Getting things done on time is crucial to winning deals. You can’t expect customers to work with you if you forget critical steps in the sales process. TeamGram has multiple tools to schedule, remind, and execute different sales activities. Learn how to use each of them.
Good planning and execution are key to managing consistently high-performing sales teams. Deals can be lost when salespeople don’t follow-up on time, miss deadlines, or simply forget critical tasks in the sales process.
TeamGram has multiple tools to help schedule and execute sales activities to increase your chances of winning deals.
Activities
Anything you want to get done (yourself or by another team member) can be defined as an activity. When you define an activity, make sure you enter the relevant information to make it easy to understand and track it:
- Type: This describes the kind of activity you are scheduling. Select a type that best describes your activity. Task is a common activity type that can cover a wide range of activities. Call is used for scheduled phone calls.
- Activity Name: Use a descriptive name for the activity, e.g., “Renew annual maintenance contract”, or “Send specifications to subcontractor”.
- Assigned to: Select the person who will be the primary person responsible for this activity. You may also assign the activity to yourself.
- Scheduled time: Enter when the activity needs to start and end.
- Primary Relation: You can link activities to other records. Primary relations are just like other relations, but they are displayed on activity lists along with the activity name, making it easier to understand what the activity is about. An activity can have only one primary relation. If you need more relations, use the other relations field. A typical example is the call activity, where you may want to add the contact that will be called as a primary relation. That way, your activity list will display who will be called, and what the subject of that call will be.
Once an activity is defined, you can track its progress, get reminders, and updates. You can also add notes, files, locations and other relevant information to it.
Recurring Activities
Some activities need to be repeated periodically. Examples include annual service contract renewals, monthly maintenance services, or just touching base with inactive accounts every three months.
In TeamGram, you can turn any activity into a recurring activity simply by setting the recurrence option next to the due date to anything other than “Do not repeat”.
When you mark a recurring activity as completed, TeamGram will automatically create a new activity with the same name, but a due date pushed forward by the interval specified in the recurrence option.
Calendar View
You can also display the due dates of your activities in a calendar. To switch to the calendar view, click the Calendar icon when in the Activities section and select any built-in or custom criteria.
Activity Checklists
Some activities may involve multiple steps or items that need to be completed. Adding a checklist can make sure these are not forgotten.
The checklist section is at the bottom of the activity form. You can add as many items as needed.
Next Steps
Separately from the many activities involved in the sales process, each deal can have a series of major steps that must be followed. It is a good idea to have a clear idea about what the next step is for each open deal.
For any deal, there can be only one next step. When that step is reached, it is time to decide what the next one must be. Next steps can only be entered and completed by the owner of a deal.
Your next step for a deal can be to arrange a meeting with the customer’s team. Suppose you have that meeting and they voiced concerns about your product. After the meeting, your next step will be to send them more information to address their concerns. Once you send those, your next step will be to make follow-up calls to see if they are satisfied. If they are, your next step will be to get them to request a proposal from you, When they do, your next step will be to submit a proposal.
This series of steps will continue until the deal is closed. Thinking about your next move as soon as you complete a step is a good way to stay on top of the process even when managing multiple deals simultaneously.
Next steps are displayed prominently in deal forms. There is also a separate list that displays your next steps in each deal.
Reminders
In addition to listing all scheduled activities, you can also add reminders to most date fields for future events. These are not limited to activity due dates. For example, you can also add reminders to the expiry dates of quotes, or expected closing dates of deals.
TeamGram sends you a reminder message at the set time.
Meeting Action Items
Ideally, your meetings will end with decisions on what to do next (Action items).
After writing and saving a note summarizing your meeting, you can easily add action items (activities) to it.
To add an activity to a note, simply hover over it with your mouse. A new activity link will appear at the bottom right corner. Click on it and create a new activity.
Activities related to a note are listed under it, so you can easily view what action items are assigned under a meeting note. Hovering over each of these items will show you more details about that activity in a popup box.