However, it’s also something that many teams can overlook, or misunderstand. 

A sales engagement platform isn’t a feature of your CRM, or a collaboration tool. These services are dedicated solutions, created to enhance your workflow across all sales tools, from CRM technology, to your inbox, phone, content management system, and so much more. 

The result? 

Sales teams that need to save time achieving agile goals can remain organized and focused. 

According to CSO Insights, 93% of companies close fewer sales than they intend to. What’s more, 65% forget to use content created for their campaigns, and overlook crucial parts of the sales process. 

A sales engagement platform is how you bridge the gap between planning and results. 

What is a Sales Engagement Platform?

A sales engagement platform is a tool created to combine your sales operations across multiple platforms, into a single, dedicated environment. 

Sales engagement platforms centralize existing workflows, and link disparate tools so that teams can have access to all of the information they need to improve the quality of customer interactions, streamline sales activities, accelerate the sales cycle and increase revenue. 

Today, around 87% of sales development organizations have adopted a sales engagement platform. 

What’s more, 92% of sales development teams say that having an engagement platform in the technology stack is critical to their team’s success. 

Further, Aragon Research predicts that Sales Engagement Platforms (SEPs) will grow into a $5 billion industry over the next five years.

With a sales engagement platform, you can accelerate performance, empower your team, and access more complete and accurate data. 

What Challenges Drive Sales Engagement Adoption

So, how do you know if your team actually needs a Sales Engagement platform?

Anyone who wants to improve the performance and efficiency of their sales team, while delivering better customer service, can benefit from a sales engagement tool. 

Some of the biggest reasons companies invest in SEPs include:

1. Reps aren’t spending enough time selling: 

A shockingly large amount of your reps’ day goes wasted on tasks that don’t contribute to closing sales. Administrative tasks such as updating the CRM can be very time consuming. 

A study by Salesforce revealed that most reps spend around 64% of their time on admin tasks: 

If you want to get the best results out of your sales team, you need to make sure that they’re able to do what they do best. Sales engagement tools allow you to automate monotonous tasks, so that your reps have more time to concentrate on building relationships and closing deals.

2. An explosion of sales tools has created silos:

There’s an overwhelming number of tools available on the market today, from marketing services, to CRM technology. Most organizations give their sales teams a lot of different tools to use, aiming to improve productivity. 

In fact, a Sales Hacker Technology Landscape report showed that there were 800+ sales tools in over 38 categories. 

(Source)

However, rather than complementing each other, these solutions often operate independently, creating silos of information, and complicated workplace processes. 

Your sales engagement platform will bring multiple systems together, supporting more streamlined activities for the entire team.

3. CRMs adding administrative burden

CRMs are an incredibly useful tool. However, they also add extra pressure to your sales rep’s shoulders. A CRM solution is essentially a system of record for operational tasks and customer data. It stores all the information that your sales team is going to need to make sales, offering a logbook of customer interactions. 

However, CRMs alone can’t drive customer or lead engagement. 

The automation and communication layer that a Sales Engagement platform provides can streamline your team’s day. 

4. Lack of Personalization 

The sales journey is evolving at a rapid place, with new platforms and trends emerging all the time. If you want to delight your audience, you need to make sure you’re creating experiences that accommodate them. 

Modern Sales Engagement platforms come with technology that allow you to engage prospects on a range of platforms, from emails and phone calls, to direct mail and text. 

A sales engagement platform makes it easier to instantly update lead intelligence and get the latest information on any customer, including where they’re from, and which channels they prefer to use. 

Best Sales Engagement Platforms

Now that we’ve explained the value that sales engagement platforms offer, let’s take a look at four platforms and their features.

SPOTIO

Best for: Field sales teams

SPOTIO’s cloud-based sales engagement software lets field sales reps update client logs and access real-time information from their mobile device. The platform automatically pushes information to your CRM, so there’s no need for manual data entry.

Key features:

• Real-time monitoring: Always know where your reps are and what they’re doing while they’re in the field during work hours.
• Territory mapping: Easily cut territories by drawing on a digital map or inputting zip codes. Then assign them to the most qualified rep.
• Digital business cards: Stop handing out physical business cards that end up in the trash. Distribute digital ones instead via text, email, or QR code, and track who views them in your SPOTIO account.
• Customer mapping: Where are your customers physically located? See them on a digital map, which can be color-coded to represent just about any data point you want: pipeline stage, result of last visit, etc.
• Sales prospecting: Step up your lead generation game by connecting your SPOTIO account to Google Places. Once you do, filter through potential customers using 200+ data attributes to focus on quality leads.
• Task automation: Automatically log prospect interactions and reduce data entry tasks. The result? A 46% bump in productivity!
• Canvassing tools: If your sales team employs canvassers and closers, you’ll love this feature. Canvassers can easily capture prospect information and set appointments, then pass these details to closers.
• Sales activity management: Who have your reps contacted today? And what were the results of each visit, call, and email? All of this information is automatically logged into your SPOTIO account.
• Document management: Store important documents, send contracts, and accept e-signatures to make life easier for reps and prospects.
• Multi-channel sales communications: Modern-day field reps use a variety of channels to engage prospects. Multi-channel communication functionality in SPOTIO puts all of them at your rep’s fingertips. Quickly send emails and texts to leads to move them deeper into the funnel.
• Automated sales follow-up sequences: Automation is a sales rep’s best friend. Use SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature to build and automate sales sequences. That way, your leads never fall through the cracks.
• Detailed analytics: How is your sales team performing? Are your reps on track? How can you optimize your sales strategy? Build custom reports that only include the KPIs you care about inside SPOTIO. That way, you can answer these kinds of questions for your department.
• 2,000+ integrations: You need more than a sales engagement platform to reach your goals. Connect SPOTIO to thousands of other apps, including Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Google Calendar.

Outreach

Best for: Sales rep onboarding

Outreach is a sales engagement platform that helps with the quick onboarding of new reps. The mobile app allows reps to access “content cards” that contain talking points they might need when answering a prospect’s questions. The app also alerts reps when they’re talking too much in a client meeting.

Key features:

• Live transcription
• Automated tracking of post-meeting action items
• Automated post-meeting summary emails
• Simple search function for finding prospect and client information

Klenty

Best for: Multichannel engagement

Klenty helps sales reps pivot from emails, to calls, to LinkedIn messaging in an instant, without losing track of previous interactions. It also simplifies emails, letting reps send highly relevant messages at the right time, with just a few clicks.

Key features:

• Cadence playbooks
• Reports and dashboards
• LinkedIn automation
• Personalized emails

Outplay

Best for: Prospect tracking

Klenty helps sales reps and marketers monitor prospect actions, such as email opens, website visits, and email replies. This real-time intelligence helps reps act quickly to keep conversations going and reach out to warm prospects.

Key features:

• Outbound chats
• Multichannel monitoring
• Sales sequences
• Trigger-based actions
• Chrome extension

QuickMail

Best for: Stellar email deliverability rates

Tired of landing in your prospects’ spam folders? QuickMail is an email platform that helps reps start more conversations. Its deliverability rates are stellar. Its automation features are on point. And its customer support team is top-notch.

Key features:

• High deliverability rates + a free Auto-Warmer plan
• Automate your QuickMail account in as little as five minutes
• Amazing customer support team that can help you solve any problem
• Scale your cold email efforts by using multiple inboxes per campaign

HubSpot Sales Hub

Best for: Large inside sales teams

HubSpot is an incredibly popular CRM and sales engagement platform. Use this tool to communicate with leads, schedule meetings, analyze sales pipelines, accept payments, and more. Just make sure you have the money to pay for it!

Key features:

• Streamline your communication efforts with email templates, automated sales sequences, call tracking, and document management features.
• Schedule meetings with your target audience. Just choose when you’re available, then let your prospects book appointments when they want.
• Take control of your sales pipeline. Use the detailed analytics inside this platform to track and optimize your sales process for better results.
• Easily accept payments inside HubSpot, too. Both one-off purchases and recurring subscriptions can be accepted using this tool.

Groove

Best for: Salesforce users

Groove is a sales engagement platform for Salesforce users. Sign up to enjoy the tool’s productivity, conversation intelligence, and analytics features.

Key features:

• Automatically capture all rep activity, from emails sent to meetings booked and LinkedIn posts published. Then log it into your Salesforce account.
• Create automated multichannel, multi-step workflows that allow your reps to engage with their prospects more personalized ways.
• Record, transcribe, and analyze your reps’ sales calls. You can improve your team’s sales conversations and close more deals.

Mailshake

Best for: Automated email outreach

Mailshakes turns tedious outreach tasks into set-it-and-forget-it workflows. Build complex email campaigns; track who opens clicks, and replies to each of your messages; automatically send lead data to your CRM of choice; and more.

Key features:

• Simplify your communication tasks with automated email campaigns, cold calling features, and even social media outreach sequences.
• Analyze your email campaigns to see who’s opening, clicking, and replying to your messages. Then A/B test your communications to improve them.
• Get a bird’s eye view of your leads by quickly analyzing the emails, social messages, and calls you made to them. Then push this data to your CRM.

Zendesk Sell

Best for: Sales and customer success alignment

Finally, Zendesk Sell, another CRM that can also be used as a sales engagement platform. One of the best things about this tool is how seamlessly it integrates with Zendesk’s customer support solution, which makes it easy to align sales and support teams.

Key features:

• Use Zendesk Sell’s CRM functionality to access lead generation, contact and deal management, and activity tracking features—all from one app.
• Reach new prospects and existing customers with a wealth of communication tools, like a power dialer and automated email sequences.
• Generate custom reports that reflect the metrics and KPIs your team cares about. Then use them to help forecast future sales for your department.
• Integrate Zendesk Sell with hundreds of other tools, including Zendesk’s customer support app, which helps align sales and support teams.

