Rescuing overworked and understaffed sales teams

2020 saw a lot of universal changes in the motorcoach industry. One of those was a radical reduction in sales staff. Business went to almost zero seemingly overnight, and the phones stopped ringing. Drastic measures were the only way to survive, and sales teams were one of the first things to be trimmed down or even eliminated. 

Thankfully, the business has, in many places, seen a significant rebound in 2021, and the forecast for 2022 is bright. Companies have slowly brought their fleets back online and have spooled up to meet growing demand. Of course, it still isn’t all sunshine and roses, the driver shortage is real, and we have yet to see some of our primary business sectors return to pre-pandemic levels. But, for the first time in a long time, there is light ahead. It’s a good feeling. 

What’s not being talked about as often as it should is the effect this has had on our sales teams. Many companies define their current sales staffing as “lean,” but the truth is a bit more dramatic than that.

For example, in 2019, a company might have been running a fleet of 20 vehicles and had a sales team of 3 people. Like most companies in March of 2020, they cut that fleet down to just a few buses, and at the same time, furloughed the sales team. Fast forward to January 2022, and they have slowly put more and more of their fleet back on the road and are back up to around 15 vehicles. But the sales team hasn’t come back at the same rate, and their “lean” department consisted of a single salesperson. 

This same story is playing out across the industry right now. But, unfortunately, what most are calling lean is actually just an understaffed department struggling to keep its head above water and keep quotes going out in a timely fashion, let alone do meaningful follow-up and actual sales. 

The pandemic has reshaped the industry. There are fewer buses because of the number of companies who have closed their doors and because of a reduction in fleet sizes almost across the board. There are some excellent signs that demand is headed back to pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases, we are seeing new customers and new types of business that we have not seen in years past. While it’s good news, it also presents some significant challenges for our current sales teams. 

So what do we do? Unfortunately, hiring new salespeople isn’t as easy as it sounds in the middle of the “great resignation,” and hiring people with experience in our industry is becoming increasingly difficult. The answer may surprise you, but it can’t be to allow selling our services to fall prey to “not enough time”. 

We have talked about how necessary follow-up is in the charter booking process for years. Brokers have proven that being responsive to customers’ needs allows them to book at rates significantly higher than our own. Their only competitive advantage… they are better at follow-up. They get back to the buyer quicker and ask for the sale. 

As we have worked as an industry to embrace this same level of sales, we have consistently fallen back to a manual process. A process that relies completely on a salesperson that has to generate quotes, send emails, make calls, and ask for the booking. Yet, if we are honest, even if we were good at getting quotes out during the best of times in a day or so, our follow-up was spotty at best. 

Overlay this manual, labor-intensive process with current staffing levels and quickly rebounding demand, and the outcomes are clear. Overworked sales departments are letting business fall through the cracks, and follow-up has virtually come to a stop. 

There is hope. Technology can help you make your sales team more effective and refocus their efforts on the most important and profitable business. This means making your website a much more effective part of your sales team. In the past, your website has been little more than a virtual brochure and a tool to gather data to generate a quote. Thankfully, times have changed, and now your website can deliver accurate quotes, trigger automated follow-up processes, even ask for the sale, totally and completely automatically. 

This technology isn’t designed to replace a sales team but to make them more effective. Imagine 80% of the quotes you do being fully automated, 100% accurate, and delivered to the customer in near real-time. Imagine if your overworked sales team could focus on highly complex moves, contracts, and targeting personalized follow-up based on the value of the move to the company. Imagine a dashboard that shows you exactly what the sales pipeline is and that provides your sales team with clear and actionable data of what business they should follow up with. 

For years owners and managers have wanted to modernize the quote and sales process. They have wanted their customers to have an experience similar to renting a car, buying an airline ticket, or finding a vacation home. They have wanted to hire sales teams that can actually sell and not just take data and spit out quotes. They have wanted to be able to hire people without experience in our industry but who can have a meaningful impact on sales from day one. 

That day has come. Let us show you how.