Working with complex business to business sales is an incredibly challenging job that drives a company's revenue and profitability. But why do sales people still work with tools that aren't designed for sales people?
Why is it that less than half of all sales teams reach their quota? Would similar failure rates be accepted in other professional disciplines? Are new sales hires expected to deliver results without an outlined sales structure and process? How are sales teams being coached? These were questions we asked ourselves almost five years ago and now it's time to give sales teams and leaders a specialized tool that actively helps qualify their opportunities, navigate lengthy sales cycles, identify stakeholders and visualize the sales process. A tool that helps sales teams win more deals, with higher margins.
As the world is changing, new sales tools are needed
For several years the trend has been clear in B2B sales. Transactional sales are getting more and more automated thanks to clever Internet innovations while a growing number of deals, especially in the B2B space, fall under the category of "complex sales”. Sales cycles grow longer, more stakeholders are involved and decision makers are getting increasingly hard to reach.
"Most professions nowadays have specialized software to support their work. Nobody asks a finance department to only use Excel, or tells marketing to go wild with Outlook. Sales teams, however, are being told to settle for traditional CRM solutions. These rarely provide sales people more than a sophisticated contact database. But how do you go from having somebody's phone number and activity list to leading and closing a complex sales project?” asks Henrik Öquist, Product Manager for Membrain at Upstream.
Designed based on the latest research
Membrain is based on the latest research in complex B2B sales and focuses on the aspects that truly are success factors in complex sales environments while omitting as many distractions and annoyances as possible for the sales team.
"While traditional tools focus on information gathering, which produces graveyards of information and unrealistic forecasts, Membrain focuses on visualizing the sales process, its critical components and timing aspects. This helps sales teams to actively move deals forward. It also creates the conditions for continuous learning and coaching and leads to increased quality in the sales process. The end result is increased sales. Done right, I believe this can increase sales by 20-30% for most companies." says George Brontén, founder and CEO of Upstream.
Membrain will be launched as a web based software as a service (saas) solution on the European market in May 2012. Visit www.membrain.com today to stay informed of the development of the world’s leading tool for complex b2b sales.
From north to south, east to west, Membrain has thousands of happy clients all over the world.
