Inside Sales Adventures

Toll Free Numbers

2009-12-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

Consumers are used to being offered 1-800 numbers to dial. Because these phone numbers are toll free for the caller they are appealing to customers. 1-800 numbers are an effective for any remote sales businesses to get people to call them.

Toll free numbers are set up to charge the called party, not the calling party, for the placed call. This added cost of the phone call is offset by the benefits of toll free telephone numbers, especially if the business has some way to directly monetize incoming calls.

Using one or more toll free numbers increases company visibility, and encourages customers to call. This benefit is one of the most obvious returns to establish such a number. Toll free numbers can also increase company efficiency, and there are numerous telephony software solutions that have been designed to help remote sales teams to do this.

One such software solution is a lead management CRM. By linking inbound toll free calls to the CRM, relevant, real time information on the caller will automatically be captured and updated in the CRM’s database. These leads can be saved as future prospects for phone or email campaigns.

Another piece of telephony software that helps sales reps capitalize on toll free numbers is inbound-outbound call blending telephony. With this, sales reps may make outbound calls while they wait to receive an inbound call. The use of a CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) system blending can additionally enhance call blending. These CTI solutions often involve pop-ups or pop-screens, windows that open automatically when the inbound call is answered. This immediately displays all relevant information and allows the sales rep to easy update the contacts data in the CRM.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is another business solution that increases the effectiveness of toll free calls. ACD software is known as call routing software, and it automatically forwards incoming calls to the best available agent. Individual agents can be specified as the primary agent for individual toll free numbers or geographic locations. If preferred agents are not available, incoming calls can then be routed to a designated fail-over destination. This could be the company’s general telephone line, an internal messaging system, or a private cell phone.

The implementation of a toll free number can be the added incentive a potential customer needs to call a business they have not contacted before. These telephony pieces of telephony software gives sales representatives the tools they need to make these calls even more profitable.

What can separate a Remote Sales Professional from a Telemarketer?

2009-12-14T10:39:00.001-07:00

rWhat can separate a Remote Sales Professional from a Telemarketer?

Even those of us who work in telephony software can find ourselves annoyed with telemarketers. Perhaps we are even more annoyed with the tactless tactics these sales people use because we see how telesales should be done. We know that there are types of auto dialers that fix many of the “problems” with remote selling by telephone.

Telemarketing originated in the 1950’s, and by the 70’s telemarketing companies were experiencing a tremendous amount of success. By the 1990’s telemarketing was often seen as a public nuisance, and by the end of the decade legislative action was taken with the implementation of the “Do Not Call” registry.

There are several reasons why telemarketers fell out of favor with the American public. These calls were often placed at the least opportune times, right about the time dinner was being served and the family was gathered together. Telesales professionals were often aggressive and refused to respect their contacts wishes not to purchase what they were selling.

On top of this is added the insult of the “telemarketer pause.” This occurs when the telesales company uses a predictive auto dialer. A predictive dialer calls more numbers than available sales agents. It does this based on the amount of dropped calls or busy signals it has been encountering, as well as how much time the sales agents are spending on an average call. Since there is no guarantee that there won’t be more calls answered than there are sales agents to take those calls a percentage of calls trigger a telemarketer pause. This is when there is no agent on the line when the contact answers – the phone is dead.

It is a possibility that such a call will be routed to a sales agent shortly, but in these cases the person called is expected to remain on the line and wait. Most often these contacts simply hang up the phone. With practices like these it is no wonder that we all find ourselves annoyed with these telemarketers.

Responsible remote sales professionals opt for a different kind of auto dialer – a Power Dialer. A power dialer only calls one number at a time for each available sales representative; there is no opportunity for a telemarketer pause to occur. This kind of auto dialer not only satisfies the call center’s need to make more calls but also gives the potential customers being called courtesy that a predictive auto dialer cannot.

It is up to the sales people to deal with the problems of over aggressiveness internally.

3 benefits of using Inbound – Outbound call blending

2009-10-26T10:35:00.000-06:00

Many call centers suffer because they completely separate the duties of calling outbound numbers and answering inbound calls. Inbound – outbound call blending is a telephony software solution that increases the productivity of an entire call center by allowing individual sales representatives to handle both inbound and outbound calls.

Sales reps who wish to perform both inbound and outbound calls log into an inbound call receiver and mark themselves as available to take incoming calls. While waiting to receive calls the rep can then log into an outbound initiative in their telephone dialer. By doing so the rep will continually be routed new outbound calls.

When an inbound call is received, inbound – outbound call blending technology routes that call to an available sales rep and disconnects that rep from the outbound dialing initiative (not a call). When the sales rep is finished with that call he is then able to jump right back to making outbound calls.

Screen pop is another type of CTI (computer telephony integration) software that increases the usability of inbound – outbound call blending. CTI screen pop creates a live data link between the sales rep and the company’s CRM for each inbound call. Screen pop detects the caller id of the incoming call and compares that to the CRM database. When a matching entry is found, screen pop opens a new window displaying all of the contact information and history for that phone number. If the incoming call’s caller id does not match an existing entry in the CRM, screen pop opens a blank window instead. The sales rep can record all of the relevant information inside this window which will be saved within the CRM.

This inbound – outbound call blending solution offers the following benefits:

First, businesses stay more productive during down time. By having the same sales representatives take inbound calls while making outbound calls, the amount of inbound calls slows during the work day the sales rep is able to stay just as busy. This creates a significant increase in net calls made and taken per day, per rep.

Second, businesses can spend less on payroll. Since inbound – outbound call blending allows sales reps to take care of both inbound and outbound calls, fewer employees need to be hired to cover both responsibilities.

Third, sales representatives can respond more intelligently to incoming calls. With the uses of CTI screen pop, sales reps are able to have all of the information they need on each incoming call to respond to that lead as effectively as possible.

Contact Managers, what can they do?

2009-10-23T14:05:00.000-06:00

Any sales team that sales remotely depends on fresh leads and contacts. A contact manager system keeps all of these leads in order and keeps sales reps selling.

Contact manager systems organize and control all of the tasks and processes associated with creating, contacting, and selling to leads. These systems, which are also called customer relationship managers or CRMs, start their job with lead capturing. A third party lead generation company is certainly one location that a contact manager can upload lead information from. Another productive source of leads is the company website. Contact managers can be programmed to gather information from web forms filled out and submitted on the internet. The information on these web forms are gathered and stored within the CRM and that lead is then qualified based on the information available.

A contact manager system organizes contacts into three separate categories (sometimes referred to as “buckets”). The contacts with in these three categories – leads, prospects, and customers – can have specific tasks assigned to them, or these contacts can be split into smaller groups within their category. Using a CRM a sales representative can interact with a whole group of contacts at once, such as sending them all an identical email or fax message.

Contact managers act as calendars to keep track of meetings or call-back appointments with contacts. Syncing with email systems like Microsoft Outlook and reminding agents of important meetings is only the beginning of what a CRM can accomplish.

Contact managers are the central piece of software that supports many of the other telephony software that allows call centers to function. Power dialers pull lists of leads from the CRM and upload all important data from a call there. Automatic call distribution, or ACD, routes inbound phone calls to the best available agent that is free when the call is received. Contact managers can also be the most reliable basis for business reporting. The real time analytics that a contact manager calculates allows for an accurate interpretation of data to show the underlying trends of the current sales market.

Contact managers also aid sales agents in fulfilling the needs of their contacts. One way that a customer relationship management system does this is with its prewritten email templates and voice messages. These emails or voice messages can be left by the CRM whenever the need arises, stopping the sales agent from wasting calling time in order to send emails to clients and contacts. A contact manager helps with all parts of inside sales.

5 benefits of using CTI Screen Pop with Autodialers for Remote Sales Reps

2009-10-23T13:00:00.002-06:00

Screen pop is a useful tool for sales reps that make outbound calls and receive inbound calls.

Screen pop is a form of CTI – computer telephony integration. This refers to any technology that enables a computer and a telephone work together. CTI includes a large number of telephony tools.

Screen pop is a feature of lead management CRMs and telephone dialing systems. Screen pop is especially useful when inbound/outbound call blending is being used.

Inbound/outbound call blending works as follows; first, the sales rep becomes available to receive incoming phone calls. The sales representative then signs in to an outbound autodialer initiative. The autodialer will continue to route new leads for the sales rep to call whenever he is available.

When an inbound call is received by the call center, and the sales rep is between calls, he is automatically marked as unavailable in the outbound autodialer initiative. The inbound call is then routed through to the sales representative.

When this call is routed, CTI screen pop is activated. The screen pop creates a live data link between the company CRM and the incoming call. Key information from the call is immediately captured within the CRM. The caller ID of the incoming call is compared to those stored in the lead management CRM, and the information stored on the incoming call is displayed on screen for the answering sales rep. If there are no records available within the data base a blank screen is displayed. The sales rep can record more contact information and notes on the phone call directly into the screen pop and those changes are saved within the CRM.

There are several important benefits from using CTI screen pop:

1. Sales reps can answer inbound calls knowing much more about those callers. This could include what search engine they visited the company website from and which keyword they had searched for, their company name, their phone number, and more.
2. Sales reps have instant access to prior conversations and the dates and times of those previous calls.
3. Sales reps can immediately capture inbound call data and mark the record for future use.
4. Sales representatives can appropriately response to calls coming from multiple inbound initiatives because of the relevant information presented to him at the start of each call.
5. All information gathered is stored within the lead management CRM’s centralized database, allowing any sales rep to have instant access to all relevant data on any specific caller.

Call Center Auto Dialers

2009-10-23T11:02:00.001-06:00

Inside sales is the process of collecting leads, making contacts, and closing sales from a remote location – typically over the telephone. This differs in several ways from outside sales, where sales professionals meet with their prospects face to face. Because it is different inside sales professionals need to utilize sales technologies in order to be the most effective, and compensate for the personal touch. An auto dialer is one such technology that is essential to productive inside sales call centers.

Call centers need to make as many quality calls in a day as they possibly can. A high number of outbound calls also allow call centers to contact individual leads numerous times, if necessary, in order to convert as many customers as possible. Many call centers use ratio auto dialers or predictive auto dialers because of the high level of calls that can be made each day with these solutions.

Ratio and predictive dialers both burn through a large number of leads very quickly because both types of dialers dial more leads than there are available sales agents to take those calls. This is done to account for the number of calls that are not answered or busy. These auto dialers also come with a percentage of dropped calls. For B2B call centers that have a more complex sales process and typically a higher profit on each call, dropped leads are not an option. In this case a power dialer is the only type of auto dialer that should be used.

Power Dialers call only one lead for each sales agent at a time. When a call starts to ring it is routed through to the agent. If the answering machine picks up the auto dialer can be instructed to leave a prerecorded message while the sales agent takes another call. Since these B2B sales are complex and could require a significant amount of time, the power dialer will not begin dialing other leads until the sales agent finishes his call. This solves the problem of burning through leads, dropped calls, and lag time.

Companies using a power dialer can expect to triple their daily call volume compared to manually dialing, but cannot dial the same volume of leads that a company using a ratio or predictive dialer can in a day, which for B2B companies is not necessary. What this kind of auto dialer may lack in shear call volume it more than makes up in its ability to provide each lead with a quality sales experience.

Key features of a Lead Management CRM

2009-10-16T15:41:00.004-06:00

A lead management CRM allows sales representatives to effectively use other telephony tools. The CRM is able to triple sales productivity by integrating there numerous telephony software tools into a single, easy to implement, software platform.

The simple interface of a lead management CRM allows sales reps to easily complete their required tasks. Everything a sales representative needs to do can be done within one computer window. From here he can choose to disconnect from the phone dialer, move on to the next call, schedule a call back appointment, view call reports, send an email, and a number of other key tasks.

The technology used by a lead management CRM also helps a sales rep know the best time to contact a web-based inquiry in order to contact, qualify, and close a sale. It uses what is known as web form callback technology to do this. The web form on any website can be programmed to capture the data from the form and transfer it to the CRM. Once in the customer relationship manager, the phone number is immediately routed to a sales rep. The CRM also makes the newly generated and captured lead a high priority for the sales rep to call, ensuring that the call is placed within minutes of the lead submitting information and demonstrating interest. According to a study with Insidesales.com and MIT, when leads are contacted that quickly, the contact rate increases upwards of 800%.

Lead management CRMs add further time saving features with automated voice messaging technology. During the calls when a lead is unable to be contacted, prerecorded messages can be left by the dialer while the sales rep moves on to the next call. Prior to making calls sales representatives can create a whole library of prerecorded voice messages, and have these messages checked for quality control. When a voice mail machine is encountered the sales rep only has to click a button on their screen to have one of those messages left while he moves onto the next sales opportunity. This keeps sales reps talking to live leads, not dealing with machines that can’t make a purchase.

Lead management CRM is a powerful productivity enhancing software solution that is suitable for both B2B and B2C remote sales. Users need very little training before using a CRM for their sales calls, and it has an immediate impact on any remote sales organization.

Online Customer Relationship Managers

2009-10-16T12:35:00.002-06:00

Online Customer Relationship Managers provide all of the functions a remote sales team needs to successfully operate. These online CRMs have telephony software solutions, such as power dialing and voice messaging, built right into them. These technologies are designed specifically for businesses who sell to other businesses through their website or over the phone.

Customer Relationship Managers provide a platform for organizing and managing all of the different processes related to inside sales. An online CRM is one specific type of customer relationship manager and is also called a hosted CRM. The software needed to run the CRM is stored on a host company’s server and is accessed over the internet. Using an online-hosted CRM frees an organization from needing to developing its own system and database. Additionally, the information stored in the CRM can be accessed from any computer with internet access. This can be especially convenient when sales agents work remotely and not all in one physical location.

Some of the key featuring that an online CRM includes are power dialing, voice messaging, fax, and email marketing.

A power dialer is also called a phone dialer or an auto dialer. Dialer software will automatically calls through a predefined list of phone numbers and patches them through to available sales reps. This automation software frequently triples the amount of calls each agent is able to make in a typical work day.

Voice messaging technology allows a sales agent to save a previously recorded voice message within the online CRM. By saving and using only their most compelling voice messages a good first impression can be guaranteed with each message left. Voice messages can also be designed allowing listeners to press a button on their own phone in order to prevent further calls from reaching them or to automatically patch them through to an available agent.

Fax and email messaging serves a similar purpose as voice mail. Carefully crafted templates for both kinds of messages can be saved in the online CRM. These templates can be sent to a contact that a sales rep is speaking to as soon as the contact requests additional information. Alternatively, these messages may be sent in place of a voice message. Since these messages are saved with the Customer Relationship Manager they can be sent by the system quickly with little extra work from the sales representative.

Recession Solution? Auto Dialer!

2009-10-02T13:48:00.001-06:00

Rising unemployment rates and sinking consumer confidence affects business to business companies, just like any other. In these slouching economic times, all businesses have to look at new ways to reach their targeted audiences.

An inefficient business can still turn a profit in a good economy, but a recession can painfully highlight all the failing areas in a company. One such area is manually dialing sales leads instead of automating the process using an auto dialer.

An inside sales call center who’s sales professionals manually dial all numbers can at times perform reasonably well when a greater percentage of contacts convert into clients. In a typical well-run B2B call center a sales professional, whose primary responsibility is lead generation, can be expected to make 40 or 50 calls each work day. That’s if he was dialing manually. Once that same sales professional switches to using an auto dialer he can expect to be making 170 to 350 calls each workday.

An auto dialer works like this: First the auto dialer has a contact list of leads loaded into the database. The auto dialer will then automatically place a call to each number on that list. Once dialed, the call is routed through to an available sales agent who takes the call as the number is ringing. If the call is busy or not answered, the auto dialer system can be used to send fax, voicemail, or email. By doing all this, auto dialers not only reduce the wasted time spent manually dialing, but also eliminate much of the wasted time spent dealing with busy signals and voice messaging systems.

A hosted auto dialer solution adds even more value to this system. By contracting with a hosted auto dialer provider the maintenance, development, and set up of the dialer is completed by the host company. Also, no software needs to be downloaded on company computers. Instead the auto dialer software is accessed through the internet. This allows sales professionals to work from any location with a telephone and a PC connected to the internet. A hosted dialer solution works with whatever hardware a call center may currently be using.

