As an outside sales rep, you are a very busy person. From traveling and meeting with prospects to growing existing business, you are consistently the face of your organization. As busy as you are with scheduling meetings and making the most of your time on the road, you are also one of the largest influences during your prospect’s buying process. How can you juggle all of your responsibilities and still be an effective sales representative? Here are five productivity hacks to help you engage with prospects and prepare for sales meetings while on the road.
Access content from a single repository
Your collateral needs to be housed in the right place so you can find it, regardless of where you are. With multiple disjointed repositories, it is overwhelmingly complicated to locate the content you need for each of your sales conversations. Locating the right content becomes even more difficult when you need to account for factors such as outdated or case-specific content. Having a single content repository coupled with a contextual search feature removes these hurdles and gives you easy access to what you need. With a single repository, marketing can do its job more efficiently and provide you with only up-to-date, on-brand, and on-message collateral.
Get your collateral on all devices
You probably have a good set of smart devices to help you do your job: a laptop, a smartphone, maybe even a tablet. While all of these tools are great, make sure they’re saving you time rather than slowing you down. If you can’t access important sales collateral when you need it on whatever device you’re using, you may find yourself scrambling before meetings. But with device-neutral collateral, you can pull up any document you need from any of your gadgets. This gives you flexibility wherever you are without sacrificing your ability to share the right content at the right time.
Connect your CRM and your content repository
Creating presentations with your limited time can be challenging. However, you can save loads of time by connecting your content repository with CRM. When your content repository is integrated with CRM, you can access all of your content in the place where you spend most of your time already. By removing the need to go back and forth between your CRM and your content repository, you become more efficient and can respond to or reach out to prospects that much more quickly. According to research from CSO Insights, only 41% of sales reps’ time is spent selling. By integrating your repository with CRM, you can spend less time looking for collateral and more time engaging with customers.
Create personalized presentations on the go
Being on the go so frequently doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the quality of your presentations. You can personalize your presentations with contextual content and create a one-to-one interaction with every prospect. According to Forrester Research, 78% of executive buyers claim salespeople do not have relevant examples or case studies to share with them. If your content repository allows you to slide-pick and customize presentations quickly, you can show examples that are specific to each sales conversation and stand out from the clutter.
Prepare for the unexpected
No matter how much you do to prepare for a meeting, something unexpected is bound to happen. Meetings never go the way you expect—new people are added to the call, meetings are rescheduled or canceled, etc. Have a backup plan to stay productive if something unexpected happens. Prepare for another meeting if one gets canceled or have a way to incorporate new slides that pertain to last-minute meeting attendees. Whatever happens, make sure you keep moving forward.
You have a lot on your plate, but your responsibilities don’t have to be overwhelming. With these five productivity hacks, you can boost your effectiveness and do more with less time out in the field.
