Rallying your sales team to hit its expected quota can be a herculean task, especially when every rep has different motivations. The more complex your sales team is, the harder it is to get everyone on the same page.
Instead of solely focusing on how to help each rep improve, you should consider ways to streamline, uniform, and fine-tune the sales process.
Sales engagement software driven by queue-based lead management and sales cadence standardization can help you improve efficiencies and drive sales productivity in ways that list-based CRM simply can’t. Such an approach promotes consistency and increased visibility across all levels of your sales pipeline.
As a result, you’ll be able to set up a coherent sales process that maximizes your conversions and facilitates workflow allocation, leaving no opportunity untapped.
Why Do You Need Queue-Based Lead Management?
A sales engagement platform that features queue-based lead management prioritizes and routes the next best lead, based on criteria set by you, for the next available sales rep to call.
If the lead doesn’t respond, the system re-routes it back to the queue based on the lead criteria and sales cadence specifications.
Traditional, list-based CRM solutions hinder performance by forcing salespeople to hunt for the next lead to call from a list of leads or tasks.
This results in many salespeople “cherry-picking” leads they deem high-value and ignoring the rest of the leads, which results in a large percentage of sales leads never being contacted.
So, although list-based CRM options do minimize the need for going through lists manually, they still don’t remove the burden of lead prioritization and decision-making from your salespeople. It’s still every individual sales rep’s call to determine the next-best prospect to reach out to, which is a time-consuming and error-prone process.
With a queue-based approach, it’s possible to set up queuing priorities based on different parameters such as geography, the amount of time the contact has been waiting in the queue, specific pain points, and previous touchpoints, among other factors. The lead is automatically presented to the sales rep, thereby avoiding the requirement to choose which lead to contact from a list.
This automation means increased sales team productivity and deeper list penetration on an individual level, ensuring that no leads will slip through the cracks.
Benefits of a Queue-Based Sales Engagement Solution
In the previous section, we discussed some high-level benefits of using a sales engagement platform with queue-based functionality. Now let’s dig a little deeper into seven more lead management benefits.
1. Focus Minus Distractions
With a list-based approach, there is always a tendency (i.e., sales pressure) to rush through calls to finish the given list.
The size of the list can be overwhelming, and reps will likely not have enough information to pay 100% attention to the best leads. In other words, your sales reps
- won’t always be able to identify the most likely to convert leads
- won’t have enough time to focus on building meaningful relationships and nurturing high-quality leads.
A queue-based tool, on the other hand, presents a rep with only one lead at a time. They do not have to waste time filtering the leads and determining whom to call and what actions to take. With the best lead automatically presented, they do not need to spend time chasing low-potential prospects.
2. Greater Persistence
Lead status, call results, and lead age are a few fields in the queue-based system used to determine lead priority.
This data indicates how many times and how often the team has contacted a lead and when it is the next best time to call.
Sales professionals using a list-based system tend to be somewhat hesitant to contact leads repeatedly, especially after the third attempt. In fact, studies have shown that 80% of leads are never followed up on by salespeople meaning they give up after one attempt.
However, a Telfer Study substantiates that the number of contact attempts to arrive at a decisive outcome now stands at an average of six calls. A queue-based lead management system forces sales reps to stay persistent, which in turn reduces lead decay.
Despite someone’s personal misgivings, the system helps team members develop the practice of following the desired cadence and never missing a follow-up opportunity.
3. Enables Proactive, Natural Follow-up
In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, we cannot stress enough the importance of timely, proactive follow-up. Past studies have emphasized the need to follow up with inbound leads within 5 minutes of inquiry.
However, the aforementioned Telfer Research, which is more recent and based on a substantial sample size, refutes this through various illustrations and data.
The Telfer Study proves that the best time to make the first contact attempt is within ten to 60 minutes after receiving a web lead.
Incoming web leads or buyer intent signals can drive the queue to push those leads right to the top, where speed-to-lead dramatically increases the chances of success.
4. Eliminate Cherry-Picking
Sales reps often ignore leads from marketing and tend to call leads based on personal bias or a perceived opportunity.
This precedent, referred to as cherry-picking, is not only mentally exhausting but may also result in neglecting some leads. A queue-based lead management solution can put a stop to that by queuing up leads objectively.
Sales reps get “closest to the money” leads and can contact them in that order.
They no longer have to rely on guesstimates or their ‘gut’ about what leads to work next.
Based on the response to the call (voice mail, request for a callback, no answer), the lead assumes a position back in the queue and is presented to the salesperson again as predefined by the cadence.
5. Precise Lead Targeting Possible
Granular lead scoring based on the title, lead age, geo-location, and lead source, among other data points, ensures the leads you want your reps to call make it to the top of the call list first.
Even in case of a conflict (a fresh lead vs. a follow-up,) a queue-based lead routing system uses various metrics to assess opportunity size, industry priority, and timing or time of day to prioritize. Again, this relieves your sales reps from having to make such difficult decisions themselves without having all the relevant information.
6. Better Management Control
A queue-based sales engagement solution puts control of lead flow criteria squarely in the hands of those responsible for setting up a sales process and engineering cadences.
As administrators adjust and readjust intellective routing filters and other criteria, the sales team continues to work leads.
They experience no disruption in their sales call activities. However, they are now working leads based on these refined variables.
7. Maximized Lead ROI
Sales teams are swimming in data from purchased leads, inbound web inquiries, phone calls, social media followers, and more.
For a salesperson, ROI is all about translating this data into actions that yield profits. Queue-based lead routing systems bring focus to the sales process by ensuring that your team calls the best leads at the right time per your standard cadence.
Queue-based solutions also provide more and better conversation opportunities that can create a more significant pipeline from the same number of leads.
In Conclusion
Selling isn’t easy, and running a sales team is one of the toughest jobs out there. However, a fine-tuned sales process powered by a queue-based sales engagement platform can make your job much easier. It can also make a sales team much more successful and productive.
Queue-based selling has proven to be ground-breaking for many a sales team. The above benefits of lead management not only improve the productivity of every team member but can also ensure a smooth workflow for the entire team.
