By Yamin Choudhury on Thu 18 April 2024
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Do you want to know what a typical day looks like for a Sales Placement? Read Yamin's blog where he dives into the world of sales and shares what he's learnt so far in his placement at ProspectSoft.
Hello everyone, my name is Yamin. I’m one of the Sales Placements at ProspectSoft. I’m currently studying Economics at Sussex Uni and have just completed the eighth month of my placement. I have gotten really stuck into my role and things have been going really well! I initially wanted to do a placement so I could get a year of experience in Sales under my belt and experience a commercial environment for myself. I want to be able to hit the ground running in terms of work after I graduate so having this experience, I believe will prove invaluable for me in the future. Additionally, doing a placement with a strong skill set post-graduation further increases my potential employability.
We had some great training at the beginning of the year! This first consisted of an in-depth introduction to Prospect CRM given by the founder, Andy. This was a great starter session that got us all excited for our year at the company. We were then given a full in-person demonstration of how the CRM worked. This was conducted by the Sales Manager, Stuart. This really described the full Sales process to us and how you would approach presenting the CRM to a customer.
After this, we were tasked with giving our own demo of the CRM which was assessed by our management and the Sales team. This allowed us to understand the product we were using and ultimately selling to our customers. The final segment of our training was the handover we had with the previous placements; we were able to work alongside the previous year’s placements that were nearing the end of their time at the company. This allowed us to cover the extent of our roles but more importantly clear up any doubts or worries we had before fully entering our roles.
The daily routine as a Sales placement consists of several different things. Firstly, we need to check if we have any morning meetings, these will usually be meetings with the Sales team. We can voice any concerns we have with potential customers, and we can run through any other questions we might have. Additionally, these meetings often consist of the Sales consultants running through potential issues and questions they have, I’ve found that these conversations can be good to sit in on and listen to because as a Sales placement, their varied individual perspectives and advice can prove to be very helpful.
Once all my morning meetings have come to an end, it’s time to start the main bulk of work for the day! To begin with, I begin working through all my tasks for the day, ensuring I prioritise the hardest jobs first. I like to take the “Eat the frog approach,” encouraged by ProspectSoft and The Access Group when tackling a challenging task. This is when you have a go at the hardest part of your work first before completing your easier tasks. These harder tasks can consist of chasing payments; sending out invoice and debit chase emails and calling to follow up with customers who have outstanding invoices.
Secondly, there are New Sign Up and Opportunity tasks, these are the potential customers we reach out to and send emails to. These calls and emails consist of encouraging customers to take a free trial, integrate their ERP systems into the CRM, and ultimately book in demos for these customers. The placements have access to all the Sales consultants' calendars so we can ensure demos are booked conveniently for both the Salesperson and the customer.
I find working with my managers Stuart and Louise meaningful and helpful. At Prospect you are treated as an integral part of the team you’re in and the company you work for. I have weekly one-to-one calls with Louise on top of the frequent sales meetings, which has allowed me to really build a strong relationship with my manager and Sales team. Working with both Stuart and Louise has also given me an insight into what life can be like as a high-level Salesperson, and the skills that are required.
The Last aspect of our daily tasks today revolves around booking potential customers onto the monthly webinar that showcases Prospect CRM. We get provided with a list of potential customers that we need to reach out to and get registered for the webinar. We contact them using information we are given, or resources we’re able to find online. This part of the role is a lot more independent and requires a more investigative approach as we need to identify the right person to talk to within the company, locate their number/email, and pitch the online seminar to them. These webinar calls have a strong influence on reaching our monthly KPIs and heavily affect our monthly performance.
We had some great training at the beginning of the year! This first consisted of an in-depth introduction to Prospect CRM given by the founder, Andy. This was a great starter session that got us all excited for our year at the company. We were then given a full in-person demonstration of how the CRM worked. This was conducted by the Sales Manager, Stuart. This really described the full Sales process to us and how you would approach presenting the CRM to a customer.
After this, we were tasked with giving our own demo of the CRM which was assessed by our management and the Sales team. This allowed us to understand the product we were using and ultimately selling to our customers. The final segment of our training was the handover we had with the previous placements; we were able to work alongside the previous year’s placements that were nearing the end of their time at the company. This allowed us to cover the extent of our roles but more importantly clear up any doubts or worries we had before fully entering our roles.
The daily routine as a Sales placement consists of several different things. Firstly, we need to check if we have any morning meetings, these will usually be meetings with the Sales team. We can voice any concerns we have with potential customers, and we can run through any other questions we might have. Additionally, these meetings often consist of the Sales consultants running through potential issues and questions they have, I’ve found that these conversations can be good to sit in on and listen to because as a Sales placement, their varied individual perspectives and advice can prove to be very helpful.
Once all my morning meetings have come to an end, it’s time to start the main bulk of work for the day! To begin with, I begin working through all my tasks for the day, ensuring I prioritise the hardest jobs first. I like to take the “Eat the frog approach,” encouraged by ProspectSoft and The Access Group when tackling a challenging task. This is when you have a go at the hardest part of your work first before completing your easier tasks. These harder tasks can consist of chasing payments; sending out invoice and debit chase emails and calling to follow up with customers who have outstanding invoices.
Secondly, there are New Sign Up and Opportunity tasks, these are the potential customers we reach out to and send emails to. These calls and emails consist of encouraging customers to take a free trial, integrate their ERP systems into the CRM, and ultimately book in demos for these customers. The placements have access to all the Sales consultants' calendars so we can ensure demos are booked conveniently for both the Salesperson and the customer.
I find working with my managers Stuart and Louise meaningful and helpful. At Prospect you are treated as an integral part of the team you’re in and the company you work for. I have weekly one-to-one calls with Louise on top of the frequent sales meetings, which has allowed me to really build a strong relationship with my manager and Sales team. Working with both Stuart and Louise has also given me an insight into what life can be like as a high-level Salesperson, and the skills that are required.
The Last aspect of our daily tasks today revolves around booking potential customers onto the monthly webinar that showcases Prospect CRM. We get provided with a list of potential customers that we need to reach out to and get registered for the webinar. We contact them using information we are given, or resources we’re able to find online. This part of the role is a lot more independent and requires a more investigative approach as we need to identify the right person to talk to within the company, locate their number/email, and pitch the online seminar to them. These webinar calls have a strong influence on reaching our monthly KPIs and heavily affect our monthly performance.