As we draw closer to 2021, we look back at the things that defined 2020 and the way businesses have been shaped for the new normal.

The B2B business landscape is dynamic in nature, however, there has been a lot of significant changes in just a short period of time — as seen in recent years most especially in the time of the pandemic. Hence, business practices, services, and industries innovate, improve, and cope up with these changes. Some notable booming ones include the increased demand for lead generation services, database management services, and digital marketing services.

One aspect of business that’s changed a lot is sales workflows. We’ve found that it’s been the year for refinement and tweaks to make sure things run smoothly and more flexibly.

In today’s article, we look at refining your sales workflow.

Cohesive Strategies

Many clients, strategists, and startup owners all face dealing with incohesive strategies at one point.  Whether it’s at the beginning, troubleshooting a bad season, or just changing out strategies, there is a tendency for things to be a little difficult to implement.

And, this has the potential to gravely affect workflows.

Although there are a lot of ways to make strategies more coherent, the most effective is to ensure that there is an organizational buy-in at the beginning.

Organizational buy-in allows and develops a sense of ownership in the work culture. Instead of figuring out how to solve smaller issues, everyone is focused on a hyper-specific organizational goal that they are all individually responsible for.

The strategy has to be the priority or else everything fails. For something to be a priority, the organization has to own it.

Tools

Software is often touted as the be-all and end-all for better systems, but even then, it still might not help your sales workflow. 

If you’re confused on what tools to prioritize, make sure that you have a unified database software or a flexible CRM that you can fully customize depending on the industry that you are in.

Once you’re down with the basics, invest in automating menial workflows so that the team won’t waste valuable time on repetitive tasks. Not only will you get more efficient workflows, but you also enhance the work environment.

However, do note that tools won’t work if you have the wrong strategies in place, or if the team doesn’t buy into the strategy.

Tools are only as good as the people using them.

Marketing Campaigns

A question that we get often is, “where do I start?”

Although, there are plenty of ways to answer this question from a marketing perspective, the simplest campaign that one can start today is reengagement.

The reason it’s considered a springboard for a lot of organizations is because of its simplicity and easy integration into any marketing strategy.

Apart from new client acquisition, lead nurturing and lead nurturing campaigns, it doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t always have to launch a viral content marketing video or have an infographic picked up by the masses.

What’s important is consistently trying the market out.

Teams

At the beginning of this article, we stressed getting your teams to claim ownership of their projects, but what’s the best way of doing that?

Consider asking this question: “what’s in it for them?”

No matter how much a team is motivated, rewarded, or pressured to perform, it might all go to waste if the goals of the company do not align with the personal goals that members have.

Organizations want their members to care about the objectives that they have, and the best way of doing that is through alignment.

Objectives have to mean something to team members, they can’t just be a set of consistently moving goals or you run the risk of people clocking in just to make a paycheck.

This is why it’s important to prioritize your team’s welfare before anything else.

Customer Satisfaction

The most critical component of surviving and thriving next year is to make your customer’s life easier and there are several ways to do this.

First of all, make it easier for people to purchase your product and interact with you. This makes your products and services user-friendly and encourages repeat sales and better interactions with your customers.

You want to be in a position to properly engage with your customers.

Next would be to give your consumers a say in what they’re receiving. At HubSpot, products have an idea board/forum that gives the customers a say in how something will get developed.

You want to know what they are thinking of and how they feel about your current offerings.

This allows them to tweak products that resonate well with different customers and continue on the path to improvement.

Takeaways

We had no playbook for 2020, but what’s important is for us to realize that we’re all navigating this together. If you’ve found that your company has lagged behind, that’s all alright.

We’re playing the long game and there is no magic bullet.

The biggest tip that we can leave you when it comes to refining your sales pipelines and promoting your business is to prioritize communication.

It doesn’t matter if it’s internally, your suppliers, or your customers.

Growth is driven by collaboration and collaboration through proper communication.