Robot seller. Automating your sales team with SaaS
December is always a hot season for sales teams, such a battlefield for revenues. In the era of broadband access and cloud business automation has ceased to be the lot of large companies, now various CRM, IP PBX and thin clients are available to almost everyone. We, as a cloud communication platform developer, would like to share how we automated our own sales and what tools we use. Our experience is by no means unique, rather, we understand a little better than others how and what is best of all friends and integrates with our virtual PBX and how to create a kind of cloud-based Robot Vendor.
More recently, it was believed that the introduction of IP-PBX in the enterprise is a guaranteed step into the digital future, where sellers and customers act according to a given program, are controlled via WI-FI, and the sales themselves turn into a script algorithm that starts with the press of a button in the interface Asterisk. Time is moving inexorably forward and the number of tools designed to automate sales is growing every day. Those businesses that are trying to be trendy and want to look innovative, one day realize that they have acquired a couple dozen of cloud subscriptions and web interfaces and the time has come to do something with all this. The abundance of IP gradually begins to interfere with effective work, in a word, the integration of everything with everything and a conscious rejection of excess functionality are required.
We are the developer of the HIVE cloud PBX , in the roadmap of which for the next year integration with at least ten third-party services, CRM and online consultants is registered. It is clear that before a decision is made about who and when we would like to integrate, we first study the feasibility of this or that integration in our own sales department.
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Most of the remaining cloud tools, in our opinion, are not so necessary. It is clear that the use of various mailing services or SMS-alerts can improve the efficiency of work, but it is absolutely certain that all these VAS will never become critical.
We will show with examples how the work of our managers looks like with the main channels for receiving applications. We assume that the main tool of the seller is the CRM and the interface of our HIVE, if required, only to the system administrator, and then only once, during the initial setup of telephony. Note that telephony is invisibly present in every process, since a telephone call to a client is a mandatory attribute of any transaction.
We integrated our PBX with CRM, and CRM, in turn, integrated with the online consultant. This is very convenient, because now any appeal through the web feed is recorded in CRM and can be turned into a lead by a simple mouse click.
Even if there are no operators online, the request will be sent to CRM and the task “Make a call” will be automatically assigned to the seller. After the introduction of the online consultant, the number of incoming calls to our numbers during working hours has significantly decreased, and during off hours the online consultant does an excellent job with the task of accepting applications. The “Connect” button on the site is used by fewer and fewer people.
The basis of the foundations. Any phone call, incoming or outgoing, now goes to CRM.
If the phone number is already in CRM, then the event “Call” is attached to the corresponding client card, if the number is dialed for the first time (or the client first called from the new number), a new card is created. Moreover, if this is not a lead, but a technical challenge, the card can always be deleted. It is important that all telephone activities are now recorded in one place. When using IP SIM, CRM also receives calls from mobile phones, you can see and listen to them. A very convenient and useful function for any business, because mobiles now use everything.
Email
Good old tool. Obviously, leaving e-mail outside automation is wrong. A huge amount of valuable information goes through e-mail.
The principles of interaction between customer e-mail and CRM are identical to telephone principles. Any letter sent to the address from the customer database is automatically attached to the corresponding customer card. If the mail arrives or is sent from an unfamiliar address, a new contact is automatically made. It should be noted that we did not become tricky and organized the reception of applications from our sites, too, using e-mail channels.
Overboard were various web forms and “Call from website” buttons. In our opinion, these are secondary channels for receiving calls, and it is quite likely that the optimal form of interaction with a client is a form for entering a phone number (call order) when telephony enters the battle. It is highly desirable to call back on such applications.
We are actively exploring the market and are looking for partners for cooperation and integration, especially carefully looking towards geolocation services. Very soon, with the help of our IP SIM, it will be possible to build very “smart” call processing and sales control scripts. Be sure to write about it in one of the following posts.
We sincerely hope that this small post will help our colleagues or clients to make the right decision when choosing cloud platforms for business automation. We would like to see our virtual HIVE PBX as a ticket to the world of integration and automation, where each component of the work environment complements other components and contributes to the efficiency of sales departments. The time when the PBX was perceived only as “just to call” was irretrievably gone and now telephony has become an important, but not the only part of the communications infrastructure.
More recently, it was believed that the introduction of IP-PBX in the enterprise is a guaranteed step into the digital future, where sellers and customers act according to a given program, are controlled via WI-FI, and the sales themselves turn into a script algorithm that starts with the press of a button in the interface Asterisk. Time is moving inexorably forward and the number of tools designed to automate sales is growing every day. Those businesses that are trying to be trendy and want to look innovative, one day realize that they have acquired a couple dozen of cloud subscriptions and web interfaces and the time has come to do something with all this. The abundance of IP gradually begins to interfere with effective work, in a word, the integration of everything with everything and a conscious rejection of excess functionality are required.
