callingly, Author at Callingly

Hit a Sales Slump? 5 Stress Management Techniques During the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on May 9, 2020 by callingly

The results of a recent poll showed that 45 percent of adults in the U.S. have had their health negatively impacted as a result of worrying about the effects of COVID-19.

Does this sound familiar to you? Have you experienced a decrease in sales at your company because of the virus? Are you concerned about how your business is going to stay afloat in the wake of the pandemic?

Stress is a serious issue for a lot of people right now. Luckily, though, there are ways to cope with your concerns. Listed below are five stress management techniques you can use to stay calm during (and beyond) the COVID-10 crisis.

The Effects of Unmanaged Stress

It may be tempting to try and just put your head down and “push through” while you’re dealing with the stress of COVID-19. The sooner you address and work to manage your stress, though, the better off you’ll be.

When stress goes unmanaged for too long, it can lead to all sorts of physical and mental health issues, including the following:

Depression
Anxiety disorders
Increased risk of cardiovascular disease
Obesity
Poor skin and hair health
Gastrointestinal issues

Before you start hyperventilating, remember that our goal in sharing some of the effects of unmanaged stress is not to make you feel more stressed out. We just want to make sure you take your mental health seriously and take action to improve it.

COVID-19 Stress Management Strategies

Not sure how to take action? Here are some simple, yet effective, stress management strategies you ought to try today if your sales slump has got you in a rut:

1. Meditate

Practicing meditation even for just a couple of minutes per day can have a bit impact on your mood and stress levels. It can help you to feel calmer, more patient, and more in control. It’ll help you stay focused and more present while working or homeschooling your kids, too.

A lot of people might be turned off by the idea of meditating initially. They might assume that they have to sit cross-legged on a cushion and chant for hours on end, and that, understandably, is not appealing.

The good news, though, is that there’s no need for chanting or twisting yourself into a pretzel to experience the benefits of meditation. It can be as simple as you need.

Try setting a timer just one minute. Pick a position that’s comfortable for you — sitting on the couch, lying on the floor, etc., then close your eyes and start to breathe deeply. Try to focus on the feeling of your breath coming into and leaving your body. If your mind wanders, don’t beat yourself up. Just redirect your attention back to your breath and start again.

2. Prioritize Your To-Do List

You might find that, during a very stressful time (such as a global pandemic), you have a harder time getting things done at work. You may struggle to stay focused, or you may get overwhelmed more easily, for example. If this is the case for you, make an effort to prioritize your to-do list when you first arrive at the office (or sit down in your makeshift office at home).

Take a look at what you need to get done for the day and identify the top two or three most important tasks on your list. Make those your priorities and cut yourself some slack if you don’t get to the rest of the list that day. You can at least rest easy knowing you did the things that matter most.

3. Get Outside

Whenever possible, try to get outside and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine.

You should still practice social distancing, of course, and keep at least six feet of space between yourself and others. Make an effort to break out of your house or the office, though. Go for a walk around the block, take a trip to a local park, or just sit out in your driveway or on your balcony.

Spending time outside helps to increase your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D essential when it comes to boosting your mood and helping you to cope with stress. It’s also nice to take a break from the computer every once in a while.

4. Limit Screen Time

Speaking of taking breaks from the computer, make an effort to limit your screen time. This is especially important if you’re spending a lot of time on news sites or social media. It’s true that it’s good to be informed, but spending too much time on these kinds of sites can cause you to feel more stressed and anxious.

Give yourself a time limit screen exposure as much as you can. You may want to consider using an automated lead to call system or other automation tools, too. That way, you can take time away from the computer without worrying that customer inquiries are going unanswered.

5. Find Ways to Have Fun

Remember, you’re allowed to still have fun during a pandemic. In fact, finding ways to bring a little laughter and lightness into your life might be more important now than ever before. Look for opportunities to have fun and smile throughout the day, both when you’re working and at home.

Consider starting some kind of challenge or contest with your co-workers to keep them motivated and engaged, or have a game night with your family once a week. Little things like this can make a big difference and help everyone to feel a little less stressed out. Try These Stress Management Techniques Today If you’re feeling more stressed than usual, it’s totally understandable. Lots of people are in the same boat, especially those who are still doing their best to generate leads and make sales to keep their companies afloat.

