What Is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, and How Can It Benefit Your Company?

What Is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, and How Can It Benefit Your Company?

This article was first published in Smart Selling Tools, and it is reprinted with the author’s permission. The piece has since been updated to reflect technological advancements. We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution. Disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been made possible by the convergence of connectivity, data, and processing power. While we are only scratching the surface of what AI can do, we are seeing an increasing number of businesses – from small startups to large corporations – offering specialized AI applications.

Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) are a type of specialized AI that has recently gained a lot of traction. But what is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, exactly?

Continue reading to learn more about what an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is and how businesses can use it to improve efficiency and revenue growth.

What Is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, and How Does It Work?

Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) are the next generation of intelligent automation, allowing businesses to scale personal interactions in order to attract, acquire, and retain customers. IVAs allow businesses to provide a personalized experience to all of their contacts, leads, and customers. The ability to communicate in a human-like manner represents a significant advancement over how businesses have previously interacted with contacts, which has been limited by employee capacity or largely generic mass email programs up until recently. Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation are essential components of an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (NLG). This, according to Dr. Sid Reddy, SimpSocial’s Chief Scientist, entails having a system that precisely classifies intents and entities. By intent, we mean the end-goal user’s – what is the customer trying to accomplish? That intent’s context is provided by the entity. In other words, an entity is the data that is useful in responding to the user’s request. Machine learning, which refers to a computer’s ability to learn without being explicitly programmed and become “smarter” as more information is received, is another important component of an IVA. Human languages are incredibly complex – whether you speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, or any of the world’s 6,000+ languages, language is nuanced and ever-changing. Consider the various methods for requesting information. “Where are you located?” I might inquire if I need to get to a specific restaurant. or “Can you tell me your address?” or even “Can you tell me where I can find you?” Even if the entities differ, all of the variations of this question have the same intent. If you’re looking for an AI solution that can deliver human-like messages, look for applications that include machine learning, natural language understanding, and natural language generation.

In addition, you might want to inquire if potential IVA providers:

Have a lot of information? (information shared by people in conversations). This data will be used by an AI solution, such as an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, to improve language understanding and generation while also providing useful analytics. Allow you to customize interactions and conversations to some extent. Integrate with your current IT infrastructure. If you already have a CRM system or a marketing automation tool, make sure the IVA solution you’re considering will integrate with it so you can have a single source of data.

Incorporating Intelligent Virtual Assistants into the Workplace

To optimize key functions, businesses of all sizes and industries are turning to AI, intelligent automation, and specifically Intelligent Virtual Assistants. Sales is one traditional aspect of business that is getting a technological boost. Rather than relying on your workforce to reach out and follow up with interested prospects, an Augmented Workforce, which combines IVAs and people, automates this important but time-consuming task. It’s important to remember that using an IVA to handle initial contact and lead engagement does not replace employees; rather, it allows them to better manage their time. Sales reps spend only 37% of their time selling, according to InsideSales.com. This means that the majority of a Salesperson’s time is spent on activities that do not generate revenue, such as administrative tasks (dealing with internal policies and approvals) and researching target accounts and contacts. Your Salespeople will be able to focus on high-value work that they actually enjoy by automating these repetitive tasks. As customer expectations for prompt, courteous, and personalized communications rise, businesses must meet or exceed those expectations to earn the customer’s business. It only makes sense to invest in a solution that can deliver that much-desired prompt, personalized attention at a large scale. The good news is that we’ve arrived at a point where we can use Intelligent Virtual Assistants to make customers feel as if they’re being heard and their needs are being met. That’s a competitive advantage your company can’t afford to overlook.

SimpSocial Takes Pride in Serving Our Automobile Dealerships

SimpSocial Takes Pride in Serving Our Automobile Dealerships

With our Intelligent Virtual Assistants, SimpSocial is happy to assist and support our auto dealership customers across the country, from making a lasting impact with sales prospects to cultivating lifelong service customers (IVAs). SimpSocial continues to provide service to over 1,000 dealerships and 25 auto groups across the United States. We’re still devoted to the automobile industry, which inspired our technology over a decade ago. SimpSocial’s first Intelligent Virtual Assistant was built specifically to help salespeople in the car industry. Our IVAs collaborate with members of the Sales and Service teams to provide the best possible customer experience, engage every lead, and produce more Sales or Service appointments. This is still the case. Our approach to our car customer prospects has changed as a result of COVID-19’s economic effects. We’ll go over the reality of the auto industry, our future plan, and how we’ll continue to show our devotion to our current auto customers in the sections below.

The Automotive Industry’s Reality

Single stores and mid-sized or large dealership groups make up the automotive dealership industry’s ecology. We’re now servicing new independent dealerships through our reseller channel, while SimpSocial concentrates its direct sales efforts on dealership groups. We recognize that independent dealers benefit from both our Automotive Sales AI Assistant and our Automotive Support AI Assistants, which is why, as part of SimpSocial’s Agent Partner program, we are empowering our resellers to service individual dealerships. Dealerships are focusing more than ever on keeping car buyers by scheduling service appointments and implementing technology to help scale a high-quality end-to-end client experience. SimpSocial’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant solutions are being included into resellers’ offerings to provide more comprehensive end-to-end solutions that independent auto dealerships can use to scale their sales and fixed operations.

Our Automobile Club Program

SimpSocial is establishing an auto group initiative to assist auto groups in boosting their Marketing, Sales, and Automotive Service teams in light of our new approach. See how our AI Assistants attract, acquire, and develop auto purchasers and service customers at scale using our IVA packaging. Similarly, we offer an Auto Group Enterprise License Program to groups interested in supplying our services to their dealerships. Under this scheme, auto groups can take advantage of large discounts and flexibility throughout their stores, which applies to all of the Group’s shops.

SimpSocial has been approved for use by General Motors.

General Motors recently authorized SimpSocial’s Intelligent Virtual Assistants as in-Market Retail (iMR) Turnkey Products. This accreditation entitles GM dealers who purchase or hire a SimpSocial IVA to a co-op refund from GM, lowering their overall costs significantly. SimpSocial’s business strategy and ethos are based on a set of cultural ideals, the first of which is to be “Customer Obsessed,” thinking and acting in their best interests. Only by honestly attempting to comprehend our clients’ aims and pain points in order to assist them in achieving or alleviating them will we be able to aid drive or alleviate them. In order to assist our customers through these difficult times, we are proactively offering extra services at no cost; all of our car clients who use either our Automotive Sales AI Assistant or our Automotive Service AI Assistant can add the other for free. To learn more, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Adapting as a Team

SimpSocial is no exception to the fact that these are difficult times for many businesses. As we traverse these new roads together, we will do our best to provide you, our customers and partners, with all of the direction and relief that we can.

How Using Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Combination with Sales Engagement Tools Improves Marketing Lead Connect Rates

How Using Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Combination with Sales Engagement Tools Improves Marketing Lead Connect Rates

The concept of Sales and Marketing collaborating to create a cohesive account-based marketing strategy isn’t new. These two revenue-generating teams collaborate to identify a list of accounts, define an outreach strategy, create campaigns, and track outcomes. The actual execution of the plan is where many teams get into trouble. Yes, it all sounds great on paper, but putting it into practice can be a challenge in and of itself. Sales is frequently expected to touch an account a certain number of times (sometimes dozens) in a certain amount of time. While Marketing tries to assist Sales in prioritizing, there is often so much information available that it becomes “noise” to Sales. When this happens, Sales defaults to a volume-based strategy. What were the outcomes? Hot accounts are overlooked, opportunities for highly personalized conversations are missed, and pipeline production suffers as a result. Furthermore, concentrating on volume can be overwhelming for Sales. How are you supposed to put dozens of thoughtful touches on hundreds of accounts in a short period of time when a single rep may be responsible for hundreds of accounts at any given time?  

Consider how Sales Engagement tools combined with Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) result in increased productivity and a higher return on investment, including:

  After an IVA has worked a lead, the connect and reply rate on SDR follow-up has increased by 153 percent. When stubborn leads are handed off to an IVA to work after the SDR has tried, there is a 10% increase in response rate in target account prospecting campaigns. 2.5x the personalized, persistent, and courteous outreach without adding more people to the team. What Separates Intelligent Virtual Assistants from Sales Engagement Tools The much-loved Sales Engagement tool is now available (i.e. Outreach, Salesloft, Groove). These powerful tools allow salespeople to take control of their territories’ communication and conduct mass outreach.  

We mean it when we say “powerful.” Reps can use sales engagement tools to do their jobs at scale, such as:

Automating Outreach: Sales can automatically deliver relevant content based on a variety of triggers such as campaign engagement, content consumption, personas, and other factors, allowing them to deliver more relevant messaging at scale in real-time. Prioritizing Prospects and Accounts: Sales engagement tools typically integrate with sales intelligence providers and account-based marketing (ABM) platforms to provide Sales with full visibility into which accounts and prospects require immediate attention, without requiring them to work across multiple platforms. Aligning with Marketing: Sales engagement tools frequently integrate with Marketing engagement platforms to provide visibility into lead follow-up and to trigger additional activity based on engagement. Managers can easily monitor productivity and messaging effectiveness.  

Where do Intelligent Virtual Assistants fit in if Sales Engagement Tools can do everything? The truth is that there are some significant differences between what an Intelligent Virtual Assistant can accomplish and how Sales employs Sales Engagement tools:

  Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) Are More Autonomous: IVAs are built on an Intelligent Engagement Platform, which powers millions of mundane but extremely valuable conversations on a daily basis. IVAs initiate contact, empathize intelligently to interpret responses, and respond with a tailored response using Artificial Intelligence (AI). While Sales Engagement tools can run leads through a cadence, they can’t respond for the rep, which necessitates human intervention. Playbooks and Email Writing Routines Are No Longer Necessary: While Sales Engagement tools require Sales or Marketing to manually input content for each email in each cadence or flow, IVAs automate Sales nurture. IVAs can take a few key criteria inputs and run with them for an entire personalized, persistent, and polite communication flow, responding autonomously all the way through setting up a meeting between a lead and a Salesperson. Your SDR team has air cover thanks to IVAs: IVAs take on the volume game, ensuring that your leads receive the appropriate number of touches 100 percent of the time, allowing your sales team to focus on what they do best: developing and closing opportunities. Sales can focus on the lowest hanging fruit instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks by sharing the prospecting burden with an Intelligent Virtual Assistant. In addition, leads who have been ‘warmed up’ by the IVA are more likely to engage with your SDRs later.  

Using Sales Engagement and Intelligent Virtual Assistants to Implement an ABM Strategy

While there are some significant differences between the two technologies, there are some significant opportunities for these solutions to work together to increase Sales and Marketing productivity and results. While we could write an entire blog series about the different use cases, we’ll focus on one here: account-based marketing. The tag-team approach can provide significant productivity and coverage benefits to your Sales and Marketing teams in the ABM use case. Here are some ideas for how to go about it:  

1. The Account Tiering Strategy

  Traditionally, Sales and Marketing have collaborated to place a high priority on the hottest, most relevant accounts. Tier 1 Accounts are what we’ll call them. This is usually a manageable number of accounts for Sales to handle, ranging between 25 and 50 accounts. These accounts should receive Sales’ undivided attention in the form of highly personalized outreach based on research, and they should consume a significant portion of a Sales rep’s time and effort. Where does that leave the rest of your list of accounts if Sales is so focused on Tier 1s? Tier 2 and 3 are where Intelligent Virtual Assistants come in handy. Utilize the IVA to reach out to accounts that are demonstrating intent via Marketing engagement and intelligence to ensure relevancy. These accounts may be hesitant to raise their hands, but they are most likely still interested. The Sales team selects a few contacts per account for outbound prospecting by the IVA.  

2. The Strategy of “You Take the Inbounds”

  Another option is to have the Intelligent Virtual Assistant focus on processing any inbound interest related to your target accounts while Sales handles outbound prospecting. Simple automations between your Marketing Automation Platform, CRM, and Sales Engagement tool could help you achieve this. Sales, for example, continues to prioritize outbounding into Tier 1 accounts, but the IVA handles any inbound interest in Tier 2 and 3 accounts. Instead of waiting for scoring to warm up these leads, send them straight to an ABM-specific IVA campaign for follow-up. You could run a few different IVA campaigns based on shared interests in this scenario (i.e., industry-specific, persona-specific, or intent specific). These leads can be routed to the IVA for follow-up in the same way that leads are routed to Sales.  

Increasing Sales Productivity and Adding Value to Your Company

More personalized outreach equals more engagement, pipeline, and revenue, regardless of how you look at it. While hiring more full-time employees to handle personalized outreach may appear to be a solution in and of itself, the truth is that these business professionals would still be spending a significant amount of time on repetitive, routine tasks. Rather than simply adding more people to your workforce, it’s far better to combine technologies that augment it. In many cases, organizations simply do not have the financial resources to hire new employees. Intelligent Virtual Assistants, on the other hand, are low-cost virtual team members who assist teams in achieving common goals. Customers who use IVAs in conjunction with their existing sales team and processes achieve impressive results: To reach out to prioritized accounts, Oracle used their Intelligent Virtual Assistant, Sales team, and Bombora intent data. The results were promising, with Oracle seeing a 40% conversion rate. Epson America’s nurture process was restructured to include IVAs, resulting in a 240 percent increase in response rate. Furthermore, they can improve the morale of their Sales team. Most sales reps are a lot happier when they aren’t bogged down by repetitive, mundane processes and are instead having good, productive conversations, which boosts productivity. Sales can focus on what they do best – building relationships and closing deals – by enlisting the help of an Intelligent Virtual Assistant to handle the heavy lifting of qualifying interest and scheduling meetings. You can improve your ROI, drive operational efficiency, and create a happier workforce by combining the right technologies on behalf of your revenue-generating teams.

Why Are Revenue-Driven Organizations Embracing the Augmented Workforce in Uncertain Times?

Why Are Revenue-Driven Organizations Embracing the Augmented Workforce in Uncertain Times?

It is unnecessary to point out that things have changed. Right now, you’re experiencing it. Many businesses are being compelled to cut all discretionary expenditure, indefinitely freeze recruiting, demonstrate a great return on investment from decreased marketing budgets, and decide how to best target critical and non-critical industries. That’s a lot of weight on your shoulders. While COVID-19 and the resulting economic slowdown are unfavorable features of the current scenario, another transformation in the workplace is providing additional prospects for growth, improved visibility into the B2B buying process, and assuring better customer experience throughout the purchase cycle. This shift is being characterized by the entry of intelligent automation into the workplace, which we call the Augmented Workforce. Rashmi Vittal (CMO at SimpSocial) and Jessie Johnson (principal analyst at SiriusDecisions) explored the influence artificial intelligence (AI) is having on the B2B selling process, as well as how AI is supporting revenue-generating teams compelled to accomplish more with less during our Why Revenue-Obsessed Teams Embrace the Augmented Workforce webinar. The following are a few key insights from that discussion.  

The Business-to-Business (B2B) Selling Experience

Both B2B buyers and sellers have their own set of expectations. However, for these two groups to effectively relate to one another, it’s better if their expectations are in line. Fortunately, technological advancements are assisting B2B sellers in meeting buyer expectations and speeding up the customer acquisition process. For example, instead of targeting individual leads, vendors are opting for a more holistic strategy of targeting buying groups. After all, rather than an individual, your business solutions will most likely be employed by a team within a corporation. AI advances enable sellers to put together digital body language (such as downloading an eBook, attending a webinar, or requesting a trial) from several prospects inside the same organization, allowing them to target them more effectively. The prospect-to-conversion pathway is admittedly not as simple as vendors would like it to be. Yes, the milestones and destinations are the identical, but each member of the buying group may engage in slightly different activities. Prospects’ interest levels fluctuate throughout their lives, thus having a solution that understands these signals is essential. Smarter automation powered by AI and machine learning allows businesses to eliminate blind spots regarding their customers and have a better picture of who is involved in the buying process. Increased visibility and adaptability are just a few of the advantages AI provides to B2B sellers. Let’s look at how artificial intelligence can help revenue-generating teams.  

Workforce Augmentation

Marketers are being forced to respond, remix, and re-plan in order to rebound and recover from the current position. In this recuperation phase, an Augmented Workforce can be extremely helpful. But, first and foremost, what is an Augmented Workforce? A workplace where business experts collaborate with artificial intelligence to improve business outcomes is referred to as an Augmented Workforce. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant is one such AI-driven solution that is transforming customer-facing departments such as Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success (IVA). Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) are the next generation of intelligent automation, allowing businesses to scale human interactions in order to attract, acquire, and retain clients. Many redundant, repeating jobs that people don’t want to do or don’t do well are automated by IVAs, such as following up with each and every lead in a human-like manner to see whether they’re interested in setting up a meeting with your Sales team. This action takes a long time, which is why you should delegate it to an IVA so that your salespeople can focus on developing trusting relationships, serving as strategic partners to their clients, and finally closing deals.  

What are your strategies for utilizing intelligent virtual assistants?

  As leaders in marketing, sales, and customer success assess the current circumstances, they will be forced to make difficult decisions that will impact the near and long term. The fact of these unpredictable times is that we will eventually settle into a new normal—and if you want to survive today, revive tomorrow, and prosper into the future, it is better to prepare for a new normal on your own terms with an Augmented Workforce driven by Intelligent Virtual Assistants. The capacity to promote top-line growth (71 percent), create better customer experiences (58 percent), and boost employee job satisfaction are the top benefits company executives identify with Intelligent Virtual Assistants, according to original study on the Augmented Workforce (50 percent). IVAs have applications in Customer Service, Marketing, Sales, HR, and Finance because highly scalable human-like interactions are useful to customer-facing employees. The capacity to provide full coverage over the customer lifecycle is the fundamental benefit of an IVA.  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants help businesses get the most out of every dollar spent on marketing and sales campaigns. Here are several examples:

  Increasing the effectiveness of digital initiatives, such as virtual event engagement and follow-up Resurrecting dormant leads and ensuring no stone is left unturned are examples of good housekeeping. Also, by sympathetic outreach and presenting critical information at scale, you can keep your existing customer base. Here are a few examples of how IVAs are now being used to assist revenue-generating teams in putting their best foot forward while interacting with clients or identifying hot prospects.  

Making the Most of Your Digital Investments

Marketers are reconsidering their strategies for engaging virtual event participants. Marketers’ most expensive investments, events and tradeshows, have vanished. Instead, marketing departments are investing in virtual events by holding their own or sponsoring third-party events. While virtual gatherings are less expensive than in-person conferences, they are still an investment that needs to be maximized. Only 69 percent of companies have structured lead follow-up processes in place, which is surprising. Organizations must swiftly follow up with each registration and attendance after an event to make the most of every dollar spent. According to our findings, organizations have a 21-fold higher likelihood of qualifying a lead if they are called within 30 minutes of an event. Those few moments are critical. Fortunately, IVAs may be utilized both before and after an event to increase engagement and drive contacts to take the next best action (such as registering for the event or scheduling a call with a Salesperson after the event to learn more). Raising the profile of handraisers among digitally sourced leads: Marketers are increasingly focusing on content syndication, PPC advertising, and other digital programs and campaigns to generate leads. These leads have a reduced conversion rate in some cases. How can marketers ensure that leads acquired through digital channels are handled properly? By providing 100% lead coverage, Intelligent Virtual Assistants alleviate concerns regarding lead quality. Prospects who are interested in speaking with Sales are routed to your BDR or Inside Sales team right away. If a prospect is unresponsive or simply not ready for a Sales encounter, the IVA understands such signals and takes appropriate action, such as persistent follow-up or lead nurturing.  

Housekeeping is important.

Identifying potential in dormant or disqualified leads: Many firms are currently experiencing a period of stagnation. For better or worse, now is the greatest moment to rethink your processes, do some housekeeping, and use buckets of dormant/disqualified leads to boost handraisers you might have overlooked previously. Salespeople, admittedly, do not relish following up on cold or forgotten prospects. It requires a significant amount of time, which they just do not have. You can prove the warm or hot leads without putting additional burden on your personnel by delegating this redundant and repetitive activity to an IVA. IVAs sifting through dormant or ineligible leads have an average engagement rate of eight to fifteen percent. Handraisers can make up 12 to 21% of people who are engaged. In terms of pipeline push, IVAs outperform standard nurturing programs by 33 percent in terms of reengaging dormant prospects. Keeping your current consumer base: An Augmented Workforce can also help you keep your current consumer base. In this economic climate, businesses want to keep as much money as possible, which includes providing the best possible customer experience. However, with many companies cutting employees and Customer Success teams dealing with more accounts than they can handle on a regular basis, firms must find ways to fill in the gaps.  

Our customers are already using an Augmented Workforce to swiftly respond to their client base, informing them of how the current circumstance is affecting their business. While maintaining a compassionate, informative tone, an IVA can send the following types of messages:

  To express what your firm is doing during this time, start with a polite and sympathetic introductory statement. To address the current issue, include a P.S. statement in the signature. An informational statement that addresses any changes that your consumers should be aware of, as well as contact information for people who have questions. Conversation cadences that are easily adjustable to meet this highly fluid moment in time During this time, SimpSocial customers made up 37% of the total.

How Can Marketers Adapt in Tough Times?

How Can Marketers Adapt in Tough Times?