Inside sales operations can continue to grow in a difficult financial recession, but only when smart telephony technology is used. An auto dialer is such a solution that eliminates much of the wasted time in call centers.

Phone Dialer for the Complex Sale

2009-09-21T11:09:00.003-06:00

Business to business (B2B) sales occur when commerce happens between businesses, such as a manufacturer trades with a wholesaler or a wholesaler selling to a retailer. When a remote sales operation participates in B2B sales, those sales are often more complex than business to consumer (B2C) sales. These complex sales require different telephony software than the simpler B2C sales, such as a different kind of auto dialer.

All auto dialers work in a similar way, but not every kind could be described as a complex sale dialer. The purpose of any dialer is to increase the amount of calls and contacts a sales agent can complete in a business day. All auto dialers load a previously generated list of phone numbers and then systematically call each of those numbers. These calls are then routed through to a sales agent. This method is significantly faster than manually dialing, often bringing an increase in call volume upwards of four times what it was previous.

One of the largest differences in telephone dialers is the amount of phone numbers that the dialer calls at a time. Ratio dialers or predictive dialers call several at a time. This ensures that on each dialer a customer will be reached, but comes with some very large drawbacks. First, when a call is answered the dialer has to determine that there is someone on the line before they patch that call through to the sales agent. During this process there is a few second gap between when the contact answers the phone and when the sales rep starts speaking. This “telemarketer pause” is one of the negative experiences that contacts often complain about. Another problem that these kinds of dialers face occurs when more contacts answer the phone than there are available reps. When this occurs the extra calls are dropped, even when their was a person on the contacts line.

Both of these problems are not acceptable for a complex sale dialer. One of the unique qualities of the business to business sale is the “gatekeeper.” This can be either a recorded message system to navigate through or a receptionist whose job could very well be to prevent sales calls from reaching his or her employer. In order to speak to the important decision makers, sales teams cannot afford to come across as automated and impersonal. That is why power dialers are a much better solution for complex B2B sales. These complex sale auto dialers call only one phone number at a time for each available agent. This still speeds up the sales process dramatically, but eliminates the problems of dropped calls and telemarketer pauses.

2009-09-18T10:45:00.001-06:00

How to use an Auto Dialer... aka Don't be a rude Telemarketer

2009-09-11T11:11:00.003-06:00

What can separate a Remote Sales Professional from a Telemarketer?

Even those of us who work in telephony software can find ourselves annoyed with telemarketers. Perhaps we are even more annoyed with the tactless tactics these sales people use because we see how telesales should be done. We know that there are types of auto dialers that fix many of the “problems” with remote selling by telephone.

Telemarketing originated in the 1950’s, and by the 70’s telemarketing companies were experiencing a tremendous amount of success. By the 1990’s telemarketing was often seen as a public nuisance, and by the end of the decade legislative action was taken with the implementation of the “Do Not Call” registry.

There are several reasons why telemarketers fell out of favor with the American public. These calls were often placed at the least opportune times, right about the time dinner was being served and the family was gathered together. Telesales professionals were often aggressive and refused to respect their contacts wishes not to purchase what they were selling.

On top of this is added the insult of the “telemarketer pause.” This occurs when the telesales company uses a predictive auto dialer. A predictive dialer calls more numbers than available sales agents. It does this based on the amount of dropped calls or busy signals it has been encountering, as well as how much time the sales agents are spending on an average call. Since there is no guarantee that there won’t be more calls answered than there are sales agents to take those calls a percentage of calls trigger a telemarketer pause. This is when there is no agent on the line when the contact answers – the phone is dead.

It is a possibility that such a call will be routed to a sales agent shortly, but in these cases the person called is expected to remain on the line and wait. Most often these contacts simply hang up the phone. With practices like these it is no wonder that we all find ourselves annoyed with these telemarketers.

Responsible remote sales professionals opt for a different kind of auto dialer – a Power Dialer. A power dialer only calls one number at a time for each available sales representative; there is no opportunity for a telemarketer pause to occur. This kind of auto dialer not only satisfies the call center’s need to make more calls but also gives the potential customers being called courtesy that a predictive auto dialer cannot.

It is up to the sales people to deal with the problems of over aggressiveness internally.

2009-09-04T15:16:00.002-06:00

Over at InsideSales.com they've started up a company blog. They have an all-star team of employees over there, and they are sure to be providing some quality content. Check them out.

The Insider - Essays, Cool Ideas, & How-To's about Selling Remotely, by InsideSales.com
http://insider.insidesales.com/

What does a dialer do? How about a CRM?

2009-08-19T10:44:00.000-06:00

What does an auto-dialer do? The short answer is that it increases sales. That is a tall order for any one business tool. That is why auto-dialers go hand-in-hand with CRMs (customer relationship managers). This pairing provides all the options needed to triple or quadruple sales.

An auto-dialer is a telephony software solution that lets a single telephone operator call through a large volume of phone numbers. What that means is that any particular sales agent can increase the amount of calls that they make during a regular business day. The more calls made the more sales are made. The auto-dialer pulls these numbers from the CRM, which stores contact information in a database.

The auto-dialer automatically routes calls through to the sales rep. Wasted time dialing and dialing wrong or busy numbers is eliminated by the use of an auto-dialer. In addition, an auto-dialer can be programmed to only call numbers in specific time zones or geographic locations at predetermined times of day or days of the week. This allows agents to call leads only during the most productive hours.

Auto-dialers also speed up the how much time a sales rep needs to spend following up on calls each day. One way it does this is by automatically capturing and recording information on each call. This can include the name, address, zip code, and call duration for each lead. In addition, comments about the result of the contact can easily be typed into the CRM to be retrieved the next time that customer is dealt with by the sales team.

Following up is quicker and easier by email messaging or fax messaging software solutions built in to many Customer Relationship Managers. When a sales rep makes a promise to email or fax additional information to the contact he or she can do so immediately with a click of the button from within the CRM. Additionally, email and fax templates can be saved in the system that sales reps can quickly select and send. Consenting contacts can also be added to email campaigns. This is where the Customer Relationship Manager automatically sends, at predetermined intervals, a selection of previously written emails to the lead. The CRM automatically personalizes the emails with the name or business of the lead. These email campaigns serve to help the lead be prepared, or nurtured, for a future conversion

The dialer and CRM both cut time and increase revenue in sales. They effectively get agents connected to leads, keep in contact with clients, and prepare leads that did not convert to become valuable customers in the future.

A Comparison of Telephone Dialers

2009-08-19T10:38:00.000-06:00

A phone dialer is a type of telephony software that helps a single sales representative dial a large volume of leads. Because the phone dialer automatically calls through a predetermined list of contacts, the sales rep is able to stay on the phone longer and close more sales.

These dialers are also known as auto dialers or outbound dialers. These auto dialers will allow sales reps to reach thousands of prospective customers per day.

There are several types of telephone dialers, with the main kinds being ratio dialers, predictive dialers, and power dialers.

Ratio and predictive dialers both work to keep the sales reps on the phone every moment they are logged into a dialer initiative. Ratio dialers place numerous, simultaneous calls for each available sales representative. When one of these calls is answered the rest are dropped and the sales rep is transferred to that call. Predictive dialers usually call less people at a time, but start dialing leads before any sales representatives become available. This ensures that a lead will be waiting for each available sales rep, but when leads answer sales calls before any sales representatives are available, those leads are expected to wait on the line until a sales rep is routed in – they rarely do.

Dropped calls are a standard part of inside sales when using either a predictive or ratio dialer. Power dialers offer a solution to the problem of the dropped call.

A power dialer, in comparison to other dialers, focuses on quality interaction between the sales representative and their contact. This is achieved by having the power dialer place a call to only one lead at a time for each sales rep. The sales rep hears the phone rings, and can respond immediately when the call is answered. There is no “preferred drop rate” with a power dialer.

The power dialer is a technological improvement over manual dialing, increasing the number of calls made in a day by roughly 3 times. Power dialers are perfect for B2B communications, where secretaries need to be impressed by a sales rep before they connect him to their boss, and each individual sale is larger. In B2C sales, a power dialer stops the wasting of hundreds of leads a day because of the placement of too many calls.

All of these auto dialers can increase a sales representatives call per day ratio, but only a Power Dialer ensures that each call placed becomes a money making opportunity.

Lead Generation, Web Form Callback

2009-08-19T10:31:00.001-06:00

Companies succeed best when they have a lead generation plan. Web form call back is a powerful CRM and power dialer feature that can easily help any lead generation campaign be even more successful.

Many remote sales companies purchase a large number of unqualified leads for their sales representatives to cold call. Cold calling is the practice making unsolicited calls to potential customers. These cold calls have a very low rate of success, but the list of unqualified leads is often the cheapest to purchase. Companies who exclusively cold call often fail to realize that the money saved by purchasing cheap leads rarely equals the cost in time and money spent on calling these leads.

Another common, but ultimately unproductive, system for gathering leads is to expect sales reps to find their own. Companies who engage in this kind of practice frequently find their sales reps spending upwards of forty percent of their day trying to find a person to call.

An effective marketing campaign designed to generate leads is by far the best method of lead generation. These leads are pre-qualified by the marketing process, and significantly more likely to convert into a sale. The most successful businesses target many different outlets in their lead generation campaigns: radio, television, newspapers, and the web. Such marketing campaigns produce both scalable and sustainable sources of new and qualified leads.

The internet serves as a powerful tool in gathering the leads generated through marketing campaigns. The internet is currently the fastest growing and least expensive source of leads for almost every business. Web form callback technology makes the creation of an effective lead generating website even more important.

Web form callback works like this: First, a web form is created a posted on the company website. Interested prospects fill out the web form. The information on the form, such as name, phone number, and email, is instantly captured and transferred to a CRM. The accompanying dialer then routes that newly created contact to a sales rep. The rep then places a call to that lead. Within minutes of submitting the form online the lead is contacted.

Web form callback technology not only produces leads that are interested in the company’s services, it enables the sales rep to contact that lead while the company is still top of mind. This lead generation strategy yields much higher returns than any campaign that focuses on mass amounts of unqualified leads or on sales reps solely responsible to find their own.

Regardless of type, and Auto Dialer is a needed Sales Tool

2009-08-19T10:21:00.001-06:00

Auto dialers are powerful software tools used in inside sales. The purpose of an auto dialer is to give the sales representative the ability to dial more quality leads in a day as he or she could without the technology. Numerous companies provide auto dialer software for call centers and individual sales people to use in their work.

To operate, an auto dialer needs to be programmed with a list of phone numbers. If the sales company uses a CRM (customer relationship manager) this call list can be uploaded from the list of leads within the CRM database. As these numbers are called by the auto dialer the CRM displays for the sales rep all available information on the lead, including contact info and previous contact history. These numbers are routed to and answered by the best available sales rep. This greatly reduces the amount of time individual sales representatives spend looking up a leads’ contact information, manually dialing the phone numbers, and sitting through ring tones, busy signals, and answering machines.

Some auto dialer providers require their customers to purchase and host the auto dialer software on their own computer system. Others may require special hardware to be bought and installed to use their auto dialer system. These practices can drive up the cost of acquiring an auto dialer, significantly.

An alternative to this is a company that provides a hosted auto dialer. These hosted dialers require no on site software hosting, instead all of the necessary software and databases are housed on the host company's servers and accessed through the Internet. An online hosted auto dialer also requires less specific telephony hardware as some other auto dialer providers. Hosted auto dialers only require a telephone, a phone line, and a computer with Internet access.

Auto dialers are able to be integrated with other telephony software. A CRM can be used to upload and save data on the leads and customers dialed. Email and fax messaging solutions can be used to send important messages to contacts right from the dialer interface while the sales rep is still on the phone with the contact. Inbound-outbound call blending allows sales representatives who are using an auto dialer to also receive incoming business calls.

In addition to online auto dialers, there are several different forms of these telephone dialers, such as the power dialer that strategically dialers one lead per each available sales rep at a time. Regardless of the type of auto dialer, they are used for one purpose – make more calls and close more sales.

Presenting Ken Krogue!

2009-08-11T14:54:00.004-06:00

Ken is one the bosses over at InsideSales.com. He's a great guy with a keen sense on what works and what doesn't when it comes to remote sales opperations. He has quite the resume, but I'll let Ken tell you all about it over at his own Blog. It will be worth the click to get access at all of the juicy knowledge Ken's been gathering over the year.

Ken's Blog:
Inside Sales Entrepreneur
http://www.kenkrogue.com/

Why do I need software to do telemarketing?

2009-08-11T14:49:00.001-06:00

Businesses that practice remote sales need to use telemarketing software in order to be productive. Telemarketing is now used by many retail businesses, and these remote call centers should be organized, efficient, customer service oriented, and above all—profitable. Telemarketing software has been developed to help the growing number of businesses reach these goals. The use of telemarketing software provides a competitive edge in this market by allowing companies to get more done.

The auto dialer is a type of telemarketing software. Dialers call through a list of leads or contacts. In between calls the sales representative stays logged into the dialer system and the dialer continues to calls leads for him. This allows the dialer to immediately route new calls to the sales person. Over the course of a typical work day each sales agent is able to make more calls and spend more of their day selling. Compared to dialing manually sales agents are able to make as many as four times the amount of sales calls when using a dialer.

Contacts can be uploaded directly from a CRM and many dialers have the ability to integrate with the top CRMs. CRMs (customer relationship managers) also track all of the processes associated with remote sales. From the information screens within the CRM calls can be made instantly to contacts and clients. With this click-to-call technology a single mouse click will connect a sales agent to the specified contact.

Email messaging is an important feature available with telemarketing software. Remote sales professionals spend up to a third of their day following up on the calls they made that day. This involves sending emails with additional information on products or promotions. Email messaging technology cuts this time drastically by automating the process. Email templates are designed before the sales calls even take place and can be tested to see what email best achieves the desired action. When an email needs to be sent, it can be done during the actual phone call from within the CRM. By cutting out the time it takes to follow–up, sales agents can spend more time on the phone making calls and closing sales.

The investment in these software programs is worth it to any organization that expects to compete in the remote sales market.

Trying to stop time wasting in your call center? Start using a Power Dialer

2009-07-28T16:44:00.000-06:00

There are common obstacles that waste sales representatives’ time. It can take a lot of time to manually dial each lead on a long contact list. Sales representatives then have to spend more of their time waiting for someone to answer their calls. Often those calls are sent to voice mail systems, and sales reps have to wait through automated responses before leaving their own message when they could be moving on to a new lead. Sales agents often have to take a significant portion of their work day to follow up on those calls, including sending emails or fax messages. Inside sales companies with a complex sales process who perform business to business sales have the added obstacle of negotiating with receptionists and navigating around “gatekeepers”.

A power dialer is a software solution that calls through an uploaded list of contacts. This automated process immediately removes the dullness of manually dialing from a sales agent’s routine. Between dials the agent stays on the line, there is no hanging up after each call when using a power dialer. The next contact is immediately patched through. This feature of the power dialer can increase call volume three or four times from what it was previously.

Power dialers also incorporate voice messaging capability. Sales agents prerecord the messages they plan to leave. This lets agents proof the messages they will leave during the day to ensure those messages are exactly what they want to leave. These prerecorded messages can then be automatically left when an answering machine is encountered by the telephone dialer. This saves time for the sales agent who can move on to another call while the message is being left.

Power dialers work similarly in regards to email or fax messages. Templates for these messages can be created before calling through a list. When a sales rep promises to send an email or a fax message he or she can select the template on their computer. This message is automatically sent with very little work on the part of the sales representative, and the lead wouldn’t be able to help but be impressed by how quickly their requests are met.

Power dialer software provides many benefits. It saves so much time for sales representatives and with all of that time saved sales reps can spend more time selling. It is hard to find an excuse not to have one.

Two big problems with Predictive Dialers

2009-07-28T16:42:00.001-06:00

Predictive Dialers are old news.

