Less clutter, more closing: 5 tips to maximize the AEs' inbox

As a sales rep with closing responsibilities, I practically live out of my inbox, sending follow-up emails after meetings, scheduling next steps, answering questions and objections, sharing supporting collateral, and working through technical reviews and contract processes.

Unfortunately, all that activity can turn an inbox into Marie Kondo’s worst nightmare. When I’m on the road for customer visits, hosting remote meetings, creating decks and proposals, working on contracts, and doing all the other things it takes to move deals forward, cleaning up my email is the last thing I want to do.

But Outreach’s integrations with Gmail and Outlook help keep my inbox clean and efficient, keeping me on track and focused on engaging.

Here’s how I do it.

5 Tips To Streamline Your Inbox

1. Use Templates and Snippets to send the right response with the least amount of effort

Templates and Snippets allow you to create and share content in the most efficient way possible. These minimize the time it takes to compose messages, ensuring you’re delivering the right response with the least amount of effort. The best part? Every email and meeting booked is automatically logged to Salesforce.

My team uses Templates and Snippets to:

• Share a great response to a customer objection
• Enforce version control for messages with important documents
• Create a library of case studies and collateral relevant to each industry/segment

Just select a Template, insert Snippets, and add personal touches to deliver impactful responses in minutes.

Whether you’re working in Gmail or Outlook, just select a Template, insert Snippets, and add personal touches to deliver an impactful response with just a few clicks.

2. Simplify Scheduling with Outreach Meetings

Outreach Meetings for Google and Outlook calendars is essential for AEs with complex sales or deals that are further along in the process.

Right from your inbox, Outreach Meetings puts time back in your day by:

• Tracking different meeting types
• Displaying other team members’ availability so your prospect can schedule with everyone at the same time
• Automatically inserting teleconference links and bridge information
• Automatically dropping “no shows” into a Follow-up Sequence to ensure the next conversation happens without spending hours tracking down prospects

Outreach Meetings displays everyone’s availability at once, allowing you to schedule the best time, every time.

3. Keep Conversations on Track with Bumps and Follow-Up Sequences

Sales reps have two fundamental limitations on what they can accomplish in any given day: time and memory. But Inbox Bumps for Outlook and Gmail automatically push a message to the top of your inbox after a chosen period of time, so you always remember your next steps.

Sending out redlines on a contract and want to be notified if there’s no response in 48 hours? Bump it. Want to make sure you get a reply to your meeting invitation by next Monday? Bump it. When composing your message, just set the Bump reminder and let Outreach do the memory work.

Bumps help you stay on top of conversations without draining memory and bandwidth.

In addition to bumps, Follow-up Sequences can be attached to any message and help you to:

• Automatically resend an email if you don’t receive a reply
• Tee up additional tasks (e.g. phone calls, text messages, LinkedIn messages) to ensure conversations stay on track
• Keep you in touch with prospects who need to pause evaluation - use a nurture Follow-up Sequence to maintain the relationship

4. Laser-Focus Your Attention with Outreach Tasks

Use Outreach Tasks to create and assign tasks for emails, calling, in-person meetings, or an action-item so you always know your next step.

As I’m making phone calls, attending video conferences, working on decks and proposals, and creating contracts, my inbox is filling up with requests for a demo, proposal, or other needs. Rather than let them pile up, I use Outreach Tasks to keep my inbox clean and my attention focused.

Using the Outreach Everywhere Chrome extension, I can create a high priority task or add a prospect to a Sequence Task without leaving my inbox. I can schedule it days, weeks, or months into the future, and even assign it to another member of my team.

The 360 View in Outreach acts your personal assistant by reminding you what’s due, prioritizing your activities, and automatically logs them to Salesforce when you’re done.

5. Leverage Machine Learning to Engage Smarter

Deep beneath Seattle, in a top secret, concrete-reinforced bunker, the Outreach Data Science team is hard at work using machine learning to turn every rep into a superhero. Ok, not really, but Outreach Amplify certainly makes me feel invincible.

Now, I no longer need to check to see if a phone number has been updated or changed because Amplify automatically extracts and adds them to Salesforce, making our team smarter and more efficient without lifting a finger. In fact, our own sales team benefited from more than 43,000 phone numbers that were automatically flagged, allowing us to work as effectively and efficiently in real-time.

And with Amplify Intent Reporting and Guided Engagement releasing in 2020, we will be able to further tidy our inboxes by working the prospect’s replies based on their intent--positive or negative. For example, Amplify will classify positive reply that asks for more information from a negative reply with an unsubscribe request, allowing me to act in seconds, rather than days, giving me greater productivity and control of my inbox.

With Outreach Templates and Snippets, Meetings, Follow-up Sequences, Tasks, and Amplify, it’s easy to maintain an email inbox that even Marie Kondo could love.

Get back to joy with Outreach.