The post-pandemic scene has seen changes in how people buy and how companies sell. Looking to connect safely with clients and prospects has given quite an impetus to outbound campaigns, where agents or sales reps text or make calls to third parties, for example. 

Unlike inbound calls, where clients reach out to the company and actively seek information about their products or services, outbound calls might be the first interaction a prospect has ever had with the business. Sales representatives often have to phone hundreds of numbers before finding an interested prospect - and it’s even harder now that so many people are working remotely, far from their regular landlines. 

Outbound calling tools can help bridge the gap and connect you to more prospects faster. They can help you deliver the best possible customer experience to those prospects, increasing the likelihood of closing a sale. 

Suppose you are already using Salesforce: you could up your outbound game by adding a sales engagement platform and integrating telephony with your CRM. That way, you could enrich and leverage your records and increase your chances of meeting sales targets. Sales engagement platforms help keep sales representatives organized and streamline their work by automating low-level manual tasks and integrating with their existing CRM, phone, email, and other systems. There’s no need to purchase yet another standalone product.

A CTI or Computer Telephony Integration is a communications tool that allows your phone system to be used in conjunction with the information stored in your CRM system, such as phone numbers or interaction history. You can use your CTI to log or route calls, track KPIs and deliver a personalized experience through screen pops, along with numerous other benefits. 

These tools work together to connect sales reps with qualified prospects and improve prospect engagement. This article will look at three tools used to improve outbound calling through sales engagement and dialers. 

Orum

Orum is a sales stack engine. Through artificial intelligence (AI), Orum integrates with Salesforce, Salesloft, and Outreach to provide reps with complete contact information, notes, and other data points. AI can recognize and distinguish between human voices, voicemails, and dial-by-name directories. Instead of wasting agents’ time waiting for a beep or listening to a lengthy directory, the AI can leave a message and simultaneously connect the agent to the next call. Orum’s machine learning tools can filter out problematic numbers and search directories. This eliminates the need for manual intervention from the sales staff, which they claim can automate half of a sales rep’s daily work, improving productivity and saving money. 

Orum can dial multiple lines at once and offers AI-powered voice transcription. The ability to dial multiple lines simultaneously can save time and increase an agents’ interactions. Instead of an agent working their way down a list and calling each number individually, only to find that most of the lines are engaged or going straight to voicemail, Orum will dial multiple numbers at once to find as many people who pick up the phone as possible. Voicemails are automatically dropped and call tasks completed automatically, which can speed up your sales cadence. Once the system finds a caller that picks up, they connect the agents straight to conversations. More conversations lead to more sales. 

Orum’s ability to transcribe conversations to text through AI is particularly powerful as it collects and logs keyword-rich data that can be mined to gain additional customer insight. By converting voice call data to text, companies can better understand the mood, sentiment, and tone of conversations as customers move along the sales funnel. These insights can improve customer service, develop new products, or make improvements. 

Live conversation is the key to sales. Using Orum, reps can focus on having high-quality, conversion-driven conversations with prospects instead of spending time repeatedly trying to dial and get in touch with prospects. If you want to increase sales activity without increasing the amount of staff, tools like Orum can assist. 

Whereas PhoneIQ and ConnectAndSell support a variety of platforms, Orum is a web-based SaaS tool and recommends dialing from cell phones, which can be less than ideal for some companies. According to SourceForge, Orum’s support services are limited, although a live chat function is on their website. Pricing isn’t available on their website, but they do offer a free trial. Training options are limited as well. 

Orum is a good tool for companies that want an entry-level dialer that works with their CRM data to maximize sales reps’ time and connect to more prospects.

ConnectAndSell

ConnectAndSell is focused on helping B2B sellers accelerate and increase first, and follow-up conversations by giving management increased visibility and conversation coaching to maximize their pipeline. 

Lightning is a conversation-on-demand app. Sales reps can pick a list of prospects, press a button, and have a conversation within minutes with an available prospect. This is said to increase the number of conversations and conversions up to fivefold per day. 

We’ve already discussed how hard it is to reach a prospect on the first try. ConnectAndSell works similarly to Orum and PhoneIQ by integrating with Salesforce or other CRM systems. Their technology does the dialing automatically, moving along your CRM call list. However, ConnectAndSell has a unique value proposition in their virtual assistants. 

