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Movies like “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Death of a Salesman” depicted the traveling salesperson as a type of hard-working hero, chasing down leads to make a sale.
It isn’t the end of the “road warrior,” but the role of the traditional salesperson continues to change thanks to advances in technology. Those still traveling to close the deal rely increasingly on sales development representatives and their high-tech tools like OppSource sales development software.
Face-to-face used to be the all-or-nothing when it came to making the sale. Sales representatives like pharmaceutical representatives traveled around to pitch their products. Telemarketing came onto the scene, but the road warrior was still romanticized as the deal closer.
Business-to-business selling is no longer as dependent on face-to-face conversations. When salespeople do need to have those conversations, they can increasingly use web conferencing software to connect with clients. Customers embracing the digital age are more comfortable getting information over the telephone or through video conferences.
Buyers become more sophisticated as information about every product and service market becomes more readily available. Salespeople need to become sales specialists or rely on others who have the technical expertise to help find the right solution to match customers’ needs.
Outside sales representatives who still depend on that face-to-face time are becoming more strategic. They are doing less face-to-face selling. The drive for leaner business practices is leading companies to cut travel costs and related expenses. When they travel for that face-to-face interaction, they are more likely to do it to interact with high-value clients or engage with key decision makers as an early step in finding new ones.
Technological advances like predictive analysis and the ability to dive deeper into data give them more insight into potential customers’ buying habits than ever before. Many companies are increasing their inside sales departments to focus on lead generation. Inside sales development representatives use all types of communication including emails, phone calls, texts and more to contact potential leads. They must. Many of their initial raw leads are generated through visits to websites, and studies show the quicker salespeople contact those web leads the more chance they have of closing the deal.
While sales development representatives (SDR) may not yet be playing the role of sales heros or the focus of movies, they are becoming increasingly more important to sales departments’ efforts to meet their goals. Sales development representatives identify, connect with and qualify leads that are often turned over to account executives who complete the sales process.
Remember that the faster a sales team responds to an inbound lead, the higher the chance of converting the lead to a customer. SDRs use specialized sales development software to identify opportunities to build clientele and sell more products or services to current customers.
The OppSource PursuitPro™ sales development platform gives sales teams the ability to create sales development touch plans that make it easy for them to consistently stay on top of every lead. They deliver account-based sales ready opportunities with all historical lead development activity and account intelligence ready for the sales representatives to pursue.
The longer SDRs take to contact potential leads, the less chance they will have of turning those leads into opportunities. OppSource moment-of-interest alerts improve connect rates by up to nine times.
OppSource sales development software enables SDRs to organize both inbound and outbound leads and keep the pipeline full of sales-ready opportunities so salespeople can close more deals.
The road warrior may be forever the image of the “sales hunter,” but more and more the sales development representatives will be the ones telling them where to hunt. The OppSource PursuitPro sales development platform makes this possible.
For a free demo or more information about OppSource, visit its website at http://www.oppsource.com or call 1-877-742-8880.
Release ID: 173525