An Easy Guide to Sales Engagement Software and Why it is Important

Sales leaders and executives consider Sales Engagement as a top priority, not only for them but also for the team. 

The interactions between the sales reps and the prospects are of good quality. An emphasis should be placed on the volume of the activity as optimal Sales Engagement drives the conversion rates high and increases the number of deals closed.

As it holds such importance in the sales team's performance, various organizations invest in technology and software to help in boosting the sales rate and help the sales reps engage with the prospects effectively.

Due to the requirements and the demands of the sales organizations, many technology companies have developed applications and software for sales companies to adopt in order for them to enable high-quality sales at a larger scale. Hence, sales engagement software is created. 

And presently, it is vital to the operations of the sales organizations. This is seen through evidence such as:

• Sales Engagement software is in demand- from the sales development team to the entirety of the sales organization. 
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• Many traditional or modern organizations evaluate and invest in the technology that will aid their sales activities and performance. 
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• It helps streamline the process and helps analyze minute details that may be missed otherwise.

Today, we’ll discuss:

Before diving deep into Sales Engagement Software, let’s first look at what sales engagement is?

What is Sales Engagement?

Sales engagement is an aspect of sales that consists of interactions between the sales reps and the prospects. These may be digital interactions such as via message, email, or a phone call, or they may be in-person conversations.  
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What Sales Engagement Software does is enhances the qualitative and quantitative aspects of these interactions, driving sales, boosting productivity, and increasing performance.

In the process of sales pitches and deal interactions, the Sales Engagement Platform is used when data from automated sales activity from various channels and content recommendations are fed to the Sales Engagement Platform. The software optimizes the data and acts as the management console for the engagement process. This data will be added back to the CRM.

The CRM essentially houses and organizes this data. However, it can optimize or automate sales engagement. 

The sales engagement category comprises five key aspects; some may be stand-alone tools while others may be part of other applications.

Listed below are the five key aspects-

🔹 Channels

The mode through which sales reps communicate with prospects is known as Channels. These include several technologies and communication methods such as phone calls, messaging, emails, video, web conferences, blast mail, and social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook, and Facebook reels.

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🔹 Content Recommendations

This technology provides real-time recommendations to sales reps during interactions. It includes knowledge management, and its functionality is interwoven with sales enablement software that aids in onboarding and training.

For instance, if a junior sales rep is creating an email template for a blast mail, it will provide content that they should be using.

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🔹 Optimization

This provides a detailed analysis of the execution of the sales engagement, which can drive automated suggestions based on the data.
This employs conversation and meeting intelligence in the technology to record and analyze the conversations.

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🔹 Automated Sales Activity

It is a proactive approach to performing mundane activities without manual labor.
For instance, the system can automatically complete this task by manually transferring data and sales strategy from one department to another.

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🔹 Sales Engagement Platforms

These platforms, on a single interface, provide space to plan, execute, track, measure, and optimize the conversations between sales teams and prospects across multiple channels. 

Now that we have looked at sales engagement let’s understand one of its key aspects, i.e., sales engagement platforms/Software.

What is Sales Engagement Software?

This software helps the sales rep to engage with prospects across channels by organizing and streamlining their task list through automation and integration with other sales tools. 

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Sales engagement software includes in-built communication tools that can be used across multiple communicative channels such as emailing, calling and social media platform interaction by providing them with a single space to easily complete their tasks and move on to the next prospect. 

Thus, sales engagement software helps in boosting efficiency and increasing performance by providing reps with structure.

Having said that, sales engagement platforms are not automated marketing platforms. The latter produces leads. But they are no longer in the sales cycle beyond that point. They do not facilitate engagement between reps and prospects. 

Additionally, sales engagement software at not CRMs. And vice-versa, CRMs can not be a substitute for sales engagement software- although they help track and organize sales data, 

they are time-consuming and not convenient when used as sales engagement software. 

Why is Sales Engagement Platform Essential?

Sales executives and sales team leaders are now realizing the importance of Sales Engagement Software as they acknowledge and value the effectiveness of the software and how it helps in increasing efficiency.

The sales engagement software also allows the team to close more deals by providing relevant and personalized messages. Thus the interactions with prospects are of good quality and efficient. 
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Moreover, since there is a system in place, onboarding and training become an easier task when sales team reps transition. 
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They are also multifunctional as they provide incredible and insightful analysis of systemized sales processes and record the results easily, thus highlighting the data for continuous progress. 

Sales engagement software also helps underline which of the sales reps from your team is generating conversion, when the reps should reach out to the prospects, and which channel may be more effective. 
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These can be utilised to constantly upgrade strategies and boost performance. 

