Sales reps only spend 1/3rd of their time selling
According to the third edition of the Salesforce State of Sales report, inside sales reps spend on average 34% of their days only selling. The rest of the time they’re busy seeking out prospects, planning tasks and entering data. In addition, reps end up using on average 6 different tools to manage their sales activity.
With this in mind, it’s clear that something needs to change.
Sales Engagement: less admin, more selling!
Two of the main benefits of selling with Sales Engagement are the Lightning Sales Console and Work Queues. With these tools you have highly tailored and centralized workspaces which enable your sales reps to view everything on one screen.
Reps can see and manage their work queue in one place whilst simultaneously viewing all of the relevant information related to the lead or contact. Viewing and interacting with tasks efficiently means more time selling!
How do sales reps know if they can call a prospect?
If you’re cold calling as part of your sales strategy, you need to be careful. The country you’re operating in might have a registry of numbers it is illegal to call. For example, the USA has the ‘Do Not Call’ registry and the UK has the ‘Telephone Preference Service (TPS)’. You can get hit with hefty fines for noncompliance.
If you don’t know about the Telephone Preference Service (and corporate equivalent), then don’t worry! Ruth, our Marketing Director, wrote up this really handy guide to tell you everything you need to know.
If you are up to speed, then ask yourself how efficient is your process? Your reps could be wasting a lot of time using an external service to screen numbers. And can you really trust that a process involving extra manual effort is actually being done?
PhoneTools provides manual and automated TPS and CTPS screening right from within Salesforce. This means sales reps can see at a glance whether the number is safe to call or not.
How do sales reps know when to call a prospect?
Having all of your sales information in one place is great, but it’s what your reps do with it that counts. This is where a nifty piece of AddressTools functionality comes in.
Reaching out to a prospect at 2am or scheduling a meeting without considering their timezone frustrates the client and leaves your sales reps feeling unproductive.
AddressTools is great for making sure your address data is verified, validated and standardized, but it also displays the current time to the sales rep. Best of all, it’s right there within Salesforce so no extra windows or manual effort for your sales team! This small piece of functionality can make a huge difference for both the sales rep and client experience.
Sales Engagement: optimizing your sales process
In this article you’ve learned the importance of:
- taking the time to review your sales process
- cutting down on the number of different tools you need
- keeping everything at your sales reps’ fingertips in Salesforce
What’s left? Make those changes and watch how you save time, stay compliant and ultimately sell more!
PhoneTools
Screen against the UK TPS and CTPS databases to stay compliant and avoid fines.
AddressTools
The award-winning package for address standardization, validation and verification.