The Essential Guide To Sales Engagement Platforms

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The Essential Guide To Sales Engagement Platforms

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Today’s sales landscape is competitive, to say the least. Businesses are always looking for a way to get a leg up over their competitors, whether it’s through new technology, better processes, or more effective sales strategies.

One of the most popular and effective ways to gain an advantage in the sales process today is through the use of a sales engagement platform.

In this guide, we’ll explain sales engagement in detail and why your business could use the help of a platform designed to streamline it.

Sales Engagement vs Sales Enablement – What Is The Difference?

It’s worth noting that sales engagement and sales enablement platforms are actually two completely different things. While they sound similar to one another and touch on the same face of business, each has a unique purpose and value when it comes to driving sales and customer success.

Sales Enablement

The term sales enablement refers to the process of equipping sales teams with the arsenal of tools and resources they need to reap the full potential of every lead they come across. It focuses primarily on salespeople themselves, and how they can be best positioned to succeed.

For context, some examples of sales enablement include:

  • Recruiting and hiring new staff onto sales development teams
  • Training, educating, and motivating sales reps to be more compelling
  • Providing sales team staff with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs well and close the deals
  • Assessing who and what is working well to increase department performance

Sales Engagement

Contrary to sales enablement, sales engagement covers a slightly different aspect of sales, less how the staff is trained and leads are closed, and more how they are cultivated. It addresses the importance of strong customer relationships through the use of customer data, strategic communication, and customer feedback with the ultimate goal of making such connections stronger and more beneficial.

Examples of sales engagement include:

  • An easily accessible marketing and document library that provides the context and information sales reps need to address each prospect they work with in a personal manner
  • The use of diverse communication channels such as email, phone, SMS text, and web conferencing to cater to a variety of client communication preferences
  • Meetings and phone calls where a rep discusses needs with a client to determine the best product or service options for them

Why Sales Engagement Is Key To Business Success

The purpose of sales engagement is simple – to generate more effective sales experiences that are more likely to deliver results. By ensuring that their sales leaders are able to holistically understand and connect with customers, sales development organizations can drive their sales productivity and generate positive outcomes across the board. The following are just a few reasons why business owners choose to invest in a sales engagement.

What Is A Sales Engagement Platform?

Sales engagement platforms are a type of software designed to help businesses directly oversee and manage their customers’ journey. They usually sit atop an existing CRM system and engage a number of tools to streamline and amplify the sales engagement process.

Sales engagement platforms have become an asset in twenty-first-century business, where a number of competitors are forced to view for consumer connection within a highly digital and fast-paced landscape.

What Can A Sales Engagement Platform Do?

As highly capable and versatile tools, sales engagement platforms hone a number of features that can be beneficial to businesses, no matter their size or industry. The following are some of the key capabilities of a SEP:

Enable Businesses To Qualify And Score Leads In Real-Time

Sales engagement platforms can help sales teams quickly identify and assess leads as they come in, in order to determine which ones are most promising and should be acted upon first.

Help Businesses Develop More Insightful And Compelling Sales Content

Through the use of sales engagement data, businesses can develop a stronger understanding of what content is resonating with customers and prospects – and adapt their strategy accordingly.

Facilitate The Creation Of Personalized Sales Experiences At Scale

By leveraging customer engagement data, a SEP can help businesses to deliver more personalized sales experiences at scale – furthering the buyer-seller relationship.

Manage Interactions With Leads

The platform can also be used to manage and keep track of all interactions that sales reps have with leads, providing conversation intelligence to get a better sense of what is and isn’t working.

Automate Manual Tasks For An Efficient Workflow

From sending follow-up emails to scheduling appointments, a sales engagement platform can automate a number of manual tasks that would otherwise bog down the sales cycle.

Here are a few examples:

Messaging flows:  Send automated messages to leads at key points in the sales journey, such as after they’ve shown interest in a product or service.

Auto dial and call log syncing:  Automatically dial leads and have all call logs automatically sync to your customer relationship management platform for easy record-keeping.

Appointment scheduling: Schedule appointments with leads and customers with ease, and receive reminders so that nothing falls through the cracks.

Data enrichment: Automatically gather data about leads from a variety of sources, such as social media and website data.

Help Sales Reps Stay Organized And Focused

A sales engagement platform can be used as a central hub for all things related to sales, giving reps a comprehensive picture of their pipeline and what needs to be done in order to close a deal.

Provide Insights And Analytics For Continuous Improvement

A sales engagement platform can also provide businesses with valuable insights and CRM data analytics that can be used to further improve their sales strategy and operations.

Why You Need A Sales Engagement Platform

There are many benefits that come with utilizing a good sales engagement platform. And why wouldn’t there be? These tools are designed with the specific purpose of yielding sales engagement activity and results, and when used correctly, have the power to take your business’ sales game up a notch – sometimes even two or three.

Improved Sales Team Efficiency And Effectiveness

Sales management and CRM solutions in general play a major role in how smoothly a sales team’s operations are run. As the main point through which they gather and manage all of their sales-related information, it’s pivotal that these tools are as optimized as possible. Having a quality sales platform can help to take things to the next level by giving sales reps the tools and insights they need to better understand and connect with their customers.

