Why do sales teams overlook their existing customers? Yes, of course, businesses need new customers to keep growing.
But – that doesn’t stop you from selling more to your existing customers as well. In fact, acquiring new customers costs 5-10 times more than selling to the ones you already have.
And various call tools – including sales dialers – make it incredibly easy.
That’s all you need to know about why.
Next question – how?
4 ways sales dialers boost sales
There are a couple of things you’ll need.
First, a sales dialer (auto dialer). That one’s obvious.
Second, an integration strategy to connect your auto dialer with other systems. If your integration strategy is already strong – good work. You’re ready to automate across those systems, and that’s the key ingredient.
If not, you can’t be getting full value from your dialer, or any system. More on why later…
#1 Tracking the Customer Life Cycle
Sales means making connections. Making connections means knowing your customers.
One thing you should know about every customer is their place in your customer life cycle. Experience tells you when in that life cycle they’re likely to upgrade, to scale back, to leave…
The key question is: can you put that information to good use?
This is where your integrated sales dialers come into play. Think about Customer X. Customer X has been with you for 11 months – they’re about to renew their contract or they’re about to leave.
Either way, they’re shopping around.
What do you do? You check in with them and make sure they’re happy. You want them to sign on the line. You want to *make a connection*.
But here’s the issue.
You don’t have just one Customer X. You have 500 of them. All of them need to hear from you. How are you going to organize that?
Here’s how. You set up a simple automation that:
- Compiles customers at this key point in the life cycle, and
- Automatically puts them on a call list.
That just leaves your auto dialer to automatically dial those numbers and assign them to the right agents. Your agents get busy winning hearts and minds. You win sales – and that’s just one example of criteria you target.
Ask yourself this: if targeting people this way kept just an extra 1% of customers on board – what would the cash value be?
#2 Post-Purchase Follow-up
Lead nurturing doesn’t start moments before a sale; it starts well in advance.
Likewise, when you’re priming an existing customer for their next purchase, there’s no such thing as ‘too early’. In fact, the moment a customer buys from you is the moment you can start priming the *next* sale.
You even have a ready-made reason to call them – checking in to make sure they’re happy.
It’s relationship building and it’s good service too (especially if something has gone wrong.)
So how do you do it?
Your sales dialers are integrated with your CRM. So when a customer’s profile is updated with a new purchase, the dialer automatically adds them to the call list.
Simple as that. It works too, delivering not only more sales but bigger sales. Nurtured leads make purchases worth 47% more than non-nurtured leads.
You’ll also want to give the agent some information about the call. That’s simple to do – just present an on-screen pop-up with the key facts, from purchase history to decision-makers to the size of the business.
#3 SMS and email Integration
You want good information about your customers. But they should also have good information about you.
The decision-makers you’re targeting speak to a lot of salespeople. And it’s not easy to keep all that information straight…
The best thing you can do is provide a written summary. A simple message, via SMS or email, goes a long way.
The problem that most call centers run into? SMS and email aren’t integrated with telephony. If they want to send a written message, they have to do it manually. (Manually is our least favourite word.)
Clearly, it would be far better to send a message at the end of *each and every* call. It’s faster, less error-prone and – crucially – it keeps your marketing messages consistent.
(Did you know – organisations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams see 38% higher win rates?)
The Good News is…
This is some of the easiest integration you’ll ever tackle. Obviously, if you’re calling a mobile phone then texting that same phone is incredibly straightforward.
Integrating with an email provider is also quick and easy, and puts you on the path to multichannel outbound marketing.
#4 Lead score targeting
Finally, let’s go next-level.
So far we’ve looked at some external factors you could use as contact triggers.
But isn’t there another piece of data you’ve got… that’s highly specific to each client… and quite solidly researched…
Oh yes – their lead scores.
Again, our *how* is simple. Using APIs, you connect your CRM/lead management software with your sales dialer. You create a simple automation along these lines: high lead score + no recent contact/sale = scheduled call.
In other words, you’ve already put the work into developing the lead score. You’ve also put the work into converting that lead into a sale. Now, recycle that data and turn it into another opportunity to sell.
It’s surprisingly easy to do when you know how – and when you have the right cloud-based tools.
Most contact centers want more flexible pricing with better automation and scalability; it’s why so many of them have already migrated to the cloud.