Predictive phone dialers are a staple of call centers whose business plan involves cold calling a large volume of contacts each day. These calls centers have generated not only profit, but a good deal of contempt, and have been the targets of sweeping FCC regulations. Because of changes in how both consumers and lawmakers view telemarketers call center technology has also had to change. The problem with predictive dialers – and cold calling in general – is the lack of respect given to the contacts.

This is how a predictive dialer works. The sales manager uploads a list of contacts into the dialer. The dialer checks how many representatives are available to take calls, and then it starts dialing. When calls are answered they are automatically patched through to a sales rep waiting for a call. Because call centers using predictive dialers want as little down time as possible their dialers call more numbers than there are available reps - sometimes as many as 10 calls for each sales rep - and starts dialing new contacts before the reps finish their former call. This certainly ensures that all sales reps will be busy all the time, but it also frustrates contacts.

This frustration arises out of two things, the inconvenient times telemarketers call and the famed “telemarketer pause.”

Call centers using predictive phone dialers often call at times when they are most likely to reach a contact at home. But, these contacts are not in a buying mindset when called, and frequently view the sales rep as a nuisance. This annoyance is even greater when the contact answers their phone and has to wait on the line until a sales rep pitches him something he does not want.

Since the predictive dialer calls more contacts than there are sales reps, those “extra” contacts who answer are left on the line with no one on the other end of the line. If contacts are patient enough, and a sales rep becomes available fast enough than a sales rep will be patched into the call after a few moments of silence, the telemarketer pause. What is more likely is that the contacted lead will be annoyed with the dead call and disconnect before they ever speak with a sales agent.

A power dialer is an alternative to the archaic predictive dialer, and fixes the frustrations that a predictive dialer causes. A power dialer calls through a list of contacts for each rep, one at a time. Each answering contact is guaranteed to have a representative available to talk with them immediately. Power dialers can also help sales reps contact leads at the best possible moment with web form callback technology. This software solution captures leads from submitted web forms from a company’s website, and immediately dials that lead for an available rep. This lead is contacted at the time they are thinking about the product being sold – not over their family dinner.

Power dialers still increase call center productivity three times that of a call center that dials manually, but eliminates the predictive dialer’s flaws that make cold calling a less effective method of selling.

Steps for Tracking Sales Leads

2009-07-28T16:31:00.002-06:00

Sales lead tracking analytics makes sure that all leads are given the care and attention they need to become a profitable client. Software available with CRMs (customer relationship managers) aids greatly in the sales lead tracking process.

It takes both time and money to gather leads. The internet is a powerful resource for lead generation. Company websites are frequently developed to lead visitors to fill out and submit a web form. With the submission of the form that visitor becomes a new lead for the company’s sales representative to contact. Alternatively, companies can purchase leads from third party lead generation businesses.

Sale lead tracking for these newly captured web leads or purchased leads begins by having these leads imported into a CRM database. The CRM qualifies these leads based on the information gathered and converts these leads into “prospects” within its system.

These prospects are then routed through to sales people who move them through the sales process. The specific actions that the sales people offer the prospect are predefined within the CRM, and as prospects progress through the sales process that is recorded within the database. Based on defined probabilities that of a sales closure for each step of the sales process, sales lead tracking software can then give a prediction of sales revenue for the week based on prospects within the sales pipeline.

Visibility reports can easily be created in various formats with sales tracking software. These reports allow managers to evaluate the individual, team, or company return on investment. Added to this, forecast reports give important insights to the rest of the operational and support teams to stage the resources necessary to support the sales and marketing efforts.

These steps of sales analytics are important in maximizing ROI, and making sure each sales person is doing their part for the sales team.

Get more out of your CRM by using a Power Dialer

2009-07-14T15:56:00.000-06:00

A power dialer is one piece of software that will instantly increase the productivity of your current CRM. CRMs (customer relationship management) track all of the processes associated with sales and store all the data about your clients. A power dialer enhances the outbound calling functions of the CRM.

A power dialer can be integrated into all major brands of CRM. The power dialer and CRM work together like this: The CRM stores a list of contacts and their relevant information. That contact list is then uploaded into the power dialer. The power dialer then calls through each contact on that list automatically one at a time. These calls are then patched through to one of your sales agents.

The power dialer provides several benefits. Leads and contacts can be called on average of four times faster when using a power dialer as compared to manually dialing, which cuts down the amount of wasted time between calls. Because of this three to four times as many calls can be placed in a typical work day. Both of these benefits allow your sales agents to spend more of their time selling. Not only does this increase the number of sales closed it also boosts employee moral – sales agents want to be selling, not dialing!

These are not the only benefits a power dialer can give you when integrated with a CRM. It automatically makes the CRM a more powerful tool for your business, which also makes the CRM a more valuable investment. With both of these software solutions, it becomes easy to measure results with real time metrics and clear analytics.

Power dialers that have been designed to be added to a CRM can be installed in minutes. Training to use power dialers is minimal. There is no additional, costly hardware to purchase when acquiring a power dialer. Instead a power dialer uses your existing phone lines.
Other telephony tools built into a CRM work perfectly with a power dialer. Automated voice messaging is a perfect example. Voice messaging works by having your sales agents record messages to be left for clients which are then stored within the CRM. Normally these messages can be left while the sales agent stays on the line with a voice mail system. With a power dialer, that recorded voice message is left without the sales agent having to stay on the line. The sales agent can move onto a new call, saving even more time and giving him the chance to make even more sales.

An Online CRM will earn Money for an Inside Sales company

2009-07-14T15:46:00.001-06:00

A company is performing inside sales if it a company that sales its services or products from a remote location, meaning they interact with clients using the telephone and internet instead of face-to-face. These companies often cut costs associated with travel and store front upkeep while having access to a more reliable stream of potential clients. If a company’s own marketing efforts are not enough to bring in the desired amount of leads, they can be purchased from lead generation sources and divided up among sales representatives.

Like any type of sales, inside sales requires several steps from start to finish. From lead generation all the way through closing the sale, many different sales agents may interact with any particular lead or client. In order to track all of the interactions that a contact has with the company, and to plan what needs to be accomplished with that lead next, CRMs were developed. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and these systems are the brains behind inside sales. Particularly, an online CRM saves an inside sales organization time and increases their sales volume.

The difference between an online CRM and other kinds is how convenient it is for the companies that use it. Instead of having to purchase and download software on each computer used, the CRM is hosted completely online. This is especially helpful for companies where employees work from home and also a time saver for companies who use a call center. The information within the online CRM can be accessed anywhere the internet is available.

All CRMs benefit from the integration of other telephony tools. This integration creates the most powerful and convenient package of software solutions for the sales agents. Power dialers are a very important telephony tool that should be fully integrated with the CRM. Dialers double or triple the amount of calls sales agents can make in one business day. The prerecording of voice messages, as well as the function to automatically leave them on answering machines, is a time saving integration that also increases the quality of the messages and impressions sales agents leave. Automatic enrollment of new contacts into a campaign, a predetermined series of tasks that the online CRM will automatically schedule to be completed at specified intervals, is another software solution that greatly increases the productivity of sales professionals.

Venturing into inside sales offers many benefits to any sales organizations. Researching, purchasing, and using a trusted online CRM can help increase contact volume and sales closure in those companies.

Explore your options in Telephony Software

2009-07-14T15:34:00.001-06:00

In telecommunications, when the term telephony is used it encompasses the general use of equipment and software to link two or more telephones. The goal is to allow individuals to communicate over great distances. Telesales has moved telephony software outside of the realm of simply allowing two people to talk. Today, many different telephony software solutions have been developed to aid sales agents through the entire sales process.

A key advancement in telephony software is known as CTI. This stands for Computer Telephony Integration. This technology allows telephones and computers to interact with each other and to share information. Here is an example of CTI in action: when an incoming phone call is received by a sales agent the computer automatically recognizes that phone number, finds that number within its database, and displays on the computer screen of the sales rep all of the information stored on that individual. With this automatic data retrieval the sales agent is prepared to have a profitable interaction with the caller.

The database that makes this possible is called a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). In addition to storing information on each contact, this piece of telephony software organizes, calendars, and tracks all of the processes that are done as part of inside sales. A customer relationship management system is most useful when another telephony software solution is utilized, the power dialer.

One of the most basic tasks for a sales representative is placing a call. He or she can make three times their previous volume of calls per day by switching from manual dialing to using a power dialer. A power dialer is programmed with an uploaded list of phone numbers, and then automatically dials those numbers one at a time for the sales agent. When a call is answered it is instantly routed through to the agent. This telephony software solution capitalizes on the incredible data management capabilities of a CRM.

A myriad of additional telephony software can be incorporated with the CRM and power dialer pairing. Web form callback technology allows leads to be created with in the CRM every time a web form is submitted on the company website. Voice message broadcasting technology allows sales representatives to automatically send prerecorded messages to an entire list of leads. Automatic call distribution technology removes the need for an operator to route incoming calls through to the appropriate agent.

These are just a few of the different telephony software tools available to inside sales departments today. Look for a company that offers a variety of software solutions that are already fully integrated with their CRM and power dialer.

Don’t give up on leads! How you can get a conversion from every contact

2009-05-28T10:14:00.000-06:00

Your team of sales professionals works hard, day after day, to convert new leads into paying clients. Power dialers, CRM, and other telephony tools aid sales people in qualifying leads, placing calls, and closing sales, but even if they are the best group of sales agents in your field they undoubtedly still encounter prospective clients who do not convert. With the same power dialer suite they use to make calls they can also use to lead those contacts to conversion in the near future. This process is called lead nurturing.

The idea behind lead nurturing is that your product or service is so great that everyone will want it at some time. By keeping the mindset that every lead will convert at some point, leads are never automatically dumped into a “not interested” category where they are never thought of again. After all, your marketing department has gone through a lot of hard work to get those leads for the sales team.

Lead nurturing works like this; after the power dialer connects the sales rep to the contact the sales person makes sure he or she gathers a few important pieces of information. This would include name, company name, phone number, email address, and permission to email them in the future. All of this information should be saved with in the CRM (which stands for customer relationship management). If your lead was generated from a form filled out on the company website, it is still a good idea to verify both the information and whether the prospect has given permission to be emailed. With this information your sales team is prepared to help that lead move along the path to conversion even if they initially decide not to purchase your product.

After gathering these crucial data points the contact can be assigned to an enrollment campaign, which can be done right from the power dialer software. These campaigns are a series of tasks that you design to help your contacts build up a bank of positive impressions of your company. What works best is a combination of emails and phone calls. Each task is automatically scheduled by the CRM. Emails are sent at predetermined intervals, and calls are scheduled for your sales agents. The enrollment campaign solution built into the CRM saves time for your sales team, and the small time commitment they do have to give towards these leads pays off in dividends as they convert into valuable customers over time.

What are the strengths of SFA?

2009-05-28T10:08:00.002-06:00

A customer relationship management system tracks and organizes all of the processes and tasks that are needed to be done during the sales process. The collecting and automating of all of these tasks is also called sales force automation. A sales force automation system (SFA) is most effective when it is able to integrate the many different departments needed to complete a complex sale from beginning to end. Many telephone software solutions have been developed to support an SFA.

The most basic functions of a sales force automation system are calendaring and scheduling. SFAs are able to keep track of appointments and tasks on both an individual level and for entire groups. This ensures that all follow-up and call-back appointments are kept by sales and support representatives. This simple function is very important to sales force automation, but the other innovative tools used alongside an SFA are what separate it from a simple calendaring application.

Power dialer is a perfect example. A dialer’s purpose is to automatically call through a list of contacts and prospects for a sales agent. This saves a large amount of time for the sales agent who would normally have to look up and dial each number manually. What separates a power dialer from other kinds of telephone dialers is the fact it only calls one number at a time. This straightforward way of placing calls ensures that every answered call will have a sales agent to speak to immediately, and that no call placed by the power dialer is ever dropped.

Faxing, emailing, and voice messaging are three additional tools that support sales force automation. These messages, regardless of the media, can be prerecorded and saved within the
SFA. Any sales agent can send messages with just a click of the mouse and at anytime during a call. This allows him or her to not only give the contact additional information that a sales rep may promise to send, but also leave the best impression possible by using carefully thought out and executed messages.

The true strength of an SFA is enrollment campaigns. This feature is sometimes referred to as ELF for Electronic Labor Force. If a lead or contact fits a predetermined demographic or type of prospect then it can be assigned to a specific campaign. Once enrolled the SFA does all of the work. Previously specified emails, faxes, and voice messages will be sent to the enrolled lead at specified intervals. Additionally tasks will be created for sales agents to call that lead, too. This enrollment program ensures that the lead will receive all of the attention it needs to convert, and sales force automation takes the work out of it for the sales representatives.

Voice Broadcasting

2009-05-20T16:59:00.001-06:00

A voice message dialer allows a remote sales business to use voice broadcasting. This technology takes traditional voice message campaigns and implements them in a much more efficient manner.

Voice messaging fulfills several important roles within inside sales. First, it gives sales agents the opportunity to make positive contact with a potential client when they are unable to reach them on the phone. The best possible message a sales representative could leave can be recorded before the sales rep ever makes a call. This message is saved to be used later, whenever a message like that needs to be left. In this way voice messaging becomes a convenient tool, letting the sales rep leave the kind of quality messages he or she would like to every time. Several advances in telephony software make it possible for a sales agent to be able to move onto another call as their computer program leaves that message, which adds up to a large amount of time saved.

These voice messages can still be interactive, for times when a client answers the phone after the sales agent directs the message to be left. Interactive Voice Response, often refereed to by the acronym IVR, grants the contact the option of pressing specific keys on their dial pad to direct the computer program what to do. This could include having their number placed on a do not call list or having a call routed through to a live agent immediately.

Voice broadcasting takes this technology one step further. Voice broadcasting means no longer will a sales agent call through a large volume of calls one by one and leave messages only when a new lead is not contacted. Voice broadcasting takes care of all of that for the sales representatives.

Voice broadcasting works by having a prerecorded message uploaded into its system. Additionally a phone list of potential clients needs to be provided. The voice broadcasting system will dial through to each of those phone numbers automatically. Once those calls are either answered or a voice message system picks up the voice broadcasting system then relays the message saved within it. These messages traditionally are compatible with IVR. Because of this clients are able to speak to a live agent if they choose to do so.

Voice broadcasting not only speeds the contact process, but it also frees sales agents to perform other calls. Voice broadcasting can serve as a powerful way to contact a large volume of contacts in a short period of time.

Sales Lead Tracking

2009-05-20T15:46:00.001-06:00

Sales lead tracking is a very important part of the remote sales process. Without it, it is impossible to ensure that the most amount of contacts and leads convert into profitable clients. With it, a remote sales organization can really flourish. There are many B2B software solutions available to help with sales lead tracking. This includes Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that track and calendar all of the processes associated with lead tracking.

Sales lead tracking starts with importing sales leads from the CRM to prospecting teams. These individuals are responsible for qualifying leads before they are handed over to the men and women on the sales teams. Power dialers help with this process considerably by increasing the number of leads each member of the prospecting team can contact and qualify. Often this number is three or four times greater than what any particular sales individual can call manually. Once these leads are qualified they are transferred from leads to prospects in the CRM.

These prospects are then routed through to available sales representatives. The customer relationship management system can be set to record any or all of these phone calls. These can be saved with an individual’s contacts information within the CRM for future reference, or can be reviewed for quality control. Each action that a sales agent takes with the contact is recorded within the CRM as well, tracking where in the sales process each lead is. Future tasks that need to be completed concerning that lead, such as a follow up call, can be calendared by the CRM. The CRM will automatically remind the sales representative when that scheduled item needs to be completed.

Real time statistics and analytics are an important part of a CRM’s sales lead tracking functionality. These reports are highly customizable so the configuration can be altered to best suit any remote sales organization. The sales lead tracking software built into a CRM can import, export, organize, format, and forecast all of the data it collects through the sales process. By creating visibility reports for management, individuals, teams, or companies can each be accurately evaluated based on their return on investment. By using forecasting reports, in both graphical summaries and detailed sales deal records, sales representatives can accurately forecast revenue flow and prepare the organizations support teams to adequately support the sales and marketing efforts.

