6 features you must look for in cold calling software
Cold calling software is one of the highest ROI tools for modern sales teams. Sales teams today often rely on a lot of disjointed tools and processes to reach the right leads and sell them products and services.
Cold calling software allows salespeople to make more calls in less time and automates repetitive processes like leaving voicemails and following up with leads.
Although most cold calling software is helpful, you need to look for specific features that will help your team meet quotas. Below are some of the best features you should look for when choosing a cold calling software product.
The 6 features you must look for in cold calling software:
- Power dialing
- Call recording
- Extensive analytics
- Integration capabilities
- Scalability
- Coaching features
Power dialing
A power dialer is one of the most important features in any cold calling software. With a power dialer, the next contact on the list can be called automatically after a call is made. This allows your sales reps to save time and avoid manual repetitive work that can be taxing on them over a given workday.
Incorporating power dialing into your cold calling workflow can improve your team’s productivity significantly and save them a lot of time.
The cold calling software you use will have different power dialing features in comparison to other alternatives. It’s important to review the power dialing on a tool prior to committing to a product.
More specifically, the power dialing should be easy to incorporate into your tools and workflows. For example, if you are using Salesforce as your primary tool, your power dialer should be able to pull contacts directly from Salesforce.
This will allow your reps to spend more time on calls instead of doing administrative work like transferring contacts from your CRM solutions to your power dialer.
Call recording
In addition to a power dialer, your cold calling software should have call recording as a feature. Reviewing calls is an important part of refining your sales pitch and campaigns, so your cold calling software should enable easy call recording for your team.
Call recording is also used as a training tool for new reps. By listening to experienced sales reps make calls, new reps can learn the best practices for cold calling.
Additionally, the cold calling software you choose should also make it easy to share recordings with colleagues. Your team should be able to quickly and easily share recordings with each other in order to get feedback and improve their cold calling skills.
This can be directly in the cold calling software or it can be a downloadable file that is shared with the team.
Some cold calling software also offers cloud-based call recording, which gives sales reps the ability to review calls anywhere they have an internet connection. This is a valuable feature for managers and executives who need to listen to calls but may not always be near their desk. Make sure to take a look at the specific call recording features your software offers before buying it for your team.
Extensive analytics
A key differentiator between cold calling software products is how much analytics and data they provide on your operations.
The average sales team has access to basic KPIs and metrics on what they are doing, but extensive analytics provide them with new and untapped data that they can use to better their calling efforts with business intelligence tools.
With analytics on hand, sales teams can make data-driven decisions on how to improve their pitches, scripts and workflows.
The different kinds of analytics provided by cold calling software
- Advanced KPI tracking: With advanced KPI tracking, you can track KPIs for both the team and individual members. This will enable managers to see exactly what needs to be optimized to improve conversions and reach the overall goals for the team.
- Real-time data: Cold calling software also provides managers with real-time accurate data on the cold calls being performed. This data can be filtered by various criteria, such as time of day, type of cold call, or rep.
- Historical data: Historical data is also important for understanding cold calling trends over time. This data can help managers see what worked in the past and adapt their cold calling strategy accordingly.
Integration capabilities
The modern cold calling software needs vast software and data integration capabilities to support all the tools that sales teams use.
Sales teams are using an increasing number of tools to help them with their selling efforts and cold calling software can help centralize all of those tools under one dashboard. This ultimately helps sales teams focus less on nitpicking tools and more time on calls with customers.
Integrations that your cold calling software should support
- CRM integration: The most important integration for cold calling software is with your CRM. As mentioned before, the power dialer should be able to directly pull contacts from your CRM. Additionally, all call data and recordings should be automatically logged in your CRM for easy access later. CRM tools can also integrate well with digital marketing channels such as social media platforms.
- Email integration: Email integration allows sales reps to quickly send emails directly from the cold calling software. This is valuable for sending information about a product or service after getting off the phone with a lead.
- Calendar integration: Calendar integration enables sales reps to easily schedule appointments and follow-ups directly from the cold calling software. This is a valuable feature that saves time and ensures that leads are contacted in a timely manner.
Scalability
A commonly overlooked aspect of selecting a cold calling software is scalability. When a product is typically demoed, it’s usually for a single user. This can result in buying a cold-calling product that’s not optimized for larger teams. You should check how scalable your cold calling software can be prior to using it with your team.
Scalability features to keep in mind in cold calling software
To ensure that your cold calling software will grow with your team, be sure to ask your potential vendors about the following:
- The number of users: How many users can the cold calling software support? What does pricing look like as the number of users grows?
- Team management capabilities: Are there team management capabilities in the product that allows managers to easily add and remove users, change permissions and manage teams?
- Training and support: How much training and support will be offered for your team if you buy their product? What does the process look like for technical support for the software?
Asking these types of questions will give you a quick insight into how scalable the product can be for your team and how much the vendor can support you as you grow your operations.
Coaching and onboarding features
Coaching is at the core of the best performing sales teams and cold calling software should help your managers coach your newer reps. The average sales team relies on manual processes to coach their reps. Although this may work, there’s still a lot of untapped coaching potential due to a lack of data. The cold calling software you select should provide you with the data you need to
Coaching features to look for in cold calling tools
The best cold calling software should have in-built coaching features to help sales managers more easily coach their reps. These features should include:
- Call recording and monitoring: The ability to record cold calls is important for sales managers who want to review calls with their reps. This also allows managers to keep an ear out for top-performing reps who may be a valuable resource for coaching other members of the team.
- Call analysis: In addition to recordings, call analysis features provide sales managers with data on how reps are performing. This data can include metrics such as how many calls were made, how long each call lasted, how many leads were contacted and more.
- Performance tracking: Performance tracking features help sales managers track the progress of their reps over time. This information can be used to identify areas where a rep may need additional coaching.
In conclusion
Selecting a cold calling software with the features mentioned above will help your sales team increase their productivity and effectiveness.
By ensuring that the cold calling software you select has the ability to integrate with your workflows, provide you with analytics and power dialing, you can take a data-driven approach to cold calling and exceed all of your sales quotas.
To learn more about cold calling, check out our post on how to build trust after a cold call.