We are the developer of the HIVE cloud PBX , in the roadmap of which for the next year integration with at least ten third-party services, CRM and online consultants is registered. It is clear that before a decision is made about who and when we would like to integrate, we first study the feasibility of this or that integration in our own sales department.
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Our top 5 today looks like this
- Virtual PBX as a mandatory element of the working environment. Fortunately or unfortunately, telephony is unlikely to completely go out of business and instant messengers and free dialers have little chance of becoming the only effective business tools. Cloud PBX is becoming more and more transformed into a CRM system and is no longer the only cloud that a small business uses. In fact, IP-telephony and CRM become symbiotes and it is harder and harder for them to exist without each other. That is why for our HIVE we made boxed integrations with the most basic CRMs and worked well with the API.
- IP SIM. Integration with mobile communications. Also an obvious trend and the trend is correct. The ability to use corporate SIM cards as internal phones fits very harmoniously into the friendship of CRM + IP PBX. It is very convenient and correct, when the call history from mobiles is also included in the transaction card, calls are recorded and processed by ATC scripts.
- Actually CRM. The queen of sales and the main workplace manager. In combination with the first two points, it turns into a telephone robot seller who knows each customer by name and patronymic. There are countless combinations of cellular integration, CRM and office telephony.
- Online consultant. Is the number one candidate for the role of the second most important (after the phone) tool seller. In our sales department, the number of leads received through an online consultant is growing by leaps and bounds. Its integration with CRM is just a must.
- Good old e-mail. Looks like this thing will always be eternal. After receiving a lead by phone or via an online consultant, mail becomes the most important channel of interaction with customers.
Most of the remaining cloud tools, in our opinion, are not so necessary. It is clear that the use of various mailing services or SMS-alerts can improve the efficiency of work, but it is absolutely certain that all these VAS will never become critical.
We will show with examples how the work of our managers looks like with the main channels for receiving applications. We assume that the main tool of the seller is the CRM and the interface of our HIVE, if required, only to the system administrator, and then only once, during the initial setup of telephony. Note that telephony is invisibly present in every process, since a telephone call to a client is a mandatory attribute of any transaction.
Online consultant
We integrated our PBX with CRM, and CRM, in turn, integrated with the online consultant. This is very convenient, because now any appeal through the web feed is recorded in CRM and can be turned into a lead by a simple mouse click.
Even if there are no operators online, the request will be sent to CRM and the task “Make a call” will be automatically assigned to the seller. After the introduction of the online consultant, the number of incoming calls to our numbers during working hours has significantly decreased, and during off hours the online consultant does an excellent job with the task of accepting applications. The “Connect” button on the site is used by fewer and fewer people.
Telephony
The basis of the foundations. Any phone call, incoming or outgoing, now goes to CRM.
If the phone number is already in CRM, then the event “Call” is attached to the corresponding client card, if the number is dialed for the first time (or the client first called from the new number), a new card is created. Moreover, if this is not a lead, but a technical challenge, the card can always be deleted. It is important that all telephone activities are now recorded in one place. When using IP SIM, CRM also receives calls from mobile phones, you can see and listen to them. A very convenient and useful function for any business, because mobiles now use everything.
Good old tool. Obviously, leaving e-mail outside automation is wrong. A huge amount of valuable information goes through e-mail.
The principles of interaction between customer e-mail and CRM are identical to telephone principles. Any letter sent to the address from the customer database is automatically attached to the corresponding customer card. If the mail arrives or is sent from an unfamiliar address, a new contact is automatically made. It should be noted that we did not become tricky and organized the reception of applications from our sites, too, using e-mail channels.
Overboard were various web forms and “Call from website” buttons. In our opinion, these are secondary channels for receiving calls, and it is quite likely that the optimal form of interaction with a client is a form for entering a phone number (call order) when telephony enters the battle. It is highly desirable to call back on such applications.
We are actively exploring the market and are looking for partners for cooperation and integration, especially carefully looking towards geolocation services. Very soon, with the help of our IP SIM, it will be possible to build very “smart” call processing and sales control scripts. Be sure to write about it in one of the following posts.
We sincerely hope that this small post will help our colleagues or clients to make the right decision when choosing cloud platforms for business automation. We would like to see our virtual HIVE PBX as a ticket to the world of integration and automation, where each component of the work environment complements other components and contributes to the efficiency of sales departments. The time when the PBX was perceived only as “just to call” was irretrievably gone and now telephony has become an important, but not the only part of the communications infrastructure.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/273237/
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