11 Reasons to Invest in a Sales Engagement Platform

Here are some of the top reasons you should consider investing in a sales engagement platform in 2023. 

A Sales Engagement Platform Reduces Administrative Workload

Sales reps lose too much time to administrative tasks. And when they’re busy, they might not get around to updating important records or logging their sales calls. A sales engagement platform automates administrative tasks and lets reps make quick updates from their mobile devices when they’re in the field.

Image: SPOTIO automates many sales tasks, including the use of geofencing technology that auto-captures rep check-ins and check-outs.

A Sales Engagement Platform Automates Sales Workflows

Sales reps must be able to effectively manage multiple relationships and develop the right cadence for interacting with each contact. Without a process in place, sales reps may lose track of prospects (or annoy them by over communicating).

SPOTIO’s AutoPlays feature alerts reps when it’s time to touch base with a contact, and reps can quickly access a complete profile for every contact that helps them advance each conversation.

Image: SPOTIO Autoplays sequences rep activities for each lead and customer interaction across multiple channels.

A Sales Engagement Platform Improves Activity Management

Do you know which sales activities are driving the most conversions? Without detailed data, the best you can do is guess which strategies are most effective, but a sales engagement platform gives you the insights you need.

You can view the timing of calls, emails, texts, and visits and analyze the results of those actions. With that information, you can help sales reps be more effective in their roles.

A Sales Engagement Platform Supports Better Team Communication 

Sales engagement platforms streamline the way teams communicate with prospects. 

Whether you’re connecting over the phone, on social media, or through email, you have a more cohesive way to reach out to your clients. However, it’s not just communication with leads that benefits, but links to your internal team too. 

When your sales team can connect with each other and share crucial information in real-time, they can solve problems faster, and come up with creative ways to serve your prospects.

A sales engagement tool like SPOTIO comes with tools like Team chat, custom statuses, and even document management and storage for better collaboration.

A Sales Engagement Platform Drives Efficiency

Having all communications, data and other essential components in the same place improves rep efficiency. 

Employees can reduce the amount of time that they waste on non-sales focused tasks, like toggling between different pieces of software or working on administrative tasks. 

Instead of having to jump between multiple tools to find useful information, your Sales Engagement platform will give employees a full Sales Intelligence hub, where they can manage and learn about leads, create customer profiles and sort leads into different segments. 

Image: SPOTIO’s Lead Machine enables reps to filter prospects by 200+ data attributes.

This ensures you get more touches per rep each day, more meetings and opportunities, shorter sales cycles and a larger number of quotas met. 

A Sales Engagement Platform Streamlines Processes

The wide selection of tools now available for sales reps in the market means that experts are often trying to keep track of multiple (often disparate) channels. 

Eventually, your team members might give up on your software stack entirely and resort back to paper and pen, which means that your documentation begins to suffer. 

A sales engagement platform with its own sales activity tracker acts as your reps’ personal assistant. With this tool, your employees can plan and track meetings, demos, and calls for every lead. Once your rep’s activities are planned, their schedule is immediately pushed to their Outlook or Google calendar. 

A Sales Engagement Platform Helps Teams Sell Smarter

A crucial part of sales engagement is the intelligence that your employees can tap into. The right platform can track and monitor all of the interactions between team members and customers. This helps you to make more informed decisions based on what works and what doesn’t.

When do you call? How many times do you follow up? What script performs best? Should you email before calling? What demographics convert better?

It’s crucial that you have a system that is able to look at this data, answer those important questions, and help you formulate a high-converting sales process. 

A sales engagement platform does all this heavy lifting for you. 

A Sales Engagement Platform Personalizes Outreach

Customers don’t want to be treated like another number on a list. 

Sales engagement platforms enable teams to scale outreach campaigns while maintaining a meaningful level of personalization. 

You can set up engaging follow up sequences and event-triggered automations to ensure prospects and opportunities are served the right information at the right time in the sales cycle. 

This level of personalized automation ensures prospects continue to move along the pipeline, and that reps can spend more time out in the field or engaging opportunities in demos or sales pitch environments.

A Sales Engagement Platform Closes Deals Faster

The faster reps can close sales, the quicker they can get to nurturing the next lead. 

Although speed shouldn’t come at the expense of personalization or accuracy, it’s always a good idea to look for ways to make your processes more efficient. 

An SEP will provide tools that make it easier for reps to close deals faster. For example, all reps should have access to a central repository of sales collateral – product spec sheets, templates and sales presentations – that they can use to answer questions, handle objections and close the sale while on site. 

Similarly, reps shouldn’t have to email contracts back and forth for counter signing. A solid SEP will give teams e-Contract functionality to get virtual ink on the dotted line.

Every second from when reps walk out the door is a moment closer to losing the deal. A sales engagement platform will empower reps to close more deals on the spot.  

A Sales Engagement Platform Helps to Pinpoint Bottlenecks

Companies need to be constantly improving and updating their sales processes. The only way to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction is to measure your outcomes. 

Sales Engagement platforms don’t just connect all of your tools together, they also give you an environment where you can see what’s really working for your team. This is excellent if you want to track down any performance bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks in your sales process could look like high unqualified lead counts, or low opportunity-to-close rates. These numbers can highlight inefficienes in the prospecting process where reps are not engaging the right audience, or it could mean there is an issue in the demo or sales pitch process. 

A solid SEP will give sales managers a view of the entire sales pipeline:

And enable managers to view performance at the team and individual rep levels:

If you can look at a point in your sales processes and pinpoint a place where you’re clearly losing sales, then it will be much easier to address that problem before it hurts your business.

A Sales Engagement Platform Helps Streamline Your Stack

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of using a sales engagement platform, is that your sales teams don’t have to spend as much of their time moving between different apps and tools. 

Even if the sales engagement service that you’re using doesn’t have all of the tools that you need built-in, it will generally expand to accommodate other solutions. 

For instance, if you want to make sure that you can access all of your Salesforce data on SPOTIO, all you need to do is implement the native Salesforce integration. 

In this case, outside sales teams are able to bolt-on specific functionality such as territory mapping.

With APIs and integrations, you can build the stack that’s perfect for your team. 

Which Sales Engagement Platform is Right for Your Business?

If you’re looking to take advantage of all the benefits that a sales engagement platform can offer, you’re in the right place. For teams in search of shorter sales cycles, better customer engagement and improved employee efficiency, tools like SPOTIO can transform the sales journey. 

With SPOTIO to align and enhance your sales journey, your team can accomplish anything. Come and check out the features of SPOTIO today. 

Unfortunately, a lot of business leaders struggle with developing a strategy that can enrich and empower their operations.

A sales action plan is the easiest way to lay out your objectives, strategies, and tactics for success, in a way that your whole team can understand. Your sales plan also helps you to identify potential obstacles and roadblocks so that you can come up with ways to overcome challenges.

What is a Sales Action Plan?

A sales action plan highlights what you’re going to do to achieve your sales goals, focusing specifically on the transactions and relationships that you can cultivate with customers.

Sales plans contain information about who you want to sell to, what your revenue goals look like, and how you’re going to structure your teams for success.

An effective sales plan:

• Communicates your sales objectives and goals
• Outlines responsibilities and roles for both your staff and leadership
• Delivers strategic direction for your sales team
• Guides your decision-making strategy to help you progress towards organizational goals

While a sales action plan is excellent for month-to-month guidance, it can also help you conduct a more long-term analysis of your sales team. Over time, you can compare your action plans against your outcomes to see if you’re achieving your targets.

10-Step Action Plan to Reach Short and Long Term Sales Targets

As a manager, how do you create a sales action plan that delivers real, measurable results for your team?

An action plan needs to give your employees direction and purpose. It should ensure that your staff have everything they need to achieve their goals when it comes to things like quotas and prospecting. The more detailed your action plan is, the less likely it is that your team will end up confused and struggling to make decisions for themselves.

Here are just some of the crucial activities that should appear in a strategic sales plan.

1. Identify Your Ideal Clients

If you want to achieve success in any aspect of your sales strategy, you need to start by identifying the people that you want to target. Get together with your sales team and ask:

• Which clients deliver the most long-term value?
• What company size are you targeting?
• How did your clients find success with your solution?
• Where did your best customers come from (i.e. cold calls, canvassing, word of mouth)
• What is your target industry?

Once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is to consider how you’re going to interact with clients to encourage sales. What do your prospects need most from you, and how can you help them to achieve their goals? Where are the best places to engage with your clients? Do they respond best to telephone calls, emails, or face-to-face interactions?

Your sales action plan needs to include a complete overview of how to find and nurture your clients.

2. Assess Historical Performance

Unless you’re a brand-new business, you should have some room to learn from your past mistakes and successes. Look back over your previous wins and losses and ask yourself:

• Which strategies led to the most revenue for your company?
• What kind of customers were most likely to respond to your sales pitch?
• Were there certain months or seasons where you were more likely to reach your quota?
• Which of your team members were most successful, and why?
• Which areas delivered the most ROI for your team?

Examining your historical performance will help you to get a better idea of where your current customers and prospects come from.

Sales tracking software can give you a more complete history of this information. Make sure that you examine not just when and where inbound and outbound leads convert, but also how your teams prospected with these clients, and which tactics were most successful.

3. Chart your Destination (Choose a Goal)

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Once you know what you’ve accomplished, you begin to determine what you need to do next. For instance, you might have achieved your sales quota 60% of the time in the last year, but by the end of this year, you want to achieve an 80% success rate.

Having a target or goal that you want to reach will help to guide your decision-making for your sales quota. Remember, before you get into the details, you need to be specific about what you want to achieve both long-term and short-term.

