One of the challenges that we’ve experienced at my other company, Bonza Bike Tours, is that we’ve always had trouble finding enough time to actually sell our tours through our partners. Sure, we attended key events, did sales missions, and had good relationships with our partners, but I could tell something was missing. In talking with our tour operators, I could tell there was something missing on their end, as well.
It’s clear that there are a lot of hurdles in the way of our teams selling to their full potential. Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your sales team. They should get you thinking about some small things you can do to remove the obstacles to getting your team focused on growing sales.
How do you manage your partner relationships?
We had a spreadsheet (somewhere!), of our partners, but not much else. Simply knowing who you work with, and who you’d like to work with, makes it much easier for your team to manage their time. Your organization can then prioritize between maintaining relationships versus adding new relationships.
How do you track sales/bookings?
Are you tracking sales by partner and communicating this to your team? You work so hard to build relationships with your partners, but often companies don’t keep an eye on the actual sales that are coming through those partners. Watching sales from each partner by month, by quarter, and by year can make a huge impact on how you communicate with those partners. Often, simply bringing up slowing numbers with your partner can spur them into action (site visits, promotions, etc.) – this is often because they aren’t aware that your sales have dropped off.
How do you manage communications?
Does your team consistently send email updates and newsletters to your partners? Great…but do you track who has received them, who’s opened them, and who’s clicked on links? It’s hard to evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaigns if you have absolutely no idea who is reading the emails. In addition, it’s great if you are actively using social media, but do you track growth in followers? There are many tools for managing email campaigns (for example, MailChimp) and social media campaigns (even just using the internal metrics in things like Facebook can help).
How much time are you spending on administration vs. talking to customers?
This seems straightforward, but it is often overlooked. Companies can get so caught up in paperwork that they forget about their customers. Look for ways to make your team more efficient, eliminate paperwork, and let your team do what they do best…sell!