Even sales leads that do not instantly convert should be kept track of by the CRM. These contacts often become valuable clients in the future. Sales lead tracking software can make sure that these individuals are kept in regular contact with the company.

Avoid company burnout with an Auto Dialer

2009-05-19T10:40:00.001-06:00

Burnout is a serious problem in any profession, including inside sales. This exhaustion often arises when an employee is required to do monotonous tasks over and over again. Disinterest and a lack of efficiency are common symptoms of burnout. To prevent burnout simple and monotonous tasks need to be automated so that the sales representatives don’t have to manually accomplish all of these tasks. An example of a telephony software solution designed to fix this problem is the autodialer.

An autodialer allows a single sales team representative to make a large amount of outbound calls, and to make them quickly. To do this the autodialer needs to be loaded with a list of phone numbers. The autodialer then calls through this list one at a time. As the calls are being completed the autodialer patches the call through to the sales representative. Not only does this remove the monotony of manually dialing, it also speeds up the process. Typical sales agents can increase their sales volume as much as four times when they switch to using an autodialer. Sales professionals can then call three hundred or more people in a single workday.

Dialing is not the only common task that an autodialer can help a sales agent accomplish. This is especially true when an autodialer is used in conjunction with a Customer Relationship Manager. For example, many dialers are integrated with Customer Relationship Managers (CRMs) to provide instant email messaging for sales agents. A significant amount of time a sales representative spends at work is used to fulfill promises he or she made to his or her contact. For every five or six hours spent on the phone two or three them are typically spent sending emails or faxes in response to those conversations.

While a sales rep is on a call using an autodialer, he or she can send en email with barely any effort at all. The CRM stores several email templates that are used often by sales people. With only a couple of mouse clicks the sales representative can have the contact receiving exactly what they wanted within moments of asking for it. This reduces burnout by automating the writing and sending of the myriads of emails a typical sale’s agent is asked to send in a day. That added time can be spent on more dynamic calls to live contacts.

Even the most basic of tasks, creating phone lists for the autodialer, can be automated by the CRM and loaded into the autodialer. The automation of these simple sales chores reduces employee burnout and increases customer satisfaction.

Automatic Call Distribution and what it can do for your business

2009-05-19T10:35:00.002-06:00

Inside sales operations spend a most of their time calling people, at least that’s what they should be doing. These outbound calls are often what receive the single greatest amount of a sales representative’s time. Inbound calls are usually more valuable than the individual outbound calls because they can represent existing clients or those contacts who are actively seeking out a company’s product or service.

There are telephony software solutions that increase the efficiency of receiving these inbound calls regardless of whether an inside sales business uses in-house agents or if those agents work remotely. One of these solutions is ACD, or Automatic Call Distribution. The purpose of this telephony tool is not only to allow sales agents to receive inbound calls, but also to route those calls to the right personnel automatically.

ACD call routing works well in combination with toll free phone numbers. Managers of the system can establish which toll free numbers should be answered by which sales representatives. This can be determined by which geographic location the toll free number is advertised in, by which department that toll free number is associated with, or any other delineation. By automatically routing calls based on which sales agents can best responds instantly improves customer relations. In the event that there are no designated sales reps that call is not dropped. Instead, the Automatic Call Distribution system can be directed to route that incoming call to a fail–over number. This fail-over number could be anything from the general office line to voice messaging systems. ACD could even route the call through to one of the agents’ personal cell phones. There is no need for any inbound call to be unanswered or dropped when using ACD call routing.

This telephony solution often offers many quality control features. Usually this includes the option to record calls being completed. These recordings can be stored along with every other bit of data associated with a particular caller. These calls can be retrieved and played back if ever the need arises.

All of this makes it faster and easier to connect incoming calls to the right people. By decreasing customer wait time ACD raises customer satisfaction. When this is linked to an outbound dialer all agents that receive inbound calls can also be actively making outbound calls. ACD removes the slow, down times that can occur in a business day, generating the greatest amount of calls made and sales closed.

Dialer Software that meets the Demands of Inside Sales

2009-05-19T10:33:00.002-06:00

Several problems are faced by inside sales teams. Those problems may include—what can be done to increase productivity by making more calls and closing more sales? How is a high level of quality and customer care going to be assured? What measures are going to be taken to ensure that all promises made to contacts will be fulfilled? There are probably numerous answers for each of these problems, but to remain efficient a sales team needs to use one simple and effective solution to meet all of these needs. Power dialer software is such a solution.

Power dialer software, in its simplest form, is a program that automatically dials phone numbers from a contact list for a sales agent. This alone decreases the amount of time spent on each individual call and increase the volume of calls each sales person is able to make in a typical work day. Power dialers are designed to help a sales representative to make three hundred dials in a day, compared to a manual dialing average that is around seventy five.

Phone dialer software increases productivity further when that dialer is integrated with email or voice messaging solutions. From the dialer software previously composed emails and voice messages can automatically be sent. This frees the sales agent from using valuable calling time waiting to leave messages himself on voice mail systems or sending various different emails to many different customers at the end of his or her work day. A typical sales person spends only five or six hours of their day making phone calls and upwards of three hours sending emails or other messages to those contacts. Phone dialer software cuts this time down to a fraction of what it commonly takes, all with only a couple of mouse clicks.

Using carefully constructed emails and voice messages is also one of the steps dialer software takes to ensuring quality control. Instead of fumbling over their messages sales agents can record one in their own voice that says exactly what they and their employers want said. An additional way phone dialers assure quality from a sales team’s performance is with optional call recording. By recording and monitoring sales calls training can be planned to strengthen the sales agents and help them be more efficient in their job.

Each of these functions of well designed dialer software works together to create an easy to use system that meets the demands of inside sales.

Complex Sales require the Power Dialer

2009-05-08T16:30:00.002-06:00

An outbound phone dialer is a kind of telephony software that automatically calls through a list of phone numbers for a sales agent. Power dialers are one specific kind of dialer that is particularly effective. A sales representative who switches from dialing manually to using an outbound power dialer can expect a large increase in the volume of sales calls they can make in a business day. Research has shown it is not uncommon for this increase to be as much as four times the previous call volume. Some sales reps report that they are able to make three hundred to upwards of three hundred and fifty calls using a power dialer. That is equivalent to doing eight hours worth of work in only two or three

Outbound dialers work by loading a telephone number list of contacts or leads and then dialing them one at a time for the sales agent. The agent receives a phone call, from the dialer. When he or she answers the call, the dialer automatically patches through the phone call with the lead. After the call the sales representative stays on the line, and the dialer automatically patches through another call. This continues for as long as the agent stays on the line.

Power dialers call through this list one number at a time. Other outbound dialers that call a group of leads simultaneously are called ratio or predictive dialers. This allows these other dialers to call more leads, but only one of those calls can be routed through to the sales agent at a time. If more than one lead answers during each round of calling those extra calls are dropped, cutting off the other contacts who answer their phones. Additionally, it takes a moment for the outbound dialer to recognize when one of the many calls they are making is answered. This small time is referred to as a telemarketer pause, and often annoys leads being contacted.

Power dialers eliminate both the problems of the telemarketer pause and dropped calls. This makes the power dialer especially suited for complex sales processes, including B2B (business to business) sales. Since B2B sales often involves speaking to secretaries before a decision maker, and since they also tend to be high stakes sales, it is especially important to give each contact a personalized and streamlined approach. Other types of dialers just cannot do this.

Four telephony software solutions that increase lead management

2009-05-08T16:27:00.001-06:00

Proper lead generation and response management requires a whole collection of complementary communication and telephony software tools. These lead management solutions work to better the sales experience during the entire sales process.

A power dialer helps you reach more leads quicker. Dialing manually sales agents generally average thirty to fifty calls in a standard work day. With a power dialer sales representatives can contact one to two hundred leads in a workday. In addition, when a power dialer is integrated in other telephony software such as an online CRM, the dialer is able to organize, guide, and prompt the sales agents using it to follow a pre-defined sales process.

Generally, a sales rep who spends five or six hours a day on the phone will need to spend two or three hours off the phone fulfilling promises to provide proposals, faxes and emails. Email or fax messaging telephony software provides a sales team with templates for all of these collateral processes. Sales agents are then able to fulfill these tasks while they are still on the phone with a lead. Sales team members can then spend a full day contacting newly generated lead, and all without sacrificing any customer service.

The addition of inbound outbound call blending to a telephony software suite allows sales reps to address customer needs even further. With this software solution every sales agent can be actively calling newly generated leads. These lists of leads are programmed into the dialer, and they are automatically routed through to the sales agent. With inbound outbound call blending, these outbound dialing sales reps can also receive calls. When an inbound call is received the dialer patches that call through to the sales agent instead of dialing a new lead for them. This ensures that every existing customer is adequately taken care of without sacrificing important time reaching out to prospective clients.

Voice messaging is another important piece of telephony software. It is not rare for sales agents to sit through many voice mail messages while dialing leads. With a voice messaging system this wasted time is eliminated. In order to work a message needs to be recorded by the sales rep. This message is then saved in the voice messaging system. When the agent gets a lead’s voice mail system, the sales agent can simply direct the dialer to continue to another call automatically, and leave that prerecorded message. While the telephony software completes this task the sales agent can continue on to another call.

This is not an exhausting list of telephony software solutions. There are many different tools available for the sales professional that sells remotely.

Great Telemarketing Software Options

2009-05-08T16:25:00.000-06:00

Telemarketing, or telesales, is a form of direct marketing, where individual sales agents contact leads and solicit the prospective client to buy their products or services. It is a form of remote, or inside sales, which means the lead interacts with the company over the phone and not in person. To support this industry a wide range of useful telemarketing software has been developed. Telemarketing software solutions offer different usability to sales teams, and not all solutions are necessary to create a functioning sales operation.

A Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) is one of the most useful forms of telemarketing software. The CRM stores and tracks all of the data and processes associated with the sales process. A CRM allows many of the needed tasks associated with taking care of current or prospective clients to be automated.

A telephone dialer is another one of the most basic and useful telemarketing software. A phone dialer takes a list of phone numbers and automatically makes those calls for sales agents. It then patches those calls through to the available sales rep. Dialers are able to retrieve phone lists from a customer relationship manager, or it can be programmed in some other way.

Email or fax marketing software is another option. These give many options to a remote sales team. For example, a number that is not reached may be sent an email or fax message instead, ensuring that the lead receives some sort of contact. Also, a sales rep on the phone with a customer can instantly send an email or fax when they ask for more information. The agent is able to immediately follow up on his offer and not waste time fulfilling it later or potentially forget about it.

Another useful example of telemarketing software is web form callback. This software solution is intended to make sure that new leads generated by web forms from the company’s site are contacted within minutes of that form being submitted. This works by automatically creating a lead from a submitted web form, creating a task in the CRM for that lead to be contacted, and instructing the dialer to complete that task as soon as it can. With this tool an agent can be calling that prospective client back in minutes.

These are only a few of the many different telemarketing software solutions that have been designed for the expanding industry of inside sales. Each serves to improve the sales processes, and give more customer satisfaction.

Power dialers fix several problems of predictive dialers

2009-05-05T16:28:00.001-06:00

Telephone dialers are software solutions that allow a sales professional the ability to call through a large volume of phone numbers in a business day. There are several kinds of telephone dialers, but they have several defining traits in common.

The purpose of a telephone dialer is to increase the number of calls made. Call centers and similar inside sales organizations frequently report an increase that is four times what they were calling previously. Because number of leads called increases the number of leads contacted. The end result is the number of sales closes increases and more money is made for the business.

To operate, every telephone dialer needs to be programmed with a list of phone numbers to call. Depending on your customer management software used along with the telephone dialer when each number is called more contact information on the lead may be presented to the sales agent on their computer screen. As numbers are called by the telephone dialer, the dialer routes answered calls to sales agents. This greatly reduces the amount of time individual sales representatives spend looking up leads’ contact information, manually dialing the phone numbers, and sitting through ring tones, busy signals, and answering machines.

The differences are in the amount of calls placed by the dialer at a time. Predictive dialers call many leads at a time. The ratio of how many people called is customizable, and different from call center to call center. The predictive phone dialer automatically calls whatever number of leads it has been programmed to, and then it analyzes the response. Busy signals, disconnected numbers, and voice mail messages can all be identified by the predictive dialer and the call is disconnected. Those that are answered by a live human are routed to a sales agent. While many leads are able to be called in this manner, there are a couple serious drawbacks. First, there is a pause when the lead first answers as the dialer attempts to identify whether or not there is a live person answering. Second, if more calls are answered than there are sales reps present then those calls are dropped.

A power telephone dialer addresses these problems. Instead of calling a whole mass of leads at once, the power dialer calls one lead at a time for each sales representative. While this means a slightly smaller number of leads being called compared to a predictive dialer (though it is still significantly more than manually dialing), the “telemarketer pause” and the risk of dropping calls are almost completely eliminated.

Online dialers provide all of the benefits of other phone dialers, but with less of the stress

2009-05-05T16:26:00.001-06:00

Standard telephone dialers offer incredible power to companies who use them. The downside is they can come with the inconvenience of purchasing, installing, and managing hardware. Many companies require the purchase of dialer hardware, or design their software to only work with specific phone lines.

A less taxing alternative is a company who has designed a phone dialer that needs no onsite hardware. Often, this requires the purchasing, installing, and upkeep of that company’s software. With each added feature or business solution the amount of software that is mandated to be downloaded on the client company’s own computers increases.

An online dialer eliminates the hassle of both the acquisition of dialer specific hardware and the installation of dialer specific software. It is by far the most convenient way to use a dialer, and it has at least as much usability as other dialers.

A dialer allows a single remote sales professional to quickly make a large number of outbound calls. Dialers are ideal for call centers, telemarketers, or any business that sells a product or service remotely. Phone dialers are first loaded with a list of potential leads. Depending on the dialer it may either automatically call through each entry on the list at a preset pace or the sales rep may place the call with a click on his computer. Once a number starts to ring, or is answered, that call is immediately routed to an available sales agent.

An online dialer accomplishes all of this, but without requiring a remote sales company to purchase the previously mentioned hardware or software. An online dialer is able to do this because of the relationship between the purchasing company and the providing company. The provider could accurately be described as a host for the online dialer, and likewise the dialer could be called a hosted dialer.

Instead of needing specialized equipment, the online dialer requires three things: a PC, a phone line and with a phone, and an internet connection. All other hardware is kept at the host company and maintained by them. All software is hosted on the provider’s servers. Everything the client company needs is provided through the internet.

Online dialers eliminate much of the hassle of purchasing a telephone dialer. They also lower the initial capital need to invest in a dialer system. They still provide all of the important business solutions that phone dialers are none to provide. These include inbound / outbound call blending, integrated email and fax messaging with templates, real time data management and analytics, immediate response callback, and call transfer and recording. Online dialers provide the simplest way to receive all the benefits of using a phone dialer.

Who should use a CRM?

2009-05-05T16:24:00.001-06:00

Any business who sells products or services would do well to use a Customer Relationship Manager, or CRM, especially for a business that sells remotely. Additionally, a CRM is an important efficiency enhancing solution for any organization that uses a call center. The purpose of a Customer Relationship Manager is to organize and track all of the processes and data associated with each lead and client.

A CRM automatically fulfills many of the responsibilities a sales agent would have to perform. The many software solutions designed to compliment the data and task management of a CRM increases the versatility of it dynamically. With supporting computer telephony integration software, a Customer Relationship Manager can instantly capture leads from web forms filled out and submitted by interested contacts via the company’s website. Coupled with a telephone auto dialer, a CRM will upload its list of leads and route those calls through to the best available sales rep for each call. A CRM can even quickly send templated email messages or leave prerecorded voice messages to the lead that the sales rep is contacting with only a single mouse click by the agent.

By acquiring the services of an outside company, Customer Relationship Managers can be provided for remote sales operations without the capital investment into software design or hardware purchase. Instead, all of the necessary components of the CRM are hosted by the providing company. These Customer Relationship Managers are referred to as hosted CRMs or online CRMs.

