The Ultimate Guide to Sales Acceleration Software: ROI, Benefits, and Best Practices

What is Sales Acceleration Software

Sales acceleration software is a category of software that’s designed to maximize sales revenue by driving sales efficiencies and improving sales effectiveness. This involves not only automating sales processes, but also increasing the velocity of sales by helping reps identify the best prospects, connect with them more successfully and have more intelligent conversations during the selling process.

I predict that within the next few years, virtually all companies will need sales acceleration technology in order to be competitive. Like marketers, sales teams increasingly combine a series of single or multiple-point solutions together that form their “sales technology stack.”

Beyond just automating tasks, sales acceleration solutions help teams pinpoint high-value prospects, optimize outreach efforts, and deliver personalized, data-driven conversations at scale.

The adoption of sales acceleration tools has skyrocketed in recent years, and for good reason.

According to research, high-performing sales teams use nearly three times the amount of sales technology compared to underperforming teams.

Sales Acceleration Tools and Technology

The core of this array of tools is usually the CRM, which acts as the principal system of record. And while Gartner has estimated that CRM is climbing to a $36 billion market, sales teams have been demanding tools to serve more functions than simply managing relationships with customers. This has led companies to develop a proliferate landscape of tools aimed at helping sales reps, sales operations and sales leaders work more productively and achieve better results.

Here are just a few of the categories of sales acceleration tools:

Types of Sales Acceleration Technology

Why are Sales Acceleration Tools Gaining Ground?

#1 – Customer Relationship Management Tools are No Longer Enough

There was a time, before CRM tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics when businesses were run using spreadsheets, contact databases and sometimes even Post-it notes. While CRM has greatly improved sales teams’ productivity by storing client data and greatly enhancing team collaboration, it has done little to actually help reps influence the outcome of sales calls. Sales calls are where most inside sales deals are closed. And sales acceleration tools can bridge the gap between customer data and calls, by surfacing data in the right context. Sales acceleration tools can also help reps quickly call down CRM lists and connect with more of those leads.

#2 – Buying Behavior has Shifted

We’re seeing radical shifts in buying behavior and, as a result, companies need to change the ways that they sell. There was a time when big deals were closed over dinner and drinks. But today’s buyers are completing more of their buying journey on their own, and conducting research on the Internet before reaching out to sales.

Except for enterprise-level sales deals, there’s rarely time for in-person appointments anymore. Sales reps need to be agile enough to reach out to prospects during key sales windows. And since buyers are doing more self-educating, they expect sales reps to be more educated and informed than ever. By utilizing tools that provide reps with contextual data about prospects and their buying preferences, reps can have far more intelligent conversations than ever before.

# 3 Managers Routinely Lack Real-Time Insight into Reps’ Performance

In order to help more reps reach quota, inside sales leaders need moment-to-moment insight into sales activities and their outcomes. Tools that provide sophisticated metrics in real time can help managers make intelligent revenue predictions as well as identify key opportunities to coach reps to success. As an example, if a manager notices that an underperforming rep isn’t following up with leads as many times as top performers are, the manager could then coach that rep to follow up more aggressively.

# 4 Sales Acceleration Tools Can Help Reps Hit Quota

According to data from CSO Insights, the percentage of reps that make quota has been declining. Now only 57% of reps hit their numbers. More and more companies are finding that it takes more than the right sales model for reps to hit their numbers. It also takes the right tools. Tools that can help reps connect with more prospects, automate tedious tasks and have smarter sales conversations can have a dramatic impact on sales ROI.

#5 – Inside Sales Hiring is Growing Increasingly Competitive

Demand for sales representatives is up. As a result, companies are recruiting less experienced sales reps. According to recent data from The Bridge Group, the average experience required for new SDRs is 1.3 years, (which fell 18% annually). In fact, the same study shows that four times as many companies are are now hiring SDRs with less than one year’s experience as they did in the past. In order to help inexperienced reps succeed, it’s more important than ever to outfit reps with tools that can help them reach their potential faster.

4 Ways Sales Acceleration Software Can Help You Crush the Competition

Years from now, when you look back on your career in sales, perhaps you’ll remember 2015 as the year you transformed the way you sell. Why? Because sales acceleration technology now offers forward-thinking salespeople what once would have seemed like superpowers.

