Key Features to Look for in Your Sales Software

Satisfied customers, satisfied agents and satisfied management – for me, that’s the Holy Trinity of Sales.

Sales is vitally important for the success of any business. But selling in 2019 is definitely more challenging than it was in, say, the 1990s.

Customer expectations have changed, and sales departments have had to change with them. Gone are the days when companies can focus their sales strategy solely on cold calls. And although calls are still an important part of any sales cycle, in our tech-dominated world your company also needs to rely on comprehensive sales software in order to reap success.

Below, I’ve outlined the key features that any sales software you use should definitely have. Check them out and you’ll soon start to be selling more effectively in 2019!

Up-to-date Database

Besides having the right attitude and receiving high-quality sales training, your sales agents will also need certain technology tools in order to sell effectively. An accurate and up-to-date database is, without doubt, one of those tools.

In fact, an accurate database is a prerequisite if you want to successfully manage sales campaigns. Leveraging an up-to-date database will not only allow you to better understand your customers’ behavior and needs but also help you provide your customers with a more personalized experience, thus increasing your up- and cross-sell rates.

Therefore, I suggest you always choose a sales software solution that either comes with built-in databases or can be integrated with any other database.  

Killer Sales Script

As I’m sure you will know, call center scripts are written scripts that call center agents refer to and read from when on the phone with a customer. When used properly, they can greatly help your agents provide a seamless customer experience and sell more effectively. When written poorly, however, they can easily turn your customer experience into a nightmare and even reduce your sales performance levels.

Building powerful scripts is not always easy, and often requires significant time and resources. Even worse, if you hire a third party to build your sales scripts, the process can take up to several weeks. And, of course, time is money for any business.

So, make sure to choose a comprehensive sales software solution that comes with an easy-to-use script editor, allowing you to build and customize your own scripts in the blink of an eye.

With VCC Live, for example, instead of hiring a third party, you can quickly and easily build your own guides for agents by using our intuitive drag-and-drop script editor. You’ll see it makes all the difference!

Predictive Dialer

One thing is certain, running a call center is extremely costly. But with the right tools, you can easily turn your call center into a profit center, rather than a cost center. One tool that will definitely help you do this is having a predictive dialer feature in your sales software.

The golden principle of sales is simple: the more people you reach, the more you can sell. Predictive dialers use statistical data to help predict how many numbers need to be dialed at any one time, so that every agent is always in an active call, and as a result, outbound dialing rates are substantially sped up.

VCC Live®’s intelligent predictive dialer, for example, can allow your agents to spend up to 40-45 minutes per hour in active talk with customers, enabling you to significantly increase the possibility of making more sales. Impressive, right?

Furthermore, our intelligent predictive dialer monitors activity during specific periods and automatically sets its parameters based on historical data available from those periods. Feedback from our customers shows that utilizing our predictive dialer results in, on average, an overall 30% increase in sales performance.

Effective Integration

There’s no doubt that embracing new technologies during the customer journey is essential to meeting customer needs. But if you ask me, without integration, there is no digital transformation.

Most companies use several technology solutions on a daily basis, and it is integration that helps keep their customer data consistent and up-to-date throughout all their systems. It is also integration that allows agents to use one single platform during customer interactions, instead of switching from one system to another.

If your systems are not integrated, your agents will have no choice but to switch from one system to another during customer interactions. Needless to say, making your agents navigate between several systems will hurt your team’s productivity, and consequently their sales performance.

On the other hand, with system integration, your agents will be able to access all necessary customer information on a single platform, allowing them to provide customers with personalized up- and cross-sell offers.

Based on my experience, I would say it is crucial for any business to choose a sales software solution that is able to integrate with other tools. VCC Live®’s system, for example, can be integrated with a great number of tools, such as CRMs, workforce and workflow management systems, including Zapier, Salesforce, Facebook Messenger , MS products, and so on.

Data Analytics

Having access to limitless information certainly led to new challenges (just think of the increasing number of cyberattacks), but at the same time, it also created new opportunities for businesses to make good use of the great amount of data they gather.

And how can you make good use of this data? By measuring everything, of course.

Applying data analytics to measure data can play a key role in increasing your sales performance. It’s logical if you think about it: your best chance of selling your product or services is if you understand which offers are most relevant to your customers.

By using data analytics, you’ll be able to examine patterns, such as purchase history, in a customer’s past behavior, and then identify their preferences and needs. Such information will, without doubt, help your agents cross- or up-sell products that are the most relevant to your customers.

Luckily, these days, comprehensive software solutions come with intelligent reporting tools such as real-time KPI dashboards and wallboards to measure customer data and KPIs.

In particular, by measuring your KPIs, you can structure your workforce management based on identified peak and idle times. As such, in peak times, you can allocate more agents to take care of incoming calls, while in idle times your agents can initiate outbound campaigns.

So, these are the features that I believe are the most important ones to consider when buying a sales software. Now that you know what to look for, there’s no reason for you not to choose a comprehensive technology solution that will help your sales numbers skyrocket!