These hosted Customer Relationship Management tools often provide a very high level of customization within their programs, in addition to having an outside firm that can specifically develop software solutions for a particular business’ or organization’s needs. This includes options such as “drag and drop” functionality. This is a common software function, when applied to CRMs, allows CRM users to individually customize their CRM to their specific business model. The users can add new layouts and fields, customize size, color, and placement of fields, and do so at either the company or sales rep level. Data can be dragged and dropped in whatever position the sales agents want on the screen.

A hosted CRM provides remote sales businesses the tools needed to effectively use all prime business time by reducing wasted time and making the tasks associated with sales easier to accomplish. It is a worthwhile investment even for very small operations, and scales to be productive for much large businesses as well.

Customer Relationship Managers are powerful, but they need a supporting cast

2009-05-05T16:21:00.002-06:00

Customer Relationship Managers are powerful players in the remote or inside sales world. These software databases record and store all of the important data on each lead and client for a company. They also track and enable all of the processes used to contact those leads, close sales, and keep their clients.

Customer Relationship Manager is often abbreviated to CRM. A company that is only using a Customer Relationship Manager but is not utilizing other telephony software tools is failing to get all it can out of its CRM. Many different telephony software solutions are able to integrate perfectly with a Customer Relationship Manager. Adding a telephony solution will help each sales agent make more contacts, close more sales, and increase revenue.

While there are many kinds of helpful software, the telephone dialer is the flagship of these telephone tools that support a CRM. Phone dialers are available in several variations, though most work on the same principles. Dialers call through a list of lead information automatically and route those calls through to a sales agent. Dialers pull this phone list from the CRM, which is able to generate these lists of leads automatically from forms submitted by the customer on the company’s website or from spreadsheets containing contact information that had been created previously. Without a dialer sales agents would be forced to call through each individual number in the CRM manually. They also would have to suffer through the long list of wrong numbers and busy signals that a dialer would simply avoid routing through to a sales rep.

These two telephony solutions, the CRM and the phone dialer, benefit from other tools available, such as a voice messaging system. This would allow a sales agent to leave prerecorded messages on voicemail machines. Instead of waiting to leave a message of his own he can then move on to the next call while the dialer and CRM continue to leave the message. Email messaging, inbound/outbound call blending, and up to date call analytics are other examples.

When using these software tools to instantly capture leads, route the calls to the agents, and provide the additional features to allow sales agents be more effective at following up more leads are contacted, more sales and closed, and more revenue is produced.

Why does your company need a dialer?

2009-04-23T16:26:00.001-06:00

How I wish the opera company had a telephone dialer!

When I was in seventh grade I was “volunteered” to help the Opera Company in my home town with their fundraising one spring. I was given several pages of names and phone numbers. These people had previously donated in the past. My responsibility was to call each of them and give them the pitch I was taught. The fundraising was fairly successful; most of the people I was calling were repeat contributors. But what I remember is sitting in the kitchen, my cheek flat against the table top, bored out of my mind looking up, then dialing, then sitting through ring after ring after ring. At least a third of the messages went to voicemail and then I had to clumsily come up with a message that would get these people to call me back. I only ever got through half of my list, I gave up before I finished.

While a seventh grader may not be the best comparison for a professional sales agent, the symptoms I experienced may not be dissimilar to those experienced by call center reps. Sales agents who manually dial through lists of contacts often experience a high degree of job burnout. This leads to slower job completion and lower job quality. The potentially monotonous tasks associated with remote sales may also increase the number of employees who are actively seeking different employment. This leads to a higher number of employees quitting soon after they complete their job training. These companies are losing money a lot of money.

Simple telephony tools dramatically reduce these problems by removing the busywork from remote sales. The flagship solution is the telephone dialer. Dialers are software solutions that automatically dial through a list of leads or contacts. They remove one of the largest time wasters from remote sales, manually dialing. Besides reducing the amount of time spent looking up and dialing numbers they also increase the number of people each sales agent is able to talk to in a day. Sales would already become a lot less monotonous.

Dialers also offer software solutions to reduce the time dealt with unanswered calls and voice mail. Many dialers allow pre-recorded messages to be saved for future use. Some dialers allow these messages to be broadcasted through the dialer to the numbers called. Contacts who answer the phone can then choose to speak to a live agent. Alternatively some dialers call through a list of names, and only patch through to the live agent when calls are answered. In this scenario the prerecorded message is left to those numbers where a voice message system picks up. A third alternative is a dialer that patches every call to the agent before it is answered. The agent can then opt to move on to another call while the dialer leaves the prerecorded message when voice mail is encountered.

There are many different variations of telephone dialers. Each serves to speed the sales process, increase sales, and make the sales process more enjoyable for sales agents. It is worth the time and attention of any remote sales organization to look into which kind of dialer would work best for them.

Hosted CRM

2009-04-23T16:21:00.001-06:00

While some companies may choose to host their own Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs), the cost of hardware and software, as well as development and maintenance is prohibitive, intimidating, and obnoxious for many organizations. A hosted CRM becomes a viable alternative, especially when the host company provides all of the support business solutions necessary for successful sales.

A hosted CRM with built in outbound dialing tools creates a system where sales team professionals can focus on making sales instead of generating leads, tracking statistics, filling out paper work, and identifying sales trends.

The most fundamental outbound dialing tool is the outbound dialer itself. There are many dialers on the market, but not all dialers are created equal. Two of the first major outbound dialers created for remote sales were the auto dialer and the predictive dialer.
An auto dialer automatically dials telephone numbers for sales agents who are idle or waiting for a call.

The predictive dialer instead uses a variety of algorithms to predict both the availability of agents and how many called leads should answer, adjusting the calling process to the number of agents it predicts will be available when the calls it places are expected to be answered. Both of these dialers have their limitations, including a percentage of dropped calls that are made while waiting for an available sales agent. A better alternative to either of these dialers would be what is known as a power dialer.

A power dialer automatically calls through a programmed list of phone numbers, and patches those calls through to sales representatives. As long as the sales rep does not hang up his receiver the power dialer will continue to patch through the calls it is making. This system increases productivity over an auto dialer, and because it is still only making one call at a time it removes the dropped call rate that is inherit in a predictive outbound dialer.

A hosted CRM that has an outbound power dialer offers many other business solutions for a remote sales organization. One simple, but effective and convenient, solution is Click-to-Call software. The purpose of the software is to make calling easy. On the hosted CRM each and every phone number will have a link to call that contact. The computer contacts the CRM which activates the power dialer. The dialer then carries out its function by calling the sales rep and also the lead.

The integrated CRM dialer combination also has great potential in voice messaging. These innovations in voice mail come from two main sources. First, the power dialer will have the option to leave a prerecorded voice message with a single click on the computer. This allows a sales team professional to leave a message in his or her own voice when they encounter a voice mail system, but without having to take the time to do so. Instead the system automatically finishes the call while the agent moves on to contact the next lead. The second source of improved voice messaging is provided by message broadcast systems. A prerecorded message is again programmed into the system, and the message broadcast system automatically calls through a programmed call list and by design plays the recorded message. Contacts listening to the message may at any time press preprogrammed numbers to talk to a live sales agent, receive an email, or be removed from the call list. These voice broadcast systems automatically checks contacts programmed against the do not call list. They also check for duplications in the call list to prevent one contact from receiving the same message numerous times.

The combined hosted CRM and outbound power dialer increase productivity by increasing the rate at which new leads are contacted. This starts with automatic lead generation. This works by adding code to the company website. This code tells the web forms that are filled out to automatically create a lead within the CRM. The lead is then routed to a sales agent’s call list and within minutes of that web form being filled out online that lead is being contacted by a representative of the organization.

Such quick lead generation, routing, and calling has several benefits. First it dramatically increases the rate of contact. After all, those leads are most likely still at their computer by a telephone. Second, the rate of lead qualification goes up significantly. By contacting a lead soon after they fill out the web form they are still thinking about the company still highly interested in the product. Third, the fast rate of response by the sales agents creates an atmosphere of competency about their organization. Leads will see the company as one that gets tasks done quickly and efficiently.

These dialing tools also work with the CRM to quickly manage data, track sales, and process analytics. The data that the telemarketing department needs to operate can then be swiftly compiled and reported to other departments. The hosted CRM serves as the foundation for the entire outbound dialing system.

Use telephony software to make remote sales profitable

2009-04-23T16:05:00.001-06:00

Telephony software grants the ability to effectively accomplish many of the different tasks within a business that sales remotely. By combining the different telephony software solutions out there any company can dramatically improve how they accomplish sales tasks.

All sorts of good telephony software and solutions are used for lead management. This includes: power or predictive dialers, blended inbound call routing, voice messaging, faxing and emailing. A suite of these tools is able to fully track the metrics and analytics involved in tracking contacts, qualifying leads, and all the other tasks associated with sales lead tracking. Above and beyond simply tracking sales, these telephony tools increases the number of calls, contacts, faxes, emails, leads, follow-ups, proposals, and closes. These tools help you increase sales.

The reason telephony software solutions are able to increase sales is because they increase the number of quality interactions a lead has with the company.

Beginning with lead generation, potential clients are given a unique experience when a company is utilizing telephony lead management solutions. Any web form submitted by an interested lead automatically gets converted into a lead. This lead is then qualified, and routed through to the telephone dialer. Within minutes of that lead first submitting the request online a live sales agent is on the phone with them. In addition to the speed of this routing, new leads are assigned to the sales agent that has been identified as the best one for those types of calls. This assignment may be based on such things as which web form is submitted, or the area or zip code of the new lead.

This automatic call routing is designed to blend perfectly with outbound calling. The newly created lead will be held until the current outbound call is complete, and then be pushed through to the sales rep. This allows sales professionals to be engaged in outbound calling while waiting for new leads to generate and not to worry that new leads will be missed or current calls will be interrupted. Also, inbound calls are routed to these same sales reps allowing sales professionals the ability to use their time as effectively as possible.

Once a call is answered, the sales agent has many telephone software solutions at his disposal. Email and faxes can be sent instantly from the dialer interface. Often sales agents spend 5 or 6 hours a day on the phone, and a huge 2 to 3 hours following through on those calls by sending emails or faxes with additional information. Email or fax software solutions shorten those 2 to 3 hours to minutes.

Telephony software solutions continue to aid in the sales process on through closing the deal and following up with repeat customers in the future. With so many different business tools available it is worth the time and attention to research the options.

So, what can my CRM do anyway?

2009-04-20T10:13:00.003-06:00

The power and versatility of telephony software allows inside sales companies to increase their calls, contacts, impressions, faxes, emails, and callbacks. All of this serves to increase conversions and revenue. Telephony software solutions are available to complete the myriad of tasks that call centers or remote sales organizations need to accomplish. The software that manages all of the processes that need to occur for a remote sales professional to meet the needs of their clients and their employer is Customer Relationship Management software.

Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM, serves as a database for the storage of an organization’s information. A CRM calendars private and company events and tasks. It automatically captures information on new leads and incoming calls, and a CRM manages customer accounts through the entire sales process.

CRMs can be integrated with other computer telephony integration (CTI) software solutions. Perhaps the most important piece of software to use alongside Customer Relationship Management would be a telephone dialer.

Dialers automatically call through a list of leads, or a similar list of phone numbers pulled from the CRM. A dialer then patches that call through to a live sales agent. Several different dialers exist, from the speedy but sometimes unreliable ratio dialer to the effective and methodical power dialer. No matter what dialer is being used, they all become more effective when they are allowed to pull info from, and up load data too, the CRM.

CRM can also integrate other telephony business solutions with their own database and the dialers they empower. Voice messaging software allows sales reps to leave prerecorded, relevant voice messages on the voicemail of leads they attempt to contact. The CRM will automatically leave the message while the sales rep may move on to take another call. Alternatively these messages can be broadcasted by the CRM. The dialer will call through the list of contacts and automatically play the prerecorded message, freeing the sales rep to receive inbound calls or dial through a separate list. Generally, at any time the contact listening to the message may choose to speak to a live agent.

Email messaging is another example of a CTI solution. Pre-composed email templates may be selected and sent by the CRM during a conversation by a sales agent. These messages can automatically pull information to be included within the email, such as the contacts name or business. Instantly the lead can receive additional information promised to them by the sales agent.

Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

2009-04-17T14:22:00.001-06:00

Email, the shorthand version of electronic mail, revolutionized the way we communicate. It predates the internet with the earliest versions of it coming out in the mid sixties. This mode of communication has potential to increase customer satisfaction and the speed by which new leads convert. Telephony email software has integrated the power of email with the efficiency of Customer Relationship Management.

Email marketing is also an old idea. Successful marketing teams still frequently rely on email marketing as a staple to their campaign strategies. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing, where commercial information is mailed directly to potential clients. Email often replaces other forms of text delivery, such as direct mail or printed newsletters, for several reasons. First, it is cheap to send massive amounts of electronic messages compared to printed paper alternatives. Second, email is fast. Email messages can reach their intended audiences within seconds of sending. Often printed mail takes several days to be delivered to those same people. Additionally, email is a “green” advertisement practice that reduces paper waste. Considering that over half of all internet users check their email each day, email reaches people.

Remote sales telephony software adds business solutions to the already useful email marketing machine. One of the ways it does this is by facilitating the sending of email messages. First off, a Customer Relationship Management system may have email templates stored in them. These templates are designed to fit the purposes of the company, and can automatically import important information from the CRM, including their name or business to write into the salutation, and of course their email address. With a simple mouse click these custom email messages can be sent to leads on the phone with a sales agent, allowing them to quickly provide additional information to leads. Potential clients receive not only an email, but also the impression that the company is responsible.

Contacts can be automatically placed on email campaigns, slowly warming them up to products that they previously turned down. These emails build trust with the lead when the emails provide helpful content. This process is call lead nurturing. Using email leads can be nurtured into conversions without taken sales reps away from calling and contacting new leads.

Email marketing business solutions also offer the ability to track when emails are opened. When potential conversions open an email about the company, automatically the Customer Relationship Management system routes a call to that lead. Sales reps contact him or her within minutes of them having read the email while the company is still on their mind.

This partnership of email marketing with Customer Relationship Management creates less work and more sales for sales agents. It increases contact rates, conversions, and revenues. And best of all it saves money.

Voice Messaging

2009-04-17T14:20:00.001-06:00

Voice messaging software provides many options to sales agents. These software solutions are an example of CTI, or Computer Telephony Integration. They provide telephone automation for sales, customer support, and marketing programs within an organization’s Customer Relationship Management, or CRM.

Customer Relationship Management captures, contains, and retrieves the important information on leads, contacts, and clients. A CRM may be implemented with a major investment by the company to purchase or design software and hardware to support the processes of managing all the jobs associated with inside sales, or a host company may provide the software and hardware for the organization to use. The companies that provide the hosted CRM sometimes offer voice messaging solutions through their same company.

The voice messaging software creates voice broadcast initiatives from the contact lists within the CRM. Voice broadcasting is where a series of calls are made from a selected list and a prerecorded message is automatically played. Those listening to these messages generally have the option to press a button to be removed from the list or to speak to a live agent. Good voice messaging systems will allow these messages to be any length and allow these messages to be recorded from anywhere.

Different messages may be played if the call goes to voicemail versus whether or not the lead is contacted. Both of these messages can be prerecorded in the sales agents own voice and catered to whether it is a voicemail or a live-call scenario. Additionally multiple numbers may be called simultaneously for one contact. Whatever number answers first is where the voice message will be broadcasted to.

The time that these voice messages will be broadcasted is also customizable. This allows a sales team to ensure voice messages will be sent out at the best times of day to contact their leads. The CRM voice message pairing can identify the time zones different contacts live in and call numbers from the same contact list at different times based on their geographic location.

Voice messaging software also enhances inbound calling. These features start with the option for listeners of broadcasted messages to press a number to talk to a live agent. Similarly automatic messages can be set up as the default answer to toll free numbers, such as help lines. Answers to the most common questions can be recorded and the option to contact a live agent is presented also.

If an inbound call is not able to be answered by a sales agent voice message software provides a solution for that caller. He or she may then choose to leave a voice mail his or her self, which will be transferred to the first available agent for them to listen and respond to.
Voice messaging enhances many of the primary functions of Customer Relationship Management. It allows sales reps and contacts to get in contact with each other quickly and efficiently.