You meticulously crafted a robust 2020 Marketing strategy that displays your capacity to contribute to pipeline and revenue goals. You’ve made a significant investment in tradeshows and events as part of your entire marketing strategy, and you’re ready to shake hands and sign contracts. Uncontrollable occurrences, such as the coronavirus (COVID-19), have now put a stop to many of those eagerly anticipated activities, resulting in the cancellation of Adobe Summit, F8, GDC, Mobile World Congress, SXSW, and other events vital to you and your business. You watch the news with bated breath as more events are canceled, as well as headlines regarding global economic effect. You immediately adjust your plans and tactics from in-person meet-and-greets to digital ways of pipeline growth, determined to sustain your momentum. You devote more time and resources to webinars, content syndication, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. You run a report to determine if your recycled or DQed MQLs can be resurrected. Despite your best efforts, you instinctively roll your eyes, knowing that your Salespeople aren’t interested in pursuing “those kind of leads,” even if you nail your ideal customer profile (ICP) to a tee.  

What options do you have? How should you adjust your strategy and safeguard your numbers in these trying times?

  These are topics I need to consider as SimpSocial’s Chief Marketing Officer. Not only do I want to safeguard the health and safety of my staff, but I also want to help my organization’s financial well-being and business continuity. I’m not the only one that feels this way. The same idea is on the minds of marketing executives all across the world. Even in these difficult economic times, marketers can adapt by utilizing an augmented workforce to increase pipeline, qualify leads, and maintain strong marketing-sales communication.  

Developing a Digital-First Mentality

To maintain staff productivity and business continuity, firms are already transitioning to digital-first solutions, such as revised work-from-home guidelines, using video conferencing, and presenting streaming events for customers and prospects. A change to digital-first marketing entails re-allocating marketing budgets to digital programs and campaigns for marketing executives. Naturally, your sales team will be concerned about the quality of leads in your pipeline. Marketers would do well to implement a digital-first solution that ensures attentive lead follow-up, regardless of the source, to alleviate concerns about lead quality. Lead interaction with Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) helps to elevate sales-ready leads at scale. IVAs engage and qualify new and existing leads by asking, “Are you interested in setting up a Sales meeting?” in a human-like discussion by email or SMS until a response is received or the next best step is understood. Because the lead told your IVA whether or not they are ready for a talk, Sales teams may be confident that the lead is interested. Using a SimpSocial Sales AI Assistant to work leads in natural, two-way conversations to ascertain intent, you can demonstrate value in your digitally sourced leads by uncovering hand-raisers sooner, even if you’re facing widespread event cancellations or other economic issues.  

What Can an Augmented Workforce Do for You?

  Driving team productivity and performance while accelerating revenue creation and top-line growth are among the advantages of an Augmented Workforce, in which people and IVAs work together toward the same goals. Salespeople are allowed to focus on creating trusting connections and closing agreements by allowing the IVA to chase registrations and meetings on its own.  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants can be used in the following scenarios:

Increasing registrations for your digital events, such as webinars and virtual conferences, as well as post-event follow-up to keep attendees engaged. After all, as digital-first solutions become the standard, digital events may become your most important events. Low-scoring leads and pre-MQLs generated by content syndication or digital PPC must be qualified. You’ve already put money into these assets. Working on these things will help you live your life to the fullest. Dormant or cold lines can be reactivated. Don’t let leads who have showed interest sit dormant. Reengage them to check whether they are still interested and willing to discuss. Consider the following Talend example. When the next-generation leader in big data and cloud integration software added SimpSocial Intelligent Virtual Assistants to their workforce, they increased lead coverage and conversion rates. Talend’s Sales AI Assistant was created with the goal of recovering recycled or DQed leads. The SimpSocial Sales AI Assistant helped Talend win approximately $1 million in bookings, which was incredible. As you can see, even seemingly low-scoring, digitally sourced leads have actual worth, and IVAs are a valuable resource for Marketers wanting to maximize every opportunity.  

When You Need Optimal Lead Coverage

Marketers should implement a system that interacts, identifies, and qualifies prospects at scale in order to demonstrate the value of digitally sourced leads to their maybe hesitant Salespeople. After all, qualifying that your leads are Sales-ready is the finest safeguard against Sales apathy. With economic uncertainty and fewer opportunities to meet prospects in person, it’s more vital than ever to maximize lead engagement and follow-up. With an IVA on your team, you’ll always have a devoted and dependable team member ready to pick up those leads and work them to their maximum potential. Concern, but not panic, is warranted in light of the current economic scenario. Now is the time to act and prepare your business to weather the storm and maintain momentum.

Sales Teams Face a Capacity Challenge

Sales Teams Face a Capacity Challenge

Salespeople are overworked and picky.

  To be honest, most businesses aren’t aware of the sales capacity issue because they assumed it would happen anyway. Marketing creates as many leads as possible, while salespeople pursue as many as possible. This method puts pressure on members of the sales team to concentrate on the leads that they believe are the most promising. Unfortunately, due to the fact that salespeople only have so many hours to spend on each lead before moving on to the next, many leads go untapped. Because of this, some businesses use Business Development Representatives (BDRs) to help handle the inflow of leads by reviewing, qualifying, and nurturing them before passing them on to a salesperson to close. The method isn’t ideal, though, because BDRs (much like salespeople) will cherry-pick leads based on their own assumptions. Furthermore, many companies do not have BDR teams to rely on.  

Humans are only human.

  It’s tempting to believe that organizations can solve their sales capacity problem by simply recruiting additional people. While the reasoning is reasonable, it can also lead to a slew of issues. Businesses that overhire salespeople experience poorer work satisfaction as a result of bored and under-stimulated salespeople, as well as increased costs as a result of the addition of new team members. Each of these new hires will require extensive training and supervision. It’s also crucial to keep in mind that people are simply human. They are prone to becoming ill, having poor days, and leaving for other employment chances. Clearly, adding additional employees isn’t the solution these companies require.  

Sales Capacity Challenge-Induced Gaps

  The failure to address the issue of sales capacity results in gaps in the outreach process. Leads that do not qualify as Marketing Qualified Prospects (MQLs), leads that go dark without reason, recycled leads, leads that require several outreach attempts, and, worst of all, leads that want to go to Sales but go undiscovered are all examples of these gaps. While sales acceleration technologies can help with routine outreach and lead qualification, they still need to be managed by a Salesperson. In other words, these gadgets continue to consume an employee’s time.

A Sales AI Assistant is just what sales teams require.

 

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: The Answer to Increased Sales Capacity

Intelligent Virtual Assistants for Customer Engagement automate monotonous and routine duties so that your staff may concentrate on their core competencies. For example, the SimpSocial sends out tailored emails and texts to engage and nurture leads until their intent is discovered. It makes no difference whether it takes a week, five months, or two years. Only hand along Sales-ready leads when they are actually ready for such a conversation does the Intelligent Virtual Assistant stay polite and persistent in its contacts. By touching every lead at scale, Intelligent Virtual Assistants supplement teams without adding to the capacity challenge. This also means you won’t have to hire or fire people to deal with changing lead trends. No one in your organization needs to hustle to pick up the conversation if an employee takes a sick day or goes on vacation. Best of all, the Sales AI Assistant’s chats with potential buyers feel genuine and individualized. Finally, the Intelligent Virtual Assistant uncovers additional Sales-ready prospects from your existing pool, resulting in additional meetings, chances, and pipeline. If your company is experiencing capacity issues, AI may be the solution you’ve been looking for.

The Sales Capacity Challenge and Excess Lead Volume

The Sales Capacity Challenge and Excess Lead Volume

  Overbooking our to-do list is a pain we’ve all felt. We intend to complete ten, fifteen, or even twenty chores in a single day, but only complete one or two. It’s not that we don’t want to or aren’t capable of doing so. It’s just that each day is limited to a certain number of hours. When Marketing delivers hundreds or thousands of leads for Sales to pursue, there is a similar misalignment of expectations. Organizations face the dreaded sales capacity dilemma when the amount of leads vastly outnumbers the Sales team’s ability to follow up with each one. 71% of participants claimed they have difficulty with sales capacity. While this poll is limited to those in attendance, many businesses face this problem without even realizing it. Excessive lead volume and overworked sales teams are, after all, rather common.  

We’ll look at the sales capacity problem, its effects, and potential solutions in the sections below.

 

Faced with a Problem

  While scheduling meetings and increasing engagement are critical for any Sales team, the ultimate goal is to create revenue. However, if you have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of Marketing Generated Leads (MQLs) sitting around, it’s probable you’re missing out on Sales-ready chances. To alleviate this burden, the most obvious solution is to hire additional people. For many firms wanting to cut costs, however, this is just not a viable choice. Similarly, some businesses only get a lot of leads at specific times of the year or after trade exhibits or other events. Hiring more employees isn’t a practical option in these circumstances of temporarily changing lead quantities. This raises the challenge of how to efficiently contact the largest number of leads.  

How Can You Effectively Contact the Largest Number of Leads?

  Recognize that not all leads are created equal. Some incoming leads are “Sales-ready,” which means they are likely to contact your sales staff. Other leads are “nurture-ready,” which means they are interested in learning more about your organization and products but aren’t ready to speak with Sales just yet. What distinguishes the two? Predictive scoring has traditionally been used by Marketing and Sales to qualify leads. The formula is simple: greater lead scores are given to incoming leads that fit your selected buyer profile. Prospects who download marketing information like a buyers guide are treated similarly. This method has a place in the big picture, but it’s just an estimate. All you have to do is ask to find out which prospects are Sales-ready. This, of course, brings us back to the problem of sales capacity. It takes a lot of time and effort to ask each and every incoming lead whether they would like to talk with a Salesperson. It’s a tedious operation that will certainly yield a few “yeses” and a slew of “nos” and “not yets.” Rather than having your workers track down each and every lead, why not use an Intelligent Virtual Assistant to ask at scale, “Are you interested?”  

Using an Intelligent Virtual Assistant to Solve the Sales Capacity Challenge

  IVAs (Intelligent Virtual Assistants) assist people in doing what they are greatest at. IVAs allow employees to focus on what they enjoy doing, like as thinking creatively, creating relationships, and completing transactions, while automating many of the repetitious and boring duties that they don’t like to do. “Do you think an AI Assistant can help ease your sales capacity challenge?” the question was posed. “Yes” was answered by 93 percent of webinar attendees. Inside Sales only touch leads zero to two times on average, which is one of the reasons why a Sales AI Assistant is so beneficial. However, between seven and ten touches are ideal. Salespeople don’t have the time (or, to be honest, the inclination) to engage in this level of outreach. Fortunately, until purpose is confirmed, a Sales AI Assistant can handle the golden number of touches in a persistent, consistent, and pleasant manner. A Sales AI Assistant also generates revenue. IVAs elevate Sales-ready leads the instant they exhibit interest in scheduling a meeting, it contacts incoming leads within minutes (rather than hours or days later), and it detects handraisers among low-qualifying leads that your team doesn’t have time to touch. All of these elements work together to ensure that no opportunity is overlooked.  

Recommendations for Additional Reading

  While an Intelligent Virtual Assistant can help you discover new possibilities, it can’t do everything. Teams must still collaborate to achieve a common objective. The alignment of Marketing and Sales is one such example. Prospects will experience a messaging disconnect if these two teams use distinct terminology in their communications. Because it is created that way, SimpSocial in a consistent manner. Your teams must also be based on the same messaging. Brett Blackney of HackerRank also advises aligning Marketing and Sales before trade fairs, conferences, and major media pushes. This prepares the Inside Sales team for a surge in leads and ensures that the outreach process runs well. Another suggestion is to figure out how to divide responsibilities between salespeople and IVAs properly. In the majority of cases, businesses employ a “start small and grow” approach. For example, a Sales AI Assistant could focus on re-engaging previous leads for a company. The company may broaden its use cases if the technique proves to be successful.  

The Quick Fix

  Expecting your Sales team to chase down every single lead is simply unrealistic. However, an Intelligent Virtual Assistant can help your staff focus on closing business by supplementing their efforts. It’s time to give individuals the freedom to do what they do best while technology does what it does best.

Personalized Marketing at Scale using AI

Personalized Marketing at Scale using AI

  Every day, the ordinary person is exposed to millions of messages, advertising, and conversations. Much of this is muted, much like the background noise in a crowded restaurant. People perk up when they hear a message that is relevant to them, such as their name or order number. For marketing and sales outreach, the same principle applies. The more tailored your messages are, the better chance you’ll have of engaging and converting your contacts. In a recent webinar, Mike Madden (Marketo’s Head of Commercial Demand Gen) and Jan Sijp (SimpSocial’s Senior Director Product Marketing) discussed how each company employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help with tailored marketing at scale. In that vein, here are some pointers on personalisation, email outreach, and artificial intelligence.  

Table of Contents

  There’s a compelling argument for customizing everything you do. Here are a few statistics to persuade you of the effectiveness of personalized email marketing: Personalized emails have a six-fold increase in transaction rates compared to non-personalized emails. The click-through rate on emails sent from an individual’s address (rather than a business’s email account) is 31% higher. Subject lines that are personalized are 26 percent more likely to be opened by receivers. Personalized email messages increase click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10% on average. Incorporating a signature into your email boosts response rates by 22%. Emails that look like personal letters are opened 137 percent more often and have a 129 percent higher click-through rate than emails with generic “To” and “From” boxes.  

A third of marketers said they would prioritize personalisation in the near future if given the chance.

  These findings support the use of personalized outreach and email marketing, which includes messages from salespeople, marketers, and sales enablement software. Personalization, regardless of how you optimize your messaging, necessitates a significant amount of thinking and time. Sure, it’s simple to send a personalized email to five different people every day. But what if you’re dealing with hundreds or even thousands of leads? How could your team create individualized, successful messages for each and every one of them? How many different emails do you believe your Inside Sales team can write before they feel burned out or bored? Clearly, the goal of personalizing everything you do is a greater burden for businesses with high lead quantities.  

AI-Powered Workforce Augmentation for Scaled Personalization

  Marketing and sales teams who are having trouble balancing personalized outreach with their usual responsibilities might consider an AI-powered solution. AI is infinitely scalable and capable of handling many of your employees’ tedious, yet important, duties. SimpSocial engages leads at scale through tailored, polite, and persistent two-way discussions. For a variety of reasons, this is incredibly beneficial. The first is that the AI generates customised and unique messages without the need for Salespeople or Marketers to compose each outgoing message. Second, these discussions are designed to be effective, and they are constantly on message and consistent. Third, and most importantly, the Sales AI Assistant finds handraisers and brings them to your Sales team’s attention, resulting in more prospects from your current lead pool. SimpSocial operates in a similar way, personalizing interactions at scale for existing customers rather than prospects. Instead of asking contacts whether they want to schedule a Sales meeting, the Customer Success AI Assistant encourages them to do quarterly business reviews (QBRs), complete surveys, or look into upsell opportunities. However, how can you tell if an email or text message has been correctly optimized and personalized? Each outreach email should have at least five individualized features, according to SimpSocial. These could include your contact’s name, the sender’s name, a distinctive subject line, a mention of the contact’s function within the company, and a smart sign-off. Of course, this is just one set of examples. There are numerous ways to give your outreach a more personalized feel. Personalization is essential for engaging consumers and leads in two-way interactions, whether you use SimpSocial or write each communication manually.

Why Are Automotive Companies Behaving Like Businesses?

Why Are Automotive Companies Behaving Like Businesses?

  Automotive dealerships are becoming increasingly tech-savvy as they employ Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) for Automotive Sales and Service, despite the perception that they are trailing behind in terms of innovation. These virtual team members are becoming mainstays for dealerships aiming to attract and keep consumers, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and clever automation. In a recent edition of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, presenter Bernie Borges speaks with Micah Burgess (VP of Sales at SimpSocial) on the use of IVAs in dealerships to address Marketing, Inside Sales, and Service. Of course, IVA acceptance is only one facet of this rapidly changing sector. Here are a few reasons why automakers are starting to think like other businesses.  

Automobiles are a Changing Industry

  Micah Burgess has 15 years of experience in the automobile sector. And throughout that time, he has witnessed significant changes in the way auto professionals manage and operate their businesses. Micah emphasizes that “it’s not just the automobile business anymore; you’re in business now,” implying that the sector is moving away from old methods and toward practices that are more in line with how other industries manage and conduct their businesses. The way dealerships approach marketing and sales, human resources, and technology adoption will change as the car industry embraces this “business mindset.” Similarly, huge dealership groups are looking for new workers outside of the auto sector. They’re now bringing in top personnel from Fortune 500 firms, finance, technology, and other industries to assist them drive their entire business models to higher success and profitability. Mid-market and small-business dealerships benefit from this multi-industry experience as well. Traditional marketing approaches, such as mailers or newspaper, TV, and radio commercials, still have a place in the sector, especially in the Midwest, but data-driven marketing initiatives are gaining traction. “It’s difficult to say where a consumer came from from a ROI standpoint unless they come in with a newspaper ad folder in their pocket,” Micah explains. Customers want to know how their money is being spent and what return on investment they can expect as dealers become more data-driven and customers want more digital alternatives. “Data is more crucial now than it has ever been for the automobile industry,” Micah explains. “These businesses and dealership groups are using data to better attract and convert customers,” says the author.  

Making the Sales and Marketing Process More Efficient

  The automotive sector relies heavily on inbound leads. In the past, a typical shopper would go to their local dealership on the weekend to look at numerous models, compare costs, and test drive them. The great majority of that process now takes place online. A consumer begins their trip by studying various car models online, requesting quotes using lead forms from several different dealerships, and then comparing their selections as they arrive by email or text. It’s critical to follow up with leads as soon as they exhibit interest, because the first dealership to reply to a lead is more likely to seal the purchase. Of course, sales teams frequently have more leads than they know what to do with. And it’s impossible to follow up with hundreds or even thousands of leads in a timely and personalized manner. The same can be true for service departments aiming to attract automobile owners who, on average, require multiple reminders to get them to arrange a vehicle repair or routine maintenance appointment. Dealerships are implementing technologies like the SimpSocial Automotive Sales AI Assistant and Automotive Service AI Assistant to better handle inbound leads and outgoing service reminders to prior customers. The auto industry has a history of being sluggish to accept new technologies. Micah, on the other hand, is ecstatic to see how swiftly dealerships are using AI to improve customer experiences and increase sales or service appointments. Intelligent Virtual Assistants are so successful because they provide human-like, two-way discussions at a large scale. These discussions are courteous, persistent, and timely – a winning mix that generates a better return on investment than traditional marketing tactics in a trackable and proven manner. Micah says, “Customers enjoy it and don’t even realize they’re chatting with an AI Assistant.” Even better, Salespeople and Service teams adore AI Assistants because they promptly pass handraisers to Sales the moment they show an intent to buy, allowing them to spend less time chasing leads and more time completing transactions. This guarantees that dealerships are actively engaged and making the most of every opportunity. The Augmented Workforce is a healthy synergy between Intelligent Virtual Assistants and people, and it is something that any company can profit from.  

Choosing the Correct Route

  Automotive dealerships are doing a better job of attracting, acquiring, maintaining, and growing customer engagements by adopting a business mindset and implementing AI technologies, all while managing their staff and capturing the data they need to make better decisions.

Skills in communication that will help you sell more

Skills in communication that will help you sell more

Communication is a key component in sales. Although sales is frequently seen to be a talent that people are born with, there are some essential communication habits that people can adopt to improve their sales skills. Communication styles are crucial—you must be able to convey enthusiasm and persuade potential consumers to take the measures necessary to become clients. Although some salesmen may have innate ability in this area, only those who train on specific communication skills develop into high performers who can consistently accomplish outcomes in a range of situations and market conditions. In order to achieve the highest levels of success in the profession, successful salespeople must be able to listen, learn, and improve their communication abilities. Focusing on key components of effective communication may help sales professionals of all levels, from sales development reps to sales managers, improve their performance and results. The major components of the sales communication toolkit are discussed in this piece, as well as how these skills can help you sell more.

Listening carefully

  Do you pay attention to what’s going on around you when you’re not talking? When the customer introduces themselves or discusses their problem, are you already planning your next question, rebuttal, or pitch angle? If that’s the case, you aren’t paying attention. Many salespeople make this error. Active listening entails not only hearing but also comprehending the entire message. Repeating client comments and asking, “Is that accurate?” is one technique to do this. Another technique to practice active listening is to ask questions based solely on customer comments until a complete comprehension of their point of view or issue has been achieved.

Knowing how to read people’s bodies

  Although salespeople are not required to be mind readers, they should be able to understand body language. Customers can be placed at ease by mirroring and mimicking body language, conversational cadence, and eye contact. Additionally, salespeople can learn more about client problems and perspectives by recognizing bodily signs that reflect negative emotional states like discomfort or bewilderment.

Empathy and presumptions

  Ask as many questions as possible and don’t make any assumptions. Even if something appears to be self-evident, asking the question allows the client to respond in their own words. This enables you to gain a better understanding of how they are approaching their challenge and the solutions they are likely to consider. Erroneous assumptions can lead to costly misunderstandings in the sales process. When you assume budget authority, timeliness, or a lack of competition in a deal, you can end up with agreements that don’t close and pipelines that are unrealistic. When engaging with customers, asking questions rather than making assumptions allows you to be more empathic. Allowing clients to express their issues will help you understand how they think and will encourage you to communicate in their language. When clients feel heard and understood as individuals with distinct situations, the buyer-salesperson dynamic evolves to a more collaborative connection, which is beneficial as the buying process progresses.