Ask yourself:

• What is the big picture destination for my team? (A 100% quota success rate)
• Annual sales goals? (Maybe a 20% increase per year)
• Quarterly objectives? (Something closer to 5%)
• What can sales teams do to improve monthly?
• What is my team going to aim for each day?
• What activity metrics will we measure in order to keep the entire team

Outline what you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

For instance, if your big picture goal is to generate more closed sales overall, then you might need to start by asking your reps to complete more outbound calls each day.

The more calls you make, the more chances you have of sales. On a monthly basis, your team can work on improving their success rate, and you can measure your overall growth quarterly, aiming for greater results each year.

4. Put Resources in Place

Now you know where you’re going, what tools do you need to accelerate your opportunities and empower your teams?

The most essential resource you have is your salespeople, so ensure that you have the right number of people on board to reach your target. This includes building an enticing commission structure that motivates employees to succeed.

Next, invest in the tools and technologies that will power your success:

CRM tools: How will your teams track their interactions with crucial clients and customers?

Prospecting tools: How will reps find new prospects that meet your ideal customer profile across different sales channels and territories?

Once you know which tools your employees need, make sure that your team members are well-equipped to use them. This could mean implementing training sessions, assigning mentors to new team members, or holding one-on-one meetings.

5. Prospect with ICP data

Not all prospects are created equal. Sales reps need to understand who has the greatest need for what they’re selling. i.e. their ideal customer profile (ICP). Once created, reps can use this ICP data to uncover other consumers (B2C) or companies (B2B) who meet this criteria. This helps ensure reps are only engaging prospects with the highest likelihood of converting into a qualified lead.

Here’s a simple way to build an ICP:

• Identify your best customers: who gets the most value from your product/service?
• Make a list of attributes: what are the similarities across these customers?
• Understand the pain points: what problems does your solution solve?
• Create an ICP document: a simple one-page document that lists the demographics, firmographics, pain points, and key objectives of your ICP.

Once armed with an ICP, sales reps should use this data to uncover new prospects to engage across different sales channels.

For example, field sales reps can use the SPOTIO Lead Machine to find potential prospects and then use 200+ data attributes – age, business type, revenue, credit capacity etc – to pre-qualify the best opportunities within a given sales territory.

6. Assign Territories

Now it’s time to make sure that there’s limited overlap in your teams. It’s hard to reach your goals when everyone is focused on selling to the same area.

Assigning territories ensures that your sales team is targeting the right customers, in the right areas, and ultimately eliminates costly redundancies.

Make sure your most valuable and profitable reps are working on the biggest accounts. Remember, you can assign your territories by everything from geography, to customer type, sales potential, and industry.

Clearly defined territories help sales teams to work more strategically to address the needs and expectations of their clients. You can:

• Assign to top-performers to the highest value accounts
• Align salespeople to the segments or regions best-suited to their talents
• Ensure all reps have an adequate number of lead to work and accounts to service
• Open the door for stronger long-term relationships between your brand and customers.

7. Develop Scripts

Now your sales team knows where it’s going to be focusing; it’s time to guide them in accelerating their chances of sales. For instance, you can build templates for phone calls, follow ups, emails, voicemails, and more.

To guide your scripts, remember to focus on addressing the pain points of your customers. Remember – people buy emotionally, and justify rationally.

The Sandler pain funnel can help with prospecting, qualifying and closing more deals.

Encourage your team members to find out about the pain points that your customers face and discover solutions to their problems in the scripts that you create. As a general rule, the conversation should have a 70:30 split on the side of the customer.

Think about how your sales team can use the scripts you give them to qualify the leads that you generate. Can you ask questions that will help with segmenting customers and improving your chances of bigger upsells and cross-sells?

8. Set Minimum Daily Sales Activities

With support and guidance, your sales teams should have everything they need to accomplish real, measurable goals within your sales strategy. This is when you can begin to put teams to work by setting minimum daily sales activities.

Remember, although it’s valuable to challenge employees, you still need to be realistic. Asking staff to accomplish more than they’re reasonably capable of could lead to disengagement.

Measure and track activity-based metrics such as:

New prospects: How many new leads should your employees be finding to contact every day? How will they qualify and nurture those leads? The Lead machine from SPOTIO can make it easier for agents to find new batches of leads every day.

Contacts: How many people will your sales teams contact each day? This can include contact such as in-person visits, emails, phone calls, or social media connections. It’s all about working leads across multiple channels to build a relationship.

Follow-ups: How will salespeople attempt to improve their chances of a sale to people who haven’t answered the phone or responded to an email? You can also look at “follow ups” in terms of upsells and cross-sells to existing customers.

Referral requests: How will your employees follow up with clients to ensure that they’re as satisfied as possible? What can you do to improve your chances of positive testimonials, and referrals to new clients?

Field sales teams can use a solution like AutoPlays to sequence many of the sales activities that are critical to maintaining pipeline velocity.

9. Enforce Accountability

Once you have defined the kind of things that your employees should be accomplishing with their work each day, how are you going to make sure that they’re delivering? Do you have lead nurturing pipelines and software in place which shows you which team members are reaching their targets?

Tracking all of the sales activities that your employees engage in each day has a number of benefits. First, it means that managers can see if goals are being met, and which strategies should change if not. Additionally, a dashboard also allows individual employees to track their own performance.

Salespeople are often competitive, and like a chance to prove themselves against their peers. You could use a leaderboard in your workplace to celebrate and showcase your most successful salespeople.

Tip: once you have identified the top sales reps, consider pairing them up with new or lower performing reps for some cross-training.

10. Track Performance

Tracking performance is something that you need to do at a team level, individual rep level, and business level too. Are your reps hitting their activity targets? If they’re not, what’s causing them to fall short of the mark? What kind of opportunities are they missing out on?

Tracking your performance will help you to see the friction points in your sales pipeline. A lot of sales teams fail to track crucial data and KPIs, and this often means that they don’t know what they need to do to improve their chances of success.

By tracking the performance of your team at every level, you can uncover your top-performing reps, figure out which reps need more training, and even pinpoint which sales strategies aren’t impacting the bottom line.

Aside from looking at individual reps, ask yourself:

• Which territories are performing best?
• Which sales actions are driving the best results?
• Are there any bottlenecks in our pipeline?
• How can we rectify these issues?

SPOTIO’s My Reports feature makes it quick and easy for sales admins, managers and reps to generate custom reports containing only the most important metrics. Sales reports can be customized, saved as a reusable template, and accessed from any device while on-the-go. This ensures everyone in the company has access to the insights they need to confidently allocate resources and hit quota.

The Meetings, Pitches and Deals Should Follow

Your Sales Action Plan is all about giving your sales team the guidance that they need to make smart business decisions. When you can support sales team members by addressing issues that are within your direct control, such as a lack of guidance and direction, you can improve results.

If your sales strategy works for reps, and make sure that they have everything that they need to follow each step correctly, then reaching your targets should become a lot easier. You’ll find that the meetings, demos, and closed deals will follow naturally.

A successful sales action plan is all about focusing on the proactive actions that your business can invest in, and letting the process develop for everyone. Don’t be afraid to accept feedback from your employees, as well as examining the quantitative data in your sales activity tracker.

Your employees might be able to offer some insights into the steps that they need to take to improve their chances of closing deals and achieving better outcomes.

Ready to Take Action?

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to delivering excellent sales numbers and outcomes. The key to success is to figure out what works for your team by examining your processes, employees, and even your customers.

Designing a sales action plan will help to guide your employees towards more successful results, while making sure that they have the guidance that they need to thrive.

Modern business is dominated by data. It makes sense. Without a sufficient knowledge of statistics, KPIs, and other analytics, it’s difficult to make accurate decisions and improve company performance. This is especially true for sales teams.

If you don’t know where your best customers come from; the optimal times to reach them with a call, text, or email; and where the leaks are in your sales funnel, you’ll have a hard time reaching your sales quotas on a regular basis.

Fortunately, sales reporting software exists to get you the data you need! You just have to determine which tool fits your company best. This isn’t always easy to do…

There are A LOT of sales reporting tools on the market. Some are designed for enterprise companies, others for one-man selling operations. Plus, inside and outside sales teams have vastly different needs, as do the management professionals who oversee them.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of variables at play and it can be difficult to choose a solution that suits everyone’s needs and ensures company-wide adoption. To select the right reporting solution, you first need to know exactly what to look for.

In this article, we’ll explore what sales reporting software is, and the 13 questions you must ask in order to choose the right tool for your team.

Let’s dive in!

What is Sales Reporting Software?

Sales reporting software is exactly what it sounds like: a tool that helps sellers track (i.e. report on) their sales. When you’re able to see the data generated by your sales efforts, you can analyze the numbers and optimize your selling processes.

Sales reporting software helps teams:

• Organize data and monitor key metrics
• Present relevant data to key stakeholders – reps, managers and executives
• Identify bottlenecks across the entire sales pipeline
• Measure how specific sales activities are moving sales targets
• Hit sales quotas more consistently
• Oversee team goals and individual contributions
• Deliver more accurate sales forecasting

While a sales reporting tool will undoubtedly benefit your organization, choosing the right platform for your company’s unique needs is tricky. To make the right decision, salespeople need to ask the right questions.

How to Choose the Best Sales Reporting Software (13 Questions to Ask)

This is actually the wrong question. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s the best sales report software for my company?” What works well for sellers at Company ABC might not work as well for your team, and vice versa.

Fortunately, by asking yourself the following 13 questions, you’ll be able to better determine which sales reporting tool is the right fit for your organization.

1. Is it For Inside or Outside Sales Reporting?

The first question you need to ask yourself when choosing a sales reporting tool is who is the specific application designed for?

Inside and outside sales teams need different levels of insight to meet their sales quotas. Which kind of team are you a part of? If you’re involved in field sales, you’ll likely want to track activities and performance at the territory level.

