Take your sales team from good to great with these effective strategies.

There are many characteristics of a good sales person.

According to research from Harvard Business Review, the key factors are a drive to succeed and empathy, and according to research that we compiled last year, being social, competitive and driven is what separates a good sales person from a great one.

In truth, a sales pro will possess some or all of these characteristics, but no matter how good they are, it doesn’t make them psychic. With hundreds of customers to manage across thousands of product lines, maintaining a close relationship with each and every one of them can seem an impossible feat.

Relying on instinct, charisma and guesswork alone will only get you so far, it can’t guarantee every sale and it’s not an efficient approach to selling. With the right technology however, a good sales team will become a great one. Here’s how.

Give Them the Right Tools

Everyone’s talking about big data, and with good reason. In fact, the sheer amount of this data is growing rapidly; every two days we create as much data as we did from the beginning of time up to 2003. But it’s the ability to analyze and make use of the mass of data your company holds that is invaluable when it comes to identifying and closing those all-important sales opportunities.

The right technology will help your team better understand their customers.

• Who are they?
• What did they last purchase, when?
• What did they not purchase?
• Have they failed to re-order?
• Are there any seasonal upticks in their purchase history?

With this kind of invaluable knowledge at their fingertips, your sales team will know exactly which customer to call when to call them and how to start the conversation.

Let Them Go Mobile

Today’s workforce wants to be able to work flexibly and on their own mobile devices from wherever they are at whatever time suits them and in no industry is this truer than in sales. Sales people are constantly out of the office traveling to and from meetings, visiting clients and prospects up and down the country.

To make sure that time on-the-go is as productive as time spent in the office, employers should ensure that their tech is accessible anywhere, on any device. The ability to access customer reports and spend over time will impress your clients whilst enabling your sales pro to make sales on the go leaving the competition in their wake.

Create Opportunities for Them

Did you know that it’s twice as hard to convert a new customer as it is to sell to an existing one? As a result, customer retention is one of the most important aspects of the sales process. Guaranteeing repeat sales week on week is fantastic, but to really drive revenue you need to make the most of cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

The right sales technology will instantly analyze your customer data and provide an overview of customer buying habits and trends while identifying upselling opportunities for your sales team to pursue. Having the ability to know that, for example, certain customers always buy mops and buckets in bulk in October—their peak season—you can pre-empt their interest in your products (and stop them looking at your competitors) by offering them a tailored discount when they purchase a certain number of your products.

Streamline Internal Processes

Good sales software will help refine the inner workings of your business streamlining processes and making everyone in the company more productive. Rather than working from endless spreadsheets and having to ask the IT department every time they need to compile a sales report for a customer meeting, give your sales pro access to everything they need to do their job from one simple location.

The less time they have to spend on administrative or IT related tasks, the more time they can spend on building customer relationships and driving profits.

There’s no denying that great sales professionals all share some of the common character traits. They are often, but not always, very competitive, driven and have the charisma it takes to build and maintain lots of customer relationships. But without the right technology at their fingertips, they’ll never be as great as they could be. They’re not psychic, but the right sales technology will help your team answer the unanswerable, secure new opportunities, stop your customers drifting to the competition and ultimately, drive profits.

Originally published on Business.com