The power of automation, as most of us have discovered, is a two-edged sword. When set up properly, automation is leverage for the work you already do, multiplying results. When set up incorrectly, it multiplies your mistakes in the same way and occasionally causes you to “auger in.”
So in the interest of honesty, we screwed up pretty bad yesterday.
One of our good, solid marketing vendors sent out an email in the morning of January 6 according to plan . . . except it wasn’t the right content. In fact, it was inviting our friends to join us at Dreamforce ’10 on December 6th, a month after it happened. And though it would be easy to point fingers and blame the vendor, ultimately the fault is ours. It’s our job to make sure we have the right content in place, that it’s clearly marked, and that it’s in the right format—not our vendor’s.
But there are a couple of things our little faux pas reminded me of as well.
One, I can’t help seeing the irony of sending an out-of-date email for salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event that touts our PowerDialer app’s Top 10 position on the Salesforce AppExchange . . […]
Power for Hosted Dialers and Predictive 2.0 – Premise-based Dialers a Dying Breed
7 January 2011 — Ken Krogue
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Found a link today to a pretty interesting research report from Frost and Sullivan detailing the decline of premise-based (hardware) dialer technologies in the year 2009.
The space suffered negative revenue growth (down 5.6%), and the summary indicated the reasons, none of which will come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the hosted software/SaaS dialer space:
“Other methods and media are supplementing the use of agent-assisted outbound calling to comply with the laws and reduce campaign cost . . . Point solutions for outbound customer contact while still valuable are increasingly being viewed as not as efficient or effective for multi-function and unified outbound customer contact campaigns. Trends indicate that market demand is rapidly shifting away from point solutions.”
In other words, premise-based dialer technologies are
too inflexible
require a heavy up front cost investment, and as the 2009 economy showed us, the ongoing benefit and ROI of the investment is far from a sure thing
don’t integrate well into other systems
and last but not least, don’t link to other data applications to gain additional insight into existing business, call, and sales trends.
Hosted dialer solutions, on the other hand, mitigate or eliminate all of the above, particularly the sunk costs […]
Looking Backwards and Forwards From 2011: Predictive Sales Intelligence Will Redefine CRM and the Sales Process
29 December 2010 — Ken Krogue
3 Comments
One of the problems we all have with technology is that we soon forget that what is now commonplace was once rare or non-existent.
New technologies penetrate the market so rapidly that total market transformations can occur in the space of under three years (and some might say even less).
It’s barely been a decade since the Y2K scare and the Dot Com crash. Widespread broadband Internet access hasn’t been a reality since 2003 (and some could even argue since 2005). Smart phones, text messaging, YouTube, SmugMug and Flickr, convergence of mobile audio and telecom, “apps” getting added to the mainstream lexicon . . . all recent developments. 4G network access right through your telecom provider? Check. Streaming HD? Check.
Many businesses and universities barely got their WIRED infrastructures in place by the early 2000s. Now being forced to “plug in” to a network with an actual wire seems almost archaic.
But the real point of all of this is that we have to be careful not to look past the mark with our old sales and marketing standby, CRM.
Hosted CRM seemed revolutionary 10 years ago. Now it’s simply considered the norm for applications of its type. Fluid, mobile, […]
What to Look For in a Sales Dialer – One (Very Smart) Man’s Response
5 November 2010 — Steve Watts
2 Comments
Inside sales entrepreneur Ken Krogue recently responded to a comment on his blog, asking what the key principles, or key concepts should be when looking for a dialer system to improve sales performance and productivity.
His response was short, but insightful, so with his permission I’m re-posting it here.
Question: Other than cost, what features are important while using a hosted dialer?
Ken’s Answer:
That’s an interesting question. On the surface the basic concept is the same for all of them–make more calls and make better use of agent time.
The differences really depend on . . . .
Quick Sales Tip – Don’t Forget the Gap in “Big Account” vs. “Small Account” Technology Needs
30 August 2010 — Ken Krogue
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The guys and gals up at SEO.com recently announced that they were partnering with Boostability.com to address a “hole” in their service offerings. Recognizing that up to this point the bulk of their clients had been high-level enterprise, SEO.com felt that they needed to add a service offering for locally focused, small-to-medium-sized businesses to continue growing their market share.
My initial thought was, “Good for them.”
My second thought was, “I hope they know how to successfully target local businesses’ technology needs to get the results they want from the initiative.”
I say this because one of the biggest challenges InsideSales.com has faced has been differentiating our offerings between enterprise and small-to-mid-sized businesses.
In a perfect world, we’d never have to have our sales reps working both enterprise and small business deals. We’d separate the sales team by deal size, and “big account” closers and “small account” closers wouldn’t ever have to cross channels.
