INFOGRAPHIC – A day in the life of a Sales VP using the CRM from Salesforce

The devil is in the details. Before making a decision on the adoption of a new solution, it is important to be able to move away from high level digital transformation conversations, and be able to dig into the details. Why should businesses use a CRM? What difference does it make in the day-to-day of sales teams? Here is a close-up of the impact a CRM like Salesforce can have on a Sales VP, and the entire the sales team, in the context of a regular work day.

A day in the life of a Sales VP using the CRM from Salesforce

6:05AM – WAKE UP
Shower. Breakfast. Take kids to school. Salesforce is not in this part of your life yet.

7:33AM – CHECK EMAILS FOR EMERGENCIES
From your email account, which is integrated with Salesforce, you can jump straight into Opportunities and Accounts that require immediate attention. From there, you can take action or delegate, in one tap.

7:34AM – IT’S ALL THERE
You can see everything. For each Opportunity or Account, you see every email, call, quote sent or other action taken by any member of your team. And team members can see the exact same thing to help them in their work. No more “Was it sent?” or “Did we follow-up?”. It’s all there. For everyone.

9:00AM – SALES TEAM MEETING
You review the pipeline status, quotas, and targets, all of which are aggregated in a dashboard generated automatically by Salesforce. No need to ask for someone to consolidate the data; even the deal closed by one of your reps 3 minutes before the meeting is accounted for. During that meeting, you and your team notice that high performers spend at least 30% of their time in face-to-face meetings. Data speaks: that recipe works and the low performers take note of it.

VIEW GRAPHS & CHARTS ABOUT

Closed business
Sales pipeline
Sales activities
Leaderboards
Close rate
Key opportunities
Opportunity size
And more…

9:56AM – NEW LEAD, SCORED, SEGMENTED, ASSIGNED
Somewhere within the company, a sales rep gets a notification about a new Lead. It’s coming from the Marketing department, which uses Salesforce Pardot, integrated directly with your Salesforce CRM. The Lead is assigned to that rep after meeting the criteria that you and the marketing department have agreed upon together. The entire process is automated.

Qualified lead threshold passed
Lead added to CRM
Lead assigned to rep, and rep notified

10:15AM – ONE-ON-ONE WITH A NEW REP
You take the time to welcome a new team member, but you know he will soon be hitting the ground running with quotas to meet. With everyone busy, there won’t be time for hand-holding. Thankfully, using the CRM provides him with a structure, a formula, and tips to maximize his chances of success. Looking at the Opportunity funnel, you show the new rep the key things he can do to be successful at every stage, from Discovery to Close. It’s all written down in each Opportunity, your new rep won’t have to search for any of it.

11:07AM – PREPARATION FOR A KEY ACCOUNT MEETING
Before an important customer meeting, you want to make sure that there won’t be any surprises. Because your Customer Service department is using Salesforce Service Cloud, you are able to see any resolved or unresolved issues for that key account directly from the CRM. Seeing that all cases are closed, you know you’ll be able to focus on upselling instead of having to put out fires.

11:30AM – LUNCHTIME MAGIC…
Like every lunchtime for the past 10 years, you retreat to the woods to meditate and eat 10 grains of steamed rice with a sip of spring water. As you clear your thoughts, Salesforce keeps doing its magic in the background.

Receiving Leads from Marketing
Receiving information from Customer Service
Sending Sales and Account information to Accounting
Sending sales and pipeline information to supply chain

1:00PM – SMOOTH KEY ACCOUNT MEETING
The meeting went without a hitch. The customer is even interested in one of your new offers, has requested a quote, ASAP!

2:15PM – FAST QUOTE
Right after the meeting, your sales rep is able to quickly produce a quote from the CRM. The document is automatically generated from a template that can be edited. It’s sent with one click from Salesforce to the customer, and the quote is always available in Salesforce from the customer’s account. Nothing is ever lost.

2:16PM – READY TO SIGN
The best part is that the quote can be signed electronically, with the same legal binding as a paper signing. No need for the customer to print it, sign it, scan it, and re-send it (which tends to significantly delay contract signings).
The CRM is updated as soon as the client affixes his electronic signature. Opportunity won! With a better customer journey and contract signing experience, the sales cycle is shortened.

3:00PM – BIG BOSS MEETING
He wants to know… How are the sales? How is the pipeline? Are we on target?

Fortunately, you have all this information at the ready, all the time. Every Opportunity and Close from all your reps are in the system. KPIs and other key metrics that you have selected are shown in easy to read dashboards. You have also created a custom dashboard specifically for that manager.

With up-to-date and easy to read information, you and your executive colleagues are able to have fact-based conversations that lead to better decisions.

SHOW GRAPHS & CHARTS ABOUT

Closed business
Sales pipeline
Revenue mix
Margins
Forecasts
Discounts
Current vs. last quarter
And more…

4:27PM – A CUSTOMER COMPLETES HIS JOURNEY
The same way it happens every hour, minute, or second, a customer successfully went from Prospect to Lead to Opportunity to Close. With a properly configured and integrated CRM, his journey was defined by:

Relevant and personalized marketing
Timely interactions with salespeople who knew his needs and could provide the right answers and assets
A simple and easy contract signing process
Useful interactions with Support where he didn’t have to repeat himself to multiple representatives

As the Sales VP, you don’t know this customer. But it’s happening nonetheless.

5:14PM – READY FOR TOMORROW?
At the end of the day, you may be asking yourself these questions:

How many deals have we closed this week and for how much? What about this month?
Will I have to call and email everyone in my team to know where our pipeline stands?
Is our sales process breaking down at a specific stage we haven’t yet identified?
Will I have to somehow find sales data and crunch it in Excel to be able to show something to my boss?
Does Supply chain know what’s coming from our side?
Are we sending clean, uniform, and complete quotes?
Does Accounting have what they need to invoice?
When talking to customers, are my reps and Support contradicting each other?
What’s the difference between my high and low performers? Are they spending their time differently?
Does my team have enough leads? Are they good leads?

Thankfully, with your CRM, you already know the answers to a lot of these questions and a lot of it has already been taken care of.

…Well, it’s time to go get the kids, and head home.