Originally posted on https://justcall.io/blog/improve-sales-reps-productivity-with-cloud-telephony.html

Sales has become more flexible and agile than ever because of the heavy competition in almost each and every sector. Moreover, with humans as buyers sales can never be linear. Sales reps have to go for multiple calls and process that are mostly disorganized and not streamlined.

So, how is this all working out?

A study on sales reps shows that sales agents only spent one-third of their time in selling and the rest of the time in manual work.[Source]

Brutal, yet real!

That’s where a cloud telephony solution comes into the game, acting as a co-pilot for sales reps by handling all the manual tasks related to calls. Cloud telephony has emerged as a game-changer in the world of modern B2B sales. Whether we are talking about inside sales or field sales, cloud telephony has been the best bet for getting more closed deals.

6 ways cloud telephony can boost sales reps productivity:

A highly motivated business with big growth plans requires efficient and robust solutions for sales. As growth is essentially dependent on a killer sales team. Let’s take a look at how cloud telephony can act as a booster for the sales agents.

1. Save reps from manual tasks

Cloud telephony is the most important tool in the sales communication arsenal of a rep. It has multiple features that automate the tasks of the agents and saves time for more productive tasks like persuading a high-value prospect and building relationship.

Automatic logging of call details and notes in the CRM:

Modern sales is not just about a silver bullet or a single call that can make or break the deal. Reps have to continuously put efforts in understanding the need and problems of the prospects. And follow-ups need to be done religiously.

This is only possible when all the conversations and details are saved for future conversations. Cloud telephony solution automatically saves all the call-related details that include call logs and details, SMS details, notes, call recording, disposition codes/call outcomes and others in your respective CRM.

Before the follow-up call, agents can quickly go through the saved notes and call details from the leads/customer profile and take the conversation forward. They can even listen to the recordings of the previous calls and understand the requirements of the prospect.

Sales Dialers – Auto Dialer and Predictive Dialer:

If a business is serious about growth, they have to break the mold of traditional outbound sales. And this can only be achieved by putting a brain behind the outbound sales strategy- Sales Dialers. A sales rep normally make 30-50 calls on a daily basis but with a sales dialer, the call frequency can go 3X.

While both Auto Dialer and Predictive Dialers act as a dialing hand for reps, both are different in terms of calling frequency and some other features. Auto Dialer dials 1 number at a time and connects the rep with the lead. This way agents can not miss even a single prospect. A single-line Auto Dialer can make around 75-80 calls per hour.

Predictive Dialer, on the other hand, dials multiple numbers at once and connect the agent with the answered calls only.

SMBs, solopreneur, small support or sales team who are looking for more personalized conversation with prospects/customers should go for Auto Dialer. As Auto Dialer will dial 1 contact at a time and agents will be prepared with all the notes and sales scripts.

A Predictive Dialer can supercharge your agents if we are talking about enterprise and teams with more agents. With multiple active calls at any instant, the sales team will be able to handle more prospects. Sales scripts, disposition codes, notes, call logging and monitoring as the available features, predictive dialer acts as a reliable sidekick for your sales reps.

Read: Predictive Dialer vs Auto Dialer: Which is right for your business?

Click to call and text button in CRM:

For a business or call center that needs to make hundreds to thousands of calls a day, the seconds used for manual dialing easily add up to hours that could’ve been maximized for business-impacting tasks.

The typical workflow of sales reps is – pull up lead records on their CRM’s interface, dial the numbers in their mobile or desk phones, open notepads for notes and save call logs in the CRM after the call. But now, click to call and text button has made this process a lot smoother for salespeople.

Click to call and text icons remove this hassle of dialing numbers manually. With just a click, sales reps can quickly make the call to the contact from the CRM itself. And the same is true for SMS with click to text icon.

All conversations are automatically logged and recorded so that reps can focus on selling, while in-depth call reporting helps managers improve their team’s call techniques.

Voicemail drop:

Sales reps often face unanswered calls, and hence, voicemail box. This limits the reps to convince the prospect if they are unprepared for voicemail box.

The ‘highest yielding’ B2B sales have conversations floating around a 43:57 talk-to-listen ratio. In other words, the data shows that top-producing sales professionals speak only 43% of the time (on average), allowing the prospect to speak 57% of the time (on average).

You are highly motivated for your next closure but what if there is a voicemail box waiting for you? Reps can’t simply miss the chance of conversion if they have to leave a voicemail instead of proper conversation.

Voicemail drop feature comes as a savior in this case. With just a click, you can drop a saved voicemail reply in the prospects voicemail box. This not only increases the chance of conversion but also save time of the reps. Your saved voicemail just need to be convincing and should create interest in the buyer.