Find a Host, don't do it yourself!

2009-04-17T14:18:00.002-06:00

Customer Relationship Management is used by businesses that use call centers or any other form of remote sales. A Customer Relationship Management, abbreviated as CRM, captures and stores important information on leads and clients. This data is retrievable by sales agents whenever they need it. CRM become more versatile and less of a hassle for companies when they allow another company to host the software. Hosted CRM provide many opportunities to integrate with other telephony software and solutions to create an effective sales organization.

The powerful data management that CRM offers has many applications within a sales team. They serve as platforms for the management of individual and group calendaring, managing both office events and deadlines as well as providing reminders for follow-up calls to be made by specific sales reps to specific leads.

Hosted CRM may also be linked with the telephone dialer used by a business. Regardless of the type of dialer (ration, predictive, auto, or power) the CRM will pull up the previously stored data associated with any number called. With this the sales rep can easily see when the lead was last contacted, what the result of that contact was, and what action needs to be taken next with that lead. The sales rep can easily edit that information, or add additional notes and details about the call.

Hosted CRM linked with a dialer in this way provides additional options to the sales rep that would not be available if he used the dialer alone. Customer Relationship Management should give the sales agent the option on their computer screen to instantly send an email or a fax to the lead they are contacting. Additionally, the CRM allows the sales rep to leave a prerecorded voice message when a lead is not reached. While the voice message is being left by the Customer Relationship Management system the sales agent may move on to his next call.

This integration of CRM and a dialer helps sales teams be more productive. Hosted CRM makes this setup even more profitable. The host company maintains and manages all hardware needed to run the software, which is also housed by the host company. The software is accessed by the remote sales organizations over the internet. This option opens up the possibility of having sales representatives work from home, or completely separate offices since they do not need either the hardware or software they need at the site from which they work.

Lead Response Research

2009-04-17T14:14:00.000-06:00

Lead response management is the combination of business practices and software solutions to guarantee that all newly generated leads are contacted as quickly as possible after that lead is generated. It also entails the effective contact and conversion of that lead into a valued customer.

The driving economic principle behind lead response management is ROI. ROI stands for return of investment. Synonymous terms are rate of return (ROR), rate of profit, or just the return. The return of investment is the ratio of money gained, or lost, in an investment relative to the amount of money lost. The profit or loss calculated as the ROI is what motivates all business decisions.

Lead generation is an investment for a company. It takes time and effort to gather or create leads, not to mention money. Thousands of dollars may be spent on Marketing, SEO, and purchasing leads to give organizations the contacts they need to make sales. Related to lead response management, this return of investment becomes important in determining if the leads generated are worth the amount of money invested in them. Lead response management is designed to increase the return of investment and increase overall profit.

Lead response management includes numerous different responsibilities within lead management. These include lead generation, lead capture, lead scoring, lead routing, lead distribution, lead qualifying, and lead tracking. Because lead response management is encompasses so much, and since it is influential on the overall success of a remote sales business, the independent research company Incoho performed a in depth research of web site response practices.

Incoho made inquiries, using a fabricated identity, on five hundred and twenty-six web sites from four hundred and sixty-nine separate companies through web-based forms. They tracked all responses they received.

Incoho used the initial findings of a joint study between InsideSales.com and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the ideological framing of their research. The MIT study found that odds of contacting a lead increased one hundred times if the attempt to contact that lead happened within five minutes that the lead was generated as compared to contacting them with in thirty minutes. It likewise found that those leads contacted in the five minute window were also twenty-one times more likely to be qualified. A third relative finding by MIT is that each attempt to contact a lead after twenty hours of generation became increasingly less productive.

In Incoho’s study each web form submitted was filled out and submitted five separate times on five separate days. Their goal was to observe what percentage of businesses would follow the lead response practices that MIT identified as being the most efficient at increasing ROI.

When the results were compiled 45.1% of companies never responded to the web form submissions. Of those who did respond nearly all of them (47%) responded by email, and on average not until fifty-four hours after the initial web form was submitted. Only 15% of the inquiries were responded to within the ideal five minute time frame.

Lead response management software aids inside sales companies in being one of the few businesses to respond to leads within the optimal first five minutes. Lead response management software assists in all of the tasks previously mentioned that are associated with lead response management, but they’re especially useful in three ways:
1. Automatic lead qualifying
2. Automatic lead routing
3. Effective lead tracking

Automatic lead qualifying recognizes a potential lead. This is done by having all forms on a company web site upload into the CRM. Within seconds of filling out a form the software checks to see if proper contact information is provided and compare the query against other leads in the system. The management software separates duplicates from new sales leads, and allows sales agents to call the leads that are most likely to become a conversion.

Automatic lead routing is the process in sales lead management where those newly acquired and qualified leads are sent straight to available sales agents. This prevents leads from becoming uninterested during the hours they wait for a representative to call them. It also insures you contact the lead before a competitor within the important first five minutes.

Effective lead tracking is required for those leads who do not convert immediately. By keeping in touch with those leads it increases the chance of a conversion from that lead in the future. This is called lead nurturing. Lead management software tracks previous contact attempts, the results of those contacts, and can automatically perform a long-term email campaign with those unconverted leads without taking more man-hours from the organization.

Lead response management can be simple with well designed lead response management software. The research shows it’s incredibly effective and produces a high return of investment on leads generated. Remote sales companies using lead response management software see increased profits compared to those who do not.

How voice messaging systems work together

2009-04-17T14:06:00.002-06:00

Voice messaging software solutions provide remarkable time saving solutions for remote sales professionals.

A voice broadcast system is one voice messaging tool that vastly increases the speed at which a sales rep can reach a large audience. With voice broadcasting a prerecorded message is automatically sent out to those on the call list. This frees the agent from making each of those calls individually.

One criticism of voice messaging systems, like broadcast systems, is that they lack the personal feeling that customers like to experience. IVR call routing is one solution for those contacts that are interested in a businesses product or service, but do not want to deal solely with a computer voice message.

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. An interactive voice response system provides all of the functions traditional reserved for touch tone menus. These include the users response to a recorded menu or survey. When the contact desired to respond to what was said over the telephone, a push on one of the number pads conveyed the message. Instead, an IVR listens for the responses a contact will give vocally, and reacts accordingly, including transferring the lead to a live sales agent. Other options that the listener may choose would be to have a fax or email message automatically sent to them, or to be removed from the call list.

An interactive voice response system is not only beneficial when broadcasting voice messages, but can also be helpful when used for inbound calls. Specifically inbound toll free numbers can be set up to transfer callers to the IVR system. Automated responses to common questions can be prerecorded, freeing up sales agents from needing to respond to the same inquiries time and again. Alternatively an IVR may be set up to direct the caller to whichever department they need to reach. This option eliminates a good portion of the work a secretary or telephone operator may need to do in a large organization.

Voice broadcasting and IVR systems both become more efficient when coupled with an ACD call routing system. The ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) routes whatever call is received to the best available sales agent. As contacts opt to talk to a live agent as opposed to working with the recorded messaging system, the ACD will connect them to the best sales rep for their call. All of these options serve to increase productivity without decreasing any of the personal aspect of sales that lead to conversions.

What does a CRM do?

2009-04-17T14:02:00.001-06:00

A good Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) has all the features needed for it to be the brain behind a remote sales team. Individual agents update information on their leads and clients, and the CRM stores all of the data in one place. CRMs facilitate the quick and effortless management of that information, and provide many solutions for increasing customer satisfaction and lead conversion.

CRMs have several parts to them. These include Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Marketing Automation software. These manage the data in the CRM for the sales and marketing processes of remote sales. An SFA should be able to manage contact and account information, track sales from specific geographic territories, control the ‘pipeline’ of how often new leads are fed to sales reps, and store the product and service catalogue for the business. The marketing automation portion of the CRM tracks email marketing, controls campaign and leads management, captures leads from online sources, and automatically responds to inbound emails.

Customer Relationship Managers speed customer support by following individual cases and automatically assigning them to specific sales representatives. They may also store documents that can be retrieved for use by the agent or shared with leads when appropriate by fax or email.

A CRM is also a powerful analytics tool. This software tracks all aspects of the sales process and can quickly produce custom reports on performance. These reports include a record of how many leads were contacted and what ratio converted, how long an individual sales person stays on the phone with their customers, and the total amount of calls a sales team typically makes in a business day.

High customizability is not only provided in the analytics solutions of a CRM. A well engineered Customer Relationship Manager offers customization of any and all forms sales agents use and display of information. These customizations can even happen on a department by department level, not strictly company wide. This allows each department to have access to the information that is most needed to them, which in turn helps the whole sales process to perform better.

Customer Relationship Managers can also have the remote sales team’s dialer software embedded into it. By connecting the power dialer into the CRM, much of the data that needs to be inputted by sales agents are captured by the system automatically. Additionally the CRM will automatically retrieve and display previously captured information on inbound calls.

Get the most out of your Web Forms

2009-04-17T14:00:00.001-06:00

Web form callback technology enables sales reps using dialers to reach leads as soon as they are generated. This telephony tool can increase the productivity of a sales team, and it does so in elegantly simple ways.

This whole business solution starts with a web form. This application is placed on a website and encourages those interested in the organizations services or products to fill it out and submit it. The data from these web forms could sit, filed away on some computer, for a long time before an agent gets the time to look at them. Web form callback technology captures the information submitted and converts them into a lead in the company’s CRM (customer relationship manager). This quick and automated lead capturing assures that all new leads are looked at in a timely manner. Additionally, it provides a way to disqualify potential leads that do not submit all of the requisite information, or who have already been added into the CRM. This stops sales agents from wasting time qualifying leads when they could be on the phone talking to contacts.

A web form callback dialer solution will then ensure that the newly captured lead is routed to the best possible sales representative. This can be determined by several factors: which agents are available, which agents are responsible for specified geographic regions, and which agents are responsible for different toll free numbers.

The call to the new lead is routed through the dialer to the sales agent within minutes of the web form first being generated. The speed at which this call is made enhances productivity by increase the number of leads that are successfully contacted by the sales team. This contact ration increases because the lead is most likely still in a position to be thinking about the company and to be able to receive a telephone call. After all, it was within minutes of the call that the lead was filling out the form on the company website.

Web form callback technology has another important benefit. It increases the confidence that potential clients have in an organization. By reaching a lead quickly the message sent is that the company will fulfill all of its promises that quickly. This feeling of trust allows a lead to feel safe when purchasing a product or service. Because of this automated web form callback increases the ratio of leads contacted to leads converted.

Increase Sales 800%

2009-04-17T13:58:00.001-06:00

Lead response rates greatly influence the ratio of leads contacted to leads converted. The purpose of lead response management software or solutions is to aid sales team professionals to make more contacts, close more sales, and increase revenue.

Lead management software creates contact lists for sales representatives to call. One way it does this is by exporting contact lists from the Customer Relationship Management system. This is generally easy for the sales rep to do, often with only a few mouse clicks. These lists can be generated from a number of parameters, such as their geographic location, their response to the last successful contact, or whether or not they’ve ever been in contact with a sales agent. These lists are then called through by whatever dialer the sales professional uses in conjunction with their Customer Relationship Management system.

Alternatively contact lists can be generated by web form capture solutions built into the lead response software. This business solution utilizes the web forms on the company website. When potential clients fill out and submit a form including their name and phone number that information is automatically captured and stored within the Customer Relationship Management system. These leads are then routed by the lead management software immediately to the best sales agent for the call, usually based on the agents designated responsibility over that particular web form, website, or the leads geographic location in addition to the agent’s availability. These newly captured leads are given high priority by the lead generation software, allowing sales representatives to attempt to contact newly generated leads within minutes of when they enter the Customer Relationship Management system.

This rapid response rate may be the largest contributing factor to the increase in successful lead contacts, successful conversions, and successful sales. The rate of contact and conversion decreases dramatically as the amount of time it takes to respond to new leads increased. By using lead response software in conjunction with a Customer Relationship Management system to contact new leads in minutes, companies who sell remotely have reported upwards of an eight hundred percent increase in sales.

This sales solution is one of the few business implementations that bring immediate results. Within 24 hours of implementing software that captures and redirects newly created leads sales representatives will see an increase in the amount of sales closed. A lead management software solution is an important improvement for any sales team.

Hosted CRM revisited

2009-04-17T13:47:00.002-06:00

This integration of CRM and a dialer helps sales teams be more productive. Hosted CRM makes this setup even more profitable. The host company maintains and manages all hardware needed to run the software, which is also housed by the host company. The software is accessed by the remote sales organizations over the internet. This option opens up the possibility of having sales representatives work from home, or completely separate offices since they do not need either the hardware or software they need at the site from which they work.

The Dialer

2009-04-17T13:23:00.002-06:00

Historically sales were done with a store front that customers could visit or by door to door vendors bringing their wares and services directly to their customers. Recently shifts in sales practices have led to the development of “Inside Sales”, a very different focus with very different tools.

Inside sales differ from traditional, or outside sales, in several ways. The clearest distinction is how customers are encountered. Inside sales are often conducted from an office or call center, through the use of a computer and telephone. Sometimes visits or appointments are set up for a face to face visit, but the phone becomes the primary tool of communication.

Numerous different kinds of hardware and software have been developed to aid in the process of inside sales. Dialers have emerged as a staple in the inside sales industry. Dialers, or dialer software, are programs that monitor, record, alter, and streamline the calls that are made by any single sales agent. Not all dialers are the same, but many fall into a few basic categories.

Predictive dialers are designed to give increased control and flexibility to sales teams to improve the amount of talk time each agent has over the course of a workday. A ratio dialer works by calling a set amount of leads per available sales agent. This call per agent ratio takes into account that some calls are never answered by the lead. Ratio dialers can leave a prerecorded message when they encounter a voice mail system, and never bother the sales agent with the machine. The salesperson’s time is spent only with prospects.

A second type of dialer is the auto dialer. With auto dialers, the dialer will call through a list of leads automatically, patching them through to the sales representative as the call starts to ring. If a call is not answered the salesperson can choose to leave a voice message. An auto dialer reduces the amount of dropped calls from unavailable representatives or pauses between when the client answers and when the sales person connects to the call that may occur with a ratio dialer.

Power dialers are a third kind of dialer used in inside sales. A Power dialer can call through a list of numbers, similar to an auto dialer, but a power dialer gives more control to the call agent. The agent is able to control the rate of calling, by calling the agent as it makes a call to a lead. The salesperson answers the call, which is then patched through to the lead. Power dialers also have the ability to leave voice messages, emails, and faxes if a call is not answered.

All dialers are designed to increase productivity of inside sales departments. They all require a preprogrammed list of leads, but each have their own nuances to allow dialers to meet the needs of the diverse inside sales community.

Hosted CRM

2009-04-17T09:59:00.001-06:00

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems allow departments that are a part of a remote sales team to coordinate information about their customers. This is why companies contract with a hosted CRM service provider. A CRM prevents new leads from being lost in the shuffle between those agents who generate, qualify, contact, and nurture leads.

These hosted CRMs fulfill all of the functions of other CRMs, but have several benefits.

First, no additional hardware needs to be purchased, and generally no additional software needs to be downloaded on to the company’s own computers. The hardware and software will be hosted by the CRM company’s location and on their network. This lowers the cost of acquiring, storing, and maintaining a Customer Relationship Management system. This also places the responsibility of fixing problems and “bugs” onto the shoulders of the host.

Second, company’s that use a hosted CRM gain the added business solutions that have been designed to work alongside the management system. Sales Force Automation (SFA) is one example. An SFA automates many of the simple tasks that sales agents have to do. These include automated lead management and tracking, account management and tracking, business reporting, and workflow management. All of these business solutions remove the tedious nature of record keeping from inside sales. SFA allows one agent to be able to handle all the needs of a single customer, no longer forcing them to pass their leads back and forth through different departments.

