WOW that’s a lot of letters! What in the world do any of them mean?
Introduction
There are many Customer Relationship Management Softwares and Customer Engagement Platforms on the market for Sales Development Representatives and Business Development Representatives to use in 2022. They are all fairly similar in how they work; point and click. We have used almost all of them here at Alleyoop throughout the years; Outreach, Salesloft as well as FrontSpin most recently.
What is what and which is which?
FrontSpin works with Salesforce where all the data is stored. Lists are created with the data in Salesforce which feed into FrontSpin. FrontSpin is the leading-edge sales communication software and power dialer. The platform and power dialer implements playbooks (otherwise known as sequences or cadences) across all touchpoints, helping us engage with more prospects and customers in less time.
FrontSpin is a Sales Communication Software or CEP that manages your calls and emails; CEPs are designed to pick up where CRMs stop. The major difference is a CRM is a front-office system of record with limited support for customer engagement whereas a CEP is a platform designed for engagement, which supports rapid scaling.
Alleyoop SDRs Best Practices:
When you first start working on your CRM/CEP explore as much as possible to learn how to navigate. Shadow coworkers and look up tutorials! See if there is a knowledge page specifically for that CRM that can help you come up to speed quickly.
Keep Your CRM Clean
Your CRM is only as good as the information you put into it. Make sure to add notes and take out or update any misinformation you come across such as bad numbers, email addresses, job titles, or company names.
Prior to removing any phone numbers make sure you have tried at least two times to rule out any server issues on the phone when you initially attempted. Another common quick fix is to ensure capitalization is correct. When auto-generated emails go out, you want to make sure that their name is not in ALL CAPS.
Updating the contact status and call results will also keep your lists clean. The data you have already had an engagement with will be removed automatically allowing new data to filter in.
Understand Your Data & Your Prospect
In order to best serve your prospects, it’s important to understand where your data is coming from. Knowing this will help you in the communication of the messaging. For example: is this list coming from a trade show your sales team was recently involved in? Or maybe these are all prospects who downloaded an eBook from the website. Your scripting will also be aligned with the email messaging targeted for the persona to which you are reaching out.
How you approach a prospect initially will depend on previous engagements or lack of. The first time you work with a prospect you want to do a little research – three in under three. Three under three means you research for at most three minutes and try to find three things relevant about the prospect and update your notes. This will allow you to review quickly when in a call blitz.
Phone Settings & The Power Dialer
Phone settings are incredibly important when it comes to your connection rate. FrontSpin allows you to decide how you want your number to be shown. Rotate using your assigned number along with a local or random presence in your outreach to increase the likelihood of a connection.
Use the power dialer! This is not an auto dialer – I repeat – this is not an auto dialer! Unlike Connect and Sell where the system calls multiple people at the same time, the power dialer simply sets up your next call as you’re finishing your current call. FrontSpin’s power dialer allows the system to call the next prospect automatically once you are done with the previous one for maximum efficiency. You are able to set the amount of time you want to pause in between calls so you have time to make notes and designate call dispositions before the dialer moves to the next call.
Pre-Recorded Voicemails
Using pre-recorded voicemails in FrontSpin can be a great time saver and voice saver! You simply press a button as soon as the voicemail beeps and the message is being left at the same time you are on to calling the next prospect!
There are two options used when pre-recording your voicemails:
1. Record the entire message all at once (if no customization is needed).
2. Record only the body of the message and then do a live introduction to the person you are calling before dropping the pre-recording on top of the live introduction. It all goes together as one longer voicemail. If you do this a best practice is to avoid recording a time gap in your audio. When you click the RECORD NEW button, start speaking immediately, and then once you are done speaking, make sure to stop recording.
Stay Organized & Engaged
Maximizing your engagement efforts will help you succeed as an SDR or BDR. In doing this, it’s also important that you are creating follow-up tasks so you don’t lose sight of conversations you already had with the prospect. The ability to track open rate and click rate helps you prioritize who to focus on. When setting up your profile, review your notifications to make the most of your software.
One best practice we have enacted recently is tracking opens but not clicks. This has helped with spam. Make sure you are paying attention to opens and clicks from your emails sent. You should create a “Hot List” to add those engaged prospects to which will allow easy access when you are doing a call blitz.
You did it – you had a conversation! Regardless of if the conversation leads to a meeting set or not, always follow a conversation up with an email. You never know when a prospect might need you. After the email is sent make sure to set a follow-up task to reach back out. This task could be for you to nurture some more or to connect after they get back from vacation.
Conclusion
Being aware of your activity is critical to your success as an SDR. Frontspin has a dashboard that allows you to easily view your activity for the day such as calls made, emails sent, talk time, etc. Make a point to go into your dashboard to see how you are pacing for the day. This will eliminate the pressure of being behind on your numbers.
What are some best practices you have for your CRM/CEP? Let us know on LinkedIn!
Caroline Crouse
Head of Business Development | Alleyoop
Caroline is our in-house data expert! She has grown from Sales Enablement to Head of Business Development where she now leads our data efforts for all of our SDR teams.