Develop your expertise in a specific field.

Demonstrate that you are dedicated to being the greatest counsel possible by spending time in your sector. Don’t be scared to show your customers and prospects that your passion for this industry extends beyond your job title. Follow and share the material of published experts in your industry with your customers. This will demonstrate to your customers that you are a reliable source of information and new ideas. Your ability to talk with confidence will improve as you develop this reputation, making your advice more persuasive. As a result, you’ll be more effective when it comes to guiding clients through critical purchasing decisions. Salespeople used to be information gatekeepers who could provide vital product and technical knowledge. Customers now consider this information to be readily available and instead seek advise and direction from salespeople. Salespeople who are regarded as trusted advisors stand out and succeed with a wide range of buyer audiences.

Honesty and sincerity

  It is acceptable in some teams to lie or use cliched terms in order to convert clients. Although these methods may appear to yield quick results, they should never be encouraged in your workplace. When salespeople are trusted and believed for their valuable expertise and perspective, they are the most effective. Salespeople have the distinct advantage of being able to speak with a diverse range of consumers who are experiencing the same issue. This provides salespeople with a deep awareness and awareness of how customers perceive the problem and the available solutions. When talking to customers about your product, pricing, or the competitive landscape, there’s no reason to utilize gimmicks or half-truths. Salespeople should be upfront and open in all parts of dealing with clients in order to generate trust and rapport, which leads to meaningful, long-term client relationships.

Machine learning software

  Many components of the sales position are being automated as technology progresses. Sales teams may now perform follow-up actions at scale thanks to AI tools. These technologies will contact potential customers on a regular basis and respond to them in a personalized way. Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions accomplish this by comprehending and responding to individual client enquiries in a human-like manner. This AI-assisted communication allows customers to get further in their purchasing process before engaging your sales team. Before they interact with your sales team, AI helps your customer base become more informed and motivated.

Briefly,

  Sales success depends on constant improvement in communication abilities, whether prospects are engaged through phone conversations, web conferences, or in-person meetings. Salespeople at all levels will find that being a subject matter expert and incorporating technologies like AI into their prospect engagement process will help them be more effective, work better with clients, and close more business. Learn about the SimpSocial’s features and benefits. Communication is a key component in sales. Although sales is frequently seen to be a talent that people are born with, there are some essential communication habits that people can adopt to improve their sales skills. Communication styles are crucial—you must be able to convey enthusiasm and persuade potential consumers to take the measures necessary to become clients. Although some salesmen may have innate ability in this area, only those who train on specific communication skills develop into high performers who can consistently accomplish outcomes in a range of situations and market conditions. In order to achieve the highest levels of success in the profession, successful salespeople must be able to listen, learn, and improve their communication abilities. Focusing on key components of effective communication may help sales professionals of all levels, from sales development reps to sales managers, improve their performance and results. This article will go over some of the most important parts of the sales communication toolbox, as well as how these skills can help you sell more. Listening carefully Do you pay attention to what’s going on around you when you’re not talking? When the customer introduces themselves or discusses their problem, are you already planning your next question, rebuttal, or pitch angle? If that’s the case, you aren’t paying attention. Many salespeople make this error. Active listening entails not only hearing but also comprehending the entire message. Repeating client comments and asking, “Is that accurate?” is one technique to do this. Another technique to practice active listening is to ask questions based solely on customer comments until a complete comprehension of their point of view or issue has been achieved. Knowing how to read people’s bodies Although salespeople are not required to be mind readers, they should be able to understand body language. Customers can be placed at ease by mirroring and mimicking body language, conversational cadence, and eye contact. Additionally, salespeople can learn more about client problems and perspectives by recognizing bodily signs that reflect negative emotional states like discomfort or bewilderment. Empathy and presumptions Ask as many questions as possible and don’t make any assumptions. Even if something appears to be self-evident, asking the question allows the client to respond in their own words. This enables you to gain a better understanding of how they are approaching their challenge and the solutions they are likely to consider. Erroneous assumptions can lead to costly misunderstandings in the sales process. When you assume budget authority, timeliness, or a lack of competition in a deal, you can end up with agreements that don’t close and pipelines that are unrealistic. When engaging with customers, asking questions rather than making assumptions allows you to be more empathic. Allowing clients to express their issues will help you understand how they think and will encourage you to communicate in their language. When clients feel heard and understood as individuals with distinct situations, the buyer-salesperson dynamic evolves to a more collaborative connection, which is beneficial as the buying process progresses.

Using artificial intelligence to increase lead generation and conversion

Using artificial intelligence to increase lead generation and conversion

Marketers are more interested than ever in artificial intelligence. What is the reason for this? Demand generation marketers know better than anybody that being ahead of the curve with new lead generation strategies is critical, and AI is where it’s at. AI integrates perfectly into the MarTech stack for lead generation, qualification, and conversion, and solutions are only getting better as the AI market is expected to expand to $70 billion by 2020. The top AI systems search through data to uncover new prospects or advise existing leads worth pursuing, as well as give powerful insights about prospects and customers.

AI advances automate and optimize lead generation procedures.

The good news is that AI has progressed to the point where off-the-shelf solutions can now automate and improve critical lead generation and conversion procedures for businesses of all sizes and budgets. The power of AI is embodied in a robust, tailored user experience that ensures you’re targeting the right people at the appropriate organizations and deciding which leads to send on to sales. Furthermore, AI enables data from various sources to collide with business intelligence in one location, resulting in measurable insights and actionable results. According to Aberdeen Group research, lead scoring is the primary motivator for investing in AI, with 61 percent of respondents citing it as the primary motivator. You can better understand leads, locate new high-quality leads, and turn those leads into sales with AI.

Learn how to: Download our new eBook, “Leveraging AI to Boost Lead Generation and Conversion Efforts,” to learn how to:

  Evaluate your company’s readiness for AI implementation. Learn how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the most difficult sales problems. as well as marketing difficulties Get started with artificial intelligence.

How to Set More Effective Sales Goals

How to Set More Effective Sales Goals

When expectations and abilities to carry out the plan are truly aligned, goal setting is effective. Setting goals for your team in a way that is measurable, reachable, and practical is the best way to go. Most teams are required to meet an annual income target, with each rep being liable for a share of that total. Annual revenue objectives should be split down into smaller quarterly and monthly targets per sales rep to better track progress throughout the year.

The disintegration

Consider your business in the context of your audience’s habits and cycles to break down these annual goals into smaller time frame income targets. As a result, your objectives should correspond to the seasons and cycles of your client base. If your target group makes the majority of their purchases at the end of the year, the last quarter may have a disproportionately higher goal than the other quarters.

Consider the following scenario:

23 percent in the first quarter 23 percent in the second quarter 23 percent in the third quarter 31 percent in the fourth quarter Create weekly income targets that feed into these larger goals once your quarterly objective is set. In the example above, a sales representative would need to achieve 7.67% of their annual objective in each of the first three quarters of the year. If this rep’s annual quota is $1 million, the monthly income goal for the first three quarters is $76,700.

Goals that are difficult to achieve

Many managers utilize stretch goals to motivate employees to go above and beyond. In our previous example, a stretch goal may be $80,000, with an additional incentive if the stretch goal is met during quarters when quota is met. Quarterly stretch goals are also prevalent, and they award reps with extra quota incentives if they meet or exceed their targets. When you’re deciding on your goals, be sure they’re attainable. Setting strong targets is crucial, but teams will suffer from low morale and attrition if the figures aren’t based on reality. Goals that are too aggressive are harmful to team cohesion and goal achievement. Sales people are ecstatic when their team succeeds. When their peers meet quotas and achieve personal remuneration and career goals, reps perform with zeal. To keep high achievers and build a strong, motivated team culture, make sure the goals are attainable.

Observe and quantify

There are more ways to put your team up for success once you’ve established your team goals. Linking the targeted income outputs to the activity inputs that generate the results is required to meet the objectives. To guarantee that your teams are on pace for success, these specific actions should be recognized and monitored on a regular basis. Opportunities made, demonstrations set, demonstrations held, and quotes given are all examples of activities to identify and measure. How would you know whether these initiatives were successful? Translating the income objective into activity terms is the best method to do this. For example, if your average deal size necessitates reps closing four transactions every month to meet quota, and your team’s win rate per demo held is 30%, your reps should strive to hold 14 demonstrations each month. If you know that 80% of scheduled demos are held, your SDRs should aim to arrange at least 18 demos each month, or 5 demos per week.

Accomplish the task

You can create daily activity goals that support the weekly demo objective after you have a weekly goal in place. These daily activity targets are determined by the style of your team and the ratio of inbound to outward activity. These daily activities should be recorded in your CRM so that you can keep track of trends and your progress toward your objectives. Dashboards that display this information in real time are particularly useful for visualizing team behavior and determining how goals are being met. This method assesses performance in a transparent and understandable manner for all team members. Setting goals in this manner also allows managers to use current tools to track daily activities over time and change and move priorities based on the team’s success. Managers may examine details of a specific team member’s efficiency by tracking performance at this granular level, which is useful for supporting personal growth goals and learning more about the balance of capabilities among your sales teams.

Finally, some thoughts

Setting better sales goals will provide you the structure you need to direct your sales agents’ efforts so they complement team and personal objectives. This will foster a team culture in which reps are motivated and rewarded for exceeding quotas. You can have more confidence in your forecasts and commitments if you use CRM technologies to track progress. It can be challenging to set goals. Hopefully, the ideas and best practices presented above will serve as a foundation for your process as you develop a goal framework for your expanding team.

Account-based selling vs. account-based marketing: what’s the difference?

Selling to accounts vs. marketing to accounts

Account-based marketing (ABM) has swiftly established itself as a recommended practice for scaling up marketing to high-value target accounts. If you’re providing a sophisticated product that affects numerous business units inside a huge corporation, you’re probably using some form of account-based marketing to engage your target audiences and gain new clients. Your ABM activities can have a beneficial influence on client retention and even upsell revenue if they are properly implemented. Account-based selling must be used in conjunction with account-based marketing efforts in order to optimize the results of any ABM strategy. So, what exactly is account-based selling, and why is it so vital when businesses communicate with their target audiences? ABM approaches are used by marketers to identify and engage high-value target accounts. Measuring key metrics related to your audience’s interactions and behaviors is one of the most crucial parts of a successful ABM approach. Measure and track the following critical behaviors throughout time: Attendance at the events Site-based content consumption Responses to campaigns opt-ins via email These can assist you understand your prospects’ buying cycles and pain issues, as well as the people making decisions about your solution. Keeping track of the following behaviors during the procurement process with a thorough ABM approach can assist identify which stakeholders to engage. This extensive information will aid in the creation of an account profile and the identification of key members of the buying team, such as end-user advocates, management influencers, and financial decision makers.

The overall objective

Revenue is the unifying goal of ABM and ABS. Because topline growth is such a clear aim, account-based marketing and sales operations should be organically integrated, with seamless coordination between these two functions. This is a reasonable assumption, but account-based marketing activities must be executed in a way that supports the overall purpose. Teams must be empowered to succeed in order for account-based selling to perform well. We’ll look at three aspects of account-based selling that are important to consider: team organization, content, and critical KPIs.

Formation of a group

It’s critical to design your sales teams in such a way that they can focus on core operations rather than continually shifting priorities in order to meet several objectives. As a result, a lot of sales teams are set up like this: SDRs are in charge of scheduling demos, qualifying accounts, and ensuring that account data is appropriately modeled in CRM. Account Executives (AEs) are in charge of completing new business and overseeing the sales funnel. Customer retention, expansion, and upsell activities are the responsibility of Account Managers (AMs). This specialization not only allows your team members to focus, but it also gives specialized points of contact for your prospects and customers as they move through the purchase process.

Success = Consistent Content

Your sales teams will need to develop highly personalized messages for key stakeholders on a frequent basis if you use an account-based selling strategy. Videos, slide presentations, and client testimonials will be included in these mailings. To ensure that messaging is consistent across all platforms, your marketing team will need to generate this material. Supporting your customer-facing staff in this way will result in faster customer response times and greater audience trust. When your salespeople present material that supports a unified buying experience, your clients and prospects will notice. They’ll notice the message’s consistency and start to think of your team members as a resource for making decisions about your solution.

Inputs are measured.

Scaling the nitty details of engaging prospects at the account level is a key aspect of account-based selling. While generating a report on the quality of a relationship with a specific account is challenging, knowing how frequently accounts are contacted, by whom, and with what type of material is doable if the relevant behaviors are measured. Metrics for account-based marketing are used to track audience engagement. We need track outbound sales actions like: Within accounts, the total number of calls made by all roles The number of emails sent to prospects that aren’t automated Accounts covered in number Demonstration count sat These are the granular inputs that result in the most crucial outcomes: pipeline generation and contract closing.

The list is short.

You might be wondering, “What’s next?” now that you understand the distinction between account-based marketing and account-based selling. What should I do first?” The following short list will assist you in creating an account-based selling strategy. Locate accounts that are relevant. Identify which accounts should be targeted and write down your ideal customer profile. Make a plan for your material. Create material that piques the interest of key stakeholders at various phases of the purchasing process. Calculate the results. Select the metrics that will be used to assess the impact of account-based marketing and sales. Account-based selling goes beyond the traditional practice of a marketing team generating a lead and passing it on to the sales team to convert into a customer. Account-based selling is a sales strategy that works in tandem with account-based marketing to help you develop targeted, coherent, and engaging connections with your customers.

Start Using These 9 Lead Conversion Secrets Right Now

Start Using These 9 Lead Conversion Secrets Right Now

Marketers would have an easier time if every customer went through the same purchasing procedure. We’d just respond to information requests via forms on websites, hold demos, and seal deals. It’s simple! Rather, buying processes are as diverse and complicated as the potential consumer base. This is when lead conversion becomes challenging. You must engage decision-makers with the appropriate material at the appropriate time—and do so predictably at scale—to successfully convert website visitors into customers. There is no easy button, but the good news is that there are best practices, and we’ve identified nine of them to assist you improve your lead engagement and conversion rates.

1. Make a path map

Take the time to learn how a website visitor turns into a lead. Understanding how visitors use your site’s content to decide whether or not to engage with you is an important part of enhancing lead conversion. You can construct a new path that guides prospects to material and interactions that will help them take the next steps toward conversion after you understand the existing path.

2. Carry out A/B tests

What are you waiting for if you’re not doing A/B tests on your major landing pages? One of your landing pages will most likely be the first step in the conversion process. These pages should be evaluated to ensure that the offer, call to action, and thank you pages are optimized to receive the maximum number of qualified leads.

3. Inform Your Prospects

Prospects have a voracious appetite for knowledge and typically perform their own research. Your website material should assist customers in understanding their problem, informing them of available solutions, and providing context on which solutions are appropriate for their circumstances. Prospects should have access to content that supports this full learning activity so that they may qualify for your solution. Prospects who have educated themselves in this manner will have a better grasp of mutual fit, and discussions about prices and implementation will be more appropriate.

4. Increase the number of contacts and meetings

The SDR team should follow practices that not only set up demos, but also encourage interested prospects to engage in activities that progress them along the buying path. For certain prospects, this may entail being led to a white paper to aid in the preliminary stages of their investigation. For others, it may include registering for an in-depth webinar on a topic of interest. The SDR team’s methodology should guarantee that data collection and documentation of qualifying criteria are flawless, so that CRM data supports timely and relevant touch points for these targeted prospects.

5. Sales Qualified Leads Should Be Nurtured

If future actions are not clearly defined or buyer timescales vary, sales qualified leads might become static. Prospects who are not ready to buy after the initial call should not be ignored; they are valuable leads who should be developed on a regular basis. AI tools can be used to track down these leads and engage them with information that is relevant to their concerns and interests. This communication can be coordinated with the activity of the SDR team to establish a unified outreach campaign that results in conversions.

6. Assist Me Assist You

Allow your audience to tell you what they want to do next. Marketers should ask buyers about their motives, desires, and timing at every opportunity. Create and track the effectiveness of content that addresses consumer concerns and indicates where they are in the purchasing process. If a prospect downloads a white paper that explains how your solution works in a specific technology environment, for example, your SDR team can follow up with very precise information that will guide the prospect to the next stage in the buying process and finally convert them.

7. Make Use of Engaging Content

Prospects are both wary and assertive. They’ve grown accustomed to swiftly comparing product price, features, and value before speaking with a salesperson or requesting information online. Create a content-rich experience for clients who are educating themselves before making a purchase to assist them in making their judgments. This content should be diverse and easy to distribute (i.e., video testimonials, short case studies, and infographics).

8. Speak with a professional!

According to Nielsen research, expert content is 38 percent more successful than branded content in boosting purchase intent. When prospects are certain that your solution fits their demands and mitigates the risks of choosing you as a vendor, lead conversion occurs. Find a thought leader or expert in your sector and perform an interview with them via video, podcast, or blog that demonstrates how their expertise supports your viewpoint. This doesn’t have to be a blatant product endorsement; rather, it should be a thorough discussion that puts your product or service at the core of a solution to a specific industry problem.

9. Make Use Of Live Chat

Users who are in the consideration stage of the buying cycle benefit greatly from live chat platforms. These tools allow potential purchasers to tell you how they want to proceed without having to spend a lot of time doing so. They’re also an excellent method to employ AI to qualify leads and advance them along the conversion route.

Last Thoughts

Now that you’ve learned the ropes, you may pick a few concepts that will have the biggest influence on your present process and conduct some tests. Understand that many of these actions will need to be reassessed to adapt with the changing demands of your audience, no matter where you are in the process of boosting lead conversion. If this list sounds overwhelming, pick one strategy to focus on and then move on to the next after you see results. The goal is to keep your marketing operations fresh while also learning as much as possible about your target demographic. They’ll recognize your efforts and convert as a result!

Return to Business Sales and Marketing Strategies

Return to Business Sales and Marketing Strategies

Most people, both professionally and personally, had to make significant adjustments in the first half of 2020. COVID-19 shattered our habits and drastically altered our social relations. Leaders in marketing and sales have adapted as well, altering operations and business methods to meet current difficulties. However, although we can improve our odds of health and stability by staying at home and watching movies, business executives must take severe measures to maintain their companies healthy and productive. This is a difficult assignment, but it is all the more vital.   Where should business leaders begin, though? How do businesses swiftly adapt and build effective strategies? As Sales and Marketing teams get back to work, here are a few ideas on where to focus your efforts.  

Create marketing messages that are focused on your customers.

Marketing executives devote a significant amount of time and effort to establishing and coordinating plans that align with their company’s goals. Right now, a CMO’s four major tasks are saving pipeline, handling change, safeguarding their brand, and protecting income.   Maintaining these tasks can be challenging at times, which is why many Marketing executives are experiencing some concern right now. Some business leaders are even questioning whether brands can—or should—continue to sell and market when the world isn’t focused on business. According to a recent survey, only 8% of consumers worldwide believe that because of the coronavirus pandemic, brands should stop advertising completely. Despite this, a whopping 74 percent believe businesses should not take advantage of the situation.   With both of these numbers in mind, it is up to marketers to strike a balance. As the findings above illustrate, this is also true for B2C. But it’s especially relevant for B2B because target audiences are dealing with their own issues, such as working with less resources or finances.   Knowing this, it’s critical that marketing professionals return to the basics when it comes to campaign messaging. Understanding their audiences and addressing their pain areas with actual solutions are two of the most important things they can do.   Customers, whether B2C or B2B, are more interested in practical advise than in being marketed to right now. As a result, Marketers must concentrate on demonstrating value through informative and useful tools. Rather than pushing a hard pitch, consider providing thought leadership pieces and telling experiences of other customers who have overcome similar obstacles.  

Align Yourself Every Day to Move More Quickly

Business leaders face a lot of uncertainty as a result of dramatic cultural and economic shifts. This insecurity is exacerbated by a lack of team collaboration, which frequently leads to communication failures, teams pushing in opposing directions, and wasted opportunities. To stop or resolve these typical problems, corporate leaders must unite on a regular basis to meet and respond to changes as they occur.   So, how does this work in practice? Teams may align on messaging, pipeline goals, and budgets by bringing together leaders from Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Finance in a near-daily meeting. This gives everyone a forum to voice their concerns and have them matched with practical solutions. Transparency, responsibility, and proactively solving problems together as an organization are the keys to a fruitful meeting of this type.  

During these check-ins, keep the following in mind:

  Creating a consistent message across sales, marketing, and customer service Identifying and modeling the effects Defining ideal customer profiles (ICPs) more precisely, as these may have altered in recent months, Assessing which initiatives are producing results allows funds and resources to be targeted more effectively. And figuring out the best strategies to target ICPs for a faster time to value. Business leaders may reduce aimlessness and allow teams to pivot together by aligning regularly and supporting open cooperation.  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: What Role Do They Play?

