how to implement the frictionless sales model?

have you ever wondered why you are not achieving all your goals? Do you think your teams are wasting time on administrative and organisational tasks? The answer in many cases could be yes. We know that when a company is already consolidated, has been established for many years or is just starting, its organisation can be chaotic. Even in teams with a large number of components there can be gaps, in which the profitability of all actions is reduced. The sales team is one of those who suffer the most from these consequences. We call them frictions.

what is friction?

It is the set of obstacles that slows down the growth process of a company. The opposite case would be the force, that is, any strategy or process that is implemented to give impetus to the cycle.

why do these processes occur?

It all starts with the sales funnel. For the sales team, the figure of the sales funnel is very important. How users or audiences go through the funnel until they finally become loyal customers and leads for a company. However, on many occasions, it can happen that the sales team is more concerned with attracting these leads - the top of the funnel - than with existing customers. These customers are possibly the most important for a company to be successful. Word-of-mouth marketing, that is, the recommendations and promotions that these customers can make to others are key to the growth of a brand. Satisfied customers drive growth, they are the strength. Meanwhile, dissatisfied customers generate friction and obstacles to growth.

That's why a frictionless sales model has been developed to remove friction from your sales cycle - a model to follow to drive business growth, improve the performance of your sales team and your other teams. This model is based on three simple steps: enable your reps to buy; align with your buyers; and finally, transform your rep team.

Enabling your reps allows you to improve the performance of your sales team or reps. With good rep enablement, it is possible to achieve: data-driven outreach tactics; team collaboration; single system input; data automation; systematic prioritisation; and lead quality.

The sales leader's goal should be to ensure that the sales team can focus on selling and not on administrative tasks that slow down the process. This is achieved through:

1. Evaluating current tools and processes: knowing what your reps are spending their time on.
2. Improving pipeline review meetings, which can provide a lot of value to leads.
3. Importantly, enable tools that help you automate data entry tasks (HUBSPOT CRM, for email and calls).
4. Make use of an integrated platform or tools that allow you to complete multiple tasks.

With a dashboard like the one offered by Hubspot Academy, you can evaluate all the activities your reps perform and identify what you can automate.

Align with buyers, through this action you can develop align your buying process with the buyers' journey. As a company, you can offer: continuous availability; simplified meeting scheduling experience; transparent pricing and discounts; ease of purchase and cancellation; and create a buyer-driven process. Taking charge of the customer experience is the responsibility of the sales team, thus improving the customer experience during their buying process. To do this, you must:

1. Identify your leads: collect as much information as possible and focus on potential customers. Monitor all conversations you have with customers, to choose the best contacts.
2. Train your representatives to accompany customers through the sales process. Inbound Marketing training. They should provide advice.
3. With a consultative Inbound strategy, your reps will be able to identify unqualified leads, so they don't waste their time working with people who are not going to buy. So they will have more time to focus on the people who show real interest.
4. Invest in a tool to simplify the scheduling of meetings.
5. Invest in a tool that allows representatives to create their own proposals.
6. Update the website to be more prospect-focused (add live chat, a sales contact form and ROI studies).

Hubspot Academy offers a worksheet, which you can implement in the process of aligning the sales team with buyers.

Transforming the rep team, the sales team does not stop learning, processes and customers are constantly changing. They must achieve objectives consistently. Imparting a culture of learning must be a must among your company's objectives. Providing training to your sales team can help you achieve: consistent performance; real-time data; leaders are primarily dedicated to training their team; sales team guidance and coaching; and the organisation of the company to enable, align and transform.

1. Define the sales process and measure results (with a CRM Tool, or similar platform).
2. SWOT analysis, where you should look specifically at weaknesses and analyse the effectiveness of your training.
3. Take advantage of the sales experience and try to share it with the team, to determine the meaning of the training.
4. Be very clear that the objective is to align sales processes with buyers' processes.
5. Give your reps the opportunity to choose the path they want to follow. With a variety of opinions and methods, you nurture your company in different formats. Take advantage of the variety of your reps to enrich the internal processes of your company.
6. You can offer practical guides, such as Hubspot's, so they can easily access the information they need.
7. Encourage coaching.

With this worksheet from the Hubspot Academy, you can instil a culture of learning and transformation in your purchasing reps.

By applying all these tips, you can develop the frictionless sales model and remove all the obstacles that clog up your sales cycle and prevent you from growing your business and generating leads that promote your brand.