Scattered communication between tools eats up your sales rep’s critical sales time. A Mckinsey report says that about a third of all sales operations tasks can be automated, helping managers generate 25-30% more revenue per rep.
A deeper dive into the deal’s value chain shows a complex interweaving of tools that require painful manual work at every step of the chain:
| Steps of the deal | Activities | % Potential automation |
| Feasibility evaluation | Use Typeform to understand customer requirements, collaborate with product to analyze deal feasibility | fifty% |
| Technical solutions | Create a sales engineering task, follow up with SE for status updates, review the demo, and iterate the entire cycle. Get customer feedback and finalize the SoW. | 30% |
| Financial purposes | Use a CPQ tool to share the product price. Secure funding and product to review the proposal. | 70% |
| Request for Proposals/Request for Quotes Process | Collaborate with Devops, Infosec, Product, Sales, Legal to complete a web platform or Excel sheet | 80% |
| Negotiation and Adjustment | Align with Legal and Finance on contractual terms and negotiation limits. Use docusign to submit the contract for signature | fifty% |
| Close the deal | Update the offer status in Hubspot. Communicate status update to activation team, sales manager and update an activation document with customer requirements. | 70% |
Poor communication and collaboration is the main cause of agreements being canceled. Delays are the leading cause of sales reps losing a deal throughout the funnel. Organizing deals, communications, updates, and reminders in a deal room is the key to success for a sales rep and their manager.
What is an offer room?
A Dealroom often refers to a platform or digital space designed to facilitate the management and closing of deals in a sales context.
It is an online environment (web page, slack channel) where sales representative, sales manager, sales engineers and prospects can collaborate, communicate and manage deal-related activities and documents.
What are the key features of a deal room?
- Allows collaboration:
- Enables real-time collaboration between sales teams and potential customers.
- It provides a platform to discuss requirements, plan next steps, share proposals, negotiate terms and address queries.
- Simplify offer tracking:
- Monitors the progress of deals through various stages of the sales process.
- Provides information on the status of the agreement, possible obstacles and next steps.
- It integrates perfectly:
- It can be integrated with CRM (customer relationship management) systems to streamline deal management.
- It can connect with electronic signature platforms to facilitate digital signing of agreements.
- Facilitates Communication:
- Facilitates communication between all parties involved in the deal.
- It may include chat features, video conferencing, and notification systems.
- Analysis and reminders:
- Provides reminders to stakeholders about task completion.
- Provides data and analysis related to business progress and performance.
- Helps identify patterns, forecast and optimize the sales process.
How does not having a negotiation room affect sales teams?
While sales reps may face more operational and day-to-day challenges because they do not use a trading room, sales vice presidents may face strategic and supervisory-related issues. Both roles, although in different ways, would experience inefficiencies, risks and challenges in managing and closing deals effectively, ultimately affecting organizational results and customer relationships.
For vice president of sales:
- Inadequate supervision:
- Disadvantage: Limited visibility into deal progress and sales rep activities.
- Impact: Difficulty identifying bottlenecks and providing timely support.
- Inaccurate forecasts:
- Disadvantage: Lack of real-time data to make accurate sales forecasts.
- Impact: Ineffective planning and resource allocation.
- Compliance and legal risks:
- Disadvantage: Possible non-compliance with data sharing and storage rules.
- Impact: Legal repercussions and damage to the company’s reputation.
- Ineffective Strategy Implementation:
- Disadvantage: Limited data and knowledge to formulate and adapt sales strategies.
- Impact: Reduced effectiveness of sales strategies and possible loss of opportunities.
- Team Alignment Challenges:
- Disadvantage: Difficulty ensuring alignment between sales representatives and other departments.
- Impact: Inconsistent messaging and approach to prospects, affecting deal success.
- Customer relationship management:
- Disadvantage: Limited information about customer interactions and history.
- Impact: Hindered ability to build and maintain strong relationships with key accounts.
For sales representatives:
- Disorganized information management:
- Disadvantage: Struggling with information scattered across multiple platforms (emails, files, etc.).
- Impact: Time-consuming information recovery and possible loss of critical data.
- Inefficient collaboration:
- Disadvantage: Limited real-time collaboration with internal teams and prospects.