  Organizations may see a boost in demand as shelter-in-place orders fade and businesses and customers adjust to a new normal. While this may appear to be a good thing, the truth is that many businesses have had to lay off employees and slash resources, leaving them unable to satisfy demand.   An Augmented Workforce, powered by intelligent automation working in concert with business professionals to create top-line growth, is one strategy to help fill in the gaps. Organizations that use Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) realize the benefit in giving personalized touches to each and every lead, raising hot leads, and organizing meetings with salespeople at scale.   Salespeople only have so many hours in the day to conduct their tasks. The Sales Capacity Challenge is what it’s called. IVAs allow salespeople to focus on higher-value duties (such as closing deals) by automating many of the activities that they normally handle (including personalized lead outreach, updating contact information or asking leads if they are interested in scheduling a meeting). IVAs help Customer Success teams overcome similar difficulties, allowing Customer Success Managers to focus on creative issue solving rather than chasing clients to plan or reschedule meetings.   Your revenue-generating staff can be more attentive in completing high-value work by delegating due diligence to an Intelligent Virtual Assistant. During a CMO Insights webinar titled “Sales & Marketing Strategies for ‘Getting Back to Business,'” guest Rashmi Vittal (CMO of SimpSocial) revealed that SimpSocial’s own IVAs raised the hot lead rate by 15% in the 60 days prior to the webinar.      

How the 4Ps of Sales Effectiveness Help Sales and Marketing Teams Work Better Together

How the 4Ps of Sales Effectiveness Help Sales and Marketing Teams Work Better Together

What is the level of collaboration between your Marketing and Sales teams? According to SimpSocial research, marketers and salespeople want positive, coherent relationships with one another, yet expectations are frequently misaligned. Marketing believes Sales isn’t following up with leads quickly or frequently enough, and Sales believes Marketing is sending over bad or insufficient leads.   Ineffective lead follow-up, along with a lack of visibility into sales performance, can result in a low return on investment and lower lead conversions. This is particularly aggravating for marketers who have little influence over which leads Sales teams pursue.   When your marketing and sales teams work together, your company can convert more leads and generate more marketing income. As a result, it’s vital to follow the “4Ps” of promptness, persistence, personalization, and performance during marketing and sales operations.   This article will discuss how to better connect Sales and Marketing teams with the 4Ps in order to generate more leads and close more transactions.  

What is the cause of the misalignment?

Poor visibility: One of the most pressing concerns for Marketing is the lack of visibility into the sales follow-up process. Marketers must be able to monitor where individuals are converting or abandoning their campaigns in order to better alter their strategies. Are these leads being followed up on? Is it a good lead, a hot lead, a terrible lead, or an at-risk lead? Marketing and sales leaders are left in the dark without insight.   Limited capacity: While the Marketing and Sales teams try their best to touch and qualify prospects, each day only has so much time. In fact, a whopping 77 percent of leads are never followed up on. This covers leads that Sales has never handled as well as leads that have been handled only once and have been lost in the shuffle or disregarded. Due to a lack of capacity, triaging leads is a natural reaction. Warm, or even lukewarm, leads, on the other hand, can result in reduced revenue.   Putting too much reliance on lead scoring models: Lead scoring is important, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. It’s simply a guess about how probable a lead is to convert based on their digital body language in comparison to other users. You must inquire to determine whether a lead is sales-ready or not. You risk missing out on opportunities if you don’t, which is bad for both marketers and salespeople.  

What exactly are the 4Ps?

Follow the 4Ps of sales effectiveness to realign your sales and marketing teams. These four concepts will help teams overcome some of these obstacles and improve the effectiveness of their communications and client interactions.  

Timeliness:

  Teams who establish connections quickly are more likely to convert a lead into a customer. According to SimpSocial’s 2020 Sales Effectiveness Report, engaging a lead within the first hour boosted the chances of qualifying the lead by seven times when compared to a two-hour window and 60 times when compared to 24 hours or more.   It’s best to respond to all queries within five minutes of the prospect contacting you. If your company routinely fails to meet deadlines, look at what’s causing the delay (sales team capacity issues, high lead volume, delayed MAP to CRM syncing, etc.) and figure out how to fix it. Marketers and salespeople get the most out of their time and resources by swiftly following up with prospects.  

Perseverance:

  Companies must be more persistent than ever to grab potential consumers due to hectic schedules, buried emails, or missed phone calls. In fact, organizations with the fastest-growing revenues are five to eight times more likely to contact a lead.   It can take up to 18 follow-ups to get a potential buyer’s attention. According to SimpSocial’s original data, 60 percent of businesses only follow up with leads once or twice. So that leads do not abandon their buyer’s journey, your marketing and sales teams must maintain consistent and timely communication.  

Individualization:

  Personalized contact with a lead increases the chances of a successful engagement and conversion. An email must have an individual sender (rather than a department name in the “From” line), a personalized greeting, signature and contact information, material relevant to the contact, and a “call to action” to move the conversation ahead to be deemed really personalized.   Personalizing an email effectively takes time, which makes it difficult to send a high-quality email quickly or to create many personalized emails for ongoing outreach. As a result, many businesses employ automated email solutions to communicate with their connections. However, not every automated email provider can send a message that is truly individualized. Some send emails with merely a reference to a contact’s name in the subject line. This is insufficient to pique someone’s interest. Make sure that emails from marketers and salespeople are personalized enough to stand out from the crowd and get the recipient’s attention.  

Performing Arts:

  To be effective, your communications must reach the intended audience. Whether your outgoing emails land in a contact’s Primary inbox (where they should) or somewhere else is referred to as performance (where the contact is less likely to see it). Personalized emails perform better than non-personalized emails, which should come as no surprise.   Many firms send personalized emails authored by Marketers or Salespeople in tandem with mass emails about upcoming webinars or new material, due to the high number of touchpoints required to pique a lead’s interest. In either instance, it’s critical to send high-quality emails to the Primary inbox rather than the Social or Promotional email folders. This allows you to get the most out of any correspondence you receive from the Marketing or Sales departments.  

Automated Intelligence

Lead engagement and follow-up is a highly individualized activity with a lot of possibility for mistakes. Working together, business people and automated technologies may give sales teams the promptness, persistence, personalization, and performance they need to work quality prospects more effectively and efficiently.   Even the most dedicated Marketing and Sales teams will find this a difficult task. As a result, many businesses decide to use an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) to deliver tailored emails at scale autonomously.   Because Intelligent Virtual Assistants are designed with best practices in mind, Marketing and Sales organizations can rest assured that these AI-powered dialogues adhere to the 4Ps.   SimpSocial connects to your CRM and pulls pertinent data (such as a person’s name and title) to create customised messages that guide conversations to a desired conclusion (like scheduling a Sales meeting). Our AI Assistants listen in on two-way discussions and respond appropriately, such as updating contact information in your CRM. Even better, AI-powered communications are multichannel, spanning email, SMS text, and the web.   SimpSocial specialized on Conversational Sales and Marketing can bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing with context-sensitive communications. Our AI Assistant lets teams to give leads messaging proven to identify interest and respond accordingly, whether they need to engage leads, re-activate their interest, or win back prior buyers.   It all happens automatically, swiftly, accurately, repeatedly, and with customisation using an Intelligent Virtual Assistant. Without overburdening Marketing or Sales personnel, organizations can expect 100% follow-up on all leads. Organizations increase communication with prospects by delegating key, repetitive tasks like crafting conversations with leads, allowing Marketers and Salespeople to focus on what they do best—educating the market and closing the deal.  

The Platform for an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is Intelligent Automation.

The Platform for an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is Intelligent Automation.

Customer-facing teams understand the importance of communication, but that doesn’t mean it’s simple. Attention, time, and effort are required for thoughtful communication. This is true whether you’re conversing with someone in person or through a digital channel like email, SMS, or website chat.   While technology can help scale communications through digital channels, the right technologies are required to ensure quality communication. Marketing automation platforms, for example, are ideal for reaching a large audience. While personalization can be incorporated into traditional email campaigns and nurture programs, these messages are intended to inform recipients rather than engage them in a real conversation. That is, it is extremely rare for a prospect or customer to respond to a batch or nurture email. Simple chatbots, likewise, are frequently pre-programmed with FAQ-type responses, but no one confuses them with real-time, two-way conversations.   It’s important to remember that email and website chat are just channels, not complete solutions. Organizations looking for a more robust solution to engage their customers and prospects can use a more versatile Intelligent Virtual Assistant, which can operate via simple automation and rules-based bots (IVA).  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: Everything You Need to Know

Customer-facing teams can use intelligent virtual assistants to attract, acquire, and grow customers at scale. Delivering a personalized first touch to incoming leads, persistently pursuing or nurturing a lead over time, autonomously identifying and elevating a sales-ready lead at the moment they express interest, driving customer health, or even renewing/expanding a customer engagement are all examples of this.   In other words, IVAs assist businesses in managing the entire customer lifecycle by sending human-like messages across three digital channels, even when business professionals are unable to do so. Intelligent Virtual Assistants can be used to provide an engaging experience for customers and prospects while also directing them to the next best action via website chat, SMS text messaging, and email. This not only helps your employees with capacity issues, but it also helps you generate revenue.

Effortless Communication Throughout the Customer Journey

In practice, here’s what a three-channel conversation powered by an IVA looks like:

  Your website is visited by a potential customer. She wants to learn more about your services by reading testimonials from your current customers. Instead of navigating the site herself, she is greeted by an Intelligent Virtual Assistant-powered website chat window.   She requests information about your customer case studies by tapping buttons or writing her own message. The IVA responds to her request appropriately, using Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG), and provides her with a link to the case studies on your website.   After reading a few case studies, the prospect decides she wants answers to two specific questions: “How much does your solution cost and how quickly can it be deployed?” and “How much does your solution cost and how quickly can it be deployed?” The IVA recognizes the significance of this question and forwards the prospect to a Sales representative via email or a scheduling link. The IVA establishes a connection between the prospect and your Sales rep, allowing them to discuss the specifics of her pain points and your offerings.   But the discussion doesn’t end there. The IVA then follows up with the prospect via email a few days later to ensure that the rep contacted her and that she was satisfied with her meeting. “Yes, I got what I needed,” she says. In an email to the IVA, she says, “Let’s revisit this next week.”   The Intelligent Virtual Assistant recognizes different types of intents and matches them to the most appropriate actions. Specifically, reminding the prospect of your business at a later date. This data is also saved automatically in your CRM or marketing automation platform.  

Continuing the Discussion

The Intelligent Virtual Assistant contacts the prospect on its own and sends a personalized email. She is deafeningly silent. The IVA follows up a few days later, never giving up. She responds this time, apologizing for missing the previous email because she is currently traveling: “Could you text me instead?” After confirming her mobile number, the IVA moves the conversation to SMS, where the prospect shares a time when your Sales rep can speak with the rest of the team.   The Intelligent Virtual Assistant contacts the prospect on its own and sends a personalized email. She is deafeningly silent. The IVA follows up a few days later, never giving up. She responds this time, apologizing for missing the previous email because she is currently traveling: “Could you text me instead?” After confirming her mobile number, the IVA moves the conversation to SMS, where the prospect shares a time when your Sales rep can speak with the rest of the team.  

Increasing the Size of Your Workforce

The Intelligent Virtual Assistant provided a powerful customer experience from the first touch to conversion, consistently moving the conversation to the next best action, and assisting the Sales team in closing a deal.   However, this is just one example. Intelligent Virtual Assistants supplement a variety of revenue-generating teams, including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Automotive Sales and Service, Finance, and Fundraising, in addition to being versatile across channels.   Intelligent Virtual Assistants drive topline growth and accelerate revenue opportunities by covering the entire customer lifecycle, all while providing operational efficiencies and scalability for customer-facing teams.  

Customers Met Where They Are

Intelligent Virtual Assistants enable businesses to meet customers where they are, whether that’s on your website, via email as a follow-up to a virtual event, or even via text message for contacts who aren’t near a computer.  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants with Multiple Channels: Meeting Customers Where They Are

Intelligent Virtual Assistants with Multiple Channels: Meeting Customers Where They Are

Customer-facing teams understand the importance of communication, but that doesn’t mean it’s simple. Attention, time, and effort are required for thoughtful communication. This is true whether you’re conversing with someone in person or through a digital channel like email, SMS, or website chat. While technology can help scale communications through digital channels, the right technologies are required to ensure quality communication. Marketing automation platforms, for example, are ideal for reaching a large audience. While personalization can be incorporated into traditional email campaigns and nurture programs, these messages are intended to inform recipients rather than engage them in a real conversation. That is, it is extremely rare for a prospect or customer to respond to a batch or nurture email. Simple chatbots, likewise, are frequently pre-programmed with FAQ-type responses, but no one confuses them with real-time, two-way conversations. It’s important to remember that email and website chat are just channels, not complete solutions. Organizations looking for a more robust solution to engage their customers and prospects can use a more versatile Intelligent Virtual Assistant, which can operate via simple automation and rules-based bots (IVA).

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: Everything You Need to Know

Customer-facing teams can use intelligent virtual assistants to attract, acquire, and grow customers at scale. Delivering a personalized first touch to incoming leads, persistently pursuing or nurturing a lead over time, autonomously identifying and elevating a sales-ready lead at the moment they express interest, driving customer health, or even renewing/expanding a customer engagement are all examples of this. In other words, IVAs assist businesses in managing the entire customer lifecycle by sending human-like messages across three digital channels, even when business professionals are unable to do so. Intelligent Virtual Assistants can be used to provide an engaging experience for customers and prospects while also directing them to the next best action via website chat, SMS text messaging, and email. This not only helps your employees with capacity issues, but it also helps you generate revenue.

Effortless Communication Throughout the Customer Journey

In practice, here’s what a three-channel conversation powered by an IVA looks like:

  Your website is visited by a potential customer. She wants to learn more about your services by reading testimonials from your current customers. Instead of navigating the site herself, she is greeted by an Intelligent Virtual Assistant-powered website chat window. She requests information about your customer case studies by tapping buttons or writing her own message. The IVA responds to her request appropriately, using Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG), and provides her with a link to the case studies on your website. After reading a few case studies, the prospect decides she wants answers to two specific questions: “How much does your solution cost and how quickly can it be deployed?” and “How much does your solution cost and how quickly can it be deployed?” The IVA recognizes the significance of this question and forwards the prospect to a Sales representative via email or a scheduling link. The IVA establishes a connection between the prospect and your Sales rep, allowing them to discuss the specifics of her pain points and your offerings. But the discussion doesn’t end there. The IVA then follows up with the prospect via email a few days later to ensure that the rep contacted her and that she was satisfied with her meeting. “Yes, I got what I needed,” she says. In an email to the IVA, she says, “Let’s revisit this next week.” The Intelligent Virtual Assistant recognizes different types of intents and matches them to the most appropriate actions. Specifically, reminding the prospect of your business at a later date. This data is also saved automatically in your CRM or marketing automation platform.  

Continuing the Discussion

The Intelligent Virtual Assistant contacts the prospect on its own and sends a personalized email. She is deafeningly silent. The IVA follows up a few days later, never giving up. She responds this time, apologizing for missing the previous email because she is currently traveling: “Could you text me instead?” After confirming her mobile number, the IVA moves the conversation to SMS, where the prospect shares a time when your Sales rep can speak with the rest of the team. The IVA contacts the prospect approximately 48 hours after the scheduled meeting to ensure she received everything she required. The prospect is pleased to report that she and her team have decided to work with your firm and are looking forward to being onboarded as a new customer.  

Increasing the Size of Your Workforce

The Intelligent Virtual Assistant provided a powerful customer experience from the first touch to conversion, consistently moving the conversation to the next best action, and assisting the Sales team in closing a deal. However, this is just one example. Intelligent Virtual Assistants supplement a variety of revenue-generating teams, including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Automotive Sales and Service, Finance, and Fundraising, in addition to being versatile across channels. Intelligent Virtual Assistants drive topline growth and accelerate revenue opportunities by covering the entire customer lifecycle, all while providing operational efficiencies and scalability for customer-facing teams.  

Customers Met Where They Are

Intelligent Virtual Assistants enable businesses to meet customers where they are, whether that’s on your website, by email as a follow-up to a virtual event, or even by text message for contacts who aren’t near a computer.  

Finding the Right Balance of Strength and Flexibility

Finding the Right Balance of Strength and Flexibility

When it comes to Software-as-a-Service, there’s a lot to think about (SaaS). Organizations want the best solutions for their needs, and they simply don’t have the time, resources, or energy to onboard shoddy technologies that will need to be replaced soon. Businesses consider a variety of factors when making purchases, including ease of use, flexibility or customization, and the solution’s best practices or strengths. These factors can, admittedly, be at odds with one another. For example, the most reliable solution might be extremely technical. Alternatively, the solution that is easiest to implement may have limited customization. It is the responsibility of each organization to evaluate each use case and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of any technology they are considering. There is, however, one inconsistency that should not be overlooked. When the value and strength of a solution like SimpSocial are directly contradicted by flexibility and customization.  

There Aren’t All Flexibilities Created Equal

  Consider an athlete’s physique. Depending on their sport or activity, they may spend a significant amount of time training their bodies to be strong or limber in specific areas. They risk injuring themselves if they do not properly prepare their bodies. SimpSocial falls into the same category. While some features benefit from flexibility and customization, others would suffer from overextension. Short and sweet emails, for example, tend to capture people’s attention, whereas long emails are frequently ignored. Similarly, well-constructed emails will arrive in the primary inbox of a recipient, whereas emails with unusual subject lines or body text will end up in spam folders. The truth is that emails that follow a specific formula have the best chance of converting leads into sales opportunities. Changing the formula will reduce the effectiveness of your outgoing emails. While SimpSocial allows customers to customize certain aspects of an AI-driven conversation (such as the subject line or injecting campaign-specific language), we do not allow other changes in order to maintain the conversation’s integrity. These limitations are based on best practices that have been tested and retested over the course of a decade of providing two-way, human-like conversations with leads and customers. Our Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) are, in fact, trained using deep learning and data from one billion interactions. SimpSocial is a leading provider of Intelligent Virtual Assistants that assist businesses in attracting, acquiring, and growing customers at scale. SimpSocial provides the most value to our customers—as well as the best experience for their leads and customers—by combining flexibility and customization when appropriate with rigidity based on longevity and best practices.

 

When Is Having Too Much Flexibility a Bad Idea?

  he primary value of an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is its ability to engage every lead or customer in a scalable way that leads to the best next action for generating revenue. An IVA, on the other hand, helps revenue-generating teams overcome many of the time and resource constraints they face by automating repetitive tasks like crafting large numbers of personalized emails, chasing cold leads, and following up with customers to schedule or reschedule important meetings. In this case, too much flexibility can work against you. When you write your own email, you have complete control over the content. You are, however, more likely to make mistakes, ranging from simple typos to sharing incorrect messaging to failing to follow best practices. Even the most seasoned Salesperson or Customer Success Manager makes mistakes or has a bad day from time to time. When you consider the large number of emails that teams must send to leads and customers, you can see how much time and effort goes into outreach. Intelligent Virtual Assistants, on the other hand, never get angry, frustrated, or waste time. Even better, IVAs always send out emails that have been thoroughly tested to ensure higher open rates and increased customer engagement. SimpSocial allows business professionals to focus on what they do best—closing deals and building relationships with customers—by intelligently automating redundant but critical communications.

 

When you want flexibility, you can have it, and when you need quality, you can have it.

  We are constantly improving our solutions based on customer feedback as a customer-centric organization. Customers are encouraged to make suggestions for what they would like to see from our Intelligent Virtual Assistants. We’ll collaborate with you to find the best SaaS solution for your needs. SimpSocial isn’t just selling software when it comes to SimpSocial. We’re selling the best practices that enable our Intelligent Virtual Assistants to have high-quality, two-way conversations with leads and customers, which saves time and increases revenue.  

How to Get More Sales-Ready Leads and Increase Lead Engagement

How to Get More Sales-Ready Leads and Increase Lead Engagement

Most Demand Generation and Marketing Operations professionals are familiar with the concept of using lead scoring and a typical funnel model to prioritize the leads they create for Sales. It appears to be an age-old practice. Leads are received, and a score is assigned based on their level of participation and demographic characteristics. Over time, that score rises until… Poof! An MQL is conceived. From there, the prospect progresses through the funnel. The classic funnel and lead scoring were created with the best of intentions. Because Marketing doesn’t want to burden Sales with leads who aren’t ready to buy, they use lead scoring to track engagement and identify which prospects should be followed up on as they progress down the funnel. It makes perfect sense: Sales doesn’t have to waste time on low-quality leads because Marketing takes care of the tough lifting in getting a lead to engage to the point where they’re ready to buy. Is the traditional model, however, the best option? Is there any other way to get more sales-ready leads and boost lead engagement?  

