When it comes time to meet your sales quota, do you have one tried-and-true method that helps you make your numbers month after month and year after year? If you think a secret weapon like that simply doesn’t exist, then consider service renewals and the power of a dedicated service renewals team.
Focused on helping your company drive recurring revenue on products and services you’ve already sold, a service renewals team is much more than a group of sales hot shots. While pushing products might come naturally to them, they’re also comfortable with leveraging data to uncover new opportunities for your business. And their job isn’t to find you new customers, but to use data to help you drive incremental revenue out of the clients you already have. These sales pros have got your back and are guaranteed to deliver quota time after time.
Here are three reasons why you should establish a dedicated service renewals team now:
- Too Many Missed Sales Opportunities: As a sales leader, nothing’s worse than knowing that your team is missing out on opportunities and leaving money on the table. At the same time, one reason service renewals are often neglected is that identifying service contracts that are up for renewal and then providing your sales team with a means to quickly and effectively take action on them is challenging – especially when old-school spreadsheets and hand-written lists are your go-to tools. That’s why today’s world-class service renewal teams rely on data driven-dashboards, high-value business intelligence and extreme automation to get the job done. From accessory and consumable sales, to rebate and incentive programs as well as upselling, cross-selling and product refresh, you can cover a lot of ground with a data-driven service initiative. When done right, it can help you mine opportunities within your installed base that you never even knew existed.
- You’ve Got Aggressive Numbers to Meet: You’re losing sleep at night wondering how you’ll reach your quota. But with recurring service revenue in your back pocket, you’ll be able to propel well past your quota — even if new sales are slumping. Keep in mind that recurring revenue grows at 8% per year while new revenue grows at 6% per year. And experts say deriving revenue from existing customers is far easier and more cost-effective than acquiring new customers, with double-digit growth attainable if a business can retain all of its customers for four additional months. Service renewal teams take this proven philosophy and run with it, building the data core they need to reach out to the right customer at the right time to close follow-on sales. As a result, they’re in position to drive increases in service sales and build stronger ties with those clients over the long haul.
- The Pressure’s On at Quarterly Board Meetings: You’re closing in on the end of the quarter and you know questions will be asked — and consequences will be leveled — if your sales results don’t match projections. With a service renewal team behind you, however, you’ll start looking forward to those board meetings because you’ll have nothing but good news to share. Indeed, consider that leading global manufacturers and distributors, in conjunction with their resellers, are already leveraging the power of data to address low-dollar, high-volume service renewals and achieve as much as $1.5 billion in new opportunities in a single year’s time. That’s a lot of cash!
Investing in a recurring revenue practice as part of your overall sales strategy can lead to new revenue gains across your business. It’s not a question of if you should put one in place, but when you should do it. And don’t wait until the end of the quarter or the end of the year, because it’s a secret weapon that can start generating results for your business right away.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Three Reasons You Need a Service Renewals Team
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