Image: SPOTIO allows field sales managers to report on activity and performance metrics at the rep, territory and team levels.

By answering this question first, you’ll eliminate a lot of poor-fit solutions from your list almost immediately.

Your company can use a tool like SPOTIO to integrate field sales and reporting capabilities into your existing CRM. This will allow you to get the data you need, while still using the tools you already know and enjoy using.

2. What Type of Sales Data do You Need to Report On?

Next up, ask yourself what kind of sales data you need to report on. Not all solutions will give you access to the same data points, so knowing what you need is paramount.

Field teams generally need to analyze and break down revenue numbers by territory. But does your team also need access to rep and team-level activity insights? What about management? Do they need a specific kind of report to properly evaluate performance and measure progress against sales targets?

Make a list of all the data points you need a sales reporting software to generate and keep the document handy as you vet various solutions.

3. Are You Able to Track Multi-Channel Sales Activity?

In the old days, there were very few ways to reach a prospect directly with your sales message.

You could visit them face to face, call them on the phone, or send them direct mail. Today, there are dozens of communication channels available to you.

Image: SPOTIO enables sales team to automatically track every visit, call, text and email.

The sales reporting software you choose should be able to track all of the channels you use — both online and off.

Before settling on a specific solution, make sure the tool will allow you to easily capture and input data. If it doesn’t, the reports you generate won’t be accurate and your sales processes will suffer as a result.

4. Is it Easy to Build Reports?

Speaking of reports, does the tool you’re considering make it easy to create them? You should be able to segment and visualize your data in different ways. That way sales reps, managers, and executives can each get an accurate view of daily activities and the ways in which they affect both the sales pipeline and company revenue.

SPOTIO’s My Reports feature enables its users to create custom reports with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder:

5. What Level of Customization is Available?

Every company is different and your sales team has a specific way of doing things. If the sales reporting tool you choose doesn’t allow for customized reports, you’ll have a hard time visualizing the data in a meaningful way for stakeholders.

Choose a sales tracking tool that’s malleable to your team’s needs — both in regards to the data points it lets you track and the ways in which it enables you to visualize said data.

Just don’t get too carried away with this idea and choose a solution with every possible bell and whistle. Customization is great, but so is simplicity. Try to find a tool that’s both flexible and doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to operate correctly.

For example, SPOTIO gives users access to Custom Statuses, which will allow you to incorporate unique sales processes into the tool. Simply determine what you want to track, then let SPOTIO automatically fill in these details while you prospect.

6. Does it Provide Activity-Level Reporting?

Annual goals are achieved through daily actions. If your sales reporting tool of choice doesn’t allow you to track daily activity, you might not realize you have a faulty process until it’s too late.

Make sure the reporting solution you use shows how daily efforts translate into leads, prospects, and customers on a weekly and monthly basis — or not. That way you can take this information and either adjust your selling approach or double down on winning tactics.

For example, you’ll likely want to track the number of emails sent, calls made, social media conversations generated, booked meetings, etc.

7. Can it be Used in the Field?

If you’re part of an outside sales team, you’ll definitely want to choose a sales reporting tool that can be used in the field, i.e. can be accessed via an app on a mobile device.

Think about it: you could jot down information about the prospects you meet in the field on a yellow legal pad or in some kind of journal, then transfer those details to your tracking software once you make it back to the office. But is this really the best use of your time?

Instead, eliminate tedious data entry work and boost productivity by selecting a solution that you can easily take on the go with you.

8. Does it Provide Automated Notifications?

Speed is important in sales. The faster you can close deals, the less time it will give your prospects to get cold feet and your competition to swoop in and steal the sale.

That’s why we recommend choosing a sales report software that features automated email notifications, which can be triggered by specific events. Wouldn’t it be nice to know, for example, when a prospect downloads a white paper from your website? You can easily use this information to gauge prospect interest and move them farther down your pipeline.

Your reporting tool should give you access to key data points and enable you to act on them quicker than ever before.

9. Does it Integrate With Other Data Sources?

Here’s the thing: just about every business uses multiple pieces of software to run operations. Why? Because no application does everything a modern company needs it to. This fact makes integration capabilities a real concern.

Investigate whether or not your current technology stack will connect with the sales reporting tools you’re considering — and whether the integration is seamless or not.

10. How is Data Secured?

Data security is always a top concern. Many big-name brands have gotten themselves into hot water by not protecting their customers’ private details. Don’t be like these companies! Find a sales reporting tool that’s committed to data security.

While this isn’t the most exciting feature to look for, it’s incredibly important and will ensure the safety of your customer and business data.

11. How Does Pricing Scale?

Budget is an ever-present concern for most businesses. You need to make sure that you can afford the sales reporting tool you’re interested in. But you also need to check to see how pricing scales for the solution, too.

The last thing you want to do is onboard a new reporting solution, only to realize that prices skyrocket as your team and/or sales activity increases. Take the time to understand how pricing will change as your team and operations scale.

Cost is often the deciding factor between similar solutions and can make choosing between two options much easier.

12. Have You Checked Customer Reviews?

At this point, you’ve probably narrowed down your search to just a few sales report software options. Now you need to look at what past and current users say about these tools.

This is so important! A certain solution might have every feature you need and be well within budget. But if a large portion of its user base claims the tool is difficult to use or buggy, you should seriously consider investing in something different.

So read as many reviews as you can on sites like Capterra and G2. Better yet, speak with current users about their experiences if you’re able!

13. What Level of Customer Support is Provided?

Finally, take customer support into account when deciding which sales reporting tool to use for your company. A rude help team will be unpleasant to work with.

How do you tell which solutions offer quality support? You should be able to get a good idea by reading product reviews, your interactions with the tool’s sales team, and the quality of help you receive during a free trial.

Top Sales Reporting Tools

Keeping track of your sales with accurate reports can be easy with the right tools.

SPOTIO

Best for: Outside sales teams

With SPOTIO’s Sales Tracking Software, sales performance is more predictable with the tool’s easy-to-read insights and analytics. With detailed reports, you’re better equipped to make strategic decisions and hit your goals.

When your team is in the field, you need to know how your reps are doing and where gaps might be to mitigate any issues. SPOTIO enables managers to track rep location, sales activities, revenue data, and pipeline metrics at the rep and territory levels.

Key features:

• Sales activity reporting across multiple channels
• Sales performance reporting at the rep, territory and organization levels
• Custom pipeline visibility reports
• Sales win-loss analysis
• Drag-and-drop custom report builder
• Daily and weekly updates
• Create sales leaderboards and incentivize performance
• GPS rep location tracking
• Automatically sync field data with your CRM
• Mobile app that enables activities and notes to be added from the field

Get pricing.

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce provides CRM reporting tools for sales leaders to quickly access the data they need to make critical business decisions. Salesforce places large amounts of information at your fingertips, that is not only easily accessible, but analyzed. The reports that Salesforce offers provide valuable insights into profitability, customer needs, pipeline efficiency, goal progression, and more.

Key features:

• Pipeline visibility and reporting
• Interactive dashboards
• Customizable sales forecasting reports
• Native integration with SPOTIO

Pipedrive CRM

Pipedrive helps make sales operations around activity-based selling more efficient. The tools help you effectively manage leads and deals around the clock with custom chatbots and web forms. Communications are tracked, letting you see calls, emails, and contact history. Furthermore, you can reduce repetitive tasks by letting AI automate your administrative tasks so you can focus on larger goals.

Key features:

• Custom report builder
• Lead reporting and deal tracking
• Revenue forecast reporting
• SPOTIO integration

Which Sales Reporting Tool is Right for Your Business?

Choosing a sales reporting tool doesn’t need to be overwhelming. While certain tools are best suited for inside sales teams, SPOTIO is the best sales reporting tool for outside sales managers.

Here are a few of SPOTIO’s top reporting features:

• Track sales activities at the rep, team and organizational levels.
• View pipeline activity inside sales territories.
• Create custom metrics and build KPI dashboards.
• Create rep accountability with GPS location tracking.
• Motivate reps with team leaderboards.
• Build pipeline benchmarks and accurate sales forecasts.
• Create custom reports with our drag-and-drop builder.

If you think SPOTIO might be a good fit for your company, request a demo today. Our knowledgeable team will walk you through our solution’s features and help you determine if SPOTIO is the right sales reporting software for your company.

Think about the last time you wanted to buy something on the web. Chances are, you spent hours scouring the internet for people’s reviews on the products you want to buy. But, let’s say there were no reviews. This could put a damper on your purchase as no one likes to buy something without knowing what previous buyers thought about it.

Suppose your brand is in this category where your products have little to no reviews, or the ones left by the customers are not as captivating. Then, it is time to implement a strategy that will bring more customers to your website and increase sales.

You can start by creating B2B video testimonials strategies on your website. Using video reviews brings a human touch to your products as customers can relate to the person reviewing the products. We are in an era where everything is digital and from the look of things, video testimonials dominate the business world, so why not give video testimonials a try.

You may get the impression that taking a video and posting it is easy. But that’s not the case, as a lot goes into making powerful and engaging video testimonials. Let us explain what B2B video testimonials marketing is and why you should use it.

A customer video testimonial is a video that shows your customers speaking honestly about their experience using your products and services.

So, what are the benefits of having video testimonials in your business?

• It helps show customers that your brand is credible and trustworthy
• The customer helps explain how to use the products, benefits, and experience, which can appeal to your target customers.
• Improves conversion rate
• It is natural and user-friendly. It is easier to believe a person than an ad.

Here are eight tips to use when making B2B video testimonials. First, before filming, find the right customers, those who wholeheartedly love your products.

1. Do Not Use a Script

Customers rely on video testimonials because they are authentic, so when you post a scripted video review, your customers and potential clients will know. This might make it hard for them to trust your brand.