Leaving Lead Engagement Opportunities on the Table

  The difficulty is that lead scoring isn’t very good at determining a lead’s intent on its own, especially in a world that’s been turned entirely upside down. Buyer behavior has evolved to the point that 79 percent of buyers are eager to speak with Sales at the awareness or consideration stages of their purchasing process, which is significantly earlier than most traditional lead handoff techniques would allow. Knowing this, there’s a good chance that by the time you give a lead on to Sales, it’ll be too late. If you rely on a lead score to notify Sales when to follow up, you’re probably missing out on some crucial possibilities for engagement with your prospects and, as a result, losing money. Here are some examples of where the standard top-of-funnel procedure falls short: Typically, you send out about 40% of your new leads as MQLs, with the remaining 60% going into a nurture program or retargeting campaign. How confident are you that every single one of those leads is actually “not ready”? When leads have exhausted all of their nurture campaigns, they are frequently left in your database to get stale. You may launch revival campaigns now and again, but for the most part, those leads sit and you have to rely on them to raise their hands again on their own. Of course, you’re snagging hot leads and sending them straight to the SDRs. But how quickly do they respond? In many circumstances, they don’t have the capacity to follow up within the same day (if not the same hour), or they give up after a few tries. Delays kill deals—the longer you wait to follow up, the less likely you are to be engaged. What happens to a lead once it’s disqualified if Sales makes no attempt to qualify it? You undoubtedly have a nurture campaign in place that picks them up, but now you’re relying on the prospect to raise their hand and say they’re interested once more You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take if you don’t take them. We’ve devised a method for keeping leads in the top of the funnel and, as a result, slowing down the purchase cycle. Yes, it’s entirely unrealistic to expect Sales to follow up with each and every lead. You’ll not only have an army of disgruntled salespeople on your hands, but you’ll also have a strained Sales and Marketing relationship and wasted a lot of money in the process. Naturally, we want to assist Sales in prioritizing and facilitating outstanding conversations. However, when did priority become talking to only 40% of your prospects? The truth is that if you never ask, you’ll never know if a prospect is interested in speaking with you. Unfortunately, the approach isn’t scalable for your Sales staff, so hold off on trashing your lead scoring approach just yet. When you grade your leads, you usually have your SDR follow up with the best leads, referred to as “A leads”—this part remains the same. Rather than tossing your low-scoring leads into a nurture campaign and waiting for them to turn into MQLs, you can meet each prospect with a personalized greeting from an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA). Giving your lower-scoring leads some individualized attention is known to accelerate their progress through the funnel, resulting in serious pipeline that would not have occurred if you had relied on those leads to surface over time. CenturyLink, for example, reported a 16 percent to 20% boost in qualified leads simply by using an IVA on prospects that were less qualified in the traditional sense. When the IVA establishes that a lead is genuine, she can link that lead with a Salesperson in the same way that an SDR would.

Consider Using a Funnel That Isn’t a Traditional Funnel

  Prioritization is necessary for a variety of reasons. Maintaining a decent lead volume for Sales and ensuring that Sales is having constructive interactions with prospects who are truly interested in buying are two of the most important goals. Prioritization, on the other hand, must coexist with coverage—that is, continue to hand along hot leads to Sales as part of a standard lead scoring plan, but don’t allow the rest of your leads to fend for themselves and navigate the buying process without assistance. Intelligent Virtual Assistants can handle the heavy lifting of following up with all of your less-qualified prospects, putting less strain on Sales, and generating more pipeline from the leads you already have.  

When Sales and Marketing are on the Same Page

When Sales and Marketing are on the Same Page

Salespeople criticize Marketing teams for sending over weak leads, while Marketers chastise Sales teams for not following up on the leads they generate. Interdepartmental breakdowns lead to missed opportunities, squandered effort, and frustration. And, as businesses grapple with a sagging economy, these flaws are becoming even more apparent. But, regardless of how teams assign blame, the truth is that both teams rely on one another because they are all working toward the same goal: generating revenue. When sales and marketing teams work together, they can accomplish incredible things.

Increasing Sales and Marketing Alignment

SimpSocial conducted a short survey early last year, asking Marketing and Sales leaders about their teams’ relationships. The vast majority of sales and marketing professionals (87%) and marketers (93%) rated their relationship as “important” or “very important.” While two-thirds of respondents said the team relationships were good, they also thought they could be better. This raises the question of how Sales and Marketing leaders can actually improve things. Rashmi Vittal, SimpSocial’s CMO, said of the nine-square grid that combines people, processes, and technology to most effectively coordinate a go-to-market strategy, demand generation, and enablement, “This grid is something I always find myself coming back to.” “In terms of what Marketers can do to better align themselves with Sales, this is absolutely from a Marketing mindset.”

When Sales and Marketing are on the Same Page

People, Processes, and Technology are all important.

People, process, and technology can all be found on the left-hand side.

It all begins with individuals. Your team members must possess the necessary skills to critically evaluate the market, educate and communicate with potential customers, and motivate buyers. Business leaders must hire the best employees and give them the freedom to do what they do best. “No matter what department you work in, you will always have to deal with people in any organization. “People are always a part of the picture,” Vittal explained. “But there are also processes to consider. How do you get things done within or across groups, and what are the expectations?” Any organization’s ability to create and maintain proper processes is critical. Unfortunately, many of these processes are developed in a Marketing silo and then passed to Sales as directives. This causes mistrust among salespeople, who believe that marketing doesn’t understand what prospects really want. To improve processes, marketing and sales leaders must work together on market research and playbooks to generate (and hopefully convert) high-quality pipeline. The final piece of the puzzle is technology, which aids in the acceleration of human resources and provides insight into how well processes are performing. Analytics, reporting, and enablement tools, as well as CRMs and Marketing Automation Platforms, are all examples. “Reporting and analytics are critical, from your marketing automation tool to your CRM tool, to even come to the table with sales and have that conversation to answer the question, ‘How are we doing, and what can we do better?’” Vittal said. “Then there are other technologies, such as what we offer—Intelligent Virtual Assistants—that actually help optimize the funnel at various stages to have a higher contribution into your pipeline and higher contribution into your revenue.” Through scalable two-way, human-like conversations, Intelligent Virtual Assistants for Sales and Marketing help drive top-line growth, accelerate hot leads, and autonomously collect up-to-date lead data (such as contact information). This type of intelligent automation helps teams become more profitable and efficient by automating many redundant processes. As things stand, neither team has enough capacity to provide the experience required to gain more opportunities. This issue manifests itself in Marketing’s inability to provide a personalized touch to large numbers of inbound leads. But, strictly speaking, your companies do not want to contact more leads. What you really want is to be able to attract more clients. In a recent podcast, Drew Neisser, founder and CEO of Renegade, a New York-based marketing agency, mentioned how his father would encourage him during sports practice by saying, “If you can touch it, you can catch it.” We can practice turning more misses into close-calls and more close-calls into catches, even if we don’t always catch a new opportunity. However, in order to do so, salespeople and marketers must align and expand their sense of responsibility all the way through the funnel to the point of closure. The age-old marketing excuse, “Hey, we filled the pipeline and sales just didn’t close,” won’t cut it, according to Neisser.

Demand Generation, Enablement, and GTM Strategy

Examples of what Marketers can do to better align themselves with Sales can be found across the top. The first is a go-to-market strategy that boils down to one question: Where do you get your revenue? Before Sales can be given leads and prospects, Marketing must collaborate with Product Marketing to define a go-to-market strategy. The second step is to carry out the plan, which results in demand generation. What methods do you use to pique people’s interest? And how much of that interest should be generated by Marketing rather than Sales? What is the significance of this collaborative relationship? “Everyone needs to come together at the demand generation table,” Vittal said. “It’s all about generating pipeline and revenue, which we all know and love.” Enablement is the third area. It’s worth noting that the right-most column refers to “enablement” instead of “sales enablement.” It’s critical to recognize that Marketing has an impact across the board, from nurturing and educating leads for Sales to cultivating customer relationships to create brand ambassadors. “You should be enabling the company if you have the right people on your team,” Vittal says. Marketing’s role is not to educate and influence the market at large from the outside. It should also help with influencing within the organization.” One example is establishing a regular education cadence, knowing that education is critical to the success of your Sales team. When you combine this with the right technology to assist people in doing what they do best, you have a winning combination.

Collaboration is the key to establishing trust.

So, how can Sales and Marketing teams work together more effectively? “There isn’t going to be a big reveal. There isn’t a ta-da moment here. “It’s about collaborating to build trust,” Neisser explained. Business leaders must overcome the siloed thinking that Sales has a job and Marketing has a job in order to better align Sales and Marketing teams. They must recognize that they are both responsible for generating revenue for the company. To empower their revenue-generating teams, business leaders should strive to bring together the best people, processes, and technologies.

5 Ways an Intelligent Virtual Assistant Can Help You Close More Deals

5 Ways an Intelligent Virtual Assistant Can Help You Close More Deals

  It’s important to keep your sales cycle short, but it’s also important to keep the length of your sales cycle short. It’s also crucial to give prospects and clients a personalized experience throughout the process. While your employees are crucial in developing relationships with potential customers, technologies such as Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) can help businesses increase their speed and efficiency throughout the sales process. AI-driven technologies like an IVA aren’t a substitute for human involvement – they’re an important tool that augments your Sales team to create a more efficient process and produce more leads. From helping to funnel prospects to answering pressing inquiries 24/7 and following up over months and months of email tag, AI-driven technologies like an IVA aren’t a substitute for human participation – they’re an important tool that augments your Sales team to create a more efficient process and produce more leads.

AI’s Expansion and Power

We’re not talking about broken experiences or muddled workflows when it comes to Intelligent Virtual Assistants. In recent years, AI technology has advanced at such a rapid pace that distinguishing between a “real” person and AI has become increasingly difficult. In fact, 27% of customers were unsure whether their last customer service interaction was with a human or with artificial intelligence.

It’s also not a fad. According to Finance Digest, AI will be at the heart of 95% of all customer interactions by 2025.

  What’s the best thing about having an Intelligent Virtual Assistant on your team? It can be customized for your company so that responses that make sense, reflect your values, and describe your products are automatically generated. At the same time, you can use an IVA to update your database, contact numbers, and names, as well as automate meeting scheduling with your sales team.

1 – Intelligent Virtual Assistants Quickly Locate Prospects

  Consider the impact of an IVA. It can use a trigger to follow up on old and dead leads if they haven’t been contacted in a year. These are leads that no Salesperson would have touched before, and you’re giving yourself a second chance with outreach that appears to be personalized if the AI is set up correctly. As a result, AI is working as a member of your sales team, digging up old leads that would have otherwise slipped through the cracks. An IVA produces interested prospects through email, social media, webchat, and other methods with no employee involvement.   And here’s the greatest part: AI can learn from every encounter, making it more effective at keeping potential clients interested and bringing them in the door.

2 – Use Intelligent Virtual Assistants to Qualify Prospects and Schedule Meetings Quickly

  When it comes to sales, nothing is more frustrating than a dead end. With a series of simple questions—the most essential of which is “are you interested in speaking with a Salesperson?”—an Intelligent Virtual Assistant can assist speed up the process of ensuring prospects are truly qualified. ”. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant can determine whether it’s worth your time to set up an appointment with someone else in the sales department by seamlessly incorporating these questions into a conversation. This would be useful in and of itself, but AI technology doesn’t stop there. An IVA can plan prospect appointments on behalf of your sales team by acting as a digital assistant. And this is crucial: salespeople only spend 36% of their time selling. Non-sales activities such as admin work, meeting scheduling, paperwork, and email answering take up the rest of that time. An IVA relieves your team of this burden, allowing them to focus on what they do best: selling.

3 – Intelligent Virtual Assistants Assist in Product Presentation and Answering Questions

  Though your certified Sales team will still need to keep up to date on your products and services, an IVA can assist speed up this aspect of the process significantly. For starters, an AI Assistant can help keep a customer engaged with an email or SMS message by encouraging them to download a guide or free eBook that explains your service. As a result, by the time a potential client meets with the sales staff, they will already have a solid understanding of the product.   For some businesses, the “objections” phase of the sales cycle is the most time-consuming and difficult. Prospective clients want to make sure they’re getting the best solutions for their business or home, so they’ll frequently ask follow-up questions about the product. So, what do you do if a client contacts you on a weekend with a question? Or in the middle of the night?   A simple question can take days to answer without a customer-facing AI solution in place. The sales cycle can be greatly shortened if AI is ready and able to answer questions quickly. One of the most appealing features of an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is that it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   And if you don’t believe AI can effectively answer questions, think again. With support, AI was able to successfully answer up to 80% of frequently asked Tier 1 support questions. In Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success, similar effects are starting to emerge.

4 – Deal Closing and Beyond

  With technological advancements and changing consumer expectations, an IVA can shorten the sales cycle by allowing your customers to ask critical questions right away, allowing them to make faster decisions – and then actually complete the sale online.   It’s a common misconception that the sales cycle ends with a sale. An IVA can be used for the following purposes: Follow-up — Using AI-generated emails or SMS messages, your team can easily contact clients after the sale has been completed to confirm that they are happy with the product, ask if they have any questions, and continue the relationship.   Simple referrals – 90% of consumers still trust brand recommendations from people they respect. You can encourage your consumers to submit reviews, discuss their experiences on social media, and tell their friends and family about your product by implementing an IVA.   You’ve not only sped up the sales cycle from prospecting to sealing the deal if you’ve used the capabilities of an Intelligent Virtual Assistant throughout the process – you’ve also impressed your clients with a simplified, efficient, and proactive outreach.

5 – If your employees have more free time, they will produce more results.

  Teams improve day-to-day operations and find time to brainstorm thanks to the power of an Augmented Workforce, which combines people and AI technologies. Having more brainpower and creativity on staff means reducing processes, strengthening team culture, and using innovation to shorten the sales cycle. More than a third of CEOs feel that the time saved by having digital assistants allows them to focus on deep thought and creation. It will be quite difficult for your organization to break out from the cycle and generate fresh, creative ideas if it spends too much time on lower-level processes. Your team will be able to spend more time not only answering higher-level questions or managing high-level prospects, but also thinking of creative solutions to speed up your processes, thanks to artificial intelligence taking on lower-level tasks. AI’s analytical prowess can also show your team where processes need to be streamlined. Machine learning capabilities can help you collect a wealth of information about potential customers. Who is visiting your website? What are the engagement demographics? What’s working and what’s not in each step of your process? How do you get better at everything? Every aspect of your sales cycle is enhanced, improved, and shortened with an IVA. When you consider how intelligent automation and Intelligent Virtual Assistants affect every stage of the sales cycle, it’s easy to see how well they integrate with your sales staff. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant frees up your top Salespeople to focus on the hard questions by answering simple questions. AI may convert those who are only looking for additional information into prospects, advancing them to the next step of the process, by engaging with them. An IVA can re-engage former leads by sending them an email or SMS. Artificial intelligence does not imply fewer human-to-human relationships. It’s all about maximizing the impact of those tailored contacts by taking care of little things, capturing data, and providing critical administrative assistance.  

Using Multiple Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Different Geographical Areas: Best Practices

Using Multiple Intelligent Virtual Assistants in Different Geographical Areas: Best Practices

Your company must resonate with your target demographic in order to succeed in sales and marketing. You must not only comprehend their objectives and pain spots, but you must also interact with them on their terms. To put it another way, if you want to make an impression on potential clients, you must “speak the talk.” Of course, what appeals to one group of people may not appeal to every group you encounter. This is especially true when communicating with people in different parts of the world. If you want to have a lasting, beneficial influence, you’ll need to overcome language obstacles and respect cultural customs. At SimpSocial, we strive to provide the most natural and positive experience for your potential consumers. This begins with a knowledge that your potential consumers are accustomed to getting emails from staff with specific names, titles, phone numbers, and email signatures. Each of these elements has an impact on how successful your lead outreach is. Here are some best practices for applying regionally and culturally relevant criteria to messages coming in for your Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), as well as how and why to leverage numerous IVAs at once, in order to get the greatest outcomes and protect your brand’s reputation.

Why Do Companies Use Several Intelligent Virtual Assistants?

Why do firms need several Intelligent Virtual Assistants if they offer near-unlimited scalability?

  This is due to a number of factors. The first is that IVAs have a variety of capabilities that cater to the needs of various teams. Because one size does not always fit all, it’s better to have one Intelligent Virtual Assistant with Sales and Marketing capabilities (for example, to follow up on leads and cultivate interest) and another with Customer Success abilities to stay in touch with customers. The second reason—and the subject of this post—is that for businesses that service multiple geographic locations, it’s critical to conform to appropriate language standards, cultural norms, consumer expectations, and other factors. Consider this: Would you hire a single employee to cover the entire worldwide market? Do you have a single marketing approach that applies to everyone on the planet? Do you expect each geo’s leads to perform the same way? Do you ever break down your outcomes by geography since you have different expectations for each? Have you taken the time to establish different websites for different geographies?

When employing your Intelligent Virtual Assistants, it’s a good idea to follow the same logic.

Consider the following factors: location, time zones, and behaviour.

  Intelligent Virtual Assistants should appear to be in real time and space. This means that just like a Sales Development Representative (SDR) can’t be on three continents at the same time, your Intelligent Virtual Assistant shouldn’t be able to. If your SDR isn’t at work at 3 a.m. local time, neither should your IVA be transmitting signals at that hour. Because they aren’t constrained by the same constraints as humans, Intelligent Virtual Assistants are practically indefinitely scalable. Customers’ return on investment suffers when they approach their IVA like a machine rather than an AI-driven workforce. What is the reason for this? While having an always-on virtual employee may appear to be beneficial, the truth is that it might disrupt conversations (as leads inquire, “Why are you awake right now?”). “Where have you gone?”) can create false expectations, such as when an IVA responds in minutes but an SDR doesn’t show up until the next morning.

When it comes to email signatures, there are a few things to consider.

Your Intelligent Virtual Assistants’ signatures should include a non-PO Box mailing address in order to be CAN-SPAM compliant. This is vital not simply for compliance, but it also helps to distinguish your Intelligent Virtual Assistant from Marketing Automation Nurturing by making her feel local and relatable. While both types of nurture and follow-up have their place, tailored, human-like emails are more likely to get a response. Avoid inserting an address from each nation in the signature line of your IVA-powered emails if you’re utilizing a single IVA to manage contacts from several locations. This is awkward, as it quickly marks conversations as inauthentic, impersonal, and more likely to have been sent from an unmonitored email address.

Using numerous Intelligent Virtual Assistants for different geos, for example, enables for local phone numbers.

Allow for cultural and linguistic differences.

  Multiple languages and cultural subtleties (such as Japanese kanji, Portuguese accent markings, and more) are supported by SimpSocial’s Intelligent Virtual Assistants, making discussions feel realistic and natural. The same can be said for an IVA’s name, title, and company name, which may need to be translated into a foreign language. Creating significant diversity in your email content is one technique to attain high deliverability rates. An IVA, for example, can present itself as a member of your company in the email’s subject line or text. The communication appears more trustworthy and individualized when the firm name, title, or other details are translated into the appropriate language—rather than English, for example.

In 2021, there will be three major changes in lead engagement strategies.

In 2021, there will be three major changes in lead engagement strategies.

The year 2020 is drawing to a close (phew), and 2021 is rapidly approaching. While it may feel like a victory just to make it through this year, there is no rest for the weary – and 2021 will undoubtedly be difficult in its own way. Isn’t change the only constant? Engagement is the name of the game for companies with growth goals (or any goals, for that matter) in the coming year. More engagement leads to more sales conversations, resulting in increased revenue. The noise and distractions in digital buyer’s journeys are only going to get louder and more distracting, making generating engagement from your audience more competitive than ever. To cut through the clutter and increase your chances of great lead engagement in 2021, we recommend focusing on three key lead engagement strategies: personalization, Sales and Marketing alignment, and omnichannel communication.  

Personalization reigns supreme and will continue to do so.

  Personalization comes in a variety of forms. Personalizing messaging with a prospect’s or customer’s demographic information is an example of a quick, easy win. Personalization that requires a little more effort includes serving content related to the most recent engagement, crafting messaging specific to a stage in the buyer’s journey, and providing content on a channel where a lead is most likely to engage based on recent behaviour. Personalization is powerful in any context, and it isn’t going away anytime soon. Customers will demand it even more in the future, and will choose to do business with brands that excel at it. According to a 2020 Forrester study commissioned by Adobe, customer expectations for more personalized and digital experiences are higher than ever before, according to 76 percent of surveyed B2B practitioners and 83 percent of surveyed B2C practitioners. However, implementing a personalization-centric strategy is time-consuming and difficult to scale. There’s no getting around it in 2021: businesses must invest in analytics, intent, and intelligent automation tools that allow them to increase the level of personalization in their campaigns and communications without putting additional strain on sales and marketing teams.  

Earlier Sales Involvement in the Buyer’s Journey

  It’s common knowledge that nurturing leads produces better results, and even a semblance of nurture is preferable to none at all. Despite this, a 2019 Demand Gen Report survey found that 60% of respondents gave their nurture programs a failing grade. With 67 percent of the buying journey taking place online, it’s critical that Sales gets involved as soon as possible. If we wait for a lead to become “qualified,” we’re more than likely to find that they’ve already gone down at least part of some decision path before speaking with Sales – and it may already be too late. This is an opportunity for Marketing and Sales to collaborate on a cohesive, consistent, and engaging nurture and follow-up strategy. Rather than drawing hard lines in the sand between when Marketing is “allowed to touch” a lead and when Sales says “hands off my leads,” the two teams should collaborate to create a nurture program that includes both Marketing-supplied content and Sales outreach, mixed throughout the buying journey. Divide and conquer your leads with a mix of traditional nurture, sales outreach, and follow-up from an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is one practical way to do this (IVA). Develop scoring thresholds for when a new lead is passed to an IVA versus when it is passed to a live Salesperson. If you have A, B, and C quality leads, for example, give the A leads to your Sales team while having an IVA follow-up with the B and C leads to further qualify them before they reach your Sales team. And if those B and C leads don’t convert, it’s no big deal for either team: the leads can go back into the remarketing pool and be resurrected at a later date, with no resources wasted.  

