This is a guest post by Jeff Osness, PhoneBurner.
Are phone calls a significant part of your outreach strategy?
They should be.
According to a DiscoverOrg survey, 55% of high-growth companies (companies with minimum 40% growth 3 years running) stated that “cold calling is very much alive.” Their counterparts who said it was “dead” experienced a staggering 42% less growth.
It takes more calls and more exposures to get a meeting than ever before. Continued exposure to qualified prospects inevitably increases awareness, trust, and ultimately interest. The result is a bigger, more active pipeline. By engaging in smarter outreach, your sales team can dramatically increase exposure without working any harder.
But phone outreach is tedious
So much of the average rep’s prospecting time is consumed by repetitive tasks:
- Figuring out who to call
- Gathering notes and contact data
- Listening to and leaving voicemails
- Sending follow-up emails
- Logging calls and performing post-call workflows
In fact, research shows that nearly 73% of prospecting time is wasted. That leaves comparatively little time to engage in high-value conversations. Is it any surprise reps regularly experience call reluctance and missed quotas?
Replace task-time with talk-time
Automation reduces tedious tasks that get in the way of live interactions. A quality integration between your power dialer and CRM makes it possible to automate repetitive tasks like dialing, leaving voicemails, sending follow-up emails, recording notes, logging calls, and more. So reps spend considerably more of their time on the phone.
Multiply touchpoints by automating key tasks
Here are some key areas of the sales call process you can automate to cut down the time your sales reps spend entering information and maximize the time they spend with your customers.
1. Voicemails: More than 7 out of 10 calls go to voicemail. Each time, it takes 30-60 seconds to listen to your contact’s greeting and leave a message of your own. No wonder so many sales reps hang up. An effective voicemail script not only generates callbacks, but it also increases the likelihood that your prospect answers the next time you call.
PhoneBurner can leave pre-recorded messages without you having to wait for the beep. Simultaneously, it can send an email with a quick pitch and a heads up that your voicemail is in their inbox. This is a highly effective one-two punch, that can be achieved with one click right from Zoho CRM.
2. Emails: However your call turns out—whether you reach voicemail, get a bad number, reach the gatekeeper, get rejected by your prospect, book a demo, or anything else—there’s a lot of value in sending a follow-up email. But it’s time-consuming.
Using PhoneBurner, you can send a personalized email to your Zoho CRM leads for any and every call result. You can also track your email opens, link clicks, and video and attachment views too, so you can follow up at just the right moment.
3. Texts: 98% of text messages are viewed by the recipient. Talk about exposure! Sending a timely text after a phone call with your contact is a powerful touchpoint that can increase replies, callbacks, and conversions.
Using the Zoho CRM-PhoneBurner dialer extension, you can text directly from the dialer window for perfectly-timed, highly personalized follow-up.
With repetitive tasks handled, reps can get through 60 to 80 calls an hour, and have four times more live conversations by integrating. The dialing app launches directly from inside of Zoho CRM from either the Contacts or Leads modules, and all activity is automatically logged into the CRM. Plus, because there’s no “telemarketer delay”—every contact will think they were dialed by hand.
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