One thing is clear: there are a lot of sales software options available, including cloud-based solutions and mobile sales apps. However, these solutions aren’t created equal. Beyond technical aspects and basic features, there are things that can help us take our sales software from "good to great."
Is your sales tracking software working for you? How do you know?
It's important to pay good enough attention to what results you are getting from your sales tracking tools that you can educate people when they ask you to explain it to them. You simply have to be able to quantify your results and share them convincingly.
The most common interpretation of "is this working for you" involves an analysis of return on investment (ROI). A negative ROI means you are losing money. A modest ROI of 2-3x over a period of a few years means you would have been wiser to invest the start-up costs elsewhere, perhaps. A high ROI of 6-8x is a roaring success and anything over 10x is astonishingly great.
But how do we quickly calculate our ROI anyway?
To calculate ROI, we need to understand a few things, namely:
- How much did it cost us to get this software in the first place? (the cost basis)
- How much value have received from this investment?
- What is our payback period?
Getting ROI Right
There are a lot of traps than can negatively impact your ability to accurately calculate ROI, including:
1. Cost Basis
When calculating the cost basis of your ROI calculation you need to be careful. It should be obvious to include the actual cost of the software you purchased, including any one-time set-up fees.
But what about the cost of the personnel involved? It's critical to determine the method you will be using to determine the cost of the team working on the project. For example, are you looking at straight up cost (annual salary divided by 2000 hours for salaried exempt individuals; hourly wage for others) or if a resource is billable, based upon the individual's billable hourly rate?
2. Return Calculation
To figure out how much value you get from an investment might seem straightforward, but it often isn't.
There are usually a number of dimensions of value creation. For example, if a system saves administrative time, how will you calculate the value of that? As with cost basis, your internal steering team will need to discuss and arrive at a consensus standard for how to measure and include value creation metrics.
3. Payback period
Also critical to evaluating ROI is the payback period.
The payback period is the period over which the new investment pays for itself. Thus, obtains an ROI of 1x. The point of this metric is that purchasing or the executive team or whoever approved the project is going to want to know how long until we break-even on this. While a fast payback period isn't the absolute top goal (and sometimes long initial payback periods become hockey stick growth curves), it does help to get projects budgeted and approved.
Key Value Factors Worth Measuring
Simple Setup
Is there anything worse than investing in software, only to find out that you have to jump through hoops to get it set up properly? We don’t think so. The truth is, when sales software setup is complicated, businesses lose time and money sorting it all out. Sales software built with the users in mind should be simple to set up. This way, companies and their teams can get to work quickly and start seeing the benefits of their investment sooner.
Reliability
Once you have your software set up and you are ready to roll, the sky’s the limit on what your team can do, right? That is, as long as the software is reliable. Before investing in sales software, you should do some digging to find out how reliable software really is. When you find a software that rates well according to real users, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to execute your sales process consistently.
Easy Admin
While admin is a necessary part of the process, clunky sales software can add a lot of extra time to this task. It’s important that the sales software you invest in actually boosts your productivity, as opposed to slowing you down. When you choose a solution with easy admin, the benefits are two-fold. First, when the process of doing the admin work is easy, it gets done in a timely manner. This means that people on your team can spend less time here and get back to bringing in sales. Second, easy admin also leads to better data management, keeping everyone on your team organized and up-to-date.
Great Support
When you get stuck or have a question about your sales software, you shouldn’t be left in the dark. This is why having great support is so important. Say goodbye to troubleshooting for hours. When your sales software also comes with good customer support from a team of experts, you can spend more time on what matters (and less time fighting headaches).
Additional Resources
If you would like to see how much ROI a mobile sales enablement platform can generate for your company, check our our ROI Calculator or schedule a demo.
