Best Sales Acceleration Tools to Drive Insights and Win More Sales

sales team with graphics

Before the Best Sales Acceleration Tools: What Is Sales Acceleration?

The business landscape is undergoing a tremendous transformation, which may be more rapid than any other in history. Even so, sales organizations still need their deals to close fast, while customers expect emotional connection and compelling interactions with salespeople who can solve their main concerns. Organizations need to implement the best sales acceleration tools and meet customer expectations by giving salespeople advanced solutions and resources to improve their performance effectiveness in every interaction.

The firm Dun & Bradstreet clearly defines sales acceleration as “Strategies that help businesses move prospects through the sales pipeline with greater efficiency. Effective sales acceleration software provides sales and marketing teams with timely data and insights designed to increase the velocity and relevance of customer conversions.”

These days, sales teams are less likely to generate revenue by using in-person meetings, cold calling, and other methods. Managing teams and individuals becomes increasingly difficult in a world where face-to-face interaction is rare. Building relationships with customers starts with providing relevant and personalized content while combining these with extraordinary communication skills.

The right conversation intelligence technology can become one of the best sales acceleration tools in your stack.

Related: Two Tips for Post-COVID Coaching for Sales Performance

Traditional Sales Cycles Changed

With the advent of digital-first interactions, traditional sales settings have been disrupted. These days, many meetings take place via a screen, which can make connecting with clients and prospects a challenge. Whether they are interacting online or in person, sales reps must create individualized and relevant conversations and content and deliver this in a way that connects with their audience if they want to shorten the sales cycle. 

In the increasingly challenging selling landscape, out-of-the-box tools geared towards sales acceleration are crucial.

It is unlikely that the first call or