Question

For a sales-heavy business like insurance or enterprise software, talk about the nuts of bolts of the sales process. How will you nurture leads to get them ready to close? What kind of staffing do you need? Do you have a commission structure? Sales territories?

Answer 1

Nuts and Bolts of the sales process:

The sales process in businesses like insurance and enterprise software heavily depends on cold calling and lead generation since the market has many players selling the same products, leads or inbounds get dry and the sales force has to heavily depend upon on the field activities.

The sales process starts from prospecting a market, population or client and thereafter approaching them, post approach the cases which can be closed quickly are picked up and followed up, the sales force keep connected with the prospect and tries to close the sale.

The less enthusiastic prospects are followed up later on intervals. It may take up to 7-8 visits to close a sale and thus the sales force needs to keep in touch with the prospects.

The prospects which we have converted into customers can also be followed up for references or leads to generate further business as we have created a favourable relationship with them.

How will you nurture leads to get them ready to close?

Lead nurturing is the process of creating relationship with people who are currently not ready to purchase our products but may become an ideal customer in the future.

Every lead requires a different treatment to make them ready to close. The most important part in nurturing a lead is providing the lead with information and clear all the doubts he has in his minds.

Lead nurturing is all about creating stronger relationships with individuals and you need to have different strategy for every individual to do so, some can be converted over call or emails others might need personal meetings.

Continuous follow-up, conversation and meetings are required to nurture leads and convert them into customers.

What kind of staffing do you need?

For a sales-heavy business individuals with following qualities can be an asset:

• A person with good networking ability who can create stronger relationships in the market.
• To sell products like insurance you need to have someone who is confident, enthusiastic and always hungry for achieving good sales number.
• Sales can be a tiring work and you need to have Patience and Perseverance to cope with the stress sales brings.
• Adaptability in different situation is also required from the sales person.
• Excellent communication skills are also important to convenience someone to buy your products.

Do you have a commission structure? Sales territories?

Every sales organization has a commission structure to keep its employees motivated. We also have a commission structure for the same where we pay a percentage of total sales amount as commission,

Sales territories are important to keep away disputes amongst the sales persons. Sales territories are geographical are allotted to sales persons which they have to cater.

Having sales territories also reduces the chances of leaving a market untapped.