Greater Customer Satisfaction And Retention

By ensuring that their sales and revenue teams are able to deliver a more personalized and tailored customer journey, sales teams can create a deeper level of connection with their target audiences. This can in turn lead to improved customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty, all three of which are essential for long-term customer success.

Sales Rep Engagement

A sales team will ultimately only ever be as good as the resources they’re provided, and a comprehensive sales engagement solution is a great way to ensure that reps have everything they need to be successful.

When sales teams and reps are given the tools and information they need to succeed, they’re more likely to stay engaged with their work and continue producing results for the business.

Saved Time And Resources

As anyone familiar with the concepts of business knows, operational efficiency equates to savings in both time and resources. In the context of the sales world, this means having more sales reps available more often, being able to close more deals in less time, and having a sales cadence that’s faster overall.

Organization And Agility

Being able to keep track of all aspects of sales is critical for any business, no matter how big or small. A sales engagement tool gives sales managers a centralized place to organize and manage their sales intelligence, making it easier to identify areas that need improvement and make changes on the fly.

Insights And Analytics

One of the most underrated aspects of having a sales engagement platform is the ability to gain valuable insights and CRM data analytics that can be used for sales development and improvement.

By understanding which customer interactions and activities are driving the most results, businesses can make more informed decisions about where to focus their efforts in order to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Increased Sales And Revenue

At the end of the day, businesses invest in sales technology in order to drive their top and bottom line. By holistically improving the sales cycle and making it more efficient, a sales engagement platform can be instrumental in helping businesses to close more deals and increase their revenue operations.

How To Choose The Right Sales Engagement Platform For Your Business

While sales engagement software is definitely a valuable tool in the world of CRM, it’s important to recognize the fact that not all solutions are made equal. There are a number of platforms out there that offer different features and levels of functionality, so it’s important to take the time to find the one that best meets the needs of your business.

 

Define Your Goals And Objectives

Before even beginning to look at sales engagement solutions, it’s important to take a step back and define what your sales engagement category, specific goals, and objectives are.

Are you looking to improve customer satisfaction? Customer success? Close more deals? Enhance client account management? Get revenue intelligence and insights?

By having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, you’ll be in a much better position to find a software solution that can help you to reach your goals.

Consider Your Current Sales Pipeline

In order to choose the right sales engagement software, it’s also important to have a good understanding of your current sales strategy. What works well and what could be improved?

Are there any bottlenecks or inefficiencies that you’re looking to address?

By taking the time to map out your sales strategy, you’ll be able to more easily identify which features and functionality you need in a sales engagement platform.

Evaluate Your Options

Once you have a good understanding of your goals and objectives, as well as your current sales strategy, it’s time to start evaluating your options.

There are a number of different sales engagement platforms out there, each of which addresses a different sales engagement category. Take the time to research each one and see which features they offer.

Make sure to also read online reviews from other businesses in order to get a better sense of how well the platform actually works in the real world.

Pricing And Contracts

It’s important to consider the pricing and contract terms of each sales engagement platform you’re considering.

Some solutions are offered on a subscription basis, while others require a one-time purchase. There are also a number of different payment options available, so make sure to choose the one that best fits your budget.

When it comes to contracts, be sure to read the fine print and understand all of the terms and conditions before signing anything.

Keep Integrability In Mind

This is a big one when it comes to the usability and ultimate success of a sales engagement platform, or any software solution for that matter. While the world we live in is very digital, we’ve yet to reach a point where all of our tools and resources work together seamlessly. This is a relevant problem for many businesses, which often use multiple resources to manage and administer their operations.  

When evaluating different sales engagement platforms, be sure to keep integrability in mind. You’ll want to find a solution that can easily integrate with your current systems and tools, without causing any disruptions.

Free Trial Or Demo

Finally, once you’ve narrowed down your options, we recommend taking advantage of either a free trial or demo for each of the sales engagement platforms you’re considering.

This will give you a chance to see how the platform works and whether or not it’s a good fit for your business.

How Growbots Can Help Take Your Sales Engagement To The Next Level

A lot of salespeople spend too much time on manual things that can be easily automated instead of the concentrating on most important things – talking to interested people and closing deals.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools, including Growbots, to help them automate the process and make the business grow exponentially. If you’re in search of a comprehensive sales engagement solution that can help achieve your specific goals, you should check out  Growbots.

With Growbots, you’ll be able to improve your outbound sales by automating email campaigns and tracking your results in real time. In addition, you can search a huge database of professional contacts to find your next leads.

In addition, Growbots integrates with a number of popular tools (all email providers, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zapier, etc.) making it easy to use in conjunction with your existing sales technology.

So there you have it – our sales engagement platform guide! By following these tips, you should be well on your way to finding the right solution for your business.

If you have any questions or need help in choosing the best sales engagement platforms and tools for your business, feel free to reach out to us at team@growbots.com and we’ll be happy to assist you.

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

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