Telemarketing Software Featured Article

There are few individuals within an organization that are scrutinized as much as those in the sales department. While there may be tools in place to help promote sales activity, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, telemarketing software and customer service solutions, those who are actually accountable for the numbers at the end of the month are the ones managing their pipelines.

For that reason, these individuals are often busy managing a number of different resources and channels to help keep their pipelines full and closings high. The problem with this approach, however, is that sales professionals are spending too much time on administrative tasks – time that should be spent working and closing bigger deals. If you truly want to drive sales success, you need to give sales professionals more time to sell.

Case in point – I spent several years in the sales world, many of them in business-to-business sales. The company I worked for had a formula that represented the number of individuals you needed to interact with to generate a lead, the number of times you need to engage the lead to generate an opportunity and the number of times you presented to the opportunity before you could close the sale. In this equation, there were a lot of conversations, engagements and interactions that needed to be completed.

At the same time, this company launched a new software platform that would track all sales activity, order processing, delivery, billing, etc. That meant that each time I talked to someone, I needed to record it in the system – which required data completion on five different pages. It was cumbersome and took several hours to complete a day’s worth of activity. My selling time turned into busy-work time and I, like other reps on the same team, quickly started to resist it.

Sales professionals make sales through specific processes that require a lot of sales engagement. That engagement should not include data entry or busy work. The company I worked for argued that it was the only way they could be more valuable in the eyes of Wall Street. That value is superficial, however, if your sales team isn’t available to actually turn leads into opportunities and opportunities into closed deals. 

In a recent Business2Community post, Josh Stevens outlines three tips sales professionals can use for taking back their time. The first suggests that you give your sales professionals access to the tools they need to quickly gather information about prospects. Telemarketing software is one example. Second, use list segmentation and persona-based calling as it helps eliminate the need to change the message with every conversation. Finally, plan your day the night before so you can hit the ground running.

Not every sales professional is going to tackle their pipeline the same way, but required administrative tasks should not make it harder to make those connections. If you truly want to see sales success – it’s time to get out of the way.