Make no mistake about it – solid sales skills, the right sales process, and CRM are still as vital as ever. But this is the year that they’re no longer enough. Because without sales acceleration technology, you could be leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

Here are 4 ways that sales acceleration technology can help you gain a powerful advantage over your competitors:

Dial More Leads

Reps typically waste a lot of time manually dialing leads. But with dialing technology like click-to-call from Salesforce and Gmail, reps can dial far more leads in a day. In fact, data from the Bridge Group shows that using dialing technology enables reps to dial an average of 48% more leads in a day. The more shots you take, the more opportunities you have to score.

Have More Conversations with Decision Makers

According to data from RingLead, 80% of sales calls go to voicemail. When prospects see an incoming call from a toll-free number, they often assume it’s a sales call and let it go to voicemail. But when they see a call coming from a local area number, they are far more likely to pick up their phones. Local Presence enables your inside sales reps to connect with far more key decision makers during outbound prospecting. And according to a Software Advice study, leads are nearly 400% more likely to answer calls from local numbers.

Find More Time to Sell

Automating key sales processes can help your reps touch more leads per day. And the more times you go to bat, the more chances you get to hit a home run. The average sales rep spends 25 hours in any given month just leaving sales voicemails. But voicemail automation tools can ensure that your reps always leave perfectly recorded voicemails without having to take the time to manually leave messages for prospects.  Solutions that automatically log call details in Salesforce can also save reps the hassle of manually logging data following calls.

Manage to Real-Time Metrics

Tools that automatically capture call metrics in Salesforce can provide you with the real-time insight you need to transform every rep on your team into an A-player. The most successful inside sales managers have real-time insight into a variety of call performance metrics such as:

• How many dials it takes to connect with decision makers
• How many dials it takes to create revenue
• The best and worst times of the day to make calls
• How many calls reps are making and taking
• Which reps are on pace to crush quote, and which need additional training

The result is that you can make smarter revenue predictions, coach your reps more effectively and help each rep on your team maximize the amount of revenue they close. 

Sales Acceleration Data and Proof

High performing inside sales teams are also high tech. Want proof? Look no further than Salesforce’s recent State of Sales report. According to the report, which surveyed over 2,300 global sales leaders, “High-performing sales teams use nearly 3x more sales tech than underperforming teams, freeing them from process-heavy tasks and giving them more time to actually sell.”

There are many different ways to use technology to bolster your sales team. Here’s a breakdown of some of the categories of sales acceleration technology that top performing sales teams are leveraging to gain a competitive advantage.

Analytics

Sales analytics not only give managers more visibility into reps’ activities, but also enable them to view the outcome of those activities in real time. Perhaps best of all, sales analytics can help reps make smarter predictions. Not surprisingly, sales analytics are being used in much greater frequency by high performing sales teams. With the right reports and dashboards, a capable sales manager could easily transform a mediocre sales team into a great one. Predictive analytics in particular are set to see triple-digit growth across B2B and B2C sales teams over the next 12-18 months.

Current Usage:

• High Performers: 57%
• Underperformers: 16%

Prospecting Tools

Prospecting tools can help reps dial more leads, connect with more reps and gain vital intelligence about prospective accounts. Another powerful tool that high performing sales teams are using is Local Presence. Local Presence enables sales reps to ensure that a local phone number shows up in their prospects’ caller ID. This can enable reps to connect with up to 400% more prospects. And more conversations with prospects provides your reps with more opportunities to close deals and generate revenue.

Current Usage:

• High Performers: 49%
• Underperformers: 15%

Activity Management

What are activities in Salesforce? Things like calls calls, emails, meetings and any other activities that you define in your Salesforce org. It’s important to manage these activities in order to make sure that reps are putting in the necessary effort to hit their numbers. Measuring your team’s dials and emails, for example can help you notice trends. As an example, say your three top performing reps are making at least 25% more dials than your laggard reps. You could then provide your underperforming reps with coaching (and dialing technology) that could enable them to dial more reps. This alone could make the difference between missing or crushing quota.

Current Usage:

• High Performers: 66%
• Underperformers: 27%

Targeted Sales Content

The same content that your marketers create to generate leads can often be used to help sales reps close deals. However, sales reps don’t always know which content can be used contextually to help move deals forward. In fact, reps often don’t even know what content is available. To help reps leverage content, there are several sales acceleration solutions that can help enable sales reps by making content suggestions or giving reps insight into which content is helping to influence deals.