- Impact: Delays in decision making and possible communication errors.
- Safety concerns:
- Disadvantage: Lack of secure environments to share confidential documents.
- Impact: Risk of data leaks and loss of trust of potential customers.
- Limited tracking:
- Disadvantage: Difficulty tracking deal progress and interactions with customers.
- Impact: Loss of visibility of the status of the agreement and next steps.
- Deteriorated customer experience:
- Disadvantage: Inability to provide fast and transparent interactions to customers.
- Impact: Possible loss of agreements and damaged relationships with clients.
What are the benefits of using an offer room?
- Efficiency: Streamlines the deal closing process by providing a centralized platform for all deal-related activities.
- Security: Ensures confidential documents and communications are managed and accessed securely.
- Transparency: Provides visibility of deal progress to all relevant stakeholders.
- Accessibility: It allows access to information related to transactions at any time and place, facilitating remote and global collaborations.
- Scalability: It can be adapted to handle different deal sizes and complexities.
Why don’t sales reps use Dealrooms?
| No. | Affair | Description | Why is it a concern? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resistance to change | Sales reps may be accustomed to their existing workflows and tools. | Changing to a new platform can be perceived as disruptive and requires adaptation. |
| 2 | Learning curve | Concerns about mastering a new tool and its features. | The time and effort required to learn a new system could be seen as an obstacle. |
| 3 | Perceived complexity | Belief that negotiation rooms are complex and cumbersome. | If the platform is not easy to use, sales reps may find it tedious to navigate and manage. |
| 4 | Data Migration Concerns | It is concerned with transferring existing data and information to a new system. | The data migration process can be considered slow and risky. |
| 5 | Lack of perceived value | Not seeing a clear benefit in using an offer room. | If the benefits are not clearly communicated, sales reps may not understand how they can help in their jobs. |
| 6 | Concerns about client adjustment | You are concerned that customers will find it difficult to use a deal room. | Introducing customers to a new platform can be seen as an additional hurdle in the sales process. |
| 7 | Lack of integration | The deal room may not integrate well with existing CRM tools and systems. | Managing data across multiple platforms can be inefficient and frustrating. |
| 8 | Privacy and security concerns | Fears about data security within a trading room. | Sales representatives may be concerned about the confidentiality of confidential information. |
| 9 | Technological issues | Experiencing technical failures or limitations. | Technical issues can disrupt the sales process and create additional challenges. |
| 10 | Organizational support | Lack of support and training from the organization. | Without proper training and ongoing support, sales reps may struggle to use the trading floor effectively. |
What are some useful deal room automations that can help drive adoption?
1. Automated creation of offer rooms:
- Description: Automatically create a deal room when a deal reaches a specific stage in the CRM or another trigger event.
- Benefits: Reduces manual configuration and ensures timely creation of deal rooms.
2. Document automation:
- Description: Automatically populate deal rooms with relevant documents based on deal type, stage, or other criteria.
- Benefits: Ensures all necessary documents are available and reduces manual document management.
3. Automated invitations and access management:
- Description: Send automatic invitations to interested parties and manage access levels based on predefined rules.
- Benefits: Streamlines stakeholder engagement and ensures safe and appropriate access.
4. Automation of tasks and milestones:
- Description: Automatically assign tasks and milestones to relevant stakeholders based on deal type and stage.
- Benefits: Ensures accountability and keeps deal progress on track.
5. Notification automation:
- Description: Send push notifications for task updates, document uploads, or other relevant activities within the trading room.
- Benefits: Keeps stakeholders informed and engaged in real time.
6. Report Automation:
- Description: Generate and send automated reports on deal progress, activities, and performance metrics.
- Benefits: Provides stakeholders with regular information and updates without manual reporting efforts.
7. Electronic signature automation:
- Description: Integrate electronic signature solutions to facilitate automated document signing workflows.
- Benefits: Streamlines the approval process and improves the efficiency of closing deals.
8. Integration automation:
- Description: Automatically sync data between the deal room and other tools/platforms (such as CRM, ERP, etc.) via API integrations.
- Benefits: Ensures data consistency and availability across all platforms.
To discuss more about trading room automation, you can schedule a meeting with our sales operations experts.