Give these stress management strategies a try today so you can feel more at ease and stave off some of the long-term effects stress can cause. Keep in mind that you can also reduce stress at work by automating certain aspects of your job, such as keeping tabs on new leads to respond to. For example, with Callingly you can boost lead call-back times by having Callingly notify you when a new lead appears through a phone call. You can immediately dial them back through your phone or schedule them in for when you’re free. No more checking CRMs frequently, or odd-hour phone calls. This will free yourself up to focus on other things (or even take a little meditation break or walk outside).

Are you interested in automating lead response for your business? If so, contact us today to learn more about how Callingly can help.

9 Sales Influencers to Follow in 2020

Posted on May 4, 2020 by callingly

Are you looking to improve your sales strategy in 2020? If so, it helps to make sure you’re following the right kind of people — people who can provide insight into the dos and don’ts of making sales and help you ensure you’re on the right track with your business.

If you’re not sure whom to follow, keep reading. Listed below are 9 of the best sales influencers to start following this year.

Mark Roberge

Mark Roberge is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He’s also the former CRO of HubSpot and author of the book The Sales Acceleration Formula. He still acts as an advisor to HubSpot and is credited for making major contributions to the tech company’s continued growth.

Roberge is a true industry leader who regularly shares free, actionable tips on his social media channels sharing ways that sales professionals can improve their numbers and help their businesses grow. His book is a must-read, but he has lots of shorter, more digestible tips available online, too.

You can follow Roberge on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Marcus Cauchi

As someone with over 30 years of experience in the sales world, Marcus Cauchi is definitely someone worth listening to. Cauchi has spent decades selling and training salespeople at Sandler Training Program. He’s known for his ability to help sales reps from various companies to level up and improve their technique.

Cauchi regularly shares articles online that are dedicated to helping salespeople see better results. He covers a variety of topics, from recruitment to improving companies’ sales pipelines.

You can follow Cauchi on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Kyle Porter

For salespeople who find themselves in need of a pep talk, they shouldn’t look any further than the social media profiles of Kye Porter.

Porter, the CEO of the top sales software SalesLoft, regularly posts motivating content that will help salespeople to get out of the heads and start putting in the work needed to level up. He shares plenty of practical tips, too, on everything from handling tough sales calls to closing more deals.

You can follow Porter on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Sean Sheppard

Sean Sheppard is best known as the founder of the company Growth X. He’s a serial entrepreneur, though, and has years of experience helping a variety of early-stage companies to grow and thrive.

Sheppard’s primary focus is on predictability in sales, and he does a great job of helping salespeople use tech to drive their pipeline. He also publishes a lot of content on business growth and improving sales education.

You can follow Sheppard on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jill Rowley

Jill Rowley is a well-known startup advisor. With over 17 years of experience in the SaaS world, she’s the person to follow if you’re part of the SaaS business yourself, or if you want to get into it in the near future.

Rowley also shares lots of information on social selling and helps salespeople to come up with creative ways to promote their products or services and grow their audience.

You can follow Jill on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Gary Vaynerchuk

It wouldn’t be a complete list of sales influencers without mention of Gary Vaynerchuk (also known as “Gary Vee”).

Vaynerchuk first got his start in the world of eCommerce wine with the site WineLibrary. Since then, he’s become a household name as a serial entrepreneur and early investor in major companies like Venmo, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Vaynerchuk posts tons of helpful content on his social media channels, and he also has a podcast that every salesperson and entrepreneur ought to be listening to.

You can follow Vaynerchuk on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Colleen Francis

Colleen Francis is the owner of Engage Selling Solutions, and she has plenty of helpful advice for those looking to improve their sales. She has spent more than two decades as a sales leader, speaker, and strategist and focuses primarily on B2B sales with the goal of helping people see consistent results while avoiding many of the common challenges that come with managing a sales team.

Francis is the author of Nonstop Sales Boom and Honesty Sells and was named LinkedIn’s Number One Sales Influencer for 2020.

You can follow Francis on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Anita Nielsen

President of LDK Advisory Services and advisory board member of the National Association of Women Sales Professionals (NAWSP), Anita Nielsen specializes in coaching and sales enablement.