Do not push the person making the video to speak the way you want as it might stress them and make them nervous. You can view some video testimonial examples to give you an idea of what other businesses are doing.

2. Humanize the Video with Real Emotions

The best B2B video testimonial is when your customers tell a personal and emotional story on how your products and services impacted their lives. It’s best to start with an issue that had plagued their lives, but became history after using your products. Then, you can use these video testimonial examples as your inspiration.

3. Keep it brief

Keep your video testimonial short and to the point. Nobody likes to listen to someone speaking about something for hours. A brief video will capture the attention of your viewers while getting out your message across.

Therefore, ensure that your video is about 3 minutes long or less. In addition, it would be best to caption your customer’s name and experience on the video to increase the time they spend talking about the product’s benefits.

4. Tell a Story

Present the testimonial in the form of a story. Try and make the story interesting for the listener irrespective of the interviewee’s age. To make the story authentic, write the questions following a particular order.

For example, you can start by asking what problem they were facing. How did they find out about your products? How did your products help them solve their problem?

The way they communicate the answers will create a narrative that is relatable to everyone watching.

5. Keep it Simple

Do not complicate your video testimonial by using complex terms. Use simple language and words that are understandable to your target market. You can incorporate data and statistics in your testimonial, but keep it short.

6. Send Out Questions Before the Interview

Make sure to provide your interviewee/customer with the questions before the scheduled interview. This allows them to familiarize themselves with the questions and avoid any awkward moments during the filming.

This does not necessarily mean that they need to memorize the answers for the recording. Instead, it gives them an idea of what to expect, be present, and humanize their responses.

7. Make it interesting

Don’t just set the camera only to capture the speaker’s face; it would be interesting to show his/her face at different angles, enhancing their expressions by zooming in and zooming out. This will help viewers get a perspective of the speaker’s emotions.

However, it is not a must since it requires several cameras to achieve this and a large crew, which would be expensive. That’s why it might be best to outsource the task to specialists for remote video testimonials to get the best outcome.

8. Don’t Interrupt

When filming, do not interrupt the speaker because it might appear scripted. Let them go with the flow when filming. Before posting, edit the video to remove the parts you feel are unnecessary. So no matter what the situation is, do not interrupt.

Suppose you are a small business and do not have the resources to film or hire a video testimonial service. You can request your loyal customers to send videos of themselves talking about your products or services, then ask for permission to post them on your website.

Ensure to end your video with a call to action and ask your viewers to share their experiences in the comment section.

Now let us see how to boost sales using video testimonials.

How to use B2B video testimonial in marketing to drive sales

After creating a powerful customer testimonial video, you must position it in a manner that is going to boost sales. For example, a survey conducted in December 2020 shows that 84% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching the brand’s video.

In addition, the survey found out that after three days, people remember about 10% of what they heard but still retain about 65% of the images in the video. This clearly shows that B2B video testimonials are a powerful marketing strategy for any business looking to boost sales.

Where should you use the B2B testimonial videos?

Landing Page

This is the first place your customer lands upon visiting your website. Statistics show that landing pages/ homepages increase the conversion rate by 86%. Customer testimonial videos help to:

• Generate leads
• Persuade prospective client to buy your products

You can also add a testimonial page on your website where clients can go to see other customer reviews.

Social Media

Almost everyone, from teens to baby boomers, is on social media. So why not post your customer testimonial video on social media where you will have a broader reach? From small enterprises to large corporations, you will find they are all present on social media.

A Digital 2020 report, published in collaboration with We Are Social and Hootsuite, shows that digital, mobile, and social media are indispensable parts of our daily lives worldwide. Over 4.5 billion people are using the internet as of Jan 1st, 2020, while social media users are above 3.8 billion. These are all potential customers you can target.

Make a habit of posting customer video testimonials on your social media pages to increase brand awareness and drive targeted traffic to your website. You can also run a campaign on your social media pages.

Analyze your testimonials

Since the video does not provide in-depth information, make an individual case study for the client by explaining how the customer used the products to the final results. This makes it easier for your customers and prospects to follow.

For instance, many people are advertising their nutrition programs by showing their clients’ before and after pictures. While this is encouraging, it doesn’t show you the whole process or how long it took. So a case study would be best at this strategy as it would explain their nutrition and exercise in detail.

After creating the video and publishing it on multiple channels, automate some tasks, such as data entry and sales tracking. Automation will improve your team’s productivity by approximately 46%. This is because it eliminates the data entry tasks since it logs every potential interaction in real-time.

In addition, the Sales tracking feature provides you with clear insights and analytics, which show you whether your video strategy is working.

Final Thoughts

Scaling a business is easy if you know what you are doing. The way you use customer reviews to promote sales plays a crucial role in your business. As we’ve seen, B2B video testimonials are here to stay, so don’t get left behind. Get creative and start posting.

Also, be ready to tweak the videos as each channel is different from the other. Don’t give up because the first video does not convert as per your predictions. Everything takes work and time. Doing it consistently will lead to better results.

About the Author 

Sam Shepler is the founder and CEO of Testimonial Hero. 150+ B2B revenue teams at Google, UiPath, Medallia, InsightSquared, and many others use Testimonial Hero to easily create customer videos that engage prospects, reduce friction in the sales cycle, and drive more revenue faster. Twitter | LinkedIn

We can’t tell you exactly why sales are down—there are many reasons why sellers fail to meet success in this field. But if we were to guess what your problem is, we’d probably say that you and your team don’t follow up with prospects and customers as often as you should.

In this article, we’ll discuss why following up is essential to an effective sales strategy and how the SPOTIO platform is specially equipped to help you in this area.

Why Your Sales Reps Lose Deals

Deals are lost for a variety of reasons. For example, your reps might be misusing social media, which can result in poor branding and a slew of unqualified leads. They might not be doing enough pre-sale work or closing too hard or talking more than they listen.

Each of these things can lead to lost deals. But there’s another, simpler possibility as well: your sales reps aren’t following up with prospects the way they should be.

Why is Following Up So Important?

Nobody brags about how many follow-up calls they’ve made or emails they’ve sent. Why? Because following up is anything but exciting. To a lot of reps, it’s downright boring, which is why 44% of sales reps give up after a single follow-up.

This is unfortunate because 80% of sales require five follow-up calls after an initial meeting. It’s a fact: if your reps aren’t following up with leads, they’re losing deals.

But the need for follow up calls, emails, and in-person visits goes even deeper than this. Studies show that it takes eight cold call attempts to even reach a prospect. You can’t close deals if you don’t talk to leads. And you won’t talk to many leads if you don’t follow up.

Still not convinced? Consider this: only 3% of your market is actively buying at any given time. And 60% of customers say “no” four times before saying “yes.”

In a nutshell, most of the leads your reps reach out to won’t need what they’re selling—at least not yet. By following up, sellers can make sure they’re top of mind when a lead finally decides they’re ready to make a deal.

Think Beyond Your Leads List

It’s not just new prospects your reps need to follow up with. They should follow up with current customers, too. That way you don’t lose them to a competitor.

This is especially important for businesses using a recurring revenue model, such as SaaS brands and various service providers. If your customers pay a monthly fee for access to your company’s offerings, rather than making a one-time payment, following up is paramount.

If you don’t continually work to keep your current customers happy, they’ll find a new company to work with, taking their money with them and reducing your cash flow.

Don’t Forget About Lost Deals

Deals fall through—even for the best salespeople…

It’s important to remember that sometimes dead deals can be revived. Just because a prospect says “no thanks” today doesn’t mean they’ll say “no thanks” in six months. But you’ll never know if they have a change of heart unless you follow up with them.

Pro Tip: Always provide value to lost deals when following up. For example, don’t reach out to a prospect who turned you down with the same offer you made them last year. Instead, invite them to a webinar you’re hosting or send them your company’s latest white paper.

Value opens the door to future sales conversations. Once that door is opened, you can learn more about a prospect’s current needs and then pitch them something to help.

How SPOTIO Simplifies the Follow Up Process

As we’ve seen, following up is incredibly important to success in sales. But as any seller knows, following up is often tedious work. That’s why your team needs SPOTIO.

SPOTIO is a field sales engagement platform that helps reps increase their activity, set more appointments, and drive more revenue. It also gives sales management personnel deep insights into the sales process so they can improve department strategy.

When it comes to following up, SPOTIO has a few specific features that can help:

Simplified Communication

Effective follow-up isn’t about making a specific amount of calls or sending a certain number of emails. It’s about consistently communicating with prospects in the ways they prefer.

Some people love talking on the phone, while others will only engage with sales reps via email and text. Your job is to determine which communication channels your prospects like to use; then do your best to engage them using those methods.

With SPOTIO, sellers can easily monitor their communication channels to see which is most effective. Then, using the information gleaned, schedule the right messages at the right times from the convenience of the SPOTIO desktop or mobile device app.

It gets better: sales reps can also build custom follow up sequences with our tool’s Autoplays feature. Create and deploy a measurable series of touchpoints for each lead in your pipeline. That way prospects are consistently engaged with and nothing falls through the cracks.

Sales Rep Visibility

Ultimately, it’s the sales manager’s job to make sure their reps are following up on a consistent basis. SPOTIO gives management pros the information they need in this area.

Our app automatically tracks each sales rep’s current location and travel history. This allows managers to understand where reps spend their time and if they’re making follow-up visits to prospects on a regular basis. (Note: these features can be turned off if privacy is preferred.)

Digital communication is also tracked inside SPOTIO. Learn how many calls, emails, and texts your reps send and the success metrics for each channel.

When you have visibility into the sales processes of your entire department, you’ll quickly learn whether your reps are putting in the necessary effort to be successful, if they need more in-depth training, why your sales figures are what they are, and more.

