The market environment: Starting off with the external information, it may be helpful to begin with a market assessment. After all, gaining a better understanding of the market conditions will play a role and influence the ability of your business to close deals. This is a starting point here as it provides important context for the rest of the information that is to follow.
The customer journey: Naturally, you need to analyze the sales funnel when doing a sales audit. This means you need to clearly identify the steps leading up to closing deals. This involves tracking the steps taken by customers at each point. This includes vital information about your leads and can identify problem areas and opportunities within your sales process.
Your internal systems: The tools and software that a business uses should improve efficiency. It is important to review what is working and helping salespeople, as any obstructions and limitations in the abilities and workflow can result in delayed or missed sales opportunities. This should include the ability for teams to qualify leads.
The leads: Analyze your leads to see the number of conversions and qualifying leads that are generated. This is crucial for business growth and can pinpoint areas where your business needs to improve its marketing efforts with a set of leads to help them reach the next stage. You also need to ensure your lead generation strategy is working effectively.
The sales: The actual work russian numbers completed by the sales team is crucial to your sales audit. This information needs to detail the interactions between the sales team and the marketing department, as well as the prospective customers. It comes down to methodology and performance, so be sure to take both results and feedback into consideration. In addition, you also need to consider the tools and content at the disposal of the sales team - for example, are product demos working?
Reporting: For an audit to be completed, you’ve got to have data to work with. The better your reporting systems, the more robust your intel and insights will be. The analysis needs to be a deep dive which is conducted regularly. The tools used for tracking need to effectively capture information and be updated. Creating a system that is replicated can make this easier, for example, having a master document with the figures which is checked monthly for regular reporting. This is where having robust analytical software, often included with CRMs and CMSs can be helpful.
Post-sale activities: Your analysis should include data pertaining to lead nurturing. In other words, information on customer service and retention is important to take into consideration, as this is crucial for long-term business relationships and success.
Step 3: Draw Insights
Once you have identified the information above, you need to find patterns and gaps. These are areas of improvement which you can then use to create a new set of goals for the sales and marketing departments. For example, you may identify that your marketing campaigns need to focus more on lead generation via social media. Other goals could be based on increasing profits, improving budgets, and improving your business value. This comes down to using the information to forecast future sales and put plans in place that will allow you to achieve those goals.
Sales Audits are important to pinpoint the effectiveness of your sales department. By following the 3 steps listed above, you’ll be armed with relevant and detailed insights that can help you improve your planning and forecasting, which will ultimately improve your marketing, sales, and revenue raised.
Get an Independent Sales Audit
Nexa is here for you. We can conduct a detailed sales audit and consultation for your business, complete with suggestions on how and where to improve. If you need a CRM system in place to conduct the sales audits yourself, we’ve got you covered too. Get in touch with us to get started.