Creating a Platform for Omnichannel Conversations

  TCommunication with prospects and customers has traditionally been one-way. Drip email nurtures, digital retargeting campaigns, and direct mail outreach are all good ways to introduce your brand to your audience, but they rarely result in productive, conversational responses. Furthermore, now, more than ever, when your customers are ready to talk, they expect immediate, consistent communication. Despite this, the channels through which you do allow a lead to respond to you are frequently disjointed. According to Martech Series, 87 percent of today’s consumers wish businesses would provide consistent experiences across channels, and another 35 percent wish they could communicate with the same person across channels. Conversations that begin via chat, for example, frequently do not continue via other channels such as email or text message, resulting in a disjointed and frustrating experience for the customer. Businesses must enable omnichannel communication experiences for their customers, especially in a digital-first world, or risk losing out to competitors who do. After all, a good experience is important to 73 percent of consumers when it comes to influencing their brand loyalty. It’s no easy task, but mastering all three of these strategies by 2021 will ensure you’re providing delightful experiences for your customers and increasing brand engagement. In addition, we could all benefit from some enjoyable experiences in our lives. Are you curious about how SimpSocial can help you boost engagement in 2021? To schedule a demo or to view our most recent webinar, please contact us.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

When it comes to technology, each advancement is reliant on the progress of others. SimpSocial, for example, automates two-way, human-like interactions on a large scale. However, achieving this capability necessitates a combination of technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robot process automation. But there’s another factor at work: Natural Language Processing (NLP). Let’s take a closer look at NLP, its position in SimpSocial, and how these technologies help revenue-generating teams achieve better results.

In AI, what is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?

  Natural Language Processing is, in several ways, just what it sounds like: a technology’s ability to process everyday language. This can be written text (as in an email, text message, or website chat window) or spoken text (as in an email, text message, or website chat window) (like a phone call or voice-activated assistant). Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG) are two other components of NLP (NLG). The ability to interpret and comprehend messages from a touch is the first. Taking orders is a simple example. The ability to produce text or voice is the latter. You can only engage contacts in two-way conversations once NLU and NLG are combined; knowing language coming in and producing language going out. Of course, that’s just the feature. Businesses are interested in what you do with that feature.  

NLP and SimpSocial in the Workplace

  Let’s take a closer look at what this means for business users now that we’ve addressed the basics. Organizations offload regular conversations to AI by automating the ability to interpret, understand, and react to conversations with leads and customers. Crafting a customized email to a prospect or client requires time. Each contact takes just a few minutes on average. When you have hundreds or even thousands of contacts to communicate with, this becomes a scalability problem. Employees may spend less time crafting repetitive communications and more time working on high-value projects by automating these interactions. Natural Language Processing in AI, on the other hand, isn’t just about increasing productivity. At the end of the day, SimpSocialI is all about generating sales. These technologies work together to simplify communications and engage contacts in natural back-and-forth conversations that lead to the best next step. Even the most committed Marketing and Sales teams will struggle to offer a customized first-touch to hundreds of webinar attendees. SimpSocial, on the other hand, makes it scalable to ask leads if they have any questions and would like to speak with a Salesperson to get them answered. Attendees are engaged by a powerful AI solution to decide which are ready to take action and which require more time or attention. SimpSocial’s ability to engage contacts, drive sales prospects and augment revenue-generating teams of business professionals relies heavily on Natural Language Processing.

Conversational AI with Human-Like Qualities: Past, Present, and Future

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a part of our daily lives, both at work and at home.

Conversational AI is everywhere, from personal virtual assistants that help us play music and monitor our homes to skilled virtual assistants that help us do our work. Let’s take a closer look at the history of Conversational AI, where it is now, and where it is headed in the future.

A Quick Overview of Conversational AI

MIT created ELIZA, a precursor to natural language processing, in the 1960s, which sowed the seeds of Conversational AI (NLP). ELIZA was prompted by a user statement and ran on a variety of scripts. One of the most well-known applications of ELIZA was in psychotherapy, where a client would say something like “My mother hates me,” and the technology would answer with something like “Why do you think your mother hates you?” It was convincing enough to pass the Turing exam at the time. With Shoebox, a voice-activated calculator, IBM, a tech giant and long-time innovator, helped NLP take a move forward. In the 1980s, IBM continued to innovate, creating a voice-activated typewriter with a built-in vocabulary of 20,000 words. With the Simon smartphone, IBM developed the first-ever Virtual Assistant, complete with automated speech recognition technology, nearly a decade later. Colloquies created the world’s first chatbot, SmarterChild. It used AOL instant messenger to connect and had 30 million “buddies” on the network. SimpSocial entered the market in 2007 with an AI Assistant designed to assist car dealerships in motivating online leads to visit the store. SimpSocial has since extended the use cases for its Conversational AI technology to assist all revenue-generating teams across sectors, based on how effective it was in speeding up transactions. The number of households and companies using personal AI assistants including Google Home and Amazon Alexa increased dramatically in the 2010s. Voice-activated assistants are used for a wide range of tasks. These tasks include using home computers, conducting web searches, and shopping online.

Today’s Most Popular Conversational AI Use Cases

Today, customer-facing business teams use Conversational AI in the form of AI Assistants to engage contacts in customized conversations at scale. AI Assistants are virtual team members who assist business professionals in completing tasks. As a result, whereas AI Assistants automate routine activities, business professionals may concentrate on higher-value tasks that involve creative thinking and problem solving, which only humans are capable of. Different teams have different use cases for AI Assistants. Marketing, for example, uses AI Assistants to give each incoming lead a personalized touch to determine the leads are “sales-ready” and which need more time. Customer Success teams, on the other hand, use AI Assistants to communicate with their clients on a daily basis. This makes it easier for Customer Success Managers to plan crucial meetings, collect feedback, track customer health, and provide growth opportunities. Another common form of Conversational AI is chatbots. Website chat facilitates the exchange of information between website users and the information they need. This involves answering commonly asked questions, directing visitors to specific web sites, and assisting with problem resolution. Website chat is very common on ecommerce sites and for customer service. Marketers have recently adopted website chat to gather lead information, identify sales-ready leads, and direct visitors to useful resources such as customer case studies. There is, admittedly, a distinction between simple chatbots and Conversational AI-powered website chat, both in terms of construction and function. Chatbots are simple rule-based systems. Certain words are recognized, and phrases are matched to a pre-programmed answer. They are unable to simulate two-way conversations, and their applications are fairly limited—which is perfect if that is what you need. However, with a more advanced AI approach, many businesses and consumers enjoy two-way conversations. Although these AI are more advanced than bots, they are often referred to as personality chatbots. Website visitors can have real-time conversations with AI-driven website chat. AI Assistants, on the other hand, can communicate through a variety of networks, including email and SMS text messaging. Although these exchanges can take place in real time, AI Assistants can carry on the conversation for days or even weeks. This level of commitment is required to promote contact with leads or clients in order to help inspire them to take the next best step, such as arranging a meeting with your Sales or Customer Success teams. Conversational AI is popular with customers because it is timely, persistent, and courteous. They don’t know they’re talking to an AI in certain situations, thinking they’re talking to a real human.

The Future of Conversational AI

Although no one can predict the future with absolute certainty, the trend toward more sophisticated Conversational AI and more use cases is likely to continue. Conversational AI’s number of available channels is expected to grow in the near future. If the popularity of social selling grows, so will the popularity of social-selling AI Assistants. Similarly, Conversational AI that is triggered by voice can improve its ability to understand and respond to users in normal, two-way conversations. It’s worth noting that a lot of Conversational AI solutions use Machine Learning, which helps to improve accuracy and capabilities over time. As a result, newcomers to Conversational AI will, on average, have less history to draw on than a legacy provider. Conversational AI can make its way into new business teams as a result of increased learning and creativity. It’s likely that Conversational AI could evolve from AI Assistants, which assist employees in automating routine tasks to increase productivity, to AI Advisors, which assist employees in making strategic decisions based on the AI’s ability to process vast volumes of data rapidly.

How Telecoms Are Using SimpSocial to Improve Customer Experience

Customers are the lifeblood of every company. This is why many telecommunications companies create Customer Success teams, also known as Account Management or Customer Experience teams, to ensure that customer relationship remain satisfied and stable. However, this is not a simple mission. High customer-to-account manager ratios make it challenging, if not impossible, for Customer Success teams to provide each customer with the attention they need to succeed. Fortunately, telecom companies may use technological strategies to maximize the value of each customer account. Let’s look at how artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service will help telecommunications companies improve their Customer Success teams.

What Is the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Success?

  It’s necessary to distinguish between Customer Success and Customer Service. Customer success focuses on constructive engagements that lead to better results for consumers. This involves onboarding new customers efficiently and increasing product consumption. On the other side, customer service is more reactive. If a customer has a query, Customer Service will assist them in resolving it. Another distinction is that Customer Success focuses on customer retention and revenue generation, while Customer Service focuses on cost avoidance.

Problems with Ability and Retention

  It’s common knowledge that retaining an existing customer is less expensive than acquiring a new one. In reality, increasing customer retention by only 5% will increase sales by 25% to 95 percent. If customer retention isn’t a top priority for your business, you’re probably wasting money. However, there are only so many hours in a day to provide diligent customer service. Customer Success teams are required to prioritize some customers over others, with customer-to-account manager ratios as high as 50:1 or 100:1. High-value accounts (those that have made the largest investments in your offerings) receive the most exposure, while low-value accounts (who make up the rest of the base) receive less. Customers can become frustrated and churn as a result of this inconsistent customer experience. Some companies believe that disgruntled customers can express their frustration, allowing Customer Success teams to react. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The vast majority of customers (96%) will not complain; instead, they will actually leave and never return. Rather than waiting for disgruntled customers to speak up, telecoms can look for warning signs of a potentially troubled account, such as missing meetings or quarterly market reviews, and low product/service use. Telecoms must embrace innovations that provide greater insight into consumer wellbeing, provide a consistent customer experience across accounts, and push consumers to the next best action—all while increasing team capacity—if they want to retain customers.

Telecommunications Customer Success Software

  The telecommunications industry is primed for AI implementation. Businesses also need creative ways to better manage personalized interactions with consumers as their user bases grow. This is where artificial intelligence (AI)—specifically, SimpSocial—comes into play. Customers are engaged in two-way, human-like interactions through various platforms using SimpSocial, which is a mixture of Natural-Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning.  

What does this imply for Customer Success professionals? SimpSocial creates and distributes customized communications at scale, encouraging consumers to take action. Here are some of the actions:

  New customers should be onboarded as soon as possible. Collecting customer reviews politely, Consistently promoting consumer well-being Growing product use and generating enthusiasm for expansion opportunities SimpSocial for telecom helps Customer Success teams reduce capacity bottlenecks and provide a personalized touch to every customer by automating these experiences. More positive focus results in happy customers and happier customers result in more sales retention and growth opportunities.  

How Three Industries Compare to the Four Ps: Technology, Telecom, Media, and Entertainment

SimpSocial conducts a hidden shopper survey every year to determine how successful companies are at sales follow-up. We then assess these businesses based on the “4Ps of Sales Effectiveness,” which include:

Promptness refers to how easily a sales team responds to a lead’s follow-up order.

Persistence:

 

The number of times a sales team contacts a customer after the initial contact.

Personalization:

  In a follow-up message, how many personalization elements are included? (e.g. personalized greeting, individual sender, signature with contact information, relevant content, and effort to push the conversation forward),And if the follow-up answer was sent to the Primary mailbox, the Promotions/Social folder, or the dreaded Spam folder.   Of course, our 2020 Sales Effectiveness Report was released during a turbulent year in which businesses grappled with the aftermath of COVID-19 and the resulting economic downturn. Although we don’t have a clear picture of how the pandemic affected each industry, it’s clear that different industries were affected in different ways.   Our research looked at 1,177 businesses in three different industries: technology, telecommunications, and media and entertainment. As consumers reevaluated their budgets, tech companies struggled to generate sales and retain customers. Businesses and customers needed more connectivity to operate remotely, which boosted demand for telecoms. Closures and municipal limitations made it impossible for media and entertainment companies to operate.   Businesses, regardless of sector, needed to engage with their contacts in order to drive sales and keep them updated. Let’s take a look at how each of the three sectors we surveyed fared in terms of the 4Ps.

The Technology Sector

  Over 800 technology firms, both B2B and B2C, were surveyed by our hidden shopper. We believed that these businesses will be digitally allowed to thrive through the 4Ps because of their industry.

Did our expectations, however, fit reality?

  The Technology industry scored the highest in two of the four Ps (with 25% of companies receiving an A in promptness and 5% receiving an A in persistence) and had the highest number of companies receiving an overall A grade (with 10% of companies consistently performing well in all four Ps).   Although this is good news for the businesses that did well, a significant number of tech companies failed to meet their revenue targets:   Within 5 minutes, 25% of businesses responded to our hidden shopper’s request for follow-up. However, nearly half of those who did not answer within 24 hours received an F. Worse still, 5% of tech companies did not respond to our shopper’s follow-up request at all.   Just 5% of businesses were genuinely diligent with their lead follow-up, contacting prospects 11 to 15 times. About half of the businesses only attempted to reach our mystery shopper once or twice before giving up.   Approximately 30% of tech companies used five personalization elements in their customized contact. Half of the messages made only rudimentary personalization attempts, such as including the lead’s name in the introduction and nothing else.   Just 12% of businesses submitted emails that were regularly delivered to the Primary Inbox. The majority of businesses (48%) sent emails that ended up in the Promotions or Social folders on a regular basis.

Technology is a powerful tool.

punctuality A percentage of 25% (0-5 mins) B is 12 percent (6-60 mins) C is 9 percent (1-8 hrs) D is 6 percent (9-24 hrs) Persistence at 48 degrees Fahrenheit (>24 hours) A 5 percent (optimal: 11-15) 9 percent B (inadequate: 7-10 / 16-20) 24°C (excessive: 3-6°C / 21°C+) D 57 percent (too few: 1-2) Personalization is 6% F (none: 0). A 29 percent (5 elements) B is 6 percent (4) 4 percent Celsius (3) ten percent D (2) Performance of 51 percent F (0-1) A 12 percent (Primary) B is 27 percent (Mix) 8% Celsius (Mix) D is for 48 percent (Promo) F5% (Spam) Over our other two sectors, the Technology industry received points for their fast and persistent follow-up. Businesses in the tech sector should place a greater focus on personalizing their outreach to increase their sales effectiveness.

Industry of Telecommunications

  Just 4% of the telecommunications firms we looked at received an overall A. This suggests that the telecommunications industry lacks the technological capabilities needed to efficiently follow up with leads and prospects.   Internal problems, such as matching Salesforce capability to increased demand for their services, trouble moving workers to remote work, or budgetary issues, were likely present in these organizations. However, this emphasizes the importance of a digital-first communication approach.  

Here are some of the report’s highlights:

  Though 17% of telecoms responded to our mystery shopper within 5 minutes, the overwhelming majority (63%) took more than 24 hours to respond. It took many people more than a week to get their first contact. And 6% of people didn’t respond at all. With 77 percent attempting to contact our hidden shopper twice or less before giving up, the telecommunications industry fell behind in Persistence. Just 16 percent of businesses hit all five elements of personalized outreach, while 65 percent didn’t personalize anything beyond the lead’s first name. For emails that ended up in the Promotions or Social files, 58 percent of businesses received a D, and for the rest of messages that ended up in the Spam folder, 6 percent received an F. Just 9% of businesses were regularly placed in the Primary folder.  

Telecommunications services

  punctuality A 17 percent (0-5 mins) B is 12 percent (6-60 mins) 5% carbon dioxide (1-8 hrs) 9-24 hours (4 percent D) Persistence at 63 degrees Fahrenheit (>24 hours) A percentage of 1 (optimal: 11-15) 3 percent B (inadequate: 7-10 / 16-20) Excessive: 3-6 / 21+) 19 percent C D 71 percent (too few: 1-2) Personalization is 6% F (none: 0). A 16 percent (5 elements) B is 6 percent (4) 7 percent carbon dioxide (3) D is 6 percent (2) Performance of 65 percent F (0-1) A 9 percent (Primary) B is 24 percent (Mix) 3 percent Celsius (Mix) D 58 percent (Promo) F6 (Spam)   The telecommunications industry should consider introducing new technology to help them deliver timely, persistent, and personalized messages at scale in order to increase sales effectiveness.  

The Entertainment and Media Industry

  Since in-person activities were suspended during the time of our review, we assumed that media and entertainment companies would be the least likely to react. Surprisingly, the Media & Entertainment industry outperformed all other industries in two of the four Ps (Personalization and Performance), with 6% of companies receiving an overall A. These companies may have realized the value of keeping their customers engaged during unpredictable times.

Here’s how the Media & Entertainment industry stacks up to the 4Ps:

  The Media & Entertainment industry earned the second-highest percentage of A grades in Promptness (19%) (for answering in 5 minutes or less) and the lowest percentage of F grades (39%). (taking over 24 hours to respond).   Companies fell behind in the field of persistence, with zero receiving an A. The overwhelming majority (70 percent) only attempted to reach our mystery shopper once or twice before giving up.   These businesses excelled at personalization, with 39 percent receiving an A for incorporating all five components. However, almost the same percentage (40%) received a D for only having two items.   Performance was equally strong as a result of these companies’ emphasis on personalization, with 14 percent receiving an A for consistently landing in the Primary folder. Half of the businesses polled (49%) used a hybrid approach of promotional emails that were still customized enough to be prioritized in the Primary folder.

Entertainment & Media

  punctuality A 19 percent (0-5 mins) B is 12 percent (6-60 mins) 17 percent Celsius (1-8 hrs) D is 13 percent (8-24 hrs) Persistence at 39°F (>24 hours) A 0 percent (optimal: 11-15) 4% B (unsatisfactory: 7-10 / 16-20) Excessive: 3-6 / 21+) 26 percent C D 70 percent (too few: 1-2) Personalization: 0 percent F (none: 0) A 39 percent (5 elements) B is 13 percent (4) 5% carbon dioxide (3) D (four percent) (2) Performance of 40 percent F (0-1) A 14 percent (Primary) B 49 percent (Mix) C is one percent (Mix) D is 36 percent (Promo) 0 degrees F (Spam) More touches to leads and opportunities will help media and entertainment companies increase their sales effectiveness.   With the help of an intelligent virtual assistant, you will increase your sales effectiveness.   Any company must consistently offer timely, persistent, and customized outreach to leads and prospects. However, scaling successful lead follow-up with people power alone is difficult. Organizations should consider augmenting their workforces with an Intelligent Virtual Assistant to help Sales teams work every lead to its full potential (IVA).   Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) combine the scalability of intelligent automation with the human-like touch of SimpSocial to help Sales teams gain revenue opportunities and increase capability by automating customized outreach that is always timely, persistent, and friendly. IVAs follow best practices at all times and encourage leads to take the next best step (such as scheduling a meeting with your sellers).   Consider taking on an Intelligent Virtual Assistant to scale your outreach if your company is struggling with the 4Ps of sales effectiveness.

The Four Ps of Successful Sales Follow-Up

We’ve all heard the story: marketing creates leads, and sales follows up to gauge interest, answer questions, and turn those leads. But, as we all know, it isn’t always that easy. Engaging a lead in a two-way conversation requires speed, patience, and tact. The more powerful a Sales team is in these areas, the more likely they are to be successful. The variables that contribute to Sales success are referred to as “the 4Ps” at SimpSocial. Engaging leads and developing them into opportunities is easier when you perform well in the 4Ps. The four Ps are: Quickness: How soon does the sales team react to a lead or inquiry? How many follow-up attempts would the Sales team make before deciding to move on? Personalization: How much of your answer was tailored to you? Did the answer make an effort to advance the conversation? Performance: Did the email make it to the primary inbox of the lead? Is it possible that it ended up in Promotions, Social, or Spam? Let’s take a closer look at each of these to see how relevant they are and how you can boost your sales effectiveness.

Punctuality

When dealing with an inbound lead, the most critical thing is promptness. The higher the chance of converting a lead to a customer, the quicker the connection is made. But when it comes to speed, how fast is fast enough? Should Sales teams follow up with a contact who fills out a lead form or requests a demo within hours or minutes? To be honest, sellers only have five minutes to contact leads. According to studies, the chances of qualifying a lead contacted within 5 minutes are ten times higher than those contacted within 10 minutes—and dramatically higher than those contacted after 30 minutes. Similarly, quick answers give you a leg up on the competition. According to research, 78 percent of consumers purchase from the first responder. Recognizing that COVID-19 and the resulting economic downturn continue to have a detrimental effect on sales cycles, companies must adapt as quickly as possible. The same is true for generating inbound leads via webinars, virtual events, or content downloads, which require consumers to submit their contact information through a lead form. Some of these prospects want to learn more about your company’s services, while others are only interested in your thought leadership. In this case, it’s a good idea to contact them right away so your company will be on their minds.

Persistence is a virtue.