Finally, a hosted CRM with proper software support from the host company will have dozens more powerful efficiency building tools for their clients. Perhaps the most powerful of these would be a outbound auto or power dialer that will route incoming leads to an available sales reps within minutes of those leads being generated. Inbound calling should also be integrated into this same system so that agents making outbound calls may also receive inbound calls. A CRM combined with both inbound and outbound will save hundred of man hours by eliminating wasted down time between callers for all members of the sells team. Simple automated email and fax marketing with preprogrammed templates and simple prerecorded voice messaging that start with just a single button click amplifies sales agents selling power.
A hosted CRM with this support from the host company will allow any individual sales rep to take care of multiple customers, no longer multiple reps for each lead!

Why should you be using Lead Management Software?

2009-04-17T09:52:00.001-06:00

Organizations act wisely when they utilize ways of bringing potential clients to their websites. Most successful businesses spend large amounts of time and resources on driving those clicks exactly where they want them. In addition, landing pages and entire websites are optimized to convert those visitors into leads. As an organization gains prominence, and as it streamlines its marketing campaigns, the flow of leads has the potential to overwhelm sales teams.

Lead management software provides businesses with several tools to help them take good care of their leads. The most basic function of any sales lead management system is tracking where the lead came from. This provides useful information on what marketing strategies are working well, which ones need some work, and which endeavors should be dropped.

Lead management software does not stop at this most fundamental function. In addition to simple tracking, sales lead management allows you to contact your leads more efficiently. Finding well designed lead management software should have a direct impact on the number of sales you are making. Sales lead management has the potential to double and quadruple an organization’s sales that previously did not use such software.

One way lead management software accomplishes this is by helping your sales team representatives contact those new leads within the first few minutes that they enter into your lead pool (such as when they fill out a form on that newly optimized company website). This is often referred to as lead response management. Because it is so crucial to conversions to contact leads quickly and efficiently, a lead management system worth its price must facilitate rapid response.

Lead management systems do this best when they incorporate other telephony software used in remote sales. Power dialing, automated prerecorded voice messaging, and embedded ties to company websites are all valuable features in lead management software. A sales lead management system that already features these tools will remove the need for additional software and will streamline the process of making more calls and contacts, sending more emails and faxes, and having more demonstrations, proposals, and sales. Ultimately, if your lead management system does not lead to more closes, it is not living up its promised role in the sales process.

Companies that will host your lead management system will not only make installation and maintenance easier for you, they will also save you the cost of purchasing hardware and developing software yourself. Since lead management systems have so much potential to increase productivity, the pay as you go fees available from system hosts are well worth the investment.

Hw does an eCRM decrease the price of performing remote sales?

2009-04-16T16:14:00.000-06:00

The internet can offer a business the opportunity to cut the cost associated with customer service, increase customer satisfaction, and personalize marketing customization. These needs are often met as previous business tools become incorporated into the World Wide Web. Customer Relationship Managers, or CRMs, are one example. When a CRM is used in conjunction with the Internet it is known as an eCRM.

CRMs are often hosted on a company’s server that companies using it pay for each month or year. These hosted CRMs are accessed by the internet and become eCRMs. All customer relationship management systems include the processes and activities an organization uses to track and organize their contacts. The challenge a CRM has to face is being able to access the information and offer the communication on the right topic, in the right amount, at the right time that the customer needs.

The internet provides many facets by which the eCRM can accomplish its task. Websites and web pages become important sources for leads in a customer relationship manager. Many company websites contain web forms. These forms collect personal information and are voluntarily filled out and submitted by visitors who often are interested in buying the company’s product or service. If a CRM was not connected to the internet, a sales agent would have to wait for an email notifying him that the web form had been completed, impute that telephone number into the CRM manually, and wait for it to be brought up for a sales rep to call.

Alternatively, an eCRM can be set up to work with the web forms on a company site. As these web forms are submitted, the customer relationship manager captures the lead. The software can accomplish this within seconds of the form being submitted, and sales agents can follow up with the prospect immediately. Lead management solutions built into the CRM push the newly captured lead to the top of the call list. The contact that filled out the web form may realistically be called within minutes of submitting their information over the web. Such a rapid response not only impresses potential customers, but it also ensures that the lead is contacted before a competitor is able to, or before his or her interest fades. This fast response rate is one way that the use of an eCRM increases sales.

Remote sales is often less expensive than face to face sales. The use of telephony business solutions like a Customer Relationship Manager, especially an eCRM, increases the difference in price between the two practices even more.

The connection between CRM and SFA

2009-04-16T11:44:00.003-06:00

In inside sales – also known as remote sales – sales agents and customers don't meet face to face to do business, at least at first. Instead your call center contacts potential leads with the intent of turning them into lifetime customers. Leads that have already become customers in turn can call the business at any time during operating hours, and request the service they need. Inside sales departments succeed by making a large volume of calls, receive a large volume of calls, adequately addressing the needs of prospects and customers, and by keeping track of all the calls and interactions that take place.

A CRM is the system used by companies who sell remotely to handle the large amount of information shared during inbound and outbound calls. These systems collect and record the important data a remote sales team needs. With a CRM, a sales agent will be able to track which of his or her leads have been successfully contacted and also when other leads need to be followed up on.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A customer relationship management system tracks all phases of the sales process: sales, marketing, support, ordering, and services.

The part of a CRM that controls and documents the sales process is called Sales Force Automation (SFA). This allows sales professionals to schedule call back appointments and phone meetings, track responses to sales and marketing campaigns, and manage individual sales accounts. The data that the SFA collects during the sales process on leads, customers, and performance will be kept in the Customer Relationship Management database.

The idea behind sales force automation is that when analytical data is shared between departments and those involved in the different stages that sales professionals will be able to ensure that they are productive as possible.

An SFA facilitates successful lead management, and is designed so that no lead will ever be lost in the transfer from lead generation to lead qualification. This allows a sales agent to contact a lead as soon as it comes in. These valuable leads generated from web forms and ad campaigns will never again sit stored in a forgotten computer file where they could be overlooked and ignored. Leads are able to be imported in from a variety of sources including spreadsheets and web captured forms automatically with sales force automation. As those leads are converted into customers sales teams can view trends and analyze those trends in their SFA, which shows how individual employees and sales teams are performing so they can figure out how they could improve.

Sales force automation also consolidates all company information into one accessible place within the CRM. This includes contact information for leads, product purchase orders, and the communication history between clients and sales agents. This information facilitates collaboration across all departments in an organization and aids the effective coordination of sales campaigns and initiatives.

Using Sales Force Automation to track the communication history of individual customers with an organization helps the company to keep their clients happy. Well designed sales force automation systems provide easy templates to be used in creating effective emails or print mailers for customers. They also provide tools for personalization, allowing companies to reach the individual needs of their clients while providing them a good experience with the organization. By tracking communication with individual leads and customers you can avoid the annoying repetitive emails, and all contact with the customer can be rewarding and relevant. SFA also provides information for an organization on whether or not emails sent to contacts are opened by them, as well as how long it took after they were sent for them to be opened.

Using the information gathered by sales force automation, a Customer Response Management system can analyze data recorded and provide reports for employers. These analytical reports will allow a company to know exactly how many calls the whole sales team is making each day, how long each one talks to individual leads and customers, and just what percent of their contacted leads convert into customers. This allows sales managers to accurately make decisions and changes to how their sales team should continue based on their current performance.

Analytical reports also become important in managing an organization’s marketing campaigns. With a customer relationship management system sales professionals can track where the majority of new leads are generated from and which of those new lead bring the company money. If one particular lead source, a lead generation company or ad space on a website, is not producing the quality of leads expected for the business, a CRM will show that in its reporting and inform the company that it should reallocate its resources into a source that will bring higher returns for its investment.

Converting leads and keeping customers happy is what inside sales is all about. A customer relationship management system (CRM) which incorporates sales force automation (SFA) provides remote sales teams the tools they need to do that.

These Software Solutions will Increase your Lead Nurturing Success

2009-04-16T10:14:00.003-06:00

Lead generation practices can produce a large volume of leads for a sales team agent to contact. Even with the best of sales reps not every lead contacted becomes a conversion. But not every lead that does not convert is a lost cause. Lead nurturing is the process of preparing contacted, but unconverted leads, into profitable sources of revenue in the future. Unconverted leads become not-yet-converted leads when lead nurturing is implemented.

A potential client needs to think and feel several things about a company before they will purchase their product or service. The lead needs to be familiar with the company and what it does. He or she needs to perceive the company as a group of experts in their field. The lead needs to feel like his or her specific problems are understood. Lastly, the company needs to be well liked enough for the lead to consider doing business with it.

This gradual changing of a lead’s feelings or attitudes cannot be accomplished by a monthly phone call asking if he or she was interested in the product yet. Instead, the lead needs to become comfortable with the organization and the employees there. Much computer telephone integration (CTI) software has been designed to manage the consistent and meaningful communication during the lead nurturing time. These telephony software solutions also incorporate several media formats to be used in the process.

Task management systems, such as an electronic labor force (ELF), manages lead nurturing from one source. These integrate with customer relationship managers (CRMs) to keep track of callbacks, events, and other tasks. These systems also control the various marketing solutions: email, voice broadcast, fax messaging, direct mail, and others.

Fax or email messaging campaigns can be particularly useful during lead nurturing. Faxes or emails can be designed previous to their sending, and cover topics that the majority of leads would be interested in. Many fax or email messaging systems also contain templates made by the host company to help in lead nurturing campaigns. These messages can then be automatically distributed to individual leads that are being nurtured periodically throughout the process. In addition, these emails, or original ones, may be sent by using the straightforward features of the ELF. The interspersion of these text based messages between phone calls from sales reps fosters a feeling of trust with the lead.

These are only a few of the software solutions available to aid the remote sales team to increase sales and customer loyalty through lead nurturing. Sales marketing tactics become more effective and more leads become conversions as lead nurturing becomes an important part of the sales process.

Which sales tools will help your company perform best?

2009-04-14T09:48:00.004-06:00

A company’s Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) tracks all of the information a sales team needs to capture about prospective and current clients, but there is more to being a successful salesperson than keeping track of numbers and reports. Vendors that develop and distribute sales automation software have provided many sales tools to enhance the productivity of a CRM and the sales agents using it.

Telephony sales tools vary widely in their functions. Some provide ways to perform the tasks associated with remote sales easily, while others can drastically reduce the amount of paperwork and form filing an agent has to do.

Voice messaging systems are one example of a sales automation tool that speeds up the job of sales professionals. Instead of forcing each agent to wait through long answering machines and leaving their own voice messages – mistakes and all – a voice messaging system allows an agent to leave a pre-recorded message with a simple click of a button. Voicemails then become sales tools. Individual agents are not wasting time that could be used to contact a live lead, but their messages sound more professional since they were recorded (and possibly rerecorded several times) without the pressure of having to get it right the first time. Additionally those messages are still left in their own voices, bringing a personal feel to the automated responses.

An important sales tool to include in a CRM is a permission marketing tracking system. This allows an organization to be in complete compliance with anti-spam and “Do Not Fax” regulations without increasing the workload of their sales department. Permission marketing tracking systems automatically include at the bottom of each fax and email the date and time that permission to send the message was given.

Other sales tools that work in conjunction with the permission marketing tracking system are Do Not Call Maintenance systems. These record “do not call” or “do not contact” requests from contacts directly into the CRM, and records the time and date the request was made.

The most powerful of sales automation tools that incorporate with a CRM are power dialers. These drastically increase the call per hour rate for phone sales professionals by automatically providing leads for them to contact. After uploading a phone list of leads or contacts into the power dialer from the CRM, the power dialer cycles through the list allowing the salesperson to call the next lead with a single click.

Sales tools enhance the already useful and powerful CRM. Many different telephony tools are offered in the industry. They give an organization of any size the resources to be successful.

Embed your dialer into your CRM

2009-04-09T14:49:00.002-06:00

A dialer is a type of telephony software that enables a sales agent to call a large volume of leads in a business day. These dialers have many incarnations such as auto dialers, predictive dialers, ratio dialers, and the efficient power dialers. Many dialers operate by calling numerous numbers at once, and they all serve to move a sales rep through a pre-programmed list of leads. All dialers operate at their best when they are used in conjunction with a CRM or ERP.

ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planners) and CRMs (Customer Relationship Managers) create, store and manage important company information, including the contact information on all leads and clients. Some popular providers of ERPs and CRMs include RightNow Technologies, InsideSales.com, Salesnet, and SalesForce.com. The ERP or CRM a company uses becomes a vital part of their sales process. A dialer should be fully integrated to work cooperatively with these systems.

The combining of the data management system with the telephone dialer enables tightly-coupled data management, tracking and analytics with an organization’s telemarketing efforts. The software combination allows quick and easy transfer of important information which powers other telephony business solutions. These include the automatic capturing of leads from submitted web forms, the routing of those leads to the best suited remote sales agent to accept that call, the automatic sending of an email or fax message by a sales agent to a lead while they are on the phone together, and the recording of important follow up tasks and dates associated with each contact.

Some providers of hosted dialer solutions also provide their own CRMs or ERPs. An alternative to a hosted solution that still provides both a CRM and ERP is a company whose telephone dialer can be fully embedded within another company’s management system.

By using a hosted dialer, a remote sales organization gains the telephony power tools associated with the dialer solution, but does not have to develop their own dialer software or download another company’s software onto their computers. Instead the software is housed on the host provider’s network, and accessed by the businesses acting as their clients.

Depending on the combination of data management and telephone dialer systems chosen, reports consistently find that the volume of sales made by any particular remote sales professional can increase three or four times than before. In addition, the ratio of contacts successfully made and contacts that become conversions increase as these telemarketing solutions are used.

How can the use of Toll Free Numbers help telesales?

2009-04-09T14:44:00.002-06:00

800 telephone numbers have become a staple in the business world. An 800 number is a toll free phone number, meaning the called party is charged for the call instead of the calling party. This allows customers to call the businesses and organizations they do business with without being charged extra for the communication. Businesses should consider the implementation of toll free numbers when they make a profit from the call in other ways. These profits include collecting fees for technical support, making a sale during the call, or seeing an enhancement in sales because of the implementation of the toll free number.

Including one or more toll free telephone numbers increases company visibility and productivity. There are numerous telephony software solutions that have been designed to help remote sales teams use tool free numbers most effectively.

By linking inbound toll free calls to a lead management CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) incoming calls can be captured. This means that the most relevant, real time information on the caller will immediately and automatically be updated into the CRM. These leads are saved as future prospects for call or email campaigns.

Inbound/outbound call blending telephony software allows sales agents to “double up” on both duties. These sales reps may make outbound calls while they wait to receive an inbound call. This call blending can be additionally enhanced by the use of a CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) system. These solutions often involve pop-ups or pop-screens, windows that open automatically when the inbound call is answered. This immediately displays all relevant information and allows the sales rep to easy update the contacts data in the CRM.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is another business solution that increases the effectiveness of toll free calls. ACD software is known as call routing software, and it automatically forwards incoming calls to the best available agent. Individual agents can be specified as the primary agent for individual toll free numbers or geographic locations. If preferred agents are not available, incoming calls can then be routed to a designated fail-over destination. This could be the company’s general telephone line, an internal messaging system, or a private cell phone.

With the analytic capabilities of an industry standard CRM, an added toll free number can be used to quickly track the progress of a new marketing strategy. The amount of time each call is left on hold and the length of each call can also be monitored and be used to create service standards for inbound calls. Toll free telephony software creates many opportunities to increase customer satisfaction and sales.

All about CRMs and SFAs

2009-04-02T14:45:00.000-06:00

All about Auto Dialers

2009-04-02T09:55:00.002-06:00

A keyword search for “auto dialer” on Google Search will find over seven hundred thousand sites. Out of the first fifty sites that Google displays, a quick perusal of the page summaries show that at least ninety percent of them are trying to get you to buy their autodialer. What is this hot item and what do you need to know about it?

An auto dialer's job is to allow just one sales agent to make a large volume of calls quickly and efficiently. When making B2C calls (which stands for Business to Customer) an autodialer will save an immense amount of time for any organization. For an auto dialer to work it must be programmed with a list of phone numbers to call, such as your list of leads. As your business generates leads from its own website or purchases new or old leads from any of the lead generation companies out there (a search of “lead generation company” will give you over sixty thousand sites to explore) they can be fed into the autodialer. The same is true for lists of previous and current clients or leads that you are nurturing. The autodialer will then give these numbers for your sales team to call.