When a company signs up for ConnectAndSell, they have access to a network of trained agents that effectively screen calls that the dialer has connected with to eliminate time-wasting hurdles that include gatekeepers, IVRs, and phone trees. These assistants represent your organization and are trained in the best methods to get targets on the phone but never speak to prospects directly. As soon as a targeted prospect answers, your agents are injected into the call immediately. Connections are made in parallel, as the technology will dial multiple lines at once. 

The user experience is extremely intuitive. Simply load your calling list and dial into the phone bridge. By hitting the ‘Go’ button, the system logs in and connects reps to conversations. Agents can update contact records and notes, which are then passed to the CRM database. Once sales reps complete a session, a report showing all connections made is automatically generated so that you can make adjustments based on the data received. 

OutboundonDemand uses Lightning to book appointments for sales reps by increasing the number of dials per day. Managers can log into dashboards and view all dials, connections, and appointments or listen to recordings. 

ConnectAndSell also automatically cleans the calling list by deleting duplicate data, wrong numbers, and disqualified prospects and improves list performance with automated follow-up. ConnectAndSell can improve sales engagement and create a sales culture by reducing the wasted effort and frustration of repeatedly calling with very little results. 

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ConnectAndSell is a robust tool for business-to-business sales teams, but it doesn’t come cheap. While the company doesn’t release per-seat information, its cost is relatively high. According to Trustradius, there is a $6000 diagnostic evaluation fee which includes unlimited use for two named users for one month. Compared to the straightforward pricing of PhoneIQ, it’s much harder to budget when buying ConnectAndSell. 

Teams also need the data capacity to support high call volumes, or they may experience lag. In terms of features, ConnectAndSell is on par with PhoneIQ but offers more robust and innovative features than Orum. They also provide comprehensive training and customer support. 

Because of its price point and the live virtual assistants, ConnectAndSell is recommended for companies focusing on high-value B2B sales and booking sales demos or appointments.

PhoneIQ

PhoneIQ is a complete contact center and CTI solution for companies using Salesforce. The platform helps sales reps seamlessly move through their cadence and multiply their output without leaving Salesforce CRM. It works on desktop, mobile, and desk phones, both in-office and remote, automatically logging interactions in Salesforce and generating reports as required. 

When it comes to features aimed at increasing connection rates and accelerating sales, PhoneIQ offers power and preview dialers that import call lists directly from Salesforce, automatically pops contact information of the prospect on the agent’s screen, and generates the corresponding call log before jumping to the next call. Activating the local presence feature increases the odds of a prospect picking up the phone by displaying a local caller ID, while the power dialer increases the volume of calls made. 

The platform offers voicemail drop that enables reps to leave a pre-recorded voice messages with a single click. SMS and MMS messaging are also available to continue increasing the number of contact points that lead pipeline conversion into closed revenue. 

PhoneIQ leverages Salesforce data robustly and effectively, which can also improve inbound call customer service by giving reps instant visibility into who is calling, why, which line and access to customer records and opportunities. Salesforce Call routing automatically connects inbound callers to the right rep based on Lead, Contact, Account, or Opportunity Owner data. 

As a Salesforce-native computer-telephony integration, PhoneIQ is extremely powerful. Reps can add call comments, create follow-up tasks and assign calls to new or existing opportunities, which will be logged in Salesforce automatically. 

PhoneIQ is an excellent tool for companies that are already using Salesforce. Because the tool is cloud-based, it can be installed and deployed to thousands of users across the globe in a matter of minutes. It’s recommended for companies with a global presence or several offshored contact centers or any contact center that wants to optimize the number of calls and the value of interactions with prospects. Pricing is affordable and straightforward, as is implementation.  

Conclusion

Orum offers basic integration and a powerful automated dialer to improve the volume of successful outbound calls that reps can make. If your company needs something more sophisticated, ConnectAndSell and PhoneIQ offers richer features, analytics, and benefits. On the downside, ConnectAndSell is expensive compared to PhoneIQ and Orum. 

Whichever solution you choose, the combination of a CTI, sales engagement platform, and your existing CRM can transform your sales efforts and ensure that your team hits its target every month.