Nielsen also works as a strategic consultant and helps organizations to customize their sales solutions and augment their selling practices. Her latest book, Beat the Bots, provides human sellers with all the tools they need to work with technology and automation to ensure they remain essential.

You can follow Nielsen on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Jen Spencer

Jen Spencer is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at SmartBug Media. She has years of experience in both sales and marketing and is a master of inbound sales.

From demand generation to holistic business development, Spencer regularly shares information that can help sales teams of all kinds to grow and thrive. She’s also created the Bravado Mentorship Program, designed to empower the next generation of young and talented sellers.

You can follow Spencer on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Level Up Your Sales Strategy Today

As you can see, there are tons of great sales influencers who can help you to improve your business and your sales strategy.

In addition to following influencers like these, though, make sure you’re also taking practical steps to increase sales. For example, investing in an automated lead response system can help to streamline the call-back process and help you follow-up with sales leads in an efficient way.

Top 5 Factors That Make a Great Sales Lead

Posted on April 27, 2020 by callingly

Did you know that 80 percent of leads never translate into sales? Do you worry that the quality of your leads is hurting your business’s bottom line?

If you have concerns about your sales leads, or if you just want to make your lead generation process better, you first need to understand what a good sales lead looks like. We’re here to help with that. Listed below are the top five things we look for to determine whether or not we’re working with a great lead.

1. Trying to Cope with a Challenge

The best leads have a specific problem that they’re trying to solve. If this is the case, then you have an opportunity to solve their problem when you do a good job of showcasing your products or services. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that you can convert them to a paying customer.

2. Shows Genuine Interest

A good sales lead will show genuine interest in your business. They might do this by signing up for a free download from your website, for example.

If they’re already taking actions that signify interest, that’s a good thing. It indicates that you ought to move forward and dedicate time and resources to showing them what you have to offer and attempting to close the deal

3. Responds with a Sense of Urgency

The best sales lead will make it clear that they’re looking to solve a particular problem and that they’re looking to solve it in an efficient manner. If their issue is time-sensitive, they’re going to be more likely to become a paying customer in exchange for your assistance.

One way that leads might show a sense of urgency is by confirming a date and time to learn more about your business or your products or services. For example, they might sign up for a webinar on a specific date or put an appointment on their calendar to talk to a sales rep (instead of just saying they’ll accept a sales call but not providing details on when they’ll be available)

4. Looks Like Your Existing Customers

In general, good leads look like the customers your business already has (or wants to have). When they share certain attributes with your existing customers, there’s a great chance that they’re part of your target audience and have a need for what you’re selling.

Your leads should align with your target customer demographics (this includes things like age, gender, occupation, income, etc.) or firmographics (such as industry, company location, company size, annual revenue, etc.) if you’re part of the B2B sector

5. Has Authority or Access to It

If you’re in the B2B world, your perfect lead also ought to have authority or easy access to it. They might be the CEO or Sales VP for a particular company, for example — someone who has the power to make final purchasing decisions.

Keep in mind, too, that a lead can also be valuable if they have less authority but have access to the higher-ups who make final purchasing decisions. Establishing a relationship with a lower-level authority figure gives you an opportunity to learn more about the company and tailor your pitch. That way, when you get a chance to talk to someone higher-up, you have a greater likelihood of closing the deal. How to Get Better Sales Leads Those characteristics of a perfect sales lead sound pretty promising, don’t they? Wouldn’t you like it if more of your leads possessed those features?

By following these three tips, you can improve the quality of your leads and convert more of them into paying customers

1. Use Questionnaires

One of the best ways to simplify the process of qualifying leads is through questionnaires. Questionnaires help to weed out onlookers and low-quality leads who are unlikely to actually make a purchase. This, in turn, frees you and your sales team up to focus more time and energy on the leads who have the greatest chance of becoming paying customers.

2. Create Great Content

Great sales leads come from great content. When you’re putting out high-quality content on your website, you’ll have a much easier time getting people interested in what your business has to offer.

This is especially true in the B2B world, where 93 percent of buying processes begin with an online search. If you have an article or video on your website that can address a problem your target audience might be having, you’ll see more high-quality leads reaching out and taking action as a result

3. Automate Lead Responses

Finally, make it a priority to automate lead responses. If your business is known for fast response times, this will get more people interested in reaching out because they know they’ll get the information they need (and potentially solve their problem) sooner.

