Automating Your Whole Sales Cycle

Create your own automated sales cycle

We like trees. We don’t like clutter. Let’s face it, going anything but paperless these days when you have a handy-dandy sales tool right in your bag, purse, pocket or–more likely than not–your hand is just plain lame.

With international laws broadly accepting electronic signatures and online contracts, the entire sales process has gone sexy and tech-savvy… so why haven’t you taken your business to the paperless level yet? From first contact all the way to a closed deal, there’s app for that. Today we are breaking down different tools you can use to streamline your sales–and your time and budget with it.

Business Cards are so 1995

We all do it. We go to these big networking events and meet great people, but then we lose their business cards, as they end up in our desk of clutter. I personally try to spend each night when I get home exhausted (and invariably tipsy) adding those folks on LinkedIn. But that only works for some because others aren’t in your Connections bubble yet and it’s just a pain in the you-know-what.

If folks have a Q-R code on their card, you can just scan it real quick and be done with it. Or add it into your LinkedIn app right that moment. But FINALLY there’s an even a better way. (Well, unless you have an iPhone.)

NFC is the way to be! If your phone has NFC (check this list to know,) then you can just download many apps where, when your phone “kisses” another phone, you share contact details! Business Card Holder with CRM and Card Shake have high Google Play store ratings for that.

Then all you have to do is integrate the contacts of your choosing with LinkedIn. Some rockin’ client relationship management systems like Nutshell and Zoho will automatically sync with your LinkedIn. Follow through and then follow up made easy!

You can also go paperfree on your own end, not having to lug physical business cards around with you either, instead getting down with eBC, electronic business cards. This is especially good for the shockingly still NFC-less iPhone users. A life without juggling business cards is a life with no muss, no fuss.

Know your clients better online than off

Speaking of CRM. We really cannot recommend anything better than using a CRM to manage your entire client interaction. CRMs allow you to:

• track the conversation
• take and maintain copious client notes
• add and update client contact info
• avoid nagging overlap where you and three co-workers are contacting the same 12 potential clients
• even create a Socratic questioning cheat sheet or template
• …and do it all on the go!

Your CRM is where all your client contact info goes. That doesn’t just mean the who, where, how, but also the most important questions the Why and the What. This is where you keep track of everything in one place, so sales action you make is focused on clear calls to action that look to solve the clients’ needs (not yours. ever.)

Write awesome sales quotes

Not to toot our own horn, but I’m part of the team at Quote Roller, the #1 business proposal software. Printed contracts and quotes attached to emails are also sooo 1995 (which was only a good year for music.)  First, you do not have time to create and format legal mumbo-jumbo. And then to negotiate back and forth, updating and attaching and losing versions? It’s just a mess and comes off as low-tech and maybe a wee bit unprofessional. And all along, you don’t even know if the client even read it!

Try out our service. We have sweet industry-proven, sector-specific templates to allow you to create sleek proposals in less time. Then, once you send it, you know exactly when your client opens it and what he or she was looking at for how long. Now that’s informed follow up.

Get signed and paid

Allowing them time to download, print, sign, scan, re-upload and send is quite a bit of time to rethink. Using your mobile device or theirs, you can close deals significantly faster with legally binding electronic signature.

Then you can get paid! There are so many amazing accounting software out there just waiting to get you paid. Or, you can use PayPal. Either way, carbon-copied invoices and contracts are just silly time wasters. We’re all growing business that need to get paid now.

Look good doing it

And do it all with a sexy-looking webpage to represent you. Seriously, the majority of our clients are somewhere in the web-design-marketing crosshairs and I’d guess at least 10 percent don’t even have working websites. (25 percent of our clients overall — and remember they’re using a nifty tech-forward SaaS.) Oh and another 35% or higher that have websites have the F and the Larry Bird of Twitter but they link to nowhere.

Whether you are still handing out business cards, sending emails or billing time, every client will look at your webpage. So it better look as good as you do.