3 Easy Steps to Transforming Inbound Callers Into Customers

For years, pundits were predicting “the death of the phone call.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.. According to BIA/Kelsey, $64.6 billion is spent each year across media just to generate calls to businesses.  More data from BIA/Kelsey reveals that 66.4% of companies surveyed report calls as a high-quality lead source—higher than any other lead source! This presents powerful opportunities for marketers to work with Sales in order to optimize inbound call conversions.

More and more marketers are going beyond simply generating inbound calls and are directly taking charge of inbound sales teams. The reason is that marketers regularly control technology that can help sales reps do a better job of converting those callers.  The companies that are best at converting inbound callers into customers will almost certainly experience dramatic growth.

Here are three actionable steps to optimizing inbound sales calls:

Step 1: Set Up Inbound Call Tracking

Call tracking enables you to measure not only the volume of calls driven by your marketing efforts, but also which of those inbound phone leads turn into customers. Companies use call tracking systems to provision local and toll-free numbers that can then be associated with any online or offline effort. When a call tracking system integrates with a CRM tool such as Salesforce, marketers can finally see which efforts not only drive the most phone leads, but also drive the best phone leads – those that result in the most revenue.

Step 2: Optimize Call Routing

As you get more data, you’ll soon see that much like web leads, not all inbound calls are created equal. Depending on how your sales organization is structured, there are different call routing options that can help your team maximize inbound sales revenue. Here are three of the most common call routing considerations:

Availability-Based Routing

If you’re lucky enough to have a group of similarly-skilled reps, routing inbound calls based on the first-available agent is often the best option.

Skills-Based Routing

Some companies employ what’s known as skills-based routing in order to route callers to the most qualified sales agent available. For example, sending callers from specific product marketing sources to reps with matching product expertise.

Time-Based Routing

The most important factor in inbound sales is making sure someone is available to take calls. For that reason, time-based routing is based on the time of the incoming call. This helps companies spanning various locations ensure that there’s always a sales rep able to speak to an interested prospect. For example, companies with offices nationwide might route callers to an office on the east coast during hours that west coast offices aren’t open. During hours that neither office is open, calls could be routed to a 24-hour call center.

Step 3: Use CTI to Provide Reps with Prospect Data in Real Time

By pairing call tracking, CRM and CTI, inside sales reps can be presented with a “screen pop” of contextually relevant information that can help them have more successful conversations. For example:

• The prospect’s geolocation
• The prospect’s title and company information
• The web page or marketing source they viewed prior to calling
• Search keywords
• Past engagement history
• Past purchasing history
• Suggested talking points