Ideally, you’d get your lead response times to below five minutes. If this seems impossible, you likely need to invest in an automated lead response program. This will take the guesswork out of responding to leads and will make it easier for you and your team to focus on other lead generation and lead nurturing processes. Improve the Quality of Your Sales Leads Process Today There are plenty of ways that you can go about improving your sales lead generation process. Before you start doing this, though, you need to know what a high-quality lead looks like. Keep the features of a great sales lead in mind as you move forward and your sales will soon improve.

Don’t forget to apply the tips for better lead generation listed above, either — especially important to focus on automated lead response. This is one of the best practices to invest your time and resources in moving forward. It helps to streamline the process of connecting with leads and frees you and your workers up to work on other projects that help to grow the business.

If you need help with automating your lead response system, we can help at Callingly. Contact us to learn more about what we do or to get Callingly integrated with your CRM today.

5 Ways to Achieve Faster Lead Response Times

Posted on April 20, 2020 by callingly

When it comes to responding to leads, a lot of businesses are missing out on potential sales because they’re too slow. One study of over 2,000 U.S. companies, for example, showed that 47 percent of businesses either took longer than 24 hours to respond or never responded at all.

Do you need to speed up your business’s lead response times? Read on to learn more about why this matters and how you can decrease the amount of time it takes to respond to potential customers.

Why Do Fast Lead Response Times Matter?

Speeding up lead response times is one of the best steps you can take to improve your conversion rate and keep your business afloat. The following are some of the most well-known reasons why improving your lead response rates matters: Quality of Leads Degrades with Time First of all, it’s important to understand that the quality of a lead degrades with time. The longer it takes for you to respond, the less likely someone is to actually follow through and become a paying customer.

When you’re slow to respond, customers have time to consider other options and reach out to your competitors. If your competitors respond before you do, someone might choose to work with them instead, not because their product is better, but because they were quicker to get back to them. Internet Has Changed Buying Behavior The internet has had a huge impact on buying behavior as a whole. Now, you can access information and make purchases in seconds with just a couple of clicks. As a result, people have shorter attention spans than ever before, and they want results right away.

If you are slow to get back to people who express an interest in working with you and your business, they’re going to be less impressed with what you have to offer. They want to hear from you as soon as possible. If they don’t, they’ll go elsewhere. Faster Lead Response Improves Reputation Having fast lead response times is good for your business’s reputation, too. Don’t you want to be known as a company that is on top of things and responds to people in an efficient way?

These days, most business pages on social media or online directories include information about lead response times. When you look up businesses online and think about reaching out to them, which one are you more likely to message: The one that responds within a few minutes or the one that responds within a few days (if at all)?

How to Achieve Faster Lead Response Times

Clearly, you need to make faster lead response times a priority if you want your business to succeed. Here are five ways you can make this happen:

Invest in Automated Lead Response

If there’s one thing you do to achieve faster lead response times, it ought to by investing in automated lead response technology. Automated lead response works to, you guessed it, automate your business’s approach to responding to the people who reach out and express an interest in what you’re selling.

The right automation tools can connect leads with consultants within seconds. You can also use them to schedule call-backs and recurring messages in the event that someone doesn’t answer on the first try.

Automating helps to simplify the whole process and makes it much more efficient. It reduces the potential for human error, too.

Control Lead Sources

Between their general phone number, email, Facebook page, and website contact form, most businesses have dozens of different methods that people can use to reach them. When you have leads coming in from tons of channels, especially if they’re not well-organized, it can be easy for people to fall through the cracks.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that businesses have systems in place for controlling lead sources. This ensures that all different platforms are checked regularly and everyone gets a response as soon as possible.

Improve Lead Qualifying Processes

It also helps to streamline your business’s lead qualifying process. If workers have a clear approach to use when they’re figuring out which leads to respond to first, it helps to ensure that the highest priority leads don’t go ignored.

Consider working with your sales and marketing team to set up a lead sorting funnel that takes customer profiles into account and determines the most qualified ones based on behavior and demographics.