When shopping for an autodialer look for a system that will phone the numbers given to your sales agents with just a click of the mouse. Additionally those sales agents should be able to leave a prerecorded voice message, or send a fax or an email with just another click.

Traditionally auto dialers haven't been used as much in B2B calls (which stands for Business to Business). Businesses are much more likely to have a receptionist or a voice recognition message systems an agent has to maneuver through that would defeat a purely automatic auto dialer or gatekeeper. Now “hybrid” auto dialers are available, which allow the auto dialer to take care of the basic tasks of calling, and call resolution, while giving the sales agent the needed control to successfully contact other businesses.

When shopping those seven hundred thousand search results for an automatic dialer search for one who's auto dialer software can provide these benefits; which enables hands free dialing, displays lead information, displays lead notes, displays lead activities, displays daily call statistics, allows leaving a voice message, allows sending email and faxes, and enables quick data entry.

The purpose of auto dialers and the corresponding auto dialer software is to allow you and your sales team to contact thousands of leads each day. An autodialer has the potential to increase the amount of calls your call center makes 'four times' the amount they are doing calling manually.

Sales Force Automation

2009-03-31T16:16:00.003-06:00

Sales force automation systems (SFA) are a part of a companies customer relations management (CRM) system . Sales force automation is a system that automatically records crucial data at all stages of the sales process. Utilization of a well designed SFA brings the possibilities of increased productivity and customer satisfaction.

The idea behind sales force automation is that when analytical data is shared between departments and sales stages that sales professionals will be able to ensure that they are productive as possible.

An SFA allows successful lead management, and promises that no lead will ever be lost. This allows a sales agent to contact a lead as soon as it comes in, never stored in a file where they could be forgotten about. Leads are able to be imported in from a variety of sources including spreadsheets and web captured forms. As leads are converted into customers you can view trends and analyze the trends in your SFA, showing how individual employees and sales teams could improve.

SFA also consolidates all company information into one place. This includes contacts, product purchases, and communication histories. This information facilitates collaboration across an organization and allows the coordination of sales campaigns.

Having an SFA helps you track the communication history of individual customers which is important in keeping clients happy. Well designed sales force automation systems provide easy templates to be used in creating effective emails or print mailers for customers. They also provide tools for personalization, allowing companies to reach the individual needs of their clients while providing them a good experience with the organization. By tracking communication with individual leads and customers annoying repetitive emails can be avoided, and all contact with the customer can be rewarding. They also provide information for an organization of whether emails sent are opened or not, and how long it took after they were sent for them to be opened.

A sales force automation system should integrate with all other telephony systems an organization uses. This allows the SFA to be as accurate and useful as possible in its analytic business reports. Because an SFA receives information constantly from sales agents, it can provide the exact status of a business at any given moment. This increases an organizations ability to make informed decisions on sales practices. An SFA that can produce graphs or charts of sales performance quickly and easily will show underlying trends, and will allow sales managers to quickly relay important information to their sales teams.

Power Dialer: It really doesn't get better than this

2009-03-31T09:49:00.002-06:00

A inside sales representative dialing leads manually can expect to dial thirty to eighty. Using a predictive dialer that same sales representative can expect to dial four hundred and six hundred but they likely loose three to six percent of calls throughout the day from times where he is busy on another call. Additionally, a “telemarketer pause” often occurs when the lead answers the phone call before the sales agent is patched through. With a power dialer the number of calls made can be expected to fall somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred and fifty calls in a typical work day, but the power dialer removes the pauses and dropped calls from the remote sales experience and is able to provide and much more satisfactory experience with a more personal feel to the lead.

Power dialers accomplish this quadrupling of leads called in the manner the software places calls. Like all dialers, power dialers need to be programmed with a list of phone numbers. This list can be generated automatically as interested individuals submit inquiries online via a web form on a company’s web site, by purchasing leads from a lead generation company, or by uploading a list of leads that were previously attempted to be contacted or current clients out of the businesses Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).

The phone numbers of the contacts on the list are fed into the power dialer one at a time. By only calling one lead, no contact will ever have to wait for a sales rep to become available to answer the call. Likewise, no call will ever be dropped because there is no sales rep available to accept the call.

The sales rep initiates a call simply by clicking on the call button next to the lead’s information within the CRM. The power dialer then rings the sales agent at the same time it calls the lead. If that lead does not pick up, the power dialer then dials the next lead on the list. As long as the sale’s agent stays on the line the power dialer will continue to make calls for him or her.

Using a power dialer, remote sales professionals also no longer have to waste their time dealing with voice mail machines. The sales representative can instead have the power dialer leave the voice message while it simultaneously starts the sales agent on another call. The agent can choose to do this with a single button click. The message left is one that the sales rep records previously in his or her own voice. This still gives a personalized feeling to the contact, but also allows the message to be planned and free from mistakes.

In similar manner a sales representative can opt to send an email or to send a fax message instead of a voice message. The power dialer pulls the necessary contact information from the CRM, and uses previously made templates to speedily send the desired message. This can also be done during a phone conversation. This increases a sales agent’s power to meet a contacts request and fulfill his own promises by immediately completely tasks that involve sending additional information.

While using a power dialer sales agents can still accept inbound calls. This allows all members of the sales team to be making outbound calls while they are waiting to receive a call, increasing over all productivity. Inbound - outbound blending utilizes ACD, or automatic call distribution. ACD call routing is when the ACD transfers incoming calls to the appropriate employee for the task. To help match which available agent should take any particular call the ACD call routing system reviews that customers credentials. Sometimes a simple interactive voice response system may retrieve additional data from the customer for the ACD. Alternatively the ACD can be programmed to recognize different toll free numbers, and direct customers to the appropriate employees based on that. Automatic call distribution will increase the rate of response to incoming calls and productivity no matter which set up is used to organize call agents. Better response times lead to improved customer satisfaction by limiting the time each customer waits for service and by giving inbound agents higher levels of responsiveness to each caller.

Since power dialers are so often embedded within Customer Relationship Management software, power dialers serve to increase reporting visibility. By using the power dialer functionality a sales rep activates all of the telephone reporting tools in the CRM system to track effort, ratios, and results. Management can easily see how many calls are made per day, the amount of talk time there is during each call, and the ratio of leads contacted to conversions for whole sales teams and individual remote sales agents.

Likewise power dialers help increase call quality by standardizing a call centers dialing and voice messaging approach as well as being able to record and monitor calls for quality control and training purposes.

What you should demand in your Telephone Dialer

2009-03-26T09:52:00.002-06:00

A telephone dialer is a combination of hardware and software that allows a sales agent to more effectively make a call. Companies or organizations that make a large volume of calls each day should consider obtaining a telephone dialer through an established host site. In this arrangement the hosting company will be responsible to resolve any technical problems and will be responsible for the purchasing and maintenance of the hardware needed for the dialer. In exchange hey will provide their software for you to use for a monthly fee.
Not all dialers are made the same, and there are certain traits that you should demand in your telephone dialer systems.

Look for a telephone dialer that will work with your existing CRM (Customer Relationship Management System). Hosted CRM's will provide your business with the organization you need to quickly and accurately keep track of leads generated. When powered with a telephone dialer that will automatically process leads generated from sources like forms on your company website, your sales team will be able to contact incoming leads within minutes of receiving them, which is absolutely crucial to converting those leads into paying clients. Having a telephone dialer that will work effectively will provide your agents with the numbers they should call, freeing them from remembering details like callback times – the telephone dialer and CRM team will do the remembering for them.

To save time in the menial and monotonous tasks of manually dialing phone numbers each work day a telephone dialer should have the ability to make a phone call with a single click of the mouse. Additionally a telephone dialer should have the option to automatically record a call, hang up, leave a voice message if a lead is unavailable, or send an email automatically to the potential customer, all with a simple single click. Look for phrases such as “click to call” when viewing the features of a potential telephone dialer.

Your telephone dialer should be able to automatically call through a list of contacts, and patch through only those leads that answer their phones. This system is referred to as a power dialer, and will dramatically cut down on the time wasted by each employee who has to sit through pointless minutes of rings and voice mail with each potential customer. This is one of the ways a telephone dialer can protect your companies time and boost its revenue.

Lead routing is the last feature you should demand in a telephone dialer. This program decides based on the parameters you gave it which agent answers which incoming calls, allowing you to make sure that those toll free numbers you've provided to your customers will always connect them to the right department.

ACD Call Routing

2009-03-24T12:11:00.001-06:00

We all want phone calls to be flooding into our call centers. An ACD will help you be organized and efficient when that happens as your agents handling the calls will automatically be routed calls that they can best handle.

ACD stands for Automatic Call Distributor. ACD call routing is when the ACD transfers incoming calls to the appropriate employee for the task. ACD call routing is ideal for offices handling a large volume of calls, especially when callers do not need to talk to a specific employee but require attention by any of multiple persons at the soonest possible opportunity.

To help match which available agent should take any particular call the ACD call routing system reviews that customers credentials. Sometimes a simple interactive voice response system may retrieve additional data from the customer for the ACD. Alternatively the ACD can be programmed to recognize different toll free numbers, and direct customers to the appropriate employees based on that. A third alternative is that an ACD may be connected with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). In this arrangement the ACD will route calls based on key information and also relay this information to the answering agent.

ACDs can work equally well with both in-house call centers and remote inbound call agents. Automatic call distribution will increase the rate of response to incoming calls and productivity no matter which set up is used to organize call agents. Better response times lead to improved customer satisfaction by limiting the time each customer waits for service and by giving inbound agents higher levels of responsiveness to each caller.

Automatic call distributors often contain software that monitor reporting and performance data. Records of call time and volume provide insight to managers about a business's performance. Tracking which toll free numbers are called the most allows an organization to refine and reevaluate marketing plans and current campaigns. Call recording options provide quality control as well as tools for valuable training for current and future employees.

The ability to blend inbound calls with outbound calls is also a task a good ACD call routing system can accomplish. This allows an agent to be free to make outbound calls while waiting to receive inbound calls. This is especially useful at increasing efficiency during non-peak shifts or down times in caller volume.

By subscribing with a hosted ACD call routing system provider your resources are expanded. Additional hold capacity without having to pay for more T1s or local lines is an example. Instead your ACD's host can hold those calls that you during those times of peak inbound call volume, and patch them through with your ACD call routing system as inbound call agents become available.

What to shop for in a Voice Messaging system

2009-03-19T12:49:00.002-06:00

It is impossible for any business to be successful without customers. A business must contact as many leads as possible to gain those customers, and studies show that contacting leads within five minutes of them showing interest increases the likelihood of them becoming a customer.

A voice messaging system is one effective and simple way to communicate with both sales leads and your tried and true clients. It is a system for calling a large number of individuals and presenting them a prerecorded voice message. These messages are recorded by you and your employees, allowing your contacts to have a good and personal experience. It also frees your live agents to be working with those contacts that show the most interest.

Voice messaging systems manage telephone messages that can then be sent to a large number of people. They are perfect for sales, prospecting, lead generation and appointment-setting – or for any other organization that want to make a high number of calls in a short period of time automatically using a prerecorded message.

There are some key features to look forward in a voice messaging system to make sure that you get the best service and highest returns from your investment.

Find a system that uses a single screen for the multiple tasks it has to perform. This will allow your organization to efficiently cover all the tasks you need: leaving prerecorded messages, recording calls, converting leads, sending emails...
Make sure your voice messaging system allows for the option that any lead listening to the pre-recorded message has the option to be routed to a live person, receive an email, or opt out of future calls. This should be as easy as simply pushing a button for the recipients of your messages.
De-duplication is a must. This feature automatically makes sure the same phone number will not be sent the same message numerous times.
You will want a system with the capacity to manage your Do Not Call list. Look for software that will not only keep track of those contacts who ask to be taken off of your calling list, but also one that will cross-check against the national DNC list for larger projects by utilizing the CRM.
Going with a trusted company that will host your voice messaging system will save you money compared to purchasing your own hardware and software to run the system yourself. This will allow you to effectively start sending messages to your contacts regardless of how little prior experience you have with voice messaging, and will also give you flexibility as your company expands.

Voice messaging will free your employees from making simple, routine calls while still allowing your customers to receive a personalized message from your company and easily getting in touch with a live person. A well designed voice messaging system has the potential to catapult the progress of your organization.

Invest in a CRM

2009-03-17T13:28:00.002-06:00

Inside sales are characterized by their reliance on telephones. The entire idea behind inside sales is that your salespeople and your customers don't even meet face to face to do business, at least at first. Instead your call center contact potential leads with the intent of turning them into lifetime customers. The current customer's role in this process is that they can call your business at any time during operating hours, and they will be given the service they need. An inside sales department can only do better if they are able to make a large volume of calls, receive a large volume of calls, and keep track of all of those calls.

With all of these inbound and outbound calls any organization will need to keep on top of their paperwork. Otherwise, who will theyknow which leads have been contacted and which ones need to be followed up on, and when, and how. A CRM is the system any inside sales company needs to stay competitive.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A customer relationship management system tracks all phases of the sales process: sales, marketing, support, ordering, and services.
The parts of a CRM that takes care of sales is called sales force automation (SFA). This allows salespeople to schedule callbacks and phone meetings, track responses, and manage sales accounts. The data that the CRM collects during the sales process on leads, customers, and performance will be kept in the CRMs database.

CRMs can analyze data recorded and provide reports for employers. These analytical reports will allow you to know just how many calls your sales team is making each day, how long they talk with customers, and just what percent of their contacted leads convert into customers. This will allow you to evaluate which sales agents need more training, which ones can handle more responsibilities, and which ones may be better off in another line of business.
These analytical reports also become important in managing your marketing campaigns. With a customer relationship management system you can track where your leads come from and which ones bring you money. If one particular lead generation company's leads aren't coming through for you a CRM will let you know that and you can reallocate your resources to a source that will bring returns.

Converting leads and keeping customers happy is what inside sales is all about. Don't loose track of your customers, your leads, or the money you have invested in gaining them. Invest in a Customer Relationship Management system.

What is Telephony and Why should you use it?

2009-03-12T15:12:00.004-06:00

Telephony is the use of equipment to allow people to verbally communicate with each other across large distances. Telephones are the standard for telephony tools, but can be upgraded by telephony software. Telephony software is any software that is used to increase the productivity of phone calls.

A salespersons success is linked to the number of phone calls he or she can make in a day. The more calls a salesperson can make, the more goods or services they will be able to sell. Well designed telephony software can quadruple the number of calls an individual salesperson can make in a day. Logic would say that the same salesperson would also quadruple his or her sales. Telephony software provides all the incentive a business owner needs to install it – a bigger bottom line!

One example of telephony software is a power dialer. A power dialer is a software that automatically selects leads for any individual salesperson to call. They will then make that call. Power dialers can make phone calls significantly faster than manual dialers. Because of this they are one of the great ways telephony software can increase your organizations number of outbound calls upwards of four times each day.

Well designed power dialers will be integrated into a company's Customer Relationship Management System, or CRM. This will display to each agent the information your company has already gathered on any individual customer that the power dialer selects to call. This will allow the salesperson making the call to instantly see how often their leads have been contacted in the past, when last contacted, and what the results of all of those contacts were. This telephony software interface with the power dialer eliminates much of the mundane note taking and busy work of the sales world by automatically recording information about the call and providing clear places to type in the information that the system still needs from any particular client.

Telephony software can also recognize answering machines, busy signals, and wrong numbers, and prevent those calls from being patched through to your available agents. This frees up your employees to be dealing with decision makers that will purchase your services. This also avoids burnout among your sales team that may be caused by the routine of manually calling leads only to be greeted by machine generated beeps and answering machines.

Telephony software can amplify any sales team or organization that routinely contacts many people by the phone each day. Search for a provider that will host the service, and will download their computer telephony software into your own system. By going with an established provider of this service you will save yourself the time and stress of recreating what has already been done for you by another company.