It doesn’t matter whether a business sells professional services, cool gadgets, delicious meals or anything else: while all employees have an important role to play, the fact is — and always will be — that the gateway to organizational success is sales.
Indeed, without sufficient revenues, businesses cannot achieve their objectives or targets. And while sales numbers typically rise and fall due to cycles and other marketplace variables, a sustained drop in revenue inevitably — and terrifyingly — leads to layoffs, scale-backs, and in extreme cases, bankruptcies and shut downs.
Given the importance of sales, it makes sense that successful businesses around the world are making the switch to an innovative cloud telephone system. Here are the 5 reasons why sales professionals LOVE this technology, and would rather give up their (sacred) expense account or vacation days than revert back to a conventional landline system:
1. Integration with CRMs
Cloud telephone systems integrate seamlessly with CRM systems (such as Salesforce), which enables sales professionals to capture calling data in real time, and enhance customer experience by automatically seeing all historical information (e.g. previous touchpoints and purchases).
2. Total Mobility
Sales professionals who spend some, most or virtually all of the time away from the office (a.k.a. “road warriors”) can connect with colleagues and customers through their smartphone or desktop softphone anytime, and anywhere. What’s more, when they make outgoing calls, the business name/number shows up on caller ID instead of their personal name/number.
3. Voicemail-to-Email
Studies reveal that a staggering 35-50% of sales go to sellers that respond first. A cloud telephone system features built-in voicemail to email functionality, which lets sales professionals pick-up time sensitive calls on-the-go. As a result, they can respond quicker than their competitors, and give themselves a crucial advantage to make the sale!
4. Web Conferencing
While many of today’s customers are fine with phone calls and emails, many want to connect face-to-face — which can be inconvenient, or in some cases, a logistical impossibility (i.e. the customer is located in Nashville and the sales professional is located in Charlotte). Cloud telephone systems feature built-in web conferencing, so that sales professionals can effortlessly close the distance gap and schedule some valuable face time.
5. Live Call Forwarding
Last but not least, it’s typical for many sales professionals to pick up a call on their smartphone, drive to work, and head into their office — or vice versa. With a cloud telephone system, they can easily forward live calls from system to system, and keep the conversation going instead of having to say “can I call you back?”
The Bottom Line
Today’s sales professionals are under relentless pressure to make quota and keep the revenue flowing. However, research shows that nearly two-thirds of their time is wasted on non-revenue generating activities. A cloud telephone system dramatically turns this around, and positions sales professionals to do what they — and everyone else — needs them to do: SELL MORE!