Minimize the Need to Engage with Consultants

By directing people to other resources, you can minimize their need to engage with consultants while still ensuring that they get their questions answered. This also helps you to free up your consultants so they have more time to spend responding to potential customers and working with the most qualified leads.

Creating a Frequently Asked Questions page, for example, is a great tool for making sure people have access to the information they need. Be sure to put it in a prominent place on your website so that everyone can find it and get their questions answered easily.

Provide Lead Response Coaching

It’s important for workers who are in charge of responding to leads to have coaching on how to handle it in the most efficient and effective manner possible. With proper coaching, you can ensure that they are classifying leads appropriately. This also helps you to ensure they understand the importance of fast lead response and are making it a priority moving forward.

Get Faster Response Times Today with Automated Lead Response

As you can see, there are lots of steps you can take to speed up your business’s lead response times. Of all the methods listed above, though, one of the most effective is an automated lead response system.

By using automation, you can streamline your response process and ensure that people hear back from your right away. You get to experience all the benefits of faster lead response times without you or your employees having to dedicate a lot of extra bandwidth.

If you need help automating your lead response, we’re here to help at Callingly. Callingly can ensure any new lead contact information for your business is immediately sent to available sales agents so they can call them back. We have over 1,000+ integrations so that you can set up any popular lead capture tool with Callingly.

Why You Should Improve Lead Response Time First

Posted on May 24, 2019 by callingly

Are your conversion rates not where they need to be? Getting plenty of leads in the pipeline but your sales team isn’t closing them?

Before doing anything else, take a look at your lead response times. How quickly you respond to new incoming leads can result in a 1,000% change in your conversion rate immediately.

According to a study conducted in 2016 by the Harvard Business Review, if your sales team waits more than 5 minutes to follow up with an incoming online lead their chances of connecting with that lead went down 10x.

Are you connecting with your leads within 5 minutes?

According to the study, only 4.7% of companies do.

Even worse, most companies don’t even know what their average lead response time actually is. If that’s you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. But there is a step-by-step process you can start to get to the point where you can confidently say you’re hitting that 5 minute limit for every lead.

1. Track your lead response time

The simplest way to start keeping track of your lead response time is right in your CRM. The CRM already knows when the lead was added so simply add another field for the time the lead was first contacted.

When someone on your sales team first calls a new lead have them log the timestamp and add it to the lead’s record. You can then run a report and get a good idea of your response times.

Is this always accurate? No, but its a good start.

Doing the process manually is a good way to ease into the flow but will not give you 100% perfect results.

2. Keep responses under 5 minutes

Once you at least have a rough idea of your lead response time metrics, you’ll see how far you have to go.

If your team is tracking their results, institute a plan to get those response times down below the 5 minute mark. Make sure everyone on your team knows how important it is to respond to new leads in a timely fashion and know that you will be reviewing the results on a weekly basis.

3. Automate the response process

However, if you really want to get 100% accurate metrics and make sure that every single lead is responded to within 5 minutes or even faster, then you have to automate the lead response process.

Callingly is a perfect example of a tool that can help you do just that.

Callingly will integrate with your existing website and CRM and as soon as a new lead comes in it will call your sales team, routing the lead based on territory and schedule.

The first agent that picks up the phone will hear the leads information and can press 1 to immediately call the lead back. If your team is able to pick up the Callingly call on the first attempt, your average lead response time can not only be below 5 minutes, but it can easily trend below 60 seconds.

If you can catch the lead on the phone while they’re still on your website, the response rate increases by over 300%.

4. If you can’t call the lead immediately, message them

Finally, you must realize that your team will never be able to grab every single lead immediately and so you must have a fallback plan.

If it’s the weekend or the middle of the night and none of your agents are on call, or if everyone is simply busy with other customers, then your system should have a way of detecting it and reaching out to let the lead know. A quick SMS letting them know that someone will be in touch with them shortly is enough to start that initial conversation and keep the lead warm.

Callingly, for example, has an option to send a SMS to a lead if no one from your team is able to respond within 15 minutes or if everyone is offline.

Have a plan and execute

Whether you’re planning on using a manual or automated process to track and optimize your lead response time, its important to have a plan, execute on it with buy-in from your entire team and then follow up on your results at least weekly for several months.

Good luck and lets get those response times to under 5 minutes!