The quickest way to increase sales is to sell more to existing customers. However, to get a customer into a position to purchase more, a sales rep will need to nurture them, using specific know-how, sales data, and the right sales tool.
In this article, we’ll look at why a sales performance app is the ideal tool for helping reps identify which existing customers to nurture.
How a sales performance app helps reps nurture customer growth
1: Shows individual customer performance- those growing, and those declining
To identify customers who need nurturing, it’s best to start with a wider perspective by looking at overall customer performance.
With a sales performance app, sales reps can access a dynamic customer leaderboard which ranks their customers according to a selection of sales metrics. It’s a tool which can give reps a wider perspective on which customers are generally performing better, who the top performers are, and who is lagging behind.
The above example shows the top 7 customers on a rep’s leaderboard organized by order of highest revenue earned for the period. The small vertical dashed line represents a paceline, which signifies a customer’s performance for the same time last year. Those customers in red who are yet to reach their paceline could have the potential to grow if nurtured. However, a rep will need to dig deeper to understand where they should focus their efforts.
2: Can reveal exactly where sales are being gained or lost- where nurturing is needed
If a customer is lagging behind, sales data can help a rep pinpoint where they should focus their effort to nurture more sales.
Drilling into a customer’s sales data reveals which products a customer has purchased more of, those purchased less, and even shed light on why. Similarly to the customer leaderboard, product group and SKU leaderboards use a paceline to show a customer’s purchases for the same time last year, and can be adjusted against other sales metrics.
In the above example, the sales data shows us that purchases in the Laundry group are slightly down from last year. To figure out why, a rep can drill into the product level and even sort their product leaderboard by average unit price compared to last year: revealing if price increases have contributed to the decline in sales of Laundry products.
It’s this intensive data breakdown which gives reps the ability to spot sales opportunities and diagnose why a customer is lagging. From here, reps can look at building a game plan for taking advantage of any sales opportunities and develop ways to nurture customers back into purchasing previously coveted products.
3: Provides accurate customer sales data quickly and clearly
While getting this information from your sales CRM or BI tool isn’t impossible, it isn’t exactly easy and can be a massive time sink for sales reps. A big advantage of the sales performance app is its accuracy, and speed.
Relying on data from your ERP, the sales data used in a sales performance app is live updating, ensuring reps are never making decisions based on month old invoice data. Additionally, quick workflows give reps the capability to quickly skim through sales data to remind themselves of a customer’s situation before going into a phone call or meeting.
Summary and your key takeaways:
Nurturing existing customers is a great way to sell more if reps can identify the right customers to invest time into. By keeping a close eye on sales data, a rep can be the first to spot a sales opportunity, or take action to win back sales.
When it comes down to it, a sales performance app helps reps nurture existing customers by:
- Showing the rep which customers are lagging/growing using a dynamic customer leaderboard.
- Allows the rep to drill down into sales data to identify which products have contributed to/cause growth/decline.
- Gives reps quick access to accurate data so they’re armed with the right information.
If you’d like to see everything a sales performance app can do for you and your sales team, get in touch with us for a hassle-free demo.