2. Acquire and nurture leads

Cloud telephony not only assist sales reps in closing deals but in the pre-sales and prospecting too. With an active business phone number and features of cloud telephony, your business can undoubtedly get more sales qualified leads than ever.

Website Click to Call button

Missing leads that are already on your website can be painful. Many a time, leads have some question related to the product or services related to your business.

Website click to call button come handy in this situation. With website click to call, leads and customers can connect with the sales reps in a click. This not only increases the number of leads but also proves that your business is inclined to improve customer satisfaction.

With JustCall, your customers can not only get on the call with sales reps in a click. But can also schedule the call for later or drop a message.

Read more on website click to call button

Bulk SMS and SMS automation

SMS is the most efficient and cost-effective way to stay connected with your customers. It skyrockets your marketing efforts and works as an accelerator for establishing communication. The most attractive feature that makes experts love SMS is that it has a staggering open rate of 98%.

With SMS automation or SMS bot, your business will be able to handle all the queries of your leads and customers at any moment. SMS bot is a proper fit if you are looking for a quick, reliable and 24/7 support system for your business that will never leave your customer’s queries unresponded. By using the keywords of a query, you can either set up a static or dynamic reply with the help of workflows.

Bulk SMS can work wonder for your cross-selling and up-selling operations. Customers can be updated about discount offers, new products, account-related details and other helpful information using Bulk SMS.

3. Never miss a lead

In the era of remote work and digital nomads, cloud telephony acts as a boon for businesses over the globe. It removes the restrictions and limits of a physical location. Sales reps can connect with customers anytime and anywhere as cloud telephony is platform-independent.

Platform independence- Web, Desktop and Mobile App

Reps can make or receive calls and SMS from the web, desktop or mobile app. Moreover, all the details related to call, call recording, notes and voicemail will be logged in the CRM and reps can have a look at these details and notes from any platform.

IVR or Interactive Voice Response

IVR works as a virtual receptionist or the first line of defense. Prospects can be connected quickly and without any error to the best available agent of a specific department. This ensures that the prospect is quickly able to get an accurate solution without wasting much of his time waiting and listening to dial tones.

With IVR, your business can handle high volume calls without making the customers wait for long. This results in more queries resolved in less time, higher conversions, and happier customers. Businesses can even give multiple language options in the IVR to ensure none of the lead is missed because of differences in languages.

Use-case for lead gen using IVR: A unique number in the marketing campaign of a real estate agency connects prospects with the IVR. After the message related to the campaign has been played, it gives leads the option to record and save their questions as voicemail. The sales team can then use the details submitted to the IVR and the query of the customer to contact with the lead. Thus, they will have something more than just a name to initiate the conversation. This helps establish a better connection and more fruitful conversation with the lead.

Read more on IVR-Interactive Voice Response

Call forwarding

Call forwarding lets your calls go wherever you want them to go. You can forward incoming business calls to any phone, cell or landline. This feature is helpful in transferring all the important calls to reps personal number or to someone who is available.

3 Ways To Forward Calls with JustCall

1. Forward calls to your JustCall Mobile and and Web Apps.
2. Incoming calls can also be forwarded to your mobile or landline phone(external number).
3. Forward calls to your team members – ring all at once or ring in order.

Call forwarding can be configured in seconds and can be change as often as needed to fulfill your business needs. Call forwarding is the perfect feature for busy teams which require their phone system to be flexible and reachable.

4. Training reps in real-time

The top salespeople aren’t the smooth talkers — they’re the most effective listeners. Instead of pushing the product from the beginning of the conversation, an effective salesperson carefully listens to the need of the prospects and assist in the best way possible. But like any skill, even naturally capable salespeople need to sharpen their skills through consistent sales training as sales is dynamic and there is always something new to learn.

And call monitoring feature of JustCall is no-doubt the best solution for real-time monitoring and training of sales reps. Call analytics assist manager in evaluating the overall performance of the reps, team, and calls.

Call monitoring- Call Listening, Call Whispering, Call Barging

For effective real-world training to happen, a sales manager needs to listen live calls of the reps, review recordings, and analyze the rep’s performance to offer timely and specific feedback. Supervisors can emphasize on listening and understanding the needs of the client and helps salespeople avoid pushing a product by providing direct feedback in a real sales situation. Managers can also barge in a live call when their interruption can assist reps in closing the deal.

Call monitoring is not just about listening to live calls but it also allows you to take necessary actions whenever required at the different stages of an on-going call.

JustCall supports all 3 stages of call monitoring :

1. Listening: Listen to live agent calls without any interference
2. Whispering: Manager can speak directly with the reps over the call without letting the customer know
3. Barging: Jump into the on-going call between your agent and customer and talk to the customer directly.

Call Analytics

Monitoring performance of the reps and team is a must for any organization. But manual tracking and keeping an eye on the performance of each and every rep is pretty heavy and time-consuming.