Now, let us look us how beneficial is a Sales Engagement Software

Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Sales Process + free sales plan template

What are the Benefits of a Sales Engagement Software?

Sales Engagement Software provides a plethora of benefits to a sales team. They are useful in the management of the rep and prospect relationship and the software can also help close more deals in less time. 

This is how it helps boost effectiveness and is time-efficient: 

• Phone services such as live agent and click-to-call, or automated voicemails can help in saving time while ensuring that the prospects are attended to and their expectations are met. 
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• The ability to either send one-on-one emails or a blast mail, scheduling emails and automatic template emails allow the prospects to feel personally reached out to, at the right time.
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• Since lead generation content is presented in the sales engagement software, sales reps can provide the prospects with value-added information at the right time throughout their deal process. 
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• Creating strategies becomes easier as the reports for both sales activities and marketing initiatives are transparent to both teams, saving time and highlighting the points that can be used in planning and execution. 
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• Sales engagement software is completed automated; therefore, it can trigger other actions based on the outcomes of the sales rep’s strategies and approaches, helping in saving the administrative time. 
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• A variety of follow-up plans are initiated based on the account structure provided by the sales team to improve the conversations-to-qualification ratio. 
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• A sales engagement software allows the sales rep to take advantage of the best sales behavior in their organization. 
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• An integrated and open sales engagement software keeps the data transparent so that every detail is shared and the sales team- reps, leaders, and executives- can all be on the same page, highlighting details and underlining opportunities in real-time. 
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After understanding all the benefits of investing in a sales engagement software, let us look at the criteria your organization should consider when choosing the right Sales Engagement Software. 

Choosing The Right Sales Engagement Software For Your Organization

There are specific criteria that one needs to consider before purchasing a sales engagement software. And the key to realizing and making the most out of your investment is to understand the requirements for your organization in terms of sales goals, maturity, and team size. 

Since there are various Sales Engagement Software available in the market, the question arises as to how to choose the right one that will actually help you?

Here’s a brief checklist to help you evaluate your stance and help affirm your choice:

• Seamless and tight integration with the CRM Tool
  
  A sales engagement software and a CRM tool form the foundational pillars of a sales team’s technology stack.
  
  Thus, it is essential to check that they are compatible and fill in each other’s shortcomings while also maintaining a cohesive design philosophy.
  
  It is also better to choose a sales engagement platform with the native integration, as opposed to third-party integration, same as the CRM- this will facilitate a seamless syncing of data.
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• Good Quality Feature for Communications channel
  
  Although the sales team uses various communication channels to interact with prospects, they also have specific preferred channels that are the backbone of their sales outreach and interactions.
  
  This channel is based on your prospects and what channel of engagement they prefer; this can vary from emails to phone calls or even social media.
  
  Thus, when choosing a sales engagement software, it should be a vital feature that the tool can be employed to use a variety of communication channels.
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• Supportive of Sales Strategy
  
  Since different sales organizations have different sales strategies, the tool should be completely customizable to your organization’s strategies. 
  
  For instance, some organizations may follow a large quantity approach with a lesser focus on personalized quality and some organizations follow the opposite approach.
  Some may follow an account-based strategy, focusing on high-value accounts. Whereas, another might look at the prospect-based approach where the prospective buyer persona is focused upon.
  
  After evaluating your organization’s sales strategy, choose the software supporting your sales team’s strategy.
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• Match your Organization’s Maturity
  
  If you are a start-up and a small-scale organization, it would be a wise choice to select a Sales Engagement Software that is automated, easy to use, and lightweight. Those who are not technically savvy should be able to learn the user interface easily.

If you are on the other side of the spectrum, meaning a large organization with an administrative team, sales team, marketing team etc, then select an enterprise-grade Sales Engagement software that supports restrictions, single sign-on, role-based permissions, heightened security and workflow restrictions among other notable features.

This point is essential as the size and features of the tools and their compatibility with the organization’s maturity are directly proportional to its maximized effectiveness and increasing performance of the sales team and the organization.

A good and easy sales engagement software should seamlessly integrate, record clearly, transcribe the interactions, analyze all the data and share it easily.

Sign up today on Convin for the Conversation Intelligence-enabled Sales Engagement Software that is optimal. 

After you sign up, Convin automatically integrates with your sales stack and CRM through a secure API key exchange. 

Then Convin starts to uncover crucial meeting topics, actionable items, customer feedback and queries, and the performance of the sales reps from the recorded sales engagement. Post this, the insights from the analysis will be shared with the leaders and executives to take action when the deal is still open.

Convin software also helps in realizing the approaches of the top performers and how can they be utilized in the sales engagement strategy for future references. Try now!