Sales reps used to spend endless hours inputting information into CRM systems to arm their team with insights to reach out to prospects and current customers — and some still do. But when you spend all of your time filling CRMs, it’s hard to find time to build relationships and close sales. In today’s modern sales era, salespeople are automating data entry so they can focus on strategic, account-based activities.
Believe it or not, 64 percent of sales reps’ time is spent on non-selling activities, such as updating contact and lead cycle information, according to a recent Accenture study. Typically when sales teams buy a new CRM software, the database comes empty. Sales ops spend days and weeks inputting data, and then once it’s set up, they continually update the CRM with new information based on recent activity and changes to contact details. It’s no wonder that 55 percent of sales reps say sales tools are more of an obstacle than facilitator of sales performance.
But sales tools are intended to help, not hurt, your lead cycle. Time and time again, sales teams say sales software becomes even more effective when the systems talk to each other and work with the same data. Here are three ways integrating sales tools helps you identify people in your funnel that match your ideal customer profile and reach out to only the prospects that matter:
1. A Cohesive View of High-Quality Data
Sales tools that integrate and share information take the manual part out of data entry and let modern sales professionals focus on what they’re best at. Salespeople should focus on human-driven activities, like building relationships and personalizing outreach, rather than tasks that machines can perform, like inputting data.
As companies fill their CRM, they often realize that prospects that should talk to are already in their funnel. They just don’t have the right data to personalize their communications. When companies combine firmographics from Mattermark like company size and funding with existing Salesforce data about lead cycles and prospecting, sales reps can more intelligently target prospects. For instance, you can learn directly in Salesforce that a customer recently closed a round of funding and congratulate them without bouncing between different sales tools. With this type of personalized outreach, sales teams can warm leads and have more powerful interactions that move from first conversation to closed deal faster.
2. Automatically Updated Insights
Out-of-date data is one of the biggest pain points salespeople face when it comes to lead enrichment. Without updated, relevant information, sales reps miss many new customer and upsell opportunities. When you integrate tools, data is automatically updated to help you qualify leads using the most timely, relevant information. Not only does information update without any action, you can also set triggers and actions to enrich leads and opportunities. For example, if a sales rep at an HR software company wants to reach out to companies once they cross the 50 employee count threshold, he can set notification triggers to know when it’s the right time to reach out to a particular company. Automation ensures sales teams don’t miss an important chance to build a stronger relationship with customers or reach out at the most timely moment.
3. Streamlined Workflows
It can be headache inducing to jump between CRM, lead enrichment and email systems. Even worse, it can take hours to input data from one software to the others. Despite the increase in sales tools intended to increase productivity, sales productivity has decreased from 41 percent to 36 percent in the last five years, according to Accenture. By integrating sales solutions to work for you instead of against you, sales teams will increase productivity and quality of outreach with all data easily accessible in one place. For example, with Mattermark and Salesforce, sales reps can instantly see updated employee count, latest funding and news among other data on the company page in Salesforce.
As SDRs, sales ops and sales reps move from transactional to trusted relationships, automating data entry and processes will increase your ROI and let sales teams focus on more strategic, human-centered activities. Just because you have data doesn’t mean you’re using it in the right way.
Your next customer is already in your funnel.
Use data to turn every transaction into a relationship.
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Also published on Medium.