Sales and customer support teams operating in various business conglomerates operating across the globe often come across a daunting question as to what is the best strategy to follow if we want to devise an effective strategy for outbound calling.
There could be plenty of answers to this very question depending on our sales process pertaining to successful achievement of business objectives. But, for the majority of the activities, list selection is dependent on the goals we want to achieve.
Let us discuss in detail about several techniques that need to be followed to achieve the best possible results.
- Following a list-based calling approach is much better than the random dialing approach
It is extremely vital to come across as someone who is organised as it is a proven method to enhance upon existing levels of productivity. In order to keep ourselves on track, having a daily plan of action is another reliable method that can be followed. There needs to be a list about our daily projects, appointments and meetings so that we don’t get surprised if something turns up on urgent basis. Many industry experts have advocated for a common practice of providing a sales and business development executive with a daily or weekly calling plan as it is considered as a more productive plan to follow rather than following ‘one-off’ random dialing system. According a recent survey conducted by a leading BPO magazine indicated that as much as 73% of the call centres across the world have formalised sales processes.
- Utilising a process-based calling strategy
Once we have reached an understanding that we want to follow a list-based approach, the next big decision pertains to how we want to organise our lists. A big question that we often come across is who do we want to call first? Another daunting question that we encounter is how do we prioritise? It is important to note that our internal sales process will be an influential factor in this decision. The best possible strategy to move forward is to make effective use of outbound calling vertical that is in sync with our sales pipeline process. In majority of the cases, it often begins with leads or prospects and leads all the way through to the sales.
- Persistence can be a huge difference maker
As social media platforms, email and texting are gathering prominence, these are more commonly used in getting business sales. It has certainly made getting a decision-maker on call a lot tougher. As per the industry estimates, the average number of endeavors to reach a decision maker can range somewhere between 7 to 10 out of 100 calls made. For executives with high levels of skill and guile, success rate can reach as high as 20 successful attempts. It also conforms to the fact the most successful sales executives are often the ones that have high levels of persistence.
- Inside sales executives need to follow a more flexible approach
Sales executives working in fast-growing and continuously evolving work environment are well-versed with the fact that new product launches and new marketing strategies can come at a rapid pace. What holds the key is to be able to adapt to the evolving working environment that can be of immense help to inside sales executives and can certainly enable them to be more productive. With multiple lists at their disposal, an inside sales representative can switch among the multiple lists and opt to change the contacts can certainly help them to stay focused on the quality aspect of calling.
- Integration of CRM with sales dialing automation makes for a feasible list dialing
Making effective use of technology can certainly enable business entities to give a huge boost to their sales velocity, thereby condensing the sales cycle, improving the overall quality of outbound calling process, and shrinking administrative costs. Technology used in the sales dialing process utilises the lists created by professional CRM systems operating in the market. When an inside sales executive completes an interaction with prospective customers, they can create their activity notes for future reference and synchronise the same with CRM. This integration does not allow for duplication of entries and allow the executives and monitors to keep a tab on the calling activity in real-time.
We can interpret from the above discussion that the techniques mentioned above are of paramount importance if we are looking to devise an effective strategy that can pave the way for achievement of our objectives.
