Businesses and sales teams have to think fast if they want to survive.
The best sales professionals show their value when faced with the challenge of selling a product that is similar to many others on the market.
Sales are about finding a way to rise above the competition. If you're selling in a competitive market, your job will be tough. Differentiating yourself from your competitors is critical.
Sales pros have started to realize that speed can become a competitive advantage. Any time a business can do something faster than its competition, it will get great results and potentially close more deals.
It’s challenging to emphasize the value of speed in our daily lives. With speed being everything, sales pros must do what it takes to stay competitive and on the ball.
The bottom line is that the faster you can close a deal, the faster your company will grow. All those hot leads in your sales pipeline? They'll cool down pretty fast. The slower your sales funnel, the higher the risk of competitors eating your lunch.
With sales moving rapidly, sales pros have to do whatever it takes to stay competitive.
There are ways you can use speed—and in this post, I will share 5 reasons why it’s becoming a competitive advantage for sales pros.
1. If You Snooze, You Lose
With the speed at which sales move, keeping up is a job that never gets any easier.
Everyone is pushing hard to get to the next step, which can leave you with little time to make yourself stand out. Your competitors will outstrip you if you can't keep up and move fast.
Prospects and customers don't want to work with a slow sales team. They expect fast, speedy service that helps them solve their pain points and fulfill their needs.
Not moving fast enough will be a death sentence for your prospects and customers because there are many other options.
Your competitors are likely moving slowly if they aren't living up to customer and prospect expectations. Moving fast can be a significant competitive advantage and help you build a strong foundation as a sales rep that others cannot do.
As the sales industry continues to evolve, expectations will rise, making speed all the more necessary.
2. Your Prospects and Customers are Expecting it
We live in a time of instant gratification, where many people are not so patient.
People aren't happy with the status quo. They want something now, and they want it fast.
Sales teams must work quickly to please their customers and prospects. Otherwise, customers will have no problem moving to another product or service. As companies continue to become more competitive, standards rise, making speed a requirement.
Speed can be a big turn-on. Most people don’t like delays, waiting on the phone to speak to somebody, etc. People like finding what others want and getting things done fast.
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And some prospects and customers might even pay more if a sales rep is fast. If a prospect brings up a complicated problem during a sales conversation, and a sales rep can propose a good solution the next day, they are much more likely to trust that this company will also treat them well once they're a customer.
To have speed means to see significant opportunities before they're seen by competition. With this, it makes you stand out and close more deals.
3. Helps You Make Better Decisions
Business is about making decisions and executing them.
The same applies to sales pros.
Decision-making is even more important to you in your position as a sales leader. Part of being a sales leader involves how you handle the decisions you face and make each day.
We make decisions every day. What are we going to eat? Wear? Watch? Those are pretty easy, right? In business, you'll face a lot of hard decisions, and the most successful people in business are good at making difficult decisions fast.
Commit to making a certain amount of decisions each day. If you keep your choices to a certain amount, you’ll start to make them faster and more often. Halting a critical decision slows the process and makes you anxious.
And the decision will still be there waiting for you to decide. You want your sales team to be on the ball so that you can help your prospects and customers with their pain points.
Sales pros need to make decisions faster. No organization ever became successful by being slow. The bottom line is that fast decisions are better than no decisions. Even if your fast decision is the wrong one, you'll learn from the result, whereas a decision that you perpetually ponder in your mind will never teach you anything.
Remember: Your competition can make the same decision before you. Do you want that? Probably not.
4. If You Want to be Successful, Productivity is Key
Sales is a fast-paced environment, and to be successful, you need to remain productive.
Tracking your pace, spending time with others, and working on tasks can give you a better idea of your sales productivity. As a sales pro, you want to focus on the speed of your selling.
Sales are imperative for your company. Your goal is to sell as much as possible as quickly as possible.
Sales productivity can be measured by the rate at which a rep increases revenue for a company. If you want to increase your productivity, try to become faster at your tasks.
The more productive a rep is, the faster they can sell and form relationships with prospects and customers. Maintaining these connections is critical to success and a competitive advantage.
Looking to optimize your sales processes? Explore our handpicked selection of sales productivity tools for success.
5. Better CRMs, Faster Communication
You should start today if you don’t have a CRM to improve communication.
Communication is essential for success. Without effective communication, your company cannot grow and maintain a competitive advantage.
With the help of a CRM, you and your team can be motivated to reach higher sales and better satisfaction with prospects and customers.
The use of a CRM speeds it up by allowing users to email, call, and text from the app.
Our CRM allows you to send thousands of emails with the click of a button. Whether you’re doing outreach or sending follow-ups, you’ll save time and make communicating easier.
If you’ve never tried CRM software, the time is now. You can try Close free for 14 days (no credit card needed).
