• Article
  • Jul.28.2016

JIRA for sales teams

  • Jul.28.2016
  • Reading time mins

In this series of blogs, we’ll be revealing how we use Atlassian tools here at Valiantys in our day-to-day work. In the first installment of our JIRA for teams series, Account Manager Bertrand Manscourt explains how JIRA can be used to streamline the sales process. 

The challenge for sales teams

There’s one unique domain where coordination, communication and teamwork are absolute fundamentals – the sales process!

Every sales professional has heard at least one of the following remarks at some point:

  • This isn’t what I was sold
  • What you’ve delivered is different to the proposal
  • The salesperson told me this…
  • I haven’t received my delivery

And it doesn’t end there – sales professionals can often feel confused at times because they don’t feel aligned with other teams  (finance and projects being prime examples), and this disconnect can seriously affect a team’s ability to deliver. So how do you ensure your sales team is always in the loop with other business units, and that it’s delivering exactly what the customer wants?

This is where JIRA Software comes to life, streamlining, simplifying and driving improved efficiency of the entire sales process by making things collaborative and transparent. The result? Happy customers and a happy sales team.

Let’s take a closer look at how we do this here at Valiantys.

Leveraging JIRA for sales teams

At the very beginning of the sales cycle, a sales person wins the deal – if they are doing their job properly, at least! But the next step involves the wider involvement of colleagues – actions like sending the PO and other important information for the order to be processed, passing on invoicing information to accounts and ensuring other members of the sales team have all the relevant information they need.

But instead of sending numerous forwarded emails to get everyone up to speed on the details, JIRA Software enables the creation of an issue, or ticket, with a number of fields. This can include information like the customer name, industry, service sold, price and contact information – details that give the recipient everything they need to know both about the context of the sale and the individual task in hand.

Any fields added later on in the process that aren’t useful to the salesperson won’t appear, but may be visible to other teams. (i.e. the workload information or name of the consultant that will eventually be working on the project.)

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 10.38.27

Visibility across teams

The project manager or service delivery manager then takes responsibility for the ticket, and is assigned to manage all the ticket’s relevant fields regarding the implementation. This is based on the appropriate workflow previously configured by the project lead. Here’s an example:

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 10.38.41

At the same time, the finance manager or accounting department can also access the ticket, where they can input information or download or upload documents within the ticket. In fact, anyone that is part of the sales process can add a comment on the ticket at any time. What’s more, everyone involved in the project has access to the same information, so all team members are well-equipped to keep the customer informed or answer any questions.

Staying connected with HipChat

What’s more, another Atlassian product, HipChat, can be connected to your JIRA instance to enable one-on-one chat around the project or the creation of a chat room based around the ticket name or issue reference. This is often how we communicate and collaborate around projects here at Valiantys.

JIRA dashboards for greater transparency

Finally, each team member involved in the project can create their own dashboard in JIRA in order to access important information that will be useful to day-to-day work – things like statistics or an issue list. This gives each business unit perfect visibility into the sales process while enabling each team to work on their individual project issues autonomously.

The outcome? A customer that has received the exact deliverables they requested, and a sales team that feels productive, efficient and connected to other teams around them.

Discover how Atlassian tools can simplify your sales process.

Contact us today

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