Telemarketing Software Featured Article

There’s a lot to be said about the intuition of good salespeople. Long years of experience can lead sales personnel – whether inside or outside sales – to know when a lead is particularly promising, when a prospect is bluffing or on the verge of buying, when a sale is about to be lost and what it would take to close a sale.

There’s also a lot that can’t be said for sales intuition. It’s not precise, it’s not accurate most of the time, and it’s hard to quantify and “sell” to a budget committee, for example, or a chief sales officer. Today, sales teams have more tools than ever at their disposal to track and quantify sales and sales processes, and make logical changes that improve sales prospects, shorten sales cycles and close more sales.

A recent Webinar produced by telemarketing software solutions provider VanillaSoft entitled, “How To Leverage Artificial Intelligence and Data to Accelerate Sales” described some of the technologies and processes being used today by forward-thinking sales teams.

Sanjit Singh, chief operating officer of Lead Crunch, noted that the more data that flows through a sales solution, the smarter it gets, and the more advantages it can offer a sales organization. One of the ways to increase this flow of actionable information is with artificial intelligence.

“We live in a world with increasing amounts of prediction and personalization,” said Singh. “We don’t need to predict that much, in order for it to be meaningful for us. A little prediction goes a long way. You don’t have to predict that much better than your competitors in order to get ahead to create what we like to call ‘competitive asymmetry.’ At the heart of this is data. Data is half the issue, and technology is the other half.”

The technology, of course, is provided by your sales or telemarketing software solutions provider. The data comes from you: your customers, your interactions, your agents, your sales professionals and your goals. To meet sales goals, ensure you choose a sales or telemarketing solution that seamlessly weds your data with an easy-to-use solution that turns the data into actionable sales intelligence that allows your sales professionals to act on it to better personalize the customer experience.

Daniel Sims, Product Evangelist for VanillaSoft, noted that gathering the data is only the first step. The next is determining the best way to funnel it to your sales team.

“What the goal is is to keep inside sales simple,” said Sims. “It’s a complex world. Things are getting more complex, but the sales process needs to remain simple. One person can’t do a million things at once.”

Behind the scenes, sales workflows have become more complex, and they can no longer be handled manually, or with a spreadsheet. By automating the process, leads can be managed better as well as prioritized, and sales people can spend less time figuring out what their next steps should be.