The Importance, Rules & Key Benefits of Sales Compliance
Author: Alex Morgan
Sales teams engage with customers through a variety of channels, using a variety of tools throughout the sales process. While these technologies can help teams complete sales quicker, they also offer regulatory difficulties for companies.
Sales teams rely largely on technologies that assist them in automating their sales operations, such as email marketing tools, CRM software, and marketing automation software. These technologies may be vitally important for growing organizations, yet they frequently pose data privacy risks.
A sales staff, for example, may acquire personal and sensitive information from clients such as their emails, phone numbers, and names. The data must be gathered and handled securely; if it falls into the wrong hands, the organization may be subjected to privacy violations and breaches.
Furthermore, once consumers provide agreement, firms must guarantee that their information is only used for the agreed-upon reasons. Customers who provide their permission for a sales team to utilize their information for marketing reasons must ensure that the information is used correctly.
What Exactly is Sales Compliance?
Sales compliance is the process of ensuring that all of your organization's sales communications conform to regulatory requirements.
In practice, sales compliance includes ensuring that all contacts with consumers are in line with the appropriate regulations at all touchpoints.
Organizations are responsible for ensuring that communications sent by their sales employees are correct, truthful, and in accordance with all relevant standards, whether they are sent by email, social media, phone, or text messaging.
Why is Sales Compliance so Important?
Sales communications are an extension of marketing communications when it comes to compliance monitoring. The key distinction is that in sales communications, a salesperson frequently communicates directly to one or a few people rather than a larger audience.
Because these communications are subject to the same rules and regulations as other marketing materials, they are not immune to regulatory scrutiny. Failure to meet these regulatory obligations may result in regulatory scrutiny and enforcement action being taken against your company.
From a liability aspect, sales compliance is critical for a sales organization. If the company's sales methods are inconsistent, the company must be able to demonstrate that its rules, processes, and procedures are consistent. Otherwise, the company may risk liability litigation if specific sales procedures are not followed.
Businesses may ensure full compliance with rules and policies by ensuring that all personnel, from C-suite executives to entry-level salesmen, fulfill necessary legal requirements.
Sales compliance is especially important for sales firms operating in highly regulated areas, such as banking or healthcare. Noncompliance has severe implications, including penalties, remedial expenses, and customer loss.
Benefits of Sales Compliance
Compliance is beneficial for sales because it increases trust between a firm and its customers. If a sales organization is under scrutiny by regulatory agencies, customers may be hesitant to purchase products or services from that organization.
Organizations that establish and follow strong compliance measures and procedures may benefit from improved sales performance. Strong sales compliance measures may help companies boost their sales, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce the risk of costly customer turnover.
Sales compliance also enables firms to identify potential risks and inconsistencies early on. If a company's sales procedures are inconsistent, it may not only face regulatory scrutiny but also legal liability.
Compliance can reduce expenses associated with regulatory fines and litigation, as well as decrease the risk of customer loss.
How to Maintain Compliance
It is the job of corporate executives to guarantee that the corporation abides by relevant legislation governing sales techniques. Businesses can avoid the risk of regulatory scrutiny, penalties, and client loss by ensuring that their sales methods comply with these requirements.
There are several ways to ensure that your organization's sales methods comply with regulatory standards. Let's outline a few rules that, if followed, will help your company stay on the safe side.
Obtain Consent to Send Emails and Store Data
Many businesses provide important information in return for an email address. It is an effective marketing tactic, and many potential consumers are willing to provide their email addresses in exchange for something in return, such as a free trial or whitepaper. However, use caution while storing and sending automated emails to these addresses. Email verification process can help ensure that the email addresses collected are valid and reduce the chances of bounces or spam complaints.
Consent is the key to compliance. Companies can only send follow-up emails to potential consumers or add them to an automated email list with their permission.
This may be as simple as adding a checkbox to your sign-up form so potential customers can agree to receive follow-up emails.
Similarly, if you are keeping a customer's information for later use, you must notify them. Make careful to notify the customer before automatically adding them to your CRM. If they advise you that they do not want their information preserved, you must respect their wishes and remove their data.
Although this may appear to be an inconvenience, you may be saving your organization both time and liability. Your salesmen do not have to waste time on administration, nor do they have to waste time on follow-ups. It also reduces the possibility of client data loss if your data is stolen by hackers.
Allow Users to Unsubscribe
Allowing anybody to unsubscribe from your emails at any moment is another crucial part of compliance. Again, permission is at the core of data protection and offering potential consumers the option to unsubscribe later guarantees you retain their consent even if you do not.
If you haven't previously, put up a page where consumers may unsubscribe from emails. Also, make sure to include a link to this website in every email you send. This not only ensures compliance, but it also makes potential consumers feel more comfortable signing up for emails in the first place if they know they may unsubscribe at any moment.
Always Encrypt Client Information
When you have your clients' permission to keep their data, you cannot just store it wherever. Each company is responsible for the security of its customers' data. Protect your customers' data with a comprehensive privacy policy that specifies how to gather, keep, and transmit information. Data must be secured and safeguarded against possible breaches in order to ensure compliance.
Ensure Compliance Across Different Channels
Another thing to bear in mind is that sales teams frequently connect with consumers through several channels. These channels must be watched and tracked to ensure that they do not break any sales compliance requirements accidentally.
Some of the most popular channels utilized by sales teams that must be matched with sales compliance standards are as follows:
- Website and social media — While most web or social media interactions can be categorized as marketing compliance, social accounts or web pages may be classed as sales compliance since they contact directly with customers, and they should be closely monitored for compliance infractions. With an appropriate social media archiving solution, businesses are able to monitor their own social media accounts and web pages for compliance.
- Emails and text messages — When it comes to compliance, one-on-one email contacts or text messaging between salespeople and customers might be a source of concern. These emails frequently include sensitive information that must be kept for the duration of the retention period. That is why it is critical to have a solid data archiving plan in place that specifies how long sensitive data should be maintained.
- Calls to the sales and support centers — What agents or sales professionals say to consumers over the phone must follow certain guidelines. They must also adhere to scripts and address complaints in accordance with company regulations.
Reconsider Making Cold Calls and Sending Emails
Cold calling has existed almost as long as the telephone. It is one technique for businesses to acquire new clients, but it may be time to reconsider how your organization contacts potential leads.
While cold calling remains a convenient, effective method, it is not without risks. Many consumers view unsolicited phone calls and emails as annoying and intrusive. In fact, 67% of consumers have reported being irritated by cold calls.
Additionally, legal regulations such as Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) restrict how businesses may contact potential consumers.
GDPR does enable companies to contact another consumer or business if there is grounds to think that they have a legitimate interest. This means that you must be highly specific in your audience and develop a more personalized email.
Educate Your Employees
Using an established, fully-compliant sales training program is the greatest approach to prevent legal liabilities and sales compliance concerns. This should contain instructional modules to help sales personnel comprehend the regulations that govern their sales operations, as well as personally tailored training courses.
Now It's Your Turn
Ensuring sales compliance may appear to be a big chore, but it does not have to be. The monitoring and compliance of your company's consumer sales interactions may be automated using technology.
With the use of compliance technologies and the application of suitable compliance policies, potential compliance issues may be automatically identified, monitored, and resolved across all of these sources.
Digital Marketing Manager at SE Ranking with experience in SEO, digital and content marketing. She's a persistent advocate of using content marketing to build a solid brand. In her spare time, she's dedicated to reading.