Task Automation

If following up is so important, why don’t more sales reps do it? There’s many potential reasons; one of them is that they just don’t have time.

It can take hours to log prospect interactions, input meeting notes, upload photos, and otherwise keep CRM software up to date. And we haven’t even talked about the time it takes to type, edit, and send follow up messages to leads.

SPOTIO’s task automation capabilities streamlines each of these tasks.

When SPOTIO users visit a prospect, our software uses geofencing tech to automatically log the interaction. Notes taken in the SPOTIO app are quickly synced with CRM software, as are photos taken onsite. And email and text templates are easily created, allowing reps to quickly follow up with leads in ways that feel engaging and personal.

At the end of the day, SPOTIO minimizes the tedious data entry work that bogs down sellers and allows them to focus more of their time on business-building activities.

Grow Sales By Following Up

In many cases, following up is what separates mediocre sales reps from department leaders. If you’re not willing to contact leads multiple times—even after they’ve said “no” to your initial pitch, you’ll never close as many deals as you would like to.

Fortunately, tools like SPOTIO make following up easier. Our tool’s multichannel communication, Autoplays, sales rep visibility, and task automation features will turn mind-numbing work into a simple, straightforward process that gets results.

Go back just a couple of short decades, and the terms content marketing and sales engagement would likely go over the heads of most marketers and company owners.

Today, you’re unlikely to find an executive-level meeting that doesn’t give space to discuss one or the other, if not both.

Even if you’re a content marketing whizz or sales engagement wizard, there’s still an important question left to be answered:

How does content marketing interact and assist with sales engagement?

Perhaps, there is even a more fundamental question: does it?

The answer to the latter is a resounding yes, otherwise this post would be dead in the water.

What this article is here to do is explain the five key ways in which content marketing helps sales engagement do its thing.

As with all good 101s, let’s start with a quick refresher or two.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the strategic approach toward marketing that puts a focus on creating, distributing, and analyzing various forms of content.

It is generally agreed that such content should be informative, valuable, actionable, consistent, and relevant.

It often takes the form of diverse formats, such as:

• Case studies
• Demos
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• eBooks
• Catalogs
• Memes
• Infographics
• Video
• Influencer content
• Animations
• Checklists
• User-generated content
• Spec sheets
• Guides
• Tip sheets
• Blog posts (like this one)

That’s a pretty long list — so why does it all matter?

Because it puts the power in the hands of the consumer (they access the content on their time, not yours), improving the customer experience and lifting the quality of your lead generation (more on that later).

In fact, content marketing is so effective that 36% of enterprise-level marketers have moved paid advertising budget allocation into content marketing over the last year.

So yeah, it’s a pretty big deal. But so is sales engagement…

What is sales engagement?

Sales engagement encompasses every experience and interaction a potential customer has with a sales rep.

Such exchanges include:

• Emails
• Phone calls
• Social media engagement (comments, mentions, DMs)
• Video conference calls
• In-person meetings
• Webinar attendance

It’s a major focus for today’s sales leaders, with 90% saying they plan to invest further in sales engagement.

As a practice, sales engagement focuses on improving sales rep performance in each of these areas.

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This may range from individual training sessions to wider, process-based changes such as altering the communication cadence or, of course, the implementation of content marketing activities to improve engagement.

How?

Glad you asked…

5 ways content marketing helps with sales engagement

1. Better Lead Generation

Here’s a striking statistic:

Just 7% of salespeople say that the leads they get from marketing are of very high quality.

That’s seven quality prospects for every 100 that call in. Not very promising, is it?

It goes without saying, then, that with that in mind, marketing departments should be focusing on lead quality rather than quantity.

The beauty in content marketing as a practice is that it not only improves the customer experience, it also delivers higher quality leads with significantly lower spends.

That’s because content marketing falls under the inbound marketing umbrella, which focuses on creating a customer-led sales journey.

It places emphasis on allowing prospects to educate themselves (with your content), essentially putting customers through a process of self-qualification. An example of this would be when an inbound lead reaches a salesperson’s desk, they are further down the sales funnel than they would be under interruptive, outbound marketing methodologies.

So, what can you do to take advantage?

You can start by coming up with blog post ideas that educate top funnel prospects without requiring the efforts of a salesperson, freeing them up to focus on more valuable leads.

Consider the common objections your sales team are handling on a daily basis, and seek to overcome them by creating valuable content pieces such as webinars, explainer videos, and infographics.

You’ll also want to make sure your sales reps are positioned with as much relevant information on a prospect as possible. Consider using a Sales Intelligence tool to bring this data to your reps’ fingertips.

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2. Efficiency

As you enter the adult world (sad face), you realize something pretty quickly:

There is a finite amount of time in each day, and even less in each workday. In short, you can’t be on the phone selling 24/7.

For salespeople working on a quota, this has long meant one of two things:

1. Work longer hours (burnout, anyone?)
2. Sell less than desired and take the loss.

Neither is desirable, but the good news is that with a bit of smart content marketing backing your reps up, they can sell more and maintain a healthy work/life balance.

That’s because some (if not much) of what a sales rep needs to communicate to a prospect can be done so through effective content. That is especially true when said content it put on an automated sales engagement cadence like Autoplays by SPOTIO.

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Such methods ensure nothing slips through the cracks, meaning prospects get every piece of content they need to make a decision, not just the ones your sales rep deems necessary (or remembers to send).

You can (and should) set these systems up to distribute content before a sales rep gets on the phone or sets up a demo. That’s because studies have shown that 30% of customers consume five or more pieces of content before ever engaging with a rep.

The lesson?

Once you’ve found a recipe that works, pound it out en masse, Colonel Sanders style.

3. Objectivity

Speaking of not leaving anything to chance, using content marketing efforts to support the sales engagement process not only improves efficiency, it also gives sales leaders an objective view of performance.

Here’s what we mean:

Consider a traditional, outbound sales team. They’ve got a predefined sales process and a script to follow. They get dialing right away, rinsing and repeating until 5 pm.

If team performance is poor, it can be tough to determine whether this is a result of delivery or the process itself.

That’s to say; you can’t tell if your script sucks or if your reps suck.

Of course, as your team grows, you’ll be able to pick at the weak links (and the strong ones, hopefully you’ll have those too). However, you’re still faced with the task of understanding how much emphasis to place on process improvements, and how much time to spend on training and coaching.

Once content marketing efforts enter the fray, things will begin to change.

That’s because you’ve removed any subjectivity from the equation (at least the parts that are being supported by content), and you can accurately and objectively assess the effectiveness of said content.

This gives further fuel to the content creation process, allowing you to determine which pieces require thorough improvement, and which are performing well.

4. Collaboration

Anyone who’s been a part of a large corporation understands the ongoing battle between sales and marketing departments.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

Because content marketing supports all stages of the funnel (top, middle, and bottom), there is an inevitable overlap between the two departments. This is preferable to marketing just handing leads off to sales reps at an arbitrary point in the process.

It results in a sort of synergy (yes, sorry, we know) between marketing and sales, where the efforts of the marketing team do more than just provide leads. Instead, it improves sales engagement itself.

It works the other way, too (that’s why we used the S word). Because sales managers will (read: should) analyze the impact of content produced by the marketing team on sales engagement, they can pass that information back through to marketing managers for further content development.

This interdepartmental collaboration has given birth to a new form of marketing: account-based marketing (ABM).

It’s a B2B marketing approach where both teams cooperate in targeting best-fit accounts. It generally involves a whole lot of content marketing techniques.

Teams following an ABM methodology can be up to 6% more likely to exceed revenue goals, proving the benefit of content marketing for sales teams.

(Image Source)

5. Authority

The fifth and final way that content marketing assists with sales engagement is pretty plain and simple.

It gives your company authority and a more professional appearance.

Customers are expecting you to be actively involved in content marketing and pushing out valuable content on a regular basis. If you’re not, then they are unlikely to take you seriously.

And it’s a big deal, too. 86% of companies focusing on content marketing have audiences who view their organization as a trusted, credible resource for information.

You’ll obviously need to make sure your content looks the part as well. At the very least, make sure you check what you write with an editing tool like Grammarly.

Conclusion

So, where to from here?

The obvious answer is to double down on your content marketing efforts.

By doing so, you can improve sales engagement and secure the following benefits:

• Better lead generation
• More efficient sales processes
• Objectivity in assessing performance
• Collaboration between marketing and sales departments
• A professional appearance

It’s fair to say, too, that you’re going to need a high-performing field sales engagement platform like SPOTIO. Request a demo today to find out how we can help.

About the Author

Brad Smith is the CEO at Wordable.io and the Founder of Codeless (a content production agency). His content has been highlighted by The New York Times, Business Insider, The Next Web, and thousands more.

In this article, we’ll discuss why sales engagement is beneficial, how to create an outreach strategy that truly engages your leads, and more.

Let’s get to it!

What is Sales Engagement?

Sales engagement is any and all interactions that take place between a prospect and sales rep. It can be measured in time spent interacting and the number of touchpoints interacted with.

For instance, the amount of time a prospect spends watching your product demo video on YouTube is a measurement of sales engagement, as is the number of email CTAs they click.

To increase engagement, many sellers turn to sales engagement software. This kind of tool helps centralize interactions across multiple communications channels (email, phone calls, texts, in-person meetings, etc.) and automate the selling process.

Imagine how much more effective you’ll be when important sales tasks like sending outreach campaigns and follow-up messages are handled for you, allowing you to focus all of your energy on building relationships with prospects and closing deals!

3 Key Benefits of Sales Engagement

Effective sales engagement requires an investment of time and resources. The question is, will the investment be worth the effort? In almost all circumstances, the answer is “YES!”

