The Sales Autodialer Will Soon be Extinct

Autodialers should be dead to anyone in sales. As in, left for debt-collectors, scammers, and telemarketers.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in sales you have heard  the age-old rule – “it’s a numbers game”. If you make enough calls, you’ll eventually connect, fill your pipeline, hit your goals, and generate revenue. Here is the thing. This “wisdom” doesn’t work now. Yes, lead lists are still important, and yes, making calls are still important. However some of the lead list solutions available today are too efficient, some are not efficient enough.

These lists come from many sources, like trade shows, marketing campaigns, partner programs, and others. Some may even be generated via reports from your own CRM. Regardless of the source, reps must be able to quickly and effectively call through them to maximize ROI and maintain productivity.

The Problem with Lead Lists and Auto-Dialers

Unfortunately, the act of calling down a list isn’t as simple as it seems. Some reps must manually dial each and every number, others switch back and forth between a dialer application and their CRM, constantly clicking and entering each number while losing precious time and causing endless frustration. Other organizations choose to use autodialers, predictive dialers, or even agent assisted dialing in order to alleviate these pains, but each come with its own set of issues and can cause even more problems.

Manual Dialing Destroys Productivity

Manual dialing has devastating effect on productivity. The act of window-switching (moving between applications on a screen) accounts for approximately 16 seconds of lost time per switch as users adjust their focus and reorient themselves. If a rep is calling a list of 200 contacts, and switches windows just three times during the list, research, dial process, they lose 48 seconds per call, or 2.6 hours before the rep even gets on the phone!

Autodialers Lead to More Problems

Autodialers, predictive dialers, and agent-assisted dialing may save a significant amount of work, but come with their own set of issues. Automated dialers and predictive dialers are both made to contact as many people as possible in the least amount of time. Autodialers do this by dialing multiple numbers as once, when one of the calls connects, the dialer passes it to any available agent. Predictive dialers use a little more intelligence. They predict when a rep will be available to take a call, and begin dialing numbers one-by-one so a call is waiting by the time an agent is ready. If you’ve ever answered a strange call only hear silence for a few seconds before the person on the other end spoke, you’ve experienced one of these. Agent-assisted dialers work similarly, except there’s an actual agent who helps the system navigate phone trees to get a live person on the phone before transferring the call to a rep.

Companies who wish to provide an excellent customer experience should stay away from any sort of auto-dialer. Not only is the long pause an awkward introduction, but the rep receives little to no context about who is on the other end of the line, and has no time to research before they are thrust into a conversation. This means they cannot effectively capitalize on the connection, the lead will be lost, and the ROI of your lead list will not be maximized. Autodialers strongly favor quantity over quality. When it comes to high value, complex products that require an understanding of a prospect’s business needs and challenges, they are not the best fit.

Streamline the Calling Process

The solution lies in sales tools that have DialNext features. DialNext is the happy medium between manual dialing and outsourced services. These tools can automate dialing, but only a single call at a time so reps stay involved in the process.

DialNext eliminates manual dialing, streamlines a lead list, but still provides relevant information and requires that a rep initiate and terminate every call. Having some engagement with every prospect keeps the rep present, eliminates the awkward pause, but still makes their life easier.

Reps should know the prospect’s company, their needs, and how they can solve them. Studies have found that at best, call preparation can take three minutes. That means if a rep is calling a list of 200 prospects, they will spend a total of ten hours performing research on that list alone. Add that to the cost of window-switching, and reps are losing nearly 13 hours on a single list.

DialNext keeps sales reps engaged with the process and the customer, instead of just browsing Facebook and waiting for their phone to ring.

Revenue.io DialNext

Revenue.io’s DialNext feature moves beyond simply placing a call by providing complete insight into the context surrounds each contact. Reps can connect on the phone all day, but to score a meeting, they must consistently have quality sales conversations that add real value to the prospect on the other end. The Intelligent Dialer instantly shows reps their contact’s account information, communications history, buyer intent data, and content engagement before or during every call. Reps can leverage this information to have more productive sales conversations and better surface and solve their prospect’s needs.   

With DialNext enabled, reps open any Salesforce list or report and select a contact. Revenue.io will automatically place the call and simultaneously display any and all relevant information. When the call is over, the next contact automatically appears in the Intelligent Dialer, along with all necessary information. DialNext completely automates the act of dialing down a list and simultaneously collects crucial sales information, essentially eliminating pre-call work. This significantly increases the speed with which reps can move through a list and ensures that call quality remains high. Since the calls take place within the Intelligent Dialer, all activity is automatically logged to Salesforce.

The dialer also adds other benefits to list calling. For example, reps can quickly add call notes using templates, or easily disposition a call with a rating, which allows you to judge the quality of your lead list.

Finally, since DialNext works with any Salesforce list or report, reps can build their own lists to call each day, whether they are reaching out to old leads, following up on information requests, or contacting new prospects, it ensures you always have a productive day.