Cloud telephony ensures that everything reps do is completely trackable and can be monitored. JustCall covers all the call analytics feature any organization might require for keeping a track on the performance of the agents.

• Live Call Activity
• Call Analytics
• Service Level Analytics
• Number Analytics
• Team Analytics
• Voicemail Analytics
• Busy Hours Analytics

5. Scale quickly and effortlessly

For a growing business, scaling team is obligatory. But onboarding new reps involve multiple steps. New system, phone and number can take days. Also, managing a big team has it’s own pain. Cloud telephony removes these complexities involved in the onboarding of a new hire and team management.

Get numbers in a click

JustCall gives you an option to instantly get phone numbers for your team members and teams in over 58 countries that we support. You can use these phone numbers to make or receive calls from any part of the world.

To get a new phone number, you just have to select the country and the type of number.

With JustCall, you have different options for new phone numbers:

• Local or Toll-Free Number
• Country
• Filter by digits or area code

Manage team

The job of a manager isn’t always a smooth sail. A manager needs to constantly keep an eye on the performance of the reps. But this is certainly not easy if we are talking about big teams. Managers can’t simply go to each and every rep and ask them questions, there’s a need for a solution that can assist manager in monitoring the performance of the team

With Justcall you can:

• Manage your team members and clients in one place.
• Allot phone numbers and access Call logs.
• Monitor your team’s call.
• Invite or remove users in a few clicks.

6. Enhance the efficiency and professionalism of sales reps

Along with removing manual tasks, cloud telephony has multiple automation that can assist reps in reaching quicker to the prospects and customers.

Incoming call forwarding

Sales reps also have to handle incoming calls of the leads and repeat customers. Cloud telephony supercharges the functionalities around incoming calls.

With JustCall there are 3 options for incoming call forwarding

• Forwarding calls to mobile or landline
• Forwarding calls to mobile or web app
• Forward calls to team members

You can also setup intelligent incoming call routing with JustCall. This allows you to connect an incoming caller with a specific team member.

Incoming call profile badge

In the case of inbound calls, screen pops filled with CRM data automatically provide context for every call. For getting the information regarding the inbound caller, JustCall has profile badge. With profile badge, you can directly go to the contact profile in the CRM and see all details and previous conversations.

Disposition code or outcome code

After the call ends, reps can tag the contact with the call outcomes or the ‘disposition code.’ These disposition codes can be anything like ‘interested, follow up’ and others

Bonus: With JustCall, you can also create a campaign and workflows based on the disposition codes you have set for the leads. Disposition codes work as tags and you can even segregate contacts based on your disposition code.

Appointment scheduler

Finding the perfect meeting time with prospects normally involves multiple distractions, waiting for replies, modification in the calendar and other monotonous tasks. In addition to the waste of time, the absence of a proper system leads to loss of lead and hence less number of closures per quarter.

There are 100s of appointment scheduler tool available online. But all of these schedulers still have leakages in terms of manual work the sales rep has to do to check scheduled call details and make manual entries in the CRM system after the call has completed. This not only consume the time of the reps but also creates the process difficult.

JustCall appointment scheduler is connected to JustCall’s phone system and your CRM system. So, if the sales rep is using JustCall’s Appointment Scheduler, you can not only let your leads schedule a call or appointment with you but you can make the calls & automatically log them into JustCall system right from your computer.

Bonus: Improve sales conversation with JustCall and Gong.io integration

How often in Sales meetings we talk about being a better listener? I would say almost in all of the meetings I have been in, this has always been one point we are told to work upon. The very best salespeople aren’t always the slickest talkers, they’re the most effective listeners. Instead of ignoring the client and trying to stay one step ahead, an effective salesperson carefully listens to the need of the prospect and assist in the best way possible.

In the era of artificial intelligence, Gong is a tool revolutionizing the space of conversational intelligence and gives you the capability of analyzing your sales meetings. Being not just another transcript tool, it gives you a balance of how long the Salesperson was talking and what are the metrics that were discussed. We at JustCall found this as an opportunity to help sales teams analyze their phone calls!! This gives you the flexibility of getting an insight into your calls and the call recording is analyzed in Gong like this

You also get a linear statistic of your JustCall recording as shown in the image below

Final thoughts:

Being a rep is difficult. Consistently succeeding as a rep is nearly impossible. Your day is hectic- multi-tasking, prospecting, doing discoveries, scheduling demos, negotiating, closing.

But cloud telephony acts as a co-pilot and assists sales reps in closing more deals in less time. Cloud telephony is pretty popular among all sales departments as it skyrockets sales team productivity and gives sales reps much more time to focus on the actual selling bit.

Book a meeting with us to discuss how JustCall can transform sales reps into sales champions.

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