Current Usage:

• High Performers: 49%
• Underperformers: 15%

Sales Acceleration Strategies That Drive More Revenue

Now that we understand the importance of sales acceleration let’s explore some key strategies that can propel your sales efforts to new heights:

Streamlining the Sales Process

At the heart of any successful sales acceleration strategy is the ability to streamline the sales process. By automating workflows, utilizing real-time data, and integrating sales tools, salespeople can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time engaging with potential customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, such as Salesforce, allow for seamless lead tracking, email outreach, and social media engagement, ensuring sales teams have all the necessary touchpoints to drive conversions.

Empowering Sales Reps with Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is a crucial aspect of sales acceleration. It involves providing sales reps with the training, resources, and tools they need to close deals effectively. Through sales training programs and the use of sales acceleration software, salespeople can fine-tune their messaging, master the buyer journey, and utilize templates and personas for personalized outreach. Effective sales enablement not only enhances individual sales performance but also ensures a cohesive and streamlined sales approach across the entire team.

Leveraging Sales Acceleration Tools

Sales acceleration tools play a pivotal role in optimizing sales performance. From lead scoring and predictive analytics to email tracking and CRM systems, these tools provide invaluable insights to sales teams. They enable sales reps to identify the most promising leads, route leads to the appropriate salesperson, and track follow-up touchpoints, improving the quality and efficiency of the sales engagement. Sales leaders can also leverage these tools for sales forecasting, performance monitoring, and sales intelligence, allowing for smart decision-making and effective sales management.

Measuring Success with Metrics and Forecasting

To gauge the impact of your sales acceleration efforts, it is crucial to measure key metrics and forecast sales performance. By analyzing data on pricing, conversion rates, and the sales pipeline, businesses can identify inefficiencies, optimize sales processes, and forecast revenue growth. Metrics such as lead routing efficiency, sales engagement rates, and sales productivity can provide valuable insights into the overall effectiveness of your sales acceleration strategy.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Through Revenue Operations

Sales and marketing alignment is a critical component of successful sales acceleration strategies. When sales and marketing teams work collaboratively and align their efforts, it creates a seamless experience for leads and enhances the efficiency of the sales process. Sales and marketing alignment ensures that both teams are on the same page regarding goals, target audience, messaging, and content. When sales and marketing teams align their strategies, they develop a shared understanding of the ideal customer profile. This collaborative effort helps identify key buyer personas, their pain points, and the most effective messaging and content to engage with them. With a clear understanding of the target audience, both teams can create marketing campaigns and sales strategies that resonate with potential customers.

What is the ROI of Sales Acceleration Software?

Ever been curious about the return on investment your competitors are getting from their technology investments? While the sales acceleration ROI story is one we at Revenue.io hear daily, many companies are still trying to make sense of how best to use sales technology (let alone how to measure ROI!). Both questions are well worth exploring.

There’s a reason why the industry is exploding – while ROI depends greatly on the type of company, sales model and technology utilization, sales acceleration tools show significant results.

SDRs ROI Using Sales Acceleration Software

As just one example, a sales development rep (SDR) working within a typical inside sales team will see a 2X lift in dials per day and a 4X lift in conversations (call to conversation rate) per day using local presence dialing. Using standard industry benchmarks for things like dials-to-opportunity rates and close rates, a typical rep not using sales acceleration tools would be driving $156,000 in revenue. But with sales acceleration tools, the rep would drive $889,200.

(for full details on how this was calculated, including tons of great industry benchmarks, see our new eBook).

Those gains are sorely needed given the stratospheric cost of simply building a quality inside sales team. According to David Sk

ok, it takes SaaS companies 23 months to see a return on investment for newly hired sales reps (after that, the ROI actually soars quickly). Given that daunting number, it’s more important than ever to put technology in place that gives reps the opportunity to get onboarded and productive asquickly as possible.

Our Sales Acceleration Software Ebook

That’s why we created  a new eBook designed to help sales teams thoroughly understand the landscape and the tools available.

Included:

• rate of adoption for sales technologies
• detailed “day in the life” sales rep use cases
• hard metrics from real companies
• functional checklists for sales, sales operations and IT

Best of all, this is our most “scannable” eBook ever. You’ll be wiser in two minutes, an expert in five, and a genius in then.

