Telemarketing Software Featured Article

When you think about sales, specifically about the salesperson, you get an image of someone who is primarily focused on selling their products and/or services, often based on maintaining strong personal relationships. This is pretty accurate, but if the right tools aren’t in place, the more accurate picture of a salesperson will likely involve them digging through old Excel files and maintaining old lead sheets, getting them absolutely nowhere.

Today, selling has become a strategic issue, which cannot be supported by legacy technologies. If you want to break through old, tired methods, you have to develop a consistent strategic approach, where a setting is created which makes it relatively easier for you to sell your products and/or services. But how and where does that start?

VanillaSoft recently hosted a webinar that discussed the challenges of inside sales efforts and how to turn them from “ho-hum” to “heck yeah!” Among the presenters included Nancy Nardin from Smart Selling Tools and VanillaSoft’s own Kevin Thornton. So, what does a “heck yeah!” selling plan include?

Well, to get to that, Nardin first covered the challenges many sales people face in today’s technological climate. One major setback for selling is not using the right tools. Today, sales is no longer about will power, to get on the horn and call day in and day out, waiting for just one prospect to say “yes!” We’ve come a long way, so today’s processes need to match the landscape they service. Today’s prospect doesn’t want to talk, nor does he/she have time to talk. Here’s a depressing statistic: only two percent of calls yield an appointment, not necessarily a sale. So, how can a salesperson turn that around?

According to Thornton, it’s about process. Gone are the days of using a list-based lead sheet. An Excel file simply isn’t going to cut it in today’s app-driven and mobile-powered society. Any sales team will end up wasting precious time digging through manual files, thus leading to a lack of productivity and, really, hardly a sale. If sales are the lifeblood of the business, then surely this is the death knell for all.

According to Thornton, queue-based selling is where it’s at. Queue-based selling is all about presenting the salesperson with the next-best-lead automatically, thus leading to a spike in productivity and letting the salespeople do what they do best: sell. That’s the good stuff. That’s what a business wants their salespeople doing.

In the language of business, time is money. With so many tasks to do and look after, time is a valuable resource that keeps businesses from maximizing their potential. Want to hear more about how to sell effectively with the right tools in your toolbox? Take the time to hear what VanillaSoft and its presenters had to say on the matter. It might make all the difference in your next sales campaign.