The reality, however, is that sales reps often have to work both types of accounts—and in technology sales, one of the biggest mistakes reps make in this situation is that they fail to adapt to the differences in technology readiness of smaller accounts.
The problem typically reveals […]
4 Sales Tips for Making Contact and Avoiding “Prospect Badgering”
12 August 2010 — Steve Watts
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One of sales reps’ most common questions is, “How many dials does it really take to make contact with a decision-maker, and how do I know when I’ve reached my limit of “pleasant persistence” and am now merely angering the prospect?”
By the numbers, every piece of sales research we’ve ever done indicates that it takes between 6 and 8 call attempts to reach a decision-maker (though this number generally goes down if you’re mixing in other media like email and voice messaging at the same time).
However, our research also shows that most sales reps only make 1.7 call attempts to reach a new prospect (far below the statistical mean to actually make contact), that they overestimate the total number of calls they’ve made (most reps think they’ve made far more call attempts than they really have), and that they rarely combine all three of the major “contactable” media—phone, voice message, and email—to produce the best results . . . .
As a vendor that specializes in dialer technology and software for sales teams, we get asked this question a lot—”Why won’t you sell / why are you biased against predictive dialers?”
The honest answer is that we don’t want to be part of the telemarketing crowd that calls you at dinner time and makes you say, “No, I don’t want that!” seven times before they finally hang up.
We want to work with professional inside sales people who happen to sell remotely, not telemarketers. It’s a specific choice we made.
Our biggest source of clients is those who come to us looking for a predictive dialer to call their business to consumer (B2C) leads. The first question we ask them is, “How much are you paying for your leads and can you afford to burn many of them?”
They always say “I pay a lot. And no, of course not – I don’t want to burn them… what do you mean?”
Then we point them to the FCC web pages with legislation against predictive dialers and the high annoyance they have caused over the years that have resulted in laws being passed. We show them that Predictive Dialers annoy and burn as many as 3% of their leads EVERY TIME THEY ARE CALLED. If you multiply that by the 7 to 12 times it takes to call a lead before you make contact, they are probably annoying about 1/3 to 1/2 of their list over time . . . .
Face-to-Face Closes 2.5x Better, But Inside Sales Makes 7x More Calls
19 March 2010 — Ken Krogue
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I just got a tip from John Sutton, a friend of mine at Sendside, who read a survey on a United Airlines flight last week from the United States Travel Association that found business leaders estimate face-to-face selling converts 40% of prospects to customers, while virtual selling (Inside Sales) converts 16%.
That means face-to-face selling closes 2.5 times better than remote selling. We found roughly the same ratio at Inside Sales about four years ago. Our current ratios place remote closing ratios around 18.5%, so the gap is narrowing.
Inside Sales teams cover way more ground in terms of prospecting than true face-to-face salespeople. In fact, very few face-to-face salespeople actually prospect in a face-to-face mode any more, so the here is where the numbers skew.
Almost all face-to-face (Outside) sales reps have switched to an Inside Sales model for their prospecting, and they pick up the phone to set their appointments.
We have found that lead generation reps (with power dialer technology) make 7 times more prospecting calls than manually dialing.
What does this mean?
It points […]
6 Reasons Why Salesforce Users Need Hosted Dialer Technology
24 October 2009 — Ken Krogue
7 Comments
Even though Inside Sales is becoming noticed more and more as a primary method of lead generation and sales, many people are unaware of the potential leverage they can bring to bear to dramatically increase productivity.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become commonplace in almost every sales department, whether tradition face-to-face, or a remote selling model like inside sales. Salesforce is the leading provider of on-demand CRM software on the planet. I get asked a lot why saleforce.com users should consider on-demand power dialer solutions. Here are 6 reasons:
1- More Revenue: In 2005 a landmark study was done by CSO Insights that showed companies that use CRM software have 17% more revenue. That is notable, but not overly compelling. Dialers coupled wth CRM software often increase overall revenue by 200%, 300%, or more by significantly increasing dials, contacts, appointments, and talk time, while lowering costs and wasted time.
2- More Dials: Our internal lead generation department department and many of our clients make 300 calls per rep per day. Most internal lead generation departments in companies we come across fall between 20 and 70 calls a day. Most outsourced lead generation companies we are familiar with make between 70 and 110 calls […]
Section 2: Choosing the Right Dialer – Negotiating the Best Deal
25 March 2008 — Ken Krogue
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Once you have chosen the right dialer, there are still a lot of steps to make sure you negotiate the best deal for your organization. This white paper helps.