Here’s how sales engagement can benefit you as a field sales rep:

Personalization

You know the old saying, “people buy from those they know, like, and trust.” By personalizing your sales efforts via an effective sales engagement process, you’ll be able to build trusting relationships with your target audience.

These relationships will undoubtedly lead to more sales as 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences and 44% say they’re more likely to make repeat purchases after going through a personalized experience.

Productivity

Personalization in sales obviously has its merits. But what if you have dozens or even hundreds of prospects in your pipeline? How can you possibly personalize all of your communications without working 18 hour days and going crazy?

The answer: use sales engagement software.

By automating your outreach campaigns, follow-up emails, text messages, and other forms of communication, you’ll be able to contact your prospects at scale.

This is especially important since the latest studies tell us that it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer and only 24% of sales emails are opened. You can greatly reduce your workload by letting sales engagement software do the heavy lifting for you.

Additionally, sales engagement software will make you more productive simply because it allows sellers to bring information from multiple sources into one platform. That way you don’t have to switch back and forth between tools, which wastes time.

Perfect Timing

Here’s the cold hard truth: it’s harder than ever to close deals. In fact, the number of sales reps making quota has decreased 10% since 2012. There are a few reasons for this including decision-making complexity and the inability of sales reps to differentiate their offerings.

But sometimes, deals stall because of timing issues. If you don’t develop an effective communications cadence with prospects, you’ll likely contact them too early or too late — both of which will result in lost sales.

Fortunately, you can use sales engagement software to automate your communications to send at the perfect times! How do you learn what the perfect timing is?

You study the analytics in your sales engagement software of choice to determine the times your unique audience is most likely to engage with your calls, emails, texts, etc.

Your Outreach Strategy

Once you’ve selected a sales engagement software (more on sales engagement software options at the end of this article), you need to implement it into your sales process and develop an outreach strategy.

Here’s an 4-step system of engagement approach for you:

1. Select Your Communication Channels

Both inside and outside sales reps can benefit from using multiple communication channels to engage prospects. While your in-person meetings will always be valuable relationship-building tools, you can close more deals by contacting your audience in a variety of ways, which will help you stay top-of-mind at all times during the sales process.

The trick is selecting the right channels for your business. Options include in-person meetings, phone calls, emails, and text messages. To choose, study your prospects to learn which channels they enjoy using and invest in those.

2. Choose the Right Sales Cadence

Selecting the right communication channels is only half the battle. You must also determine how often to use each channel. In other words, you need to choose the right sales cadence.

When you’re able to develop an outreach strategy that includes all the right channels (call, email, text, etc.) and use them each at the right times, your sales efforts will become much more successful — guaranteed.

It’s important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all sales cadence. Every company needs to find the right cadence for their unique audience and goals.

Here’s a sales cadence example to get you started:

• Day 1: Cold Call
• Day 2: LinkedIn Connection
• Day 4: Email Outreach
• Day 7: Follow-Up Email
• Day 8: Follow-Up Phone Call
• Day 10: LinkedIn InMail
• Day 12: Follow-Up Email
• Day 14: Follow-Up Phone Call

Again, all cadences must be tested to ensure effectiveness! We don’t recommend using any cadence (even the one listed above) without studying analytics and assessing results.

3. Craft Your Messages

The next step is to craft your messages. This includes call scripts, email and text message templates, and in-person presentation workflows.

Be sure to craft messages that are designed to achieve your specific goals and resonate with your target audience.

For example, if you sell to a millennial audience, you’ll probably want to limit your use of phone calls and lean heavily on social media, email, and text messages.

Furthermore, you might decide to include links to content in your communications rather than going straight for a sale, as millennials are generally averse to these tactics.

4. Evaluate Your Efforts

Lastly, you must keep a close eye on your outreach strategy and constantly evaluate its effectiveness. Once again, sales engagement software will help with this.

Take a look at the analytics inside your sales engagement platform of choice. How often are your calls returned? Are your emails and texts consistently open and read? How many in-person meetings have you been able to schedule since implementing your outreach strategy? Which communication channels have proved most successful?

These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself. Once you do, adjust your tactics based on your answers so that your outreach efforts are more potent.

CRM + Sales Engagement Platform (Why You Need Both)

Many confuse CRM and sales engagement software — or worse, think they can manage with just one of the other. In most cases, field sales reps will benefit from having both tools in their metaphorical tool belts.

A CRM is your system of record for customer data, housing all the information sales reps need regarding prospects and customers. But a CRM by itself does not drive customer engagement. Solely relying on a CRM won’t help you close more deals. In fact, it will do the opposite by causing reps to waste time on administrative tasks.

By combining a sales engagement platform with your CRM tool, you can solve this problem and allow each piece of software to do what it does best.

Engage Prospects With SPOTIO

We’ve talked a lot about sales engagement software, but we haven’t yet mentioned any specific tools that you can use to better engage your prospects.

SPOTIO is a combination of detailed CRM and powerful engagement software that’s been specifically designed for field sales reps.

One of the biggest advantages SPOTIO affords outside sales teams is the ability to see the level of engagement for every prospect in their pipeline.

For example, SPOTIO users can:

View Engagement Time on Each Communication Channel: Which channel is best received by your unique audience? A quick look at the SPOTIO dashboard will tell you how your audience wants to engage with you.

Compare Engagement Metrics to Other Sales Reps: Sales managers can use SPOTIO to assess rep performance. Easily view total engagements for every prospect and compare them to other reps on your team.

Then use the information to better coach, train, and equip your staff in the future.

Get Real-Time Engagement Stats: Sales managers can also access real-time engagement metrics inside SPOTIO. Want to know which activities your sales reps deploy in the field? Or how often they use messaging templates and the current success rates of each?

These details can be viewed in SPOTIO, allowing you to gain a better understanding of which messaging approaches work best for your team.

Overall, SPOTIO will allow you to combine a system of engagement with CRM data so that you get a comprehensive view of the entire sales cycle with actionable insights.

Engage Your Audience

To improve your sales performance, you need to engage your audience via multiple communication channels that you can personalize, automate, and track. Sales engagement software will give you the opportunity to do these things.

If you’re looking for a sales engagement software to invest in, we suggest SPOTIO. Request a free demo of our tool and increase revenue by up to 23% immediately.

According to Forbes, the average sales rep spends less than 36% of their time actually selling. Why? Because they have too many manual tasks that use up their valuable time.

Smart sales managers understand this and take steps to remedy the situation. In this article we’ll discuss the causes of low sales rep productivity and how sales task automation can help combat them.

4 Causes of Low Sales Productivity

Your sales team’s low productivity levels are almost certainly due to inefficient systems. If your team has to manually input data into your company’s CRM, for instance, they’re wasting valuable time that could be spent sourcing leads and closing deals.

Here are a few of the most common ways that modern sales reps waste time:

CRM Upkeep: It’s important to keep your company’s CRM database up to date. But too many reps spend too much of their time on this administrative task.

Writing Emails: Do your reps hand-type every prospecting email they send? This tedious task can be streamlined using messages templates.

Calendar Scheduling: Many sales reps’ productivity plummet because of poor scheduling techniques and an inability to prioritize tasks.

Document Management: A variety of contracts and documents are needed to close most field sales. Without an effective way to manage paperwork, productivity suffers.

These are just some of the ways that sales rep productivity is hindered. There are many more. Fortunately, most of them can be remedied using sales task automation software.

Sales Task Automation From SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a popular sales task automation app that field sales teams can use to boost productivity. In fact, our customers have achieved up to 46% greater productivity after implementing our solution. This is largely because of the automation tools we provide.

Using SPOTIO, you can reduce (or even eliminate) manual tasks related to:

Data Capture

Did you know that the average sales rep spends four hours a week just entering data into the company system? That means that approximately 10% of your sales resources are automatically gone due to CRM upkeep. And we haven’t even mentioned the possibility of data entry mistakes when manually updating a CRM.

By automating the data capture process with SPOTIO you’ll save your reps hundred of hours every year and ensure that your CRM data is always accurate.

Here are some of the sales tasks you can automate with SPOTIO:

• Log Prospect Interactions
• Easily Take Notes With Talk to Text
• Pass Notes Directly to Your CRM

For accurate CRM records in less time — and with WAY less effort — use the automated data capture features inside SPOTIO.

Auto-Visits

As we’ve mentioned, your reps have A LOT of admin tasks to take care of on a daily basis. Auto-Visits helps reduce them by automatically capturing check-ins and check-outs via an exclusive geofencing feature.

Essentially, this means that SPOTIO will detect when your reps reach a specific area and when they leave; then log the details into your sales software.

This information can then be analyzed by sales leaders like yourself to uncover how time spent with a prospect translates into sales. This feature also helps keep sales reps accountable for their actions since their movements are visible to higher-ups.

Messaging Template

Typing out the same email and/or text message over and over again to new leads is a waste of time. With messaging templates inside SPOTIO, you can supercharge your team’s messaging productivity with the click of a button.

Use our tool to quickly create email and text templates that can be used repeatedly. Then monitor the performance of each template and optimize it for peak performance.

Recent studies have found that email marketing ROI is two times greater than cold calling. With SPOTIO, you can increase your conversion rates in less time because of the messaging template feature that we offer!

Sales Rep Day Planner

An organized schedule is key to sales success — especially for field reps who spend most of their time outside their company’s office. Without a well-crafted schedule, it’s easy to lose track of time and difficult to properly prioritize tasks.

The SPOTIO mobile app features an embedded calendar with automated reminders to call, text, or email prospects at the appropriate times. That way they don’t get sidetracked, forget, and then blow a potential sales opportunity.

