How one sales executive uses enterprise social networking to do more with less..
TIBCO sales director Chad Garrett and his team work relentlessly, trying to say “yes” at every turning point, accommodating all kinds of newfangled requirements and working non-stop until quarter’s end. They “live and breathe the sales cycle,” Chad says. It’s part of what makes his team so good at what they do.
But Chad is under an enormous amount of pressure to surpass quarterly sales goals. And like any sales director he’s all too familiar with frugalnomics—trying to do more with less. It’s something he has to practice with his own team, and at the same time it’s what makes his job more difficult: companies are more frugal than ever these days.
Buyers are particularly finicky. In fact, the average sales cycle is 22% longer than just 5 years ago. Sales executives have to focus on ways to maximize effectiveness, while at the same time adhering to tighter spending budgets.
Yet, traditional sales enablement methods are not working. Sales reps spend an average of 7 or more hours per week looking for information to prepare for calls—and 24% of them still don’t feel prepared. Email and phone calls limit their ability to connect with new experts and CRM systems are generally used for pipeline management, rather than for sharing expertise. Sales reps need to quickly gather tips, best practices, the latest insights on competitors and so forth, but are limited by their old ways of working.
Recently Chad and other sales executives started using enterprise social technology to turn all of this around. In this whitepaper, discover how sales teams are using this technology to accelerate the sales cycle: Boosting Sales Performance with Social Collaboration.
