You know its a great idea to survey your customers about various things. Have you ever thought about surveying your sales team?
Whether you’ve hit a sales growth ceiling, are entering new markets or planning new hiring, a survey can be a great way to be sure you clearly see the biggest challenges and opportunities faced by your sales team.
We also recommend a sales team survey as step one in beginning an online CRM implementation. Review our best practice online CRM implementation plan here.
Our 4 Steps to Market Domination includes these Sales Team Survey questions and our step by step guide to organizing customers, automating lead generation and reaching your goals.
Below is a complete list of questions we like to use. Most surveys only include some subset of the below. Some of these questions are great as multiple choice, and you’ll see some suggested answers below. However, many of these questions are best asked as open ended questions. Let the sales team tell you the things you haven’t already thought of!
Sales Survey Recommendations
It’s probably best to keep the survey anonymous. You may not like some of what you hear. You need to know that stuff! Don’t discourage frank feedback by tracking who says what.
Don’t react to what you learn with immediate new initiatives for the sales team or, of course, accusations or recriminations. That will only discourage honest input in the future.
Take a few days to consider what you learn. Summarize the findings and then share them with the team. You may find that some of the feedback was not a general consensus.
Pick out a short list of 3 or 4 opportunities to address and let the sales team be part of implementing the plans.
In the case of implementing your CRM solution, keep it simple. Choose the areas where most of the team agree that the CRM can add the most value to sales growth, customer retention and profits and focus on those areas. Don’t try to make your CRM all things to all people. Win the important battles.
Sales Team Survey Questions
(Get the entire Sales Team Survey in our 4 Steps to Market Domination)
What’s the biggest obstacle to adding new customers?
Not enough leads, entrenched competitors, competitive pricing, competitive products, making contact with new leads and prospects
What is working and what is not?
What are opportunities for growth do you feel we’re missing? Why?
If you had a magic wand and could fix one problem, what would it be?
Who is your toughest competitor? What are they doing right?
What functions or processes consume most of your time? Rank them…
Calling new leads, following up with prospects (qualified leads), preparing proposals/quotes, customer meetings, internal/company meetings, travel
In what areas do you feel you/we are unable to respond to the customer quickly enough?
Pricing and availability, customer service, new product ideas/designs
What information do you find yourself looking for most often? Why?
Customer order history, pricing and availability, customer contact information
What information are customers asking for most often?
What’s the worst part of your job?
What’s the best part of your job?
How do you currently manage your daily call list?
On paper, Outlook tasks and reminders, iPhone/Android tasks and reminders, Franklin planner or similar
How do you prepare for a customer meeting?
What information do you bring to a customer meeting?
Past order history, open orders/proposals, new/additional product collateral
How can you see a centralized database of customer information benefiting the company the most?
How can it benefit you the most?
What worries you the most about implementing a new CRM?
What excites you the most about implementing a new CRM?
What information do you wish you had about customers?
What marketing would you like to see us do more of?
Social, email, print ads, radio, tv, trade shows