TSE 1324: How a Power Dialer Streamlines Your Sales Process and Improves Productivity

The Sales Evangelist

How a Power Dialer Streamlines Your Sales Process and Improves Productivity

Power dialers improve your sales process and productivity. As a salesperson, have you given this any thought? Listen to this episode to help you decide if a power dialer will help you in your business.

Sean Leonard is the founder of FunnelFLARE and the CEO of Jump Demand. One of their products is FunnelFLARE and the other is a marketing automation platform. Sean has a background in long sales cycle sales, specifically in the process automation where they are selling automation software. Interestingly, it didn’t start in sales and marketing but in manufacturing. In his early days, he was selling industrial software for manufacturing mainly in process control. Automation really played a huge part to help scale the marketing cycle. They started Jump Demand with the goal of helping people automate customer acquisition. They use FunnelFLARE for sales enablement.

The issue in sales

Sales is about the highest paid hard work and the lowest paid easy work. All salespeople want to sell more and they are highly motivated to do that. The reality is 80% of the salesperson’s revenue comes from 20% of their activities. This means that 80% of the time sales reps are not doing revenue-generating tasks. Sales is a contact sport so we have to become proficient in making calls. Every sales organization wants its staff to talk to people and be helpful. The idea behind Sean’s products is to help salespeople reduce the effort in making calls.

The second issue Sean was looking at is the CRM. He thinks that it’s purposely built to help salespeople succeed. There are so many CRMs out there and the evolution of the tool has been advantageous for everyone on the sales team as it helps them manage their projects and opportunities. Sean and his team found that many salespeople were spending so much time trying to add to the CRM that they were also spending more time outside of the CRM. They were having to bounce from one app to the other. These tasks included logging the calls, putting together a strategy throughout the day, updating the CRM, and integrating the information into the calls that the salespeople make.

Sean’s efforts enable sales reps to do their work in the CRM and reduce the effort that’s spent in using the CRM. The goal is to keep members of the organization have lots of documented opportunities while still being able to maintain a relationship with people.

Defining power dialer

Power Dialer for Sean is basically what he is doing with the CRM. It’s a list of people that he has bulk edited and flagged for his calling session. They use a Chrome extension where a dialog box appears when they click the extension. The dialog box has a pre-loaded name of the person from the flagged list. The idea behind the power dialer is that it allows you to make calls efficiently and with greater speed.

With Power Dialer the numbers are automatically selected when you make a call. The numbers are local numbers from the region because that typically gets a better hit rate. You can put a tracking script on the website. These are prospect insights and account insights, tabs that sales reps can quickly check. This gives them the idea of what their prospects have been up to. While the call is going on, Sean’s system records the call and builds a transcript of the call. When the call has ended, your next move is to do a follow-up email. Sean’s team has a pop-up email template that their teams can use. They also add commentary relating to the recent call to personalize the emails. When you’re ready to make the next call, you can also drop an automated voicemail if the call isn’t picked up.

The good thing about the system is that sales reps can make changes to the metadata. You can add notes that are applied when reloaded and the notes are saved automatically. The transcripts are also saved in the CRM as notes. This makes the call process more efficient and there’s no typing and updating involved. The data are automatically loaded into the CRM.

Personalized voicemail vs non-personalized voicemail

If you are making follow-up calls with your existing clients, or with people that are late into the sales process, your voicemail has to be personalized. In this case you can’t drop a voicemail that was pre-recorded.

It's different when you have a warm lead. You can choose to create a follow-up email or an SMS. Oftentimes, SMS has more traction because people are flooded with emails on a daily basis. Sean usually loads up SMS and sends them to prospects before making calls. This is for the prospects to know who is going to call them. The magic in the voicemail lies in the follow-up email. When you email, give them a link to your appointment scheduler and let them when they should anticipate your next call.

If you are talking to someone late in the sales process, you must personalize the message. #SalesPersonalization

Cadence Automation

Aside from the Power Dialer, Sean’s team also has cadence automation. These are predefined sequences that use both emails and SMS. This system allows them to use merge fields and track links. They can personalize the SMS with a template and merge fields. Every SMS link is shortened and tracked. Every time the prospects click the link, it will show up in the prospect’s insights. The next time the sales reps call, they can see the logs and the links clicked by the prospects. Based on their cases, their automation system is measured and it proves to save time by 60%.

Automation as an account-based selling strategy

For example, you’re selling into an account called Honeywell. Assuming that you are in process control and you’re hitting your sales. You want all of your sales reps from different regions around the world to be reselling or quoting your software. What you do as the sales manager to set up your day for calling the Honeywell account, is write a uniform script that all the members of the team will be using. That script goes into your Honeywell list. You can then go to your CRM, bulk edit, and grab all the people for the account reps for Honeywell. You can then start the call using the Power Dialer.

Selling is similar to being a doctor. A doctor is all about communicating that they understand whatever the patient is feeling. They then make a prescription based on their understanding. Doctors need to be present to know and understand their patient’s pain. The same is true in sales. You can’t jump between industries and calls. You won’t get the mindset of thinking about your client’s pain and truly be able to communicate to them that you understand them. You want to group your clients by industry so you can get into the mindset that is specific to this group.

Not all are open to using Power Dialers and there are a number of reasons why this may not work. Some may be closing the deal and feeling confident. When this happens, sales reps can stop following the process. Some may start to cut corners and don’t follow up with an email. They may not follow the script. The other reason for these systems not launching is salespeople who have been in the industry for a number of years find it difficult to learn new habits or systems.

There’s no shortcut

There is no shortcut to the system. You need to go through the process for each of your clients. The biggest challenge in automation is not letting your clients feel like they are just another number. You need to do it right. When you send them an email, don’t click before you make sure your message is personalized. Automation allows you to reuse work you’ve already done but your job is to replicate what you’re doing on a daily basis without automating the personalization. Make use of your time while staying in the pay zone.

“How a Power Dialer Streamlines Your Sales Process and Improves Productivity” episode resources Connect with Sean Leonard via his LinkedIn account.

If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald directly. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. This episode is brought to you in part by Crmble, the easy-peasy CRM for Trello that helps you manage your contacts and leads without investing in complicated solutions, sync all your data, manage custom fields, and get powerful reporting on your sales. Try Crmble now for free at www.crmble.com/tse. This course is also brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can go and visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals also call us at [phone]. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes so tune in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings to every episode you listen to. You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.