No business leader should be surprised to hear that efficiency is the name of the game for success today. But, in sales, efficiency is only possible when your team can sell the exact right offering to the exact right customer – all at the exact right time and pricing.
That calls for smart sales software that far supersedes the “spray and pray” outbound sales practices of the not-so-distant past.
And on the other side of business efficiency, you have operations.
Instead of making more revenue directly, operations strives to reduce waste – both time and money – all across the organization. But that doesn’t mean quality or performance can take even the tiniest dip.
Another case where smart technology needs to be brought in to digitize and automate slow, manual processes. Today, to improve efficiency, you luckily aren’t just boxed into hiring more staff or doing more training.
Modern tooling is the leading solution for scaling sales and operations.
So what do you say we dive into the top tech on the market that you can adopt today to boost business efficiency?
4 Tools for Sales Efficiency Optimization
The tactics skilled sales folks use to connect with people on a human-to-human level haven’t changed much in a long time. And for good reason – they work. But what has changed for the better is the tooling sales can use to improve accuracy and efficiency.
So let’s cover some of the most pivotal platforms for the steps before and after those human interactions: lead gen and email verification to ensure you connect with the best leads, enablement for putting your best foot forward, and performance tracking for beating your high score every time.
Lead Generation
The process of moving prospects who are aware of your offering (thanks, marketing!) into the sales funnel, where sales can eventually convert them into paying customers, is known as lead generation.
When it comes to lead gen, one of the biggest hurdles sales must overcome is low-quality leads who aren’t likely to convert – ever.
ZoomInfo is a multifaceted go-to-market platform known for its data depth and accuracy. As such, it’s one of the best resources sales teams can use to tap into robust B2B contact data and prospecting and sales intelligence tooling to ensure all the leads they go after are high-quality and worth their effort.
Email Verification
Sales teams can’t afford to have their domain banned from a few bounced emails. And thanks to modern email verification software, you don’t have to suffer this fate.
Increase your email deliverability by using email cleaning software like NeverBounce to clean large email lists, verify emails right when you collect them from lead pages and forms and sync with your email provider to automate cleaning so you never have to think twice before sending that sales email.
Sales Performance Software
Sales performance software is invaluable for providing sales teams with insights into how to hit their targets more reliably.
Where most customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) tooling can only report after the fact, Numerik is a purpose-built performance improvement platform that gives sales reps real-time actions and insights to win opportunities while they’re still hot.
Sales Enablement
Sales enablement combines materials, procedures, and technology to make salespeople more effective in engaging prospects and closing deals.
If it sounds pretty broad, that’s because it is. But Seismic was built to handle it all.
Seismic helps with sales content creation and omnichannel delivery, strategizing, and planning. To top it off, a layer of automation and intelligence sits over the top of the platform to help sales focus on revenue-generating tasks and get smart insights that help improve outcomes.
Six Platforms to Efficiently Power the Operations Pipeline
Operations is a wholly unique business unit.
What this team is responsible for is completely reliant on the specific needs and processes of the business and how it generates revenue.
But if we were to attempt a summary, the main goal for most operations teams is to optimize and manage all the workflows that keep a business running successfully. So this charter could include compliance-related tasks, logistics, customer experience, product development, quality control, internal system implementation, billing, and beyond.
Suffice it to say; it’s a job with a lot of variety. So in this section, we will list the best platform operations teams can use to improve efficiencies within their core duties.
Operations Automation
Operations automation tools eliminate repetitive and manual tasks so operations pros can focus on the thoughtful and unique functions that require human input.
Next Matter is a robust platform that integrates with your existing software systems to automate, digitize, and scale operations. With Next Matter, operations teams can apply rules to assign tasks, make simple decisions, reference data, set up processes, and send notifications.
Project Management
With so many responsibilities, most operations teams will benefit from software that helps track their to-dos, control resources, and motivate team progress.
This is a job for a project management platform.
Hive is a single source of truth where operations, and any teams with which they’re collaborating, can efficiently consolidate all the communications, tasks, deadlines, notes, and reminders it takes to make a project successful.
Invoice Management
Billing operations involve managing all the systems and procedures for billing customers, revenue cycle tracking, and invoice management.
Invoice management, monitoring invoices from reception until payment, is especially critical as missed and manual invoicing costs precious time and money.
Stampli’s accounts payable automation platform helps you keep track of invoices and boost payment efficiency without interrupting the carefully-crafted enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounts payable processes upon which your revenue relies.
Logistics
Anyone who’s had to manage logistics – handling the movement of goods from their point of origin to their eventual consumption – in the past few years will surely understand the value of software that smooths out the process.
Anvyl provides a dashboard where operations teams can collaborate with suppliers to nail down all the important elements of their purchase orders — then oversee vendor shipments to their warehouses to communicate accurate capacity planning to marketing, support, and other go-to-market teams.
Operational CRM
Operational CRM platforms enable teams to store and organize customer information and interactions so that customer-facing teams (sales, marketing, and support) and operations are all on the same page.
Pipedrive is an especially user-friendly CRM that enables sales teams to sell and operations teams to gain visibility, ensuring the technology is optimized, and the staffing and supply chains are ready for what’s coming down the pipeline.
Customer Support Platform
Customer support software, also commonly called help desk software, is essential for empowering support folks to do a great job managing, answering, and reporting on customer requests.
Forethought is taking an intriguing and cutting-edge approach to support software by using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to automate answering easy questions, quickly tag and route support requests, and even help agents find information to move through tickets at record speed.
How Will You Streamline Sales and Ops?
Digital-native brands continue to enter the market, and digitally-savvy consumers continue to demand better experiences – despite the supply chain interruptions and soaring costs companies are dealing with.
Increasing efficiency is necessary to stay afloat in the modern ecosystem. And with the help of some smart sales and operations tooling, you can boost efficiency without taking another hit to your bottom line.
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