Good to go? Download it.

p.s. – we modeled all the buyer checklists in this eBook off real scenarios that we were at Revenue.io have experienced with our customers. They’re also the same checklists we’ve used when adding solutions to our sales technology stack.

Six Questions to Ask Before Investing in Sales Acceleration Tools for Salesforce

Salesforce is an incredibly flexible CRM with a vast number of applications available to add to its functionality. In fact, Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace contains over 3.5 million applications. However, with so many third-party apps at your disposal you must be careful of which you choose to implement within your business. Poorly built tools, or those that do not integrate well with Salesforce can become a burden and actually be detrimental to your sales reps. The wrong sales tool can:

• Disrupt your team’s workflow
• Lengthen the onboarding processes
• Create a burden for IT and Salesforce administrators
• Clutter your Salesforce org with superfluous custom fields and data
• Greatly increase API usage levels across the organization

Sales acceleration tools can be especially helpful for sales teams. These tools are applications that help reps sell both faster and more intelligently. They increase the velocity of sales by helping reps identify hot prospects, connect with them more successfully and increase productivity during the selling process.

There are six crucial questions you must ask before implementing a new Salesforce tool to ensure it is effective, successful, and works properly within your organization’s workflow. They are:

1. What CRM was the solution originally designed for?

Many sales acceleration tools claim to integrate with Salesforce, but often they weren’t intended for it in the first place. These tools usually contain their own databases and merely pass limited information back and forth with Salesforce as an afterthought. If a solution wasn’t specifically designed for Salesforce, then it may require extensive development and extended implementation time in order for it to work harmoniously with your CRM. This comes with its own set of side-effects, like the possibility of slowing down Salesforce or requiring a large amount of API calls.

On the opposite side, a tool made specifically for Salesforce should seamlessly integrate, keep your data natively in your CRM, and require no extra effort to implement or manage.

2. Are there any up-charges or hidden fees associated with Salesforce integration?

Sometimes third-party applications will  charge an additional fee or “up-charge” in addition to their regular pricing to integrate with Salesforce. This is a sign that the app was never intended to work specifically with Salesforce. You should also be suspicious of vendors who charge an additional monthly fee for users of specific CRMs.

If an application is truly designed for Salesforce, there should never be any fee associated with its integration or use with Salesforce.

3. Are pre-made Salesforce dashboards and reports included?

Sales accelerations tools can make your team more productive, effective, and successful. One of the ways they accomplish this is through data collection, analysis, and reporting. Sales managers should be able to easily access reports on the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales teams so they can instantly see the ROI of their new sales tool. If a sales tool doesn’t include pre-fabricated Salesforce dashboards or reports to show improvements, be wary. You shouldn’t have to spend time and money on the purchase and implementation of a tool, just to spend more on making it actually work.

4. How much support will the vendor provide?

Some vendors simply turn over the keys to their software and expect you to handle the integration, implementation, and setup. For a truly successful implementation, you need to find a vendor that is willing to guide you through the onboarding process and ensure it is successful. Furthermore, it’s natural for a sales acceleration tool to become an integral part of your sales workflow, and therefore you may find that many of your reps rely on it. The downside of this is that if the tool fails or goes down, a cornerstone of your sales stack disappears. You must find how much support your potential vendor will provide you with, as well as the quality of their service.

5. Does the sales tool have a long learning curve?

When implementing a new tool you should also consider the user adoption on your reps’ side. A new tool is great, but if it frustrating and unintuitive, your reps will likely be resistant to it and you may never see 100% adoption. In fact, badly implemented sales tools can actually cause a decrease in revenue. The longer reps take to utilize your new application, the less successful they will be.

To see true ROI on a new Salesforce application, it’s important that it changes your sales process for the better and that your reps can see that right away. The application should seamlessly blend with your existing systems in a manner that provides value to your reps. In the same vein, the tool shouldn’t require that reps work outside of their normal processes.

6. Will the solution write to custom fields? If so, which ones?

Salesforce was designed to be customized, so it’s great if you’re using custom fields. Just make sure your new tool is capable of reading and writing data within those fields. It’s also important that the application doesn’t require the addition of unwanted fields, which can clutter your organization’s data.

By asking these six questions with yourself, your team, and potential vendors, you can gain an understanding of what is like to implement your potential Salesforce application, as well as how successful it will be.