Sales professionals are usually gifted with people. They know how to make someone comfortable, build rapport and explain complex things in an understandable way. But they don’t necessarily know how to use the latest technology to their benefit. Technology after all requires investment, learning and integrating into existing methods. Why bother?
The reason why sales teams should embrace new technologies is because they will be able to work smarter, not harder to achieve the same results. It is just a matter of picking and choosing the tech that will most benefit the type of sales being done. Here are 5 technologies that your sales team should consider employing to ensure their commission checks grow as fast as their competition’s.
Schedule Meetings with No Back and Forth
Wouldn’t it be great if you could schedule meetings without the hassle of back-and-forth emails to determine availability? You can!
Tools like Calendly link up with your current calendar (Outlook, Google, etc), and determine your availability based on your currently scheduled meetings and appointments.
Users simply set up their desired meeting types, and are then provided with a unique link to share with others. When clients, prospects or colleagues click on this link, they are presented with a list of meeting times that are available on your calendar. They just click, complete the form and submit.
Integrate Among CRM, Email & Voice
CRM solutions have developed a lot over the years and there are now services available to make it easier and more efficient for salespeople to update their CRM system straight from email or their VoIP business phone system. We use Salesforce integrated with Google Apps for Work, and our sales team can easily track accounts, opportunities, activities and more without having to manually enter a lot of data. Moreover, calls are logged automatically, and when a contact or lead calls, their Salesforce record pops up on screen. It not only saves time, but helps us serve customers better as we are able to access their relevant information quicker.
Automate with Salesforce.com
CRM automation systems prevent sales teams wasting time on arduous, repetitive tasks including scheduling appointments, supplying follow-up content, customising templates and sending out updated quotes. These admin-related tasks take them away from the key task of driving sales and productivity suffers as a result. Salesforce automation (SFA) technology for example, takes the admin out of the hands of sales teams by automating many of these tasks, freeing them up to focus on selling. Sales managers also use SFA technology to keep their teams up to speed with the latest sales data and new product information to optimise and assist the sales process.
Social Platforms: Driving Sales Built On Trust
Before today’s millennial customers make a sale, they are likely to go online and do research. A leading study reports that 73% of millennials say it is important to read others’ opinions before making a purchase. Sales teams that tap into social media to provide millennials with the engaging, relevant content are more likely to see positive results. In fact, a recent study reports that 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers. But what time-saving technology that will really help your sales team in this arena? Try applications like Everypost. Using Everypost and similar software, your team can share their posts across all social media accounts with one click, rather than re-post in each individual account.
Big Data for Better Insights
Using big data analytics tools, sales teams can now manage prospecting with more insight than ever before. Traditionally, prospecting has been a time and labour-intensive process. Now, through the use of analytics and customer data models, organisations can not only identify potential customers, but more accurately predict which leads from B2C or B2B lead generation efforts are likely to become clients. This gives the sales team a clearer idea of where to focus their efforts. Analytics also help organisations determine which customers to target, how to use profiles to identify lookalike customers and which buyers are most likely to respond to different messages and offers.
About VTSL
VTSL is the leading VoIP business phone service provider in the UK, offering a range of unified communications solutions. With VoIP-CRM integration, mobile integration and a variety of purpose-built applications for SMEs, VTSL offers solutions that help organisations, and sales teams, work smarter. To learn more about how IP business phones, VOIP business telephony or unified communications solutions can help your business, start with a quote from VTSL by clicking here.
