Okay so what is a Sales Engagement Platform anyway?

It’s no longer enough to just “be online”. Having a robust, cloud-based CRM solution isn’t a competitive advantage for sales teams; it’s expected of any sales rep who knows how to send an email or turn on their iPhone. With last decade’s cutting-edge technology becoming this decade’s baseline, how do you stay ahead of the competition - and the no call lists, spam blockers, and over-pitched, under-patient prospects on your list? BOOM. That’s where sales engagement comes in.

Persistence is key to sales. But you can make 10,000 calls and knock on 1,000 doors and you’ll still never be able to catch up to those who are working smarter through technology. Stressed? Don’t be. We’ve got your back.

Don’t leave me hanging - what the heck is a sales engagement platform?!

In a nutshell, sales engagement platforms enhance your existing workflows across all of your disparate sales tools - Salesforce and other CRM, your inbox, your phone, your content management system, and more - to make you faster and more effective. This solution is perfect for Account Based Sales teams who are looking for something that will save them time, keep them organized, and drive stronger results across all their selling activities.

Sales engagement platforms will help you communicate better.

Sales engagement streamlines all the ways you communicate with prospects - from email to voice to social - and lets you do it all in one place. You can work more efficiently when you bring information and tasks from 20 different platforms into one. A good sales engagement platform will have the ability to fuse with existing and popular email platforms like Gmail and Outlook in addition to your CRM. With email automation and customization, voice dialing, and much more, you can create targeted communication sequences that help you prospect more effectively while tracking and measuring your results.

Sales engagement platforms will help you work more efficiently.

By having all of your communications and data in one place, a sales engagement platform will save you time in non selling tasks like logging in, toggling between programs, tracking your work, and wondering where the heck that thread with Jim at Dunder Mifflin went. With built in prospect intelligence, you save time and come into every conversation more prepared. And with task management, you always know where your efforts should be focused when you sign on for the day. Add this up and you get more touches per rep each day, substantially more meetings, shorter sales cycles, and smiling sales teams when they demolish their quota. Again.

Sales engagement platforms will help you sell smarter.

A big part of sales engagement is sales intelligence. The right platform tracks and monitors all the calls you make, emails you send, and prospects you follow on LinkedIn, and actually helps you make informed decisions based on what works and what doesn’t. When do you call? How many times do you email? What do you say? It's critical that you’re able to plug in the right content at just the right time, and account for a variety of factors like sales stages, persona, and industry. Sales engagement does the planning for you and tells you when to hit send.

Sales engagement also gives you analytics. What good is trying fancy new strategies if you don’t have the evidence to back up whether they worked or not? The right solution turns you into a better sales professional by helping you track and measure everything you do, inspires you to think creatively in your sales strategy, and uses innovative solutions to help you overcome common obstacles that are tripping up your peers.

So… why do I need a sales engagement platform?

Batman has Robin. Sherlock has Watson. What could you achieve with a kickass sidekick like sales engagement?

Before sales engagement platforms were a “thing”, sales representatives had to deal with a number of moving parts that didn’t work well together and information that was stored in different locations, like hard drives or email accounts or ever-dreaded spreadsheets (Eek! We’re cringing). Getting a complete picture was made more difficult by trying to put all these parts together into one easy to view format. Spoiler alert: it was pretty much impossible to see all your data in one place.

Add that to the poor user experience from most standalone CRM solutions, and you have a lot of frustrated salespeople with a lot of expensive software who only know how to get about 10% of the value they’re paying for.

The sales engagement platform is the best way to stitch together what would otherwise be a scavenger hunt for information. Sales teams can improve their communications and engagement with their target markets while actually being able to keep track of what they’re doing. That’s why companies like Outreach exist. It helps you effectively engage and communicate with today's modern buyer.

What do I do next?

If you're looking for the advantages of a shorter sales cycle with better customer engagement, it's in your best interest to ask not what you can do for your CRM solution but ask what a sales engagement platform can do for you. Don’t be a slave to your sales technology. Find technology that truly works for you. Talk to someone today about how a sales engagement platform can not only help you hit your next quota, but set your goals even higher.

Want to know more about the Sales Engagement category? Go to SalesEngagement.com and listen to The Sales Engagement Podcast.