Although speed is essential, it’s uncommon to convert a lead after just one contact. In fact, getting a lead to react can take up to 15 touches. The pandemic has intensified persistence as a pattern. Sales periods lengthen as budgets tighten. More touches from sales teams are required to entice potential customers to take the next move. People are preoccupied. Even if a lead intends to answer, it will not do so immediately. Your message could become lost in a cluttered inbox as a result of this. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. Consistent follow-up keeps your company in the lead’s mind until he or she is able to take the next move and schedule a meeting with your sales team.

Individualization.

Personalization requires the most time and effort of the four Ps to create a specific and appealing message. This problem is exacerbated when salespeople either send a customized email to a new lead right away or persistently pursue a lead over time. Nonetheless, evidence shows that hard work pays off. Personalized emails get double the number of opens and click-throughs as non-personalized emails. But what exactly constitutes a personalized email? This five-part norm is used by SimpSocial to define personalization: Personalized greeting: The contact is addressed by name in the message. Individual sender: The sender’s name—or at the very least the organization, team, or department name—should be listed in the email’s “From” line. Signature or contact information: The message includes the sender’s contact information so that he or she can reply. Success factor: By requesting a meeting time, exchanging educational information, or offering to answer questions, the sales associate pushes the discussion forward. Personalized material: The email’s content refers to the lead’s original request (whether it’s for a tutorial, a content download, or registration for a webinar or event). All five are present in a fully personalized email.

Exercising

As you would imagine, personalization and success go hand in hand. The more personalized an email is, the more likely it is to be sent to the primary inbox of the recipient. Email service providers help consumers by automatically sorting emails into different files. Gmail is a good example of this. A message can end up in the Primary Inbox, Promotions Folder, Social Folder, or Spam Folder, depending on the sender and content of the email. Each of these groups serves a specific function. However, there is a clear difference for Sellers between messaging arriving in the most successful location (the Primary Inbox) and anywhere else. Sellers can improve email efficiency by adopting best practices and personalizing emails.

What Do You Do If You’re Short on the 4Ps?

Although our 4Ps are focused on industry best practices, hitting all of these categories perfectly every time is difficult. Salespeople only have so many hours in the day to follow up on leads, let alone their other responsibilities. It takes time to create a personalized email, for example.

How will salespeople do a better job of following up with high-performing customized emails on a consistent basis?

Sales teams also use email templates, marketing automation tools, and increasing headcount by recruiting more Sales Development Representatives to help them meet these goals (SDRs). However, it appears that this is insufficient. According to SimpSocial’s 2020 Sales Effectiveness Study, only 8% of companies surveyed performed well across all 4Ps. Clearly, new strategies and innovations are needed to assist sales teams in improving lead follow-up. Fortunately, an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) will help (IVA). By automating lead follow-up and outreach, an IVA helps revenue-generating teams. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant serves as a virtual team member, delivering timely, persistent, and customized messages that often obey best practices, by integrating the power of intelligent automation with the human-like aspects of SimpSocial. The primary advantage of using an Intelligent Virtual Assistant is the ability to generate sales. Improved operating performance, increased Sales force capability, and better interactions for leads and prospects are all secondary benefits. Sales teams will concentrate their energies on developing relationships with customers and converting leads by outsourcing the tedious tasks of sending personalized messages to leads in order to assess intent and move them to the next best step.  

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, you will increase property sales

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, you will increase property sales.

The new pandemic’s uncertainty has begun to have an effect. Working conditions restrictions for the ‘new standard’ are causing a deadly change in the global economy. Physical separation has caused the real estate industry to suspend activities such as open houses, home inspections, and even the building of new homes. The pace of real estate investment is expected to slow. In the midst of the pandemic, however, there is a ray of hope for realtors, as many people are becoming more willing to purchase homes. Prices have dropped, working conditions have changed, and more people are working from home, which has resulted in a rise in homebuyers. The big question now is how prepared you are as a realtor to help these homebuyers close property investment deals in the face of COVID-19’s threats. We’ve compiled a list of suggestions to assist you.

Minimize face-to-face interaction and increase online connectivity

Building trust is the most important factor in converting leads into closed sales when selling a home. Thanks to the internet, there are several options for communication and ways to keep consumers informed while also gaining their interest. And if you were using online platforms to attract more customers prior to the pandemic, you should be aware of how they would help you directly connect your brand to them. You can advertise properties using images or live videos if you’ve managed to create social media accounts. Ads will help you reach out to your target market. To meet your clients, make use of all online marketing resources available to you, such as a completely online contact center portal.

Property inspections can be replaced with virtual tours.

One of the most difficult issues is determining how to sell a property when physical contact is prohibited. Transform physical property inspections into virtual video displays or live virtual tours instead. It will take a little more time, but it will undoubtedly increase the selling points. Consider it fresh marketing materials to spice up the sales pitches. worldwide contact through the internet

Follow the correct procedures.

Sure, some buyers may need to physically inspect the property they are purchasing to determine if it is a good match. Before a physical meeting, make a list of the appropriate protocols and give them to your client. Before a property inspection, you should remind your prospects of essential reminders such as proper distancing, “No mask, no entry” regulations, sanitation procedures, and the like. This also demonstrates that you are concerned for the welfare of your clients.

Before and after, disinfect and sanitize.

Another thing to think about during these difficult times is how to COVID-proof the assets you’re selling both before and after a physical property inspection. Before inviting your clients in and after they leave, disinfect the floors, walkways, and door handles. This results in a conscientious realtor that puts their clients’ protection first.

Boost your sales team’s efficiency.

Your outbound sales team will face the most challenges, which is why you should look for ways to assist them. One option is to set up a contact center for your real estate company, but will this be feasible during the pandemic? Perhaps it’s time you got to know SimpSocial. Its numerous sales and support features will assist you in running your real estate company and smashing quotas without the need for face-to-face interaction. SimpSocial has a strong sales dialer built specifically for real estate agents. For starters, SimpSocial’s Power Dialer automates your outbound sales process by calling your leads with just one press. An omnichannel platform helps you to reach leads on any platform, including SMS, making product promotion easier. With SimpSocial’s efficiency and automation software, you can overcome the challenges of working from home.

Are you ready to increase your property sales?

There’s no question that SimpSocial will assist your real estate company in getting ahead in these challenging times. Do you want to see how SimpSocial really works? Our experts will be delighted to assist you. Make an appointment and let’s talk!

With the help of your contact center, you will increase the productivity of your sales team.

It all comes down to success and efficiency, even though you have a winning contact center squad. Contact centers are used in almost every industry and include a variety of procedures that are managed by different people in various departments. The majority of workflows are intertwined and interdependent on one another. It can quickly fall apart if there isn’t a strong flow and system in place. The reliability of a contact center is the gold standard for determining if your system is better for the people it serves and vice versa. This will help the company grow by increasing revenue and improving customer satisfaction. Here are some of the best contact center tips and activities we’ve gathered from active call centers:

Streamline each procedure.

Any organization’s performance is dependent on its processes. You should be able to recognise the system’s flaws and holes, as well as which aspect of the process consumes the majority of your agent’s time. Transparency should be implemented at all levels of the enterprise so that even minor issues can be resolved before they become a major headache. It’s perfect for new contact center teams to develop a consistent workflow structure and ensure that it’s implemented across all departments. You’ll be able to assess their performance rates and see which parts of the process need to be improved using the KPIs you set.

Use a skill-based routing system.

Use skill-based routing to intelligently delegate inbound calls to various people within the company. This allows you to guide callers to the appropriate individual, speeding up resolutions and ensuring customer satisfaction. Reduced handling time also allows the agents to focus on more issues. For example, you might delegate product demonstrations, implementation, and training to onboarding agents first. As a result, the contact center program you’re using should be capable of performing these tasks.

Manual activities should be eliminated.

Your salespeople aren’t robots, to your surprise. They will spend more time on meaningful human interactions by reducing repetitive and machine-like activities. When performed in large amounts, a simple task like dialing numbers, for example, will take a long time. Manually logging all calls or connections at the end of the day is the same. It’s not only an additional mission, but it’s even more prone to human error. Fortunately, there is now a plethora of tools and programs that will assist you with these activities. Look for one that has a smart sales dialer and makes it easy to keep track of customers. Instead, the agents should concentrate on providing excellent service.

Coach and supervise live calls.

Coaching and tracking the hired agents while on a live call, no matter how experienced they are, is always a major help in the company. This assists the team in aligning their priorities with the company’s, creating happier customers, and identifying pain points among agents. Make sure that someone from each team is solely responsible for this mission. It’s also crucial to select contact center apps that can handle quality assurance and training. One with a smart telephony system that supports call whispers, live call coaching, and warm and cold transfers is preferred.

Provide opportunities for remote jobs.

Even before the current pandemic, more companies had begun to shift to remote work. Remote work opportunities are also beneficial for salespeople who need to prospect while on the go. Productivity would be less of a problem if contact center software supported teams operating in various environments. Though working remotely presents many challenges, having a reliable system and software that enables remote work efficiency would be beneficial. Times are shifting, and you should be able to keep up with them.

All should be integrated.

Technology has opened up new ways to communicate with consumers, but it has also created a new problem: the sales team now has so many platforms to handle. This means that a typical salesperson should be able to manage several clients from various channels at the same time. You know that doesn’t look good if you’re having that frame. Integration is the response you’re looking for. Look for data management systems and platforms that can assist you. The best ones also let you integrate your CRM with their platform, allowing you to sync all you need. Your team’s productivity will skyrocket if you can find anything that gets you this.

Consider using omnichannel prospecting.

Phone calls can still be the most effective way to close deals, but with the evolution of people’s purchasing habits, capturing their attention seems to be more difficult these days. This is why you should try to catch their attention across as many different channels as possible. For salespeople, omnichannel has proven to be a successful strategy. Apart from tapping into all networks where consumers are, you can also collect all messages in one location for easy management. Find a contact center software that offers omnichannel features that are also user-friendly for your team to make your contact center more effective.

SimpSocial omnichannel prospecting

Workflows can be automated. Salespeople are human beings with thoughts and feelings, and the last thing you want to do is exhaust them with jobs that have nothing to do with talking to customers. Enable technology to assist you in doing the heavy lifting for them. While automation can seem intimidating at first, more and more companies are seeing its benefits in terms of team performance. Your agents will have more energy to speak to customers and develop relationships without having to do other things, which means more profits for your company! The next best thing you can do for your sales team while still meeting your business goals is to automate your workflows.

Productivity is the secret.

The capacity of a contact center to keep customers satisfied and meet revenue targets determines its effectiveness. It’s time to rethink the contact center’s productivity if inadequate processes are getting in the way. Switching to SimpSocial has resulted in increased efficiency for many companies. You will feel the power of an all-in-one contact center app with features like the power dialer, omnichannel support, CRM integrations, automation, and so much more. It also operates entirely in the cloud, allowing you to collaborate with teams from all over the world from wherever you are. Make the move to SimpSocial today to create a more effective contact center team. Our professionals would gladly assist you.

Additional Information On Facebook Integration, Power Dialing, And List Management

Don’t have your Facebook integration set up yet? Take this as a gentle reminder to do so. Stop losing out and start nurturing your Facebook leads with this new method. More detailed ad data can now be pulled into your SimpSocial account, allowing you to build a stronger and more personalized drip campaign with texts and calls. Try it out in your range advertising to find out just what people are looking for. Create the right follow-ups and increase your mobile customer conversations! When it comes to moving people down the funnel, we’ve made it easier to contact your leads by allowing you to power dial multiple phone numbers per contact. You can contact them on their mobile phone, direct line, or leave a message on an alternative number this way. That’s some incredible new abilities! Finally, to assist you in managing your growing directory, we’ve added the Tag Splitter, which allows you to divide large imports among your agents. Have you uploaded, say, 50,000 new leads? Break that down into 50 more friendly lists that you can allocate to agents with a single click! Do you need assistance with these new features? Give us an email at support@SimpSocial.com, and we’ll be happy to introduce you.

Trends in Contact Center Automation for the Next Five Years

The future holds so many possibilities in an age of ever-changing technology. People will be hungry for creativity in the post-pandemic workplace in the coming years, in search of a better and more sustainable job system. Contact centers are the first in line for all other technology-driven industries. For a long time, contact centers have been undergoing significant changes in order to satisfy the needs and demands of discerning consumers. Automation of all kinds is gradually being accepted, and in the next 5 years or so, this trend will only accelerate. Adapting to these changes will be important, if not critical, for any workforce and company.  

What is the concept of contact center automation?

The way consumers buy things and communicate with companies has changed, and the contact center industry must adapt as well. Automation provides intelligent algorithms and pattern-based solutions that enable companies to remain in contact with customers without having to employ additional staff. Call automation was first used in sales and service with IVRs, which solved the problem of routing customers to the appropriate department. One of the most significant automation developments in the contact center industry is this. However, since communication networks are no longer restricted to phone calls, more automation opportunities are needed. What to expect in the next five years In the next five to ten years, contact centers will undergo significant changes, especially in terms of automation. These are some of the items we should all expect to adjust to in the future, based on consumer behavior and trend trends.

1 – The move to the cloud

We were not only forced to stay at home and work because of the latest pandemic. It also demonstrated that working from home is both necessary and feasible. Businesses will search for ways to get work done in a post-pandemic workplace whenever possible. In a broad sense, technical advancements are accelerating and will continue to do so in the coming years. Industries with competitive markets would be forced to move more quickly to meet the demands of their customers. Businesses will search for ways to keep up, and the best choice is to migrate from physical servers to the cloud. With so much on the line, get ready to implement applications that can support virtual call centers. Choose one that operates entirely in the cloud to help serve automated processes and provide opportunities for remote work.

2 – Consumer expectations for multiple channels

Customers who prefer different platforms will demand more business presence and engagement as contact networks continue to evolve. Businesses are increasingly embracing this, focusing their attention on other platforms as well. However, some people may not be able to easily adjust to this pattern. Reaching out to customers via various channels is one thing, but moving them from one channel to the next can be difficult. For companies that have developed their communication networks, this task is a bitter pill to swallow. There are, however, sales automation tools that can help with this. For this purpose, contact center applications with built-in omnichannel functionality would suffice. You won’t have to think about using various channels for your contact center because of convenient features that help you handle them all in one location.

3 – The need for customers to be able to anticipate their needs

Yes, consumers’ expectations will skyrocket in the next ten years, and companies will be forced to keep up. Customers will expect not only quicker purchases, but also less time spent resolving their issues. In order to be able to ‘predict’ consumer needs, the contact center or company can keep up in order to encourage smarter transactions. Contact centers are supposed to become more intelligent. This ensures that repeat customer calls must be meticulously registered and analyzed in the event of a subsequent transaction. More importantly, asking customers several times and going through files during each call transfer should be minimized or removed as much as possible. This is expected to be improved further by automation using data and algorithms. It would be a huge help if you have contact center tools that can process all customer data and call details for you. Call dispositions that are automated, call identifiers, and notes are also useful resources to consider.

4 – Mobile-first and mobile-synchronized design

For corporations, this isn’t breaking news. Customer-business experiences, on the other hand, are expected to become friendlier, more social, and mobile-friendly. Businesses should learn more about the capabilities of this unit. Businesses can use mobile to connect and engage with consumers in greater numbers. Dealing with customers on the go would allow the company to be more versatile. Increased demand for mobile also means more personalized connections, such as instant messages, constant alerts, and smart integrations, from the customer’s perspective. However, using mobile as a platform for large-scale outreach can get out of hand. This is great news for companies because resources have now been created to address this problem. In the coming years, finding software that supports SMS messaging, customized messages, and MMS would be perfect.

5 – An astute matchmaker

You can also be on the lookout for call routing opportunities. Any system upgrade, workflow improvement, or management decision, it is normal practice for businesses to update IVRs. This often lengthens their match-making operation, which most customers dislike. Instant solutions and smoother communications are critical to their satisfaction with a service. This will prompt businesses to look for ways to make their customer matchmaking process as simple, fast, and easy as possible. Without the need for lengthy, repetitive question-and-answer procedures, customers should be led to the appropriate experts. Help teams may face a difficult task, and with privacy policy to remember, it will seem unlikely. Contact center solutions, on the other hand, are working on ways to identify this need. Apart from the traditional round-robin routing method, call routing systems can now be automatically allocated according to skill, time available, or department. The future’s “relationship centre” Contact centers will continue to look for new ways to better understand their customers’ needs. Demands are expected to skyrocket as communication technology continues to advance, regardless of industry. Contact centers are on their way to being the future’s “relationship centre” for both sales and service. Customers would expect more personalized service as a result of this. It’s more than about dialing numbers in sales. Every time an agent makes a call, it’s about developing positive relationships. It will not be a one-time deal with various agents for funding. It’s giving customers the impression that you keep track of any interaction they have with your company. With all of this in mind, it’s best to search for software that can provide these solutions, as well as better ways to meet these needs in the future. SimpSocial is a cloud-based contact center solution that keeps up with industry trends and looks for new ways to help companies meet their customers’ needs. In reality, we have a few of these already installed and running in our system. Take a look!

People Have Said: How SimpSocial Assists Various Businesses

As corny as it might sound, a company’s performance is determined by its customers. What they have to say about your product or service gives others an idea of what they should expect from your business. It gives them the power to make or destroy your company’s reputation. Customers have more influence over companies than ever before in today’s social media-driven environment. As a result, companies should consider new ways to communicate with consumers and ensure that each interaction is seamless and meaningful. This focuses on the most critical people who interact with your customers directly – your contact center staff. Every business need has a solution. We at SimpSocial develop solutions that help contact centers and businesses communicate with their customers more efficiently and provide better service. Our primary focus is to assist our clients in being the best company they can be for their customers.

Real estate power dialer

SimpSocial ensures that real estate agents’ success isn’t jeopardized by juggling too many leads at once. We’ve given them the best contact center tools they can use to convert both buyers and sellers of real estate. With our sales dialer, agents have more options for connecting with their leads in less time. “We learned about SMS marketing for home sellers and wholesale real estate from SimpSocial. With SimpSocial SMS marketing and dialer combined, we were able to triple our homes under contract acquisition.”

– RocketOffr’s Hayato S.

Law firms’ automation One of SimpSocial’s best practices is to automate workflows. This aids companies in managing and organizing all of their client transactions. You can quickly manage the workflows if you keep them organized. With SimpSocial, you can automate your calls, data lists, and call or text sequences. Automation makes it easy to run sales and marketing campaigns. Some of our law firm clients who enjoy using this feature are mentioned below. “I own and operate a mid-sized business that specializes in personal injury and employment law. The most difficult aspect of our job has been following up with leads over a long period of time. It’s all too convenient for our team to lose track of all the leads that we’ve paid for and end up losing them. We’ve put our follow-up sequences on autopilot thanks to SimpSocial! The program will call each lead as many times as we want before we are connected.”

– Tally S., Entrepreneur

“Success with Personal Injury leads necessitates a combination of pace and perseverance. In less than a minute, SimpSocial connects us with leads, and we’re the first company they contact. This means there will be more cases! Typically, 80% of potential clients want the company that calls them first, and we want to be the first caller. We do this with the aid of SimpSocial. The majority of the time, it’s their power dialer.”

– Small Business Owner Mona E.

Small business program that is all-in-one SimpSocial is aware of the difficulties faced by small companies. Maintaining multiple apps for operations should be the last thing on one’s mind when running a successful company. SimpSocial envisioned and created a stable framework that allows users to handle the entire sales process in one location. “It’s nuts to do anything in one device! Until SimpSocial, we never thought it was possible. We’re a small business that’s expanding, and SimpSocial has provided us with the resources we need to keep up with our expanding customer base.”

– Small Business Representative Frank K.

Faster return on investment for start-ups SimpSocial provides features that can make managing the contact center activities simpler for start-up owners and major risk-takers. SimpSocial was praised by business owners for assisting them in expanding their operations. We provide a forum that is solutions-based and caters to the needs of effective business communication. We work hard to ensure that your company receives the return on investment it deserves. “It’s a money saver! – When I turned it on, [we] instantly saw a return. Our revenues have increased by a factor of 20. Problem-solving assistance on a one-on-one basis. It has a very low-cost auto-texting service that I can configure. For different types of people who start with my course, I can build a variety of texting systems. Tags may also be used to organize people into groups. The framework is Mailchimp-compatible, has a simple gui, and several sign-in options for other team members.”

– Philip A., Owner of a Small Business

Any company will benefit from excellent customer service. We recognize how difficult it is to run a company and feel that our customers are entitled to more. As a result, we’ve made certain that we’re always available to assist you anytime you need us. We’re still looking for new ways to improve our job solutions. We make sure we have people you can speak to and who can answer your questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our fantastic customer service team is always willing to help. At you at any point during the implementation and monitoring process. “Amazing service and a fantastic solution. SimpSocial’s solutions are well-thought-out and well-presented, and they come at an unbeatable price. The organization is extremely sensitive to customer requests, and it has made us feel heard from the beginning, delivering updates that help us serve our customers even better.” – TJB, VP Operations, Customer Success Team Functional Manager You’re in capable hands. We recognize that no one-size-fits-all solution exists for every company, so we designed SimpSocial to be useful for every type of sales team. Whatever your company is, we’ve gone to great lengths to get you a better contact center solution. Allow us to demonstrate how we can improve your productivity and customer experience. Our helpful team is standing by to demonstrate and meet with you as soon as possible.

