversation offline. But when you do this, the world can’t see all the effort you put into fixing the problem.

Nobody sees the private email where you give that sincere apology. We can’t search for that phone conversation where you politely explain why the situation happened in the first place.

But when you do it online, in public, you earn word of mouth. For the same effort and cost, thousands more people see that you actually care about customers. Plus, you save on all the people who now don’t need to call in (or write a similarly angry post) to find an answer to the same question.

Graco’s quick and transparent use of Twitter during a recall of more than 2 million strollers, for example, helped get an important message out much more quickly, showed customers how much they cared and it just might have saved some lives, too.

Customers were thrilled with how Graco kept them updated and informed during a product recall.

9. Use Fans and Third-Party Sources to Help Tell the Story

What you say about yourself isn’t as powerful as what others say about you. It’s true when people are promoting you, and it’s true when people are calling you out.

When their brand was under attack from a competitor-led PR campaign, UPS’ Debbie Curtis-Magley and her team pointed to third-party content from news articles and industry experts to help explain the full story.

And even more powerful than experts can be the voice of your fans. You never want to put them in an uncomfortable situation, but it’s OK to ask for help sometimes.

For example, a blogger might share how he’s frustrated with a particular product feature. In which case, you might turn to your Facebook or Twitter fans with this message:

“Hey guys! Chris over at [blog name] is having trouble with [feature]. Can anyone share how they’re using it?”

10. Involve Them in the Fix

If someone’s criticizing you, it’s often just a form of tough love. They’re doing it because they care. They see potential, and they want you to do better.

So instead of seeing them as critics, start looking at them as frustrated fans that might have some worthwhile ideas.

On one hand, Dell’s IdeaStorm is just a big list of things people think they’re doing wrong. But it’s actually a release valve—a proactive community that gives people with ideas, suggestions and complaints a place to share and vote on their favorites.

Every idea on Dell’s IdeaStorm can be voted up or down, and Dell keeps everyone updated on progress.

A platform like IdeaStorm isn't right for everyone, but giving your biggest critics a way to get involved is. Try inviting yours to customer advisory boards, beta tests of new products and brainstorming sessions.

See! Negative word of mouth doesn't have to be so bad after all.

How do you handle critics? How are you making the most of negative word of mouth?

How are you responding to upset customers? No matter what you sell or what industry you’re in, you’re going to experience negative word of mouth. You know, those customers who are expressing their complaints on social media.

It just happens.
Things break, problems come up and employees have bad days. But it’s how you handle it that separates you from everyone else.

Remember: Negative word of mouth is an opportunity.

A great response strategy can convert angry and upset customers into loyal, raving fans. The rule of thumb is that while unhappy customers talk to 5 people, formerly unhappy customers you win back talk to 10.

So get out there and embrace the negativity. Start responding. Here are 10 steps you can take to stop the negative, earn new fans and generate a ton of respect.

Test Driven Development - TDD

Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: first the developer writes an (initially failing) automated test case that defines a desired improvement or new function, then produces the minimum amount of code to pass that test, and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards. Kent Beck, who is credited with having developed or 'rediscovered' the technique, stated in 2003 that TDD encourages simple designs and inspires confidence.^[1]

Test-driven development is related to the test-first programming concepts of extreme programming, begun in 1999,^[2]but more recently has created more general interest in its own right.^[3]

Programmers also apply the concept to improving and debugging legacy code developed with older techniques.^[4]