Combine this feature with the messaging template capability mentioned above and your sales reps will be able to send highly optimized messages at the perfect time, every time.

e-Contracts & Document Management

One of the biggest hangups in sales is the contract/document signing process. Why? Because it’s easy for field reps to misplace them while traveling. A delay at this stage in the buying process could lead to a lost sale.

With SPOTIO, all important sales paperwork can be digitally stored in-system and quickly found via a search bar. Once the right document is located, prospects can legally sign them with an electronic signature, which helps deals get closed faster than ever before.

All signed paperwork will then be safely stored inside SPOTIO.

According to HubSpot, e-contracts alone can double sales productivity!

Integrate SPOTIO with Your CRM

Sales task automation tools are most effective when paired with CRM software because the connection will reduce much of the manual data entry tasks that plague sales reps.

When field notes are automatically transferred from a tool like SPOTIO to your CRM of choice, your reps will have a lot more time to make sales. Here’s how this process works inside our field sales solution:

1. First, connect your CRM solution to SPOTIO. Integration options include SalesForce, HubSpot, PipeDrive, Zoho, and many more via Zapier.
2. Second, choose data points that are important to your organization and map them directly to your system of record to create a seamless flow of information.
3. Third, ask your reps to download the SPOTIO app to their smartphones and use it to streamline sales tasks like prospecting and communicating with customers.

Once the SPOTIO integration is set, the information you and your team put into the SPOTIO mobile app, it will automatically pass to your CRM in real time, ensuring it’s always up to date. This will enable you to reach insane productivity levels, shorten sales cycles, and increase revenue.

Additional Sales Task Automation Benefits

While sales rep productivity is clearly one of the biggest benefits of sales task automation, it’s not the only one. By investing in a solution like SPOTIO, you can also better evaluate individual rep performance via the cold, hard data it produces.

This will allow you to make more informed decisions about territory assignments, resource allocation, and which field sales strategies to deploy.

Boost Sales Rep Productivity

The sales task automation features available in SPOTIO will help your field reps get more done in less time. It’s that simple.

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But many companies are beginning to realize that they need to do more than simply manage their leads and customers, they need to engage them.

To fill this need, innovators have created Sales Engagement Platform (SEP) to help organizations of all types better interact with their target audiences and move prospects through the buyer’s journey in the most efficient way possible.

To be clear, SEP isn’t replacing CRM. In fact, sellers achieve the greatest results when the two software tools are used in tandem. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of a CRM + an SEP and how SPOTIO can help field reps bring these two sales solutions together.

The Benefits of a CRM + SEP

First off, why should you consider using both a CRM and SEP? Managing two different software solutions seems like a pain, right? Wrong! In reality, you’ll experience three amazing benefits when you use CRM and SEP in tandem.

1. Prospecting

Few sellers enjoy prospecting. It’s tedious work that takes away from the exciting aspects of a sales career like talking with leads and closing deals. But prospecting is 1,000% necessary. After all, without a consistent stream of potential buyers, you’ll have no one to sell to.

The key is to optimize your prospecting efforts so that they’re more effective and efficient. This is one area where CRM and SEP together really shines. An SEP + CRM enables sales managers to route leads to the right salespeople for outreach automatically.

2. Relationship Management

SEP software will automatically track your team’s engagement efforts with each and every potential customer. Which leads opened which emails? How many prospects have answered sales reps’ phone calls? And what sales tactics work best in in-person selling scenarios?

The answers to these questions (and others like them) can be stored in your CRM tool so that field sales reps can devise more effective sales strategies in the future.

3. Detailed Analytics

Modern sales is driven by data. The more you know about your prospects, the better you can sell to them. CRM + SEP will give you the most detailed analytics available. This is important since 90% of sales leaders lack confidence in their activity data.

The combination of CRM and SEP allows for complete visibility into every stage of the buyer’s journey. You’ll be able to easily track engagement metrics across multiple channels, see which field reps are most effective, and adjust sales strategies on the fly.

It’s all possible because CRM + SEP gives sales teams the insights they need to make informed decisions. Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes.

What is SPOTIO?

SPOTIO is a mobile CRM and SEP software that gives field reps a convenient way to perform, track, and measure a variety of common sales activities. In other words, it’s the ultimate tool for outside sellers and comes with handy features like:

Email Integration: SPOTIO offers 2-way integration with email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and Hotmail so that every customer interaction that happens over email is captured for future reference. SPOTIO also allows field reps to create email templates and track engagement metrics in-app for the complete convenience.

Calendar Integration: As an outside seller, you’re constantly making appointments to meet with new prospects. SPOTIO’s calendar integration feature gives you the option to sync your Outlook and/or Google calendars to SPOTIO so that both prospect and appointment information are quickly located.

You’ll also be able to create team calendars in SPOTIO that allow for shared appointments. This feature makes it easy to schedule meetings that work for each team member.

Text & Email Templates: Both sales managers and reps can create custom text and emails templates based on detailed engagement metrics. That way you know the communications you send have a high chance of getting read and responded to.

Once you’ve created and saved a template, it can be accessed via the SPOTIO mobile app and sent to new prospects at any time with just a few thumb taps.

Calls & Texts: All call activities are centralized in the SPOTIO platform, making it simple to track your phone communications with all prospects. Additionally, every sent and received text message is automatically logged in our system. Want to know who you texted last month and when? Simply pull up the information in the SPOTIO app.

Engagement Analytics: SPOTIO includes a detailed analytics dashboard that features a real-time activity digest of all prospect interactions. Sales managers will also appreciate the ability to run reports based on rep, territory, and team, which allows for a holistic view of your company’s sales activities, performance, and results.

The SPOTIO Advantage

As you can see, SPOTIO is chock-full of top-notch features. But how do these features translate to real-world success for field sales reps? That’s what we’ll discuss in this section:

Easy Access to Data

Time is money, as they say. By allowing field sales reps to access all of their sales data in one place, SPOTIO makes the sales process more efficient.

Imagine how much more productive you’ll be when you can dig up contextual details for each of your prospects without having to scour multiple software platforms.

Multichannel Communication

Modern consumers have a plethora of communication channels at their disposal — and each person has a preferred option. This is why 80% of top sales teams use at least three comms channels and deliver a minimum of 15.5 touches per contact.

So, does your audience want to talk on the phone, text back and forth, or receive email offers from your brand? With SPOTIO you can monitor each communication channel you use and ensure your prospects are communicated with in the ways that suit them best.

Streamlined Follow-Ups

Using SPOTIO’s templates feature that we mentioned earlier, you can streamline your follow-ups and increase your productivity as a field sales rep. How? By sending and responding to emails and text messages faster.

Communicating with speed may also help you boost your sales numbers. Who knows? A prospect may be ready to buy right now. If you wait too long to respond to their questions or close the deal, you might lose the opportunity to a competing brand.

Crystal Clear Visibility

If you manage a team of field salespeople, you know that visibility into rep activity is crucial to the success of your company. Without knowledge of which tactics are working and which are proving ineffective, you’ll have a hard time developing a successful sales strategy.

SPOTIO acts as your eyes and ears on the ground. Once field rep activities are logged into the SPOTIO app, you’ll gain a holistic and real-time view of your team.

The information you acquire can then be used to craft hard-hitting sales plans based on data. You’ll also be able to better coach and train your team because you’ll know exactly which sales techniques perform best and can pass this information along to your reps.

Battle Tested UX

We’ve talked a lot about SPOTIO’s mobile app, which will allow you to access all of your sales data no matter where in the world you happen to be. But what about user experience? Won’t it be frustrating to navigate a CRM software on a tiny phone screen?

We’ve designed the SPOTIO app to be easy to use on any sized mobile device. The thousands of field sales reps who use SPOTIO on a regular basis confirm that our app’s user experience leaves nothing to be desired!

On desktop: SPOTIO Review – User Friendly and Accountability

Kick Your Field Sales Efforts Into Hyperdrive

CRM and SEP software are valuable tools in any field sales team’s tool belt. But they become incredibly powerful when they’re used together. In fact, you can expect to experience more efficient prospecting, build better relationships with your prospects, and receive more detailed analytics when you pair your CRM with a proven SEP.

If you’re looking for a Sales Engagement Platform that’s specifically designed for field reps, consider SPOTIO.

SPOTIO automates much of the tedious work that field reps have to do on a daily basis, while giving sales managers a bird’s eye view of everything that’s happening in the field. That way they can confidently plan sales strategies to move their organizations forward.

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No need to search for an app on your phone or open a browser to go to a specific website, SPOTIO Lead Links gives you shortcut access to apps and websites. Seamlessly open a webpage or an application without having to leave the SPOTIO app. 

There are two types of Lead Links that can be created:

1. Web Lead Links

Instead of opening a browser and entering the URL, Web Links  are used to access and embed specific web pages. From the SPOTIO web app, just specify the URLs you’d like to have one-click access to from SPOTIO’s mobile app.

Another use for Web Lead Links is for quick access to marketing and sales documentation.

For example: if you have a product overview PDF, simply add the destination URL of where that document lives (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) for one click access.

2. App Lead Links

Same concept as Web Lead Links but instead of web pages and documents, App Lead Links are shortcuts to mobile apps. Just add your favorite and most used apps for shortcut access to all your applications without having to leave SPOTIO.

How Does This Work?

From settings in SPOTIO’s web app, head on over to the Lead Links tab and add as many links as you’d like. That’s pretty much it!

Once added, just click on any link from the SPOTIO mobile app and you will be taken directly to the webpage, application, or document you need. 

Lead Links and The Sales Process

Whether you’re out in front of a prospect and want to show a piece of marketing material, or just need to Slack someone on your team, Lead Links ensures you can easily access what you need from one location. 

By not having to switch between apps or pull up a browser and manually enter a web URL, reps are more efficient and prospects stay engaged.

With SPOTIO Lead Links, your sales team is armed with the information and resources they need to sell their best. 

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