How to Engage Customers on Mobile Successfully

It’s still incredible how a single device can alter our way of life. There is nothing that can compare to the worth of a smartphone. Smartphones have passed the “trends” stage and are now considered a necessity in today’s world. Fortunately for companies, this has resulted in more opportunities to gain customers. With the advancement in information technologies, further possibilities have arisen. Smartphones are a reliable way for salespeople to connect with and sell to their customers in today’s mobile-first world. The smartphone industry is booming. With smartphones as everyone’s favorite device, launching a company is now simpler, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before. People’s addiction to modern technology trend – Young, z age, social, and friendship concepts – Main emphasis on center guys With smartphones as the ultimate platform, mobile has created new ways to communicate with our industry. According to a Provision Living survey, the average American spends 5.4 hours per day on the internet, with 13% of millennials and 5% of baby boomers claiming they spend 12 hours or more. With the growing prevalence of social media applications and other mobile functions, this number is only expected to rise in the future. How would you maximize your promotional strategies and be at the top of your customers’ minds on mobile now, as a small business owner? Here are a few pointers that you may find useful.

1 – Be in the moment

Businesses today are well aware of the value of social media. This is also why a slew of new small businesses keep popping up, giving consumers a plethora of choices. As a result, in order to be effective in any industry, you must be present at all times. Begin with a website and expand your social media presence from there. With too much rivalry, however, remaining stagnant is as good as having no presence at all. Today, being there for customers necessitates further effort. Make your website mobile-friendly so that consumers can easily access it. You must devote time to maintaining your social media pages so that you can properly connect with customers. Provide customer service across all channels and ensure that each one is attended to by a pleasant representative.

2 – Get to know your clients

Never go into a fight without a weapon. The most important thing to remember before diving into the world of mobile sales is to know who you’ll be dealing with. Reaching out to mobile customers can be easy, but it can also be ineffective if done incorrectly. Determine who the clients are. Find out what they need, what they want, what obstacles they’re facing, and what their most cherished desires are. You’ll be more prepared to approach them and sell them a service or product they won’t be able to refuse. Customer is shown a contract by a saleswoman. As far as possible, avoid seeing the audience solely through the lens of demographics. Customer tastes are shifting, and your product may no longer be as valuable to your target market as you think it is. For example, a luxury car brand’s sales could be declining because it caters to an older audience with the financial means but little interest in the product. Instead, astute sellers who know how to personalize their targeting might consider attracting the attention of a young elite market that enjoys flashy automobiles. They may not have the financial means, but they certainly have parents who do.

3 – Set a goal and reward yourself

It’s time to plan the next move after you’ve determined who your customers are. You must be able to play with the customers’ minds using their desires in order to communicate with them. Woman uses her phone to enter a coupon code for a discount at the supermarket. Is there a shopping cart that has been abandoned? Send a customized coupon with a time limit to your client. This makes the product or service even more appealing than it was previously. Has a customer made a purchase? Send a follow-up SMS with a special bid. If a consumer buys a gadget, for example, you can sell gadget accessories for a much cheaper price. You may also make them feel like VIPs by asking if they want to join an SMS loyalty program. This benefits both parties; apart from making them feel appreciated, you’ll be able to reach out to them in a more personal way if you have special offers or discounts.

4 – Make sure each channel is linked.

SMS marketing and phone sale are both successful methods of capturing the customers’ attention quickly. It cannot, however, stand alone when it comes to sales success. Customers are more skeptical of salespeople who do not verify product and brand details before making a purchase. As a result, in order to use SMS sale efficiently, all other platforms must be intelligently looped in. If you’re sending out a promo via text message, make sure your message includes a connection they can click to learn more about it. Other platforms you used to get in touch with customers should be listed the first time you send a message. Second, introduce yourself and explain how you obtained their contact information. Perhaps you received it when they registered on your website? Or after you exchanged emails with them? This also implies that you value their privacy above all else.

5 – Make your text messages automatic.

The fact that SMS ads and phone sales target people on their preferred platform is the main reason for their success. As a result, agents who interact with these customers should have access to the tools they need. Women keep their phones in their hands as they enter the code for a store discount. The idea of offering marketing services over the internet for easy access to information is a novel one. Sending messages by hand is a thing of the past. If you’re serious about SMS sales and marketing, you’ll need to get your team on board. Sending automated SMS messages and broadcasts is a surefire way to get your message across quickly and efficiently. Another duty you can handle is keeping customers involved. Today’s businesses must keep their customers informed about updates, promotions, and other significant announcements. You can never lose contact with your customers if you want to remain on top of their preferences. With SimpSocial, you can sell on your phone. Businesses must be able to adapt to changing consumer demands, especially on mobile. Selling with smartphone is a breeze with SimpSocial’s advanced contact center features. You can set up mobile opt-in campaigns in no time thanks to its simple automation setup, unlimited SMS, and other features. SMS automation is a feature of SimpSocial’s intelligent solutions. Set up message triggers from your contact list to send text broadcasts with ease. You can send unlimited texts to customers with SimpSocial all of which are enabled by MMS or picture messages. There’s a lot more you can do with mobile to increase your sales. Are you ready to get started? Let’s talk about it!

This 2021, Here Are 7 Sales Enablement Solutions To Boost Sales And Efficiency

Every salesperson is expected to understand what makes their customers tick. They should be aware of their passions right down to their deepest desires. Successful sale necessitates a combination of psychology, human contact, and tenacity. However, in today’s world, salespeople are supposed to have one more skill added to their repertoire: technical experience. With the pandemic this year, new selling patterns and opportunities emerged. The year 2021 will usher in a new age, and as a salesperson, you must be completely prepared to meet it. Here are some resources to help you develop your post-pandemic selling skills.

1- A dependable CRM system

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it seems difficult to manage customers without using a CRM app. However, in these changing times, you must be certain that the CRM you depend on will not let you down. Choose a CRM platform that has a track record of assisting you in both good and poor times. Customer satisfaction rises as a result of better partnerships. There are more chances to foster consumer relationships if you have a solid CRM platform that is easy to use, very supportive, and integrates with the sales resources you need. Look for one that allows you to keep track of all leads and customers in one location.

2 – Auto Dialer is a device that automatically dials numbers for you.

The best form of sales communication channel will always be voice. Transactions with customers can be easier and more reliable with auto dialers assisting you throughout the contact process. Most dialers will connect to your CRM, eliminating the need to manually insert data or turn tabs when working. With the aid of a dialer, sales conversions and quotas would be easier to achieve. Make sure your chosen platform also includes a power dialer to help you meet your quotas.

3 – Coordination through several channels

Customers are everywhere, and the only way to reach them is to be present on any platform they choose to use. Managing all correspondence and ensuring that everything is connected becomes more difficult. You must be able to play to and channel’s strengths and integrate them into the sales funnels as a salesperson. Changing channels can be a bit of a pain. This is why you should seek out a method that allows you to combine your efforts. Omnichannel sales tools allow you to manage, customize, and build campaigns for various channels all in one location.

4 – Accurate analytics and reports

We all understand the importance of accurate data collection for sales performance. Each customer’s transaction should be meticulously documented and processed for reporting purposes. Sales is a numbers game of quotas and objectives. You’ll need a faster way to compute data, analyze trends and patterns, and collect customer information. No, you don’t need to recruit a whole team to complete this task. All that is needed is a tool that collects and analyzes sales data automatically. It’s even better if it has customizable reporting so you can get perspectives that are unique to your business.

5 – A well-organized appointment schedule

Well, if you’re not taking appointments seriously, you’re probably missing out on a lot of sales opportunities. Any appointment that is scheduled, cancelled, rescheduled, or completed must be recorded. If you’re still relying on your trusty planner, it’s time to reconsider. You’ll need an appointment planner that works for both you and your client by the beginning of 2021. This will allow you to handle commitments quickly for both parties. Choose an appointment calendar that works with your team and your entire contact center system to make it even more effective.

6 – Follow-ups that are automated

Although it is every salesperson’s responsibility to follow up on leads, it can take a long time if you have a large list of potential customers. Automating this method would put you one step ahead of the competition and a hundred steps closer to your revenue targets in the future. Automated follow-ups may or may not be entirely developed by the system. After all, a sales team’s role is to cultivate customer relationships. The best option is to use applications with an advanced framework that allows you to configure follow-ups. Any voicemail, text, or email follow-up that is sent automatically should have a human contact.

7 – Tools with built-in functions

No man, and no tool, for that matter, is an island. As the sales process evolves, you’ll need some features and systems. To meet your growing needs, it’s critical to consider these tools’ ability to align, or better yet, combine with other sales tools. When you kick off 2021 with a bang, integrations can come in handy. It will provide you with more options for using your customer data. You’ll have the competitive advantage to close each deal faster and more effectively than ever, thanks to tools that embrace other tools for your success. SimpSocial is a company that specializes in selling. With all of the latest technologies available to consumers, the demand for salespeople continues to be more competitive. Whatever the business, it all comes down to how you can communicate with consumers quicker and better. Having SimpSocial on your team will provide them with strategies that will help them develop customer relationships. It’s jam-packed with features to meet any salesperson’s needs, but it’s designed to be easy enough for everyone to pick up. SimpSocial assists salespeople in developing long-term customer relationships. Would you like to learn more about SimpSocial? We’ll take you on a walk!

What You Should Know About Apple’s iOS 14 Update and Facebook

Facebook for Business told advertisers in Q1 2021 that the forthcoming improvements in Apple’s iOS 14 update “will impact how we obtain and process conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel.” If you use the Facebook platform to monitor conversions from your social ads on your website or app, this update would have a significant impact on how your business’s Facebook Ads track conversions. Here’s what to expect.   SimpSocial’s Facebook Ads Manager Activity Preview   What Happened to Facebook and Apple’s iOS 14? “You’ll be expected to ask users for their permission to monitor them through applications and websites operated by other companies,” according to Apple’s updated iOS 14 policy for apps.   This means that their newest operating system, iOS14, now allows users to choose whether or not an app can monitor their web and app activities. Since most Facebook and Instagram activity takes place in an app, and Apple devices account for a significant portion of their users’ devices, this has a disproportionate effect on them as compared to other advertisement channels.   Who Is Affected by This? Advertisers who want to match their ads to customer behavior on their website or in their app (i.e., those running conversion campaigns in Apps and web-based properties for purposes of e-commerce and lead generation, among other marketing objectives.)   What Will Facebook Ads Look Like in 2021? What effect will the iOS14 updates have on your company’s Facebook ad campaigns? Essentially, Apple iOS devices will exchange even less data with Facebook, and the data that is received will feed in less regularly and be more anonymized.   This translates to:   Less Reporting/Web Events Attribution Accuracy: In Facebook Events Manager, fewer conversions will be monitored (though they will still happen in real life), and audiences will be smaller. Shorter Attribution Lookback Windows: We used to be able to attribute acts up to 28 days after clicking on an ad. The time limit has been shortened to seven days. Advertisers will be less able to segment their audiences based on user behavior on websites because activities taken on Apple devices will be shared less. Exclusion groups will be less dependable, and those who have participated in an activity will have a smaller audience (ex: custom audiences created based on website activity). Just 8 Conversions: If several advertisers are using the same website domain, they would only have to share the top 8 conversions, which will be prioritized in reporting. This is in response to an iOS14 update that only reports one action to Facebook, so they’re prioritizing which activities to report on. Changes to Breakdown Reporting: When analyzing ad results, demographic breakdowns would be removed. Changes to conversion events will be more difficult: Changing conversion events in a campaign will cause the advertising to be paused for several days until the new data is aligned. Changes in Conversion Value: In e-commerce, value-based conversions will now be reported in tiers rather than individual costs. In the new Facebook AEM settings, you can set conversion priorities.   What Does the Future Hold for Advertisers and Businesses? Apple’s enforcement is expected to take effect in March 2021, and in the meantime, advertisers can verify domains and prioritize conversions in Facebook’s latest AEM (Aggregated Event Measurement) to prevent downtime when enforcement occurs.   A verified domain is indicated by a green dot in Facebook Ads Manager.   A verified domain is indicated by a green dot in Facebook Ads Manager.   What are SimpSocial’s Adaptive Strategies? The safety of customers is crucial. People should have power over the information that big tech firms gather about them, and we should all respect that. Apple’s decision to step forward as a hardware vendor is a positive thing because it gives users more power of how their data is processed and exchanged. This follows the same pattern as what we’re seeing in browsers and “cookie-geddon.”   However, after listening to Facebook’s advice, it seems that this latest privacy policy ignores the manner in which many applications are already set up with in-app browsing of webpages, forcing advertisement platforms to struggle to adapt with little knowledge of how to achieve enforcement while also supplying advertisers with the insights they’re used to.   We assume that further adaptations will occur, and that Facebook is working on modeling solutions to ensure that marketers can still monitor ROI. We’ll also return to using Google Analytics to measure total target completions, but keep in mind that its last click attribution model is less forgiving than Facebook’s 7-day lookback window.   In preparation for the changes, SimpSocial has started verifying our client domains in Facebook Business Manager and restructuring ad account conversion events.   Not sure what to do next? Is your company in need of a dependable Facebook Ads partner when these changes take effect? Let’s talk about it.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Just One Sales Channel

Why You Shouldn’t Use Just One Sales Channel

When it comes to closing deals, phone calls have a long history of proving to be the most successful sales channel of all time. And it’s absolutely true: you can educate a customer about your goods and services, develop a partnership, and close a deal in just one call. Customers, on the other hand, are shifting, and companies and salespeople should be mindful of how they buy goods. When cold calling customers isn’t cutting it, it’s time to look for other ways to refocus your customers’ attention on your business.

Customers can be engaged across various sales networks.

The days of single-channel sales prospecting are long gone. Customers can be found almost everywhere, and how they want to be met now depends on a variety of factors. This is why, when prospecting, using the most efficient distribution channels approach that customers want is the secret to tapping all customers in your business.

1 – Prospecting via text messaging

Customers today are engrossed in one device they can’t do without: cell phones, which is fortunate for companies. That’s why it’s no wonder that 90% of text messages are read within three minutes, compared to just 26% for emails. Text messaging can be useful, but you shouldn’t waste your leads’ time by not understanding how to use it properly. Remember, this is a private channel, and the last thing you want to do is send a generic “Hello, how are you?” text message. In text prospecting, particularly if it’s your first time communicating, don’t forget to introduce yourself, tell them how you got their number, and demonstrate your intent. It’s also a good idea to respect their time by asking when they’d be available to speak rather than pressuring them to respond right away.

2 – Email is a great way to stay in touch.

Emails are still an important way for companies to score customers because they enable you to communicate with your target on a regular basis. The best thing about emails is that they allow you to experiment with various content options for connecting with customers. Because of its strength, email is the best medium to use as the backbone of your overall sales strategy, with other contact channels supporting it.

3 – Promotional and branding fax marketing

Is it still useful? Fax marketing, like cold calling, is an important advertising channel that you can not overlook. Best for political, non-profit, or real estate sales prospecting, this helps you to flex your branding design muscles with some stunning images, all while keeping your target and company mission in mind. Personalization and Post-script are the two Ps that will make fax marketing cool again (P.S.) Add a personalization note to your fax so you know who to send it to. P.S. works wonders for non-profit projects and prospecting, allowing you to give your cause one more push.

The all-in-one omnichannel app from SimpSocial

With all of these communication networks considered to be successful promotional tools, the question becomes: how can you deal with them all at the same time? SimpSocial comes in handy in this situation. SimpSocial’s sales omnichannel framework sets out all of these platforms for you to use and handle in one location, providing a streamlined approach to sales and marketing. It allows you to prospect by messaging, emailing, and faxing your customers. Campaigns are easily enabled by SimpSocial’s comprehensive contact center tools, which also includes outbound and inbound calling. Prospecting is simple without having to manually enter contact information. It also integrates with your current CRM, allowing you to manage all of your data from one location. Anything you need is right where you need it.

Are you ready to start an omnichannel marketing campaign?

Closing sales isn’t a difficult task. Sales channels are useful tools for connecting with and engaging with consumers, but they also carry a certain amount of danger. We take this burden off your hands with SimpSocial so you can spend more time interacting and conversing with your customers. Please contact us to learn more about our omnichannel features.

Predictive vs. Power Dialer Software: A Productivity Fight

Years ago, when salespeople were looking for buyers to persuade, they would call each one individually. Now that they have technology on their hand, AI-powered dialers have sprung up to make their sales lives easier. While salespeople no longer have to worry about manually dialing numbers, they now face a new challenge: rising efficiency. Technology has changed the world, but it has also provided consumers with a plethora of choices that salespeople should be able to handle. With hundreds of productivity applications and a slew of dialers to choose from, which one is the best? Take a look at the fight between these two dialers: Power Dialer vs Predictive Dialer. How does the program Power Dialer work? The advancement of call center technology paved the way for power dialers. Power dialers were given to assist agents in making their lives easier and working faster. These dialers use a pre-programmed list of customers to make automated calls to. By automatically beginning calls with a customer list, power dialer software removes manual dialing. It intelligently begins dialing as soon as the previous call hangs up, reducing agent idle time. It’s perfect for small contact centers looking to set up work processes and improve their selling abilities. What is Predictive Dialer and how does it work? Predictive dialers, on the other hand, provide a different approach to bringing calls in. It deals with patterns and AI while dialing numbers to get as many calls for its agents as possible, as the term suggests. It dials several numbers at once to minimize wait times, relying on algorithms that connect patterns around connect rates and agent availability. For massive contact centers that operate on a volume basis, predictive dialers are a godsend. However, it is not for all. Agents who work in predictive dialing must be fast on their feet and know how to handle an unexpected call. Since it calls leads even though agents are on the phone, it can have an effect on queues and overall customer service. Which is better: predictive dialer software or power dialer software? When deciding whether to use a power dialer or a predictive dialer in your contact center, you must first determine your current device. Both aim for productivity, but if the current system isn’t up to the task, they can only be considered ineffective.

Here are several things to think about when deciding between a Power Dialer and a Predictive Dialer:

User-friendliness

It should come as no surprise that power dialers are more user-friendly. It incorporates technology into the system while allowing agents to take the lead. Agents prefer power dialers because they are simpler to handle and use. Switching to a power dialer would be easier and more convenient as a result.

The total number of calls

Predictive dialers, on the other hand, are guaranteed to make more calls quicker than power dialers. There will be less idle periods and more paired calls with a predictive dialer’s AI-powered calls. It’s also crucial to know if the agents will be able to do it without difficulty. Faster does not necessarily imply better. When system-generated dials are mismanaged, they can cause unhappy customers and bad experiences.  

Customer service representative on the phone

Creating connections

Building confidence and enriching client relationships are essential to salespeople. This is why the agents should be well trained to handle a call before it is assigned to them. Although there are exceptional agents who can run the show on the spot, it is arguably always best to prepare everyone ahead of time. When it comes to this, power dialers are fantastic. It’s effective enough to free up the agents’ hands from manual dialing while also being manageable for them to focus on creating stronger relationships with and client call.

Agents’ number

A larger number of agents means a higher volume of calls. If you have a big team of a lot of enthusiastic agents, a predictive dialer is the best option for you. The reliability of predictive dialer is best for large teams with a solid framework that want to focus on bigger sales targets. This should also imply that any team’s manager should be able to use predictive dialers to fine-tune specific parameters.

Productivity is the ability to produce anything.

Both dialers have the same aim in mind: to increase efficiency. The efficiency of each dialer is determined by a variety of factors. Predictive dialers can increase the number of calls received, but if your current team is unable to handle each call at that speed, the number of calls received will only decrease. Power dialers are simple to use, but they are designed for consistency rather than quantity. Intelligent evaluation and successful decision-making should be used to decide which dialer is best for the team.  

The final decision

A predictive dialer and power dialer program vary primarily in terms of speed and performance. Predictive dialers are high-volume dialers that follow a set of rules and operate in a regulated environment. Power dialers are also used in almost every contact center, but unlike Predictive, they are a much more convenient choice for remote salespeople who want to develop good customer relationships.   SimpSocial is a cloud-based contact center that can set up work processes for any team, including remote workers. If you’re interested in learning more about SimpSocial’s Power Dialer, we will assist you.

New Metrics, Facebook Ads Integration, and Follow The Sun Filters!

Enough with the teasing: Facebook ad integration is now available! We’re ecstatic to announce that you can now use SimpSocial to further engage your Facebook leads with calls and texts. By syncing your Facebook lead generation ads with SimpSocial, all new and old form submissions will be stored as contacts, allowing you to call anyone right away. We also give you related ad data so you can track which campaign your leads came from and follow up accordingly. Yes, Facebook leads can also be added to broadcasts and sequences. We’re launching our Follow the Sun function to help you coordinate your call operation and get better results. Go to Contacts and look to the right for a new button named Follow The Sun. It basically organizes your contacts by timezone, allowing you to set your goals with just a single click. This allows you to work your leads based on their position — from East to West — increasing your chances of connecting at a convenient time.You can now quickly locate unassigned contacts by filtering your leads by source. These can make bulk tagging easier and improve the exposure of your leads, allowing you to close more deals. You can now check interaction rates on your Broadcasts tab. This is the percentage of people who react to your campaign, and it will help you determine how successful your marketing and promotion are. BONUS: It’s now even easier to change your contact’s name while on the phone! To update and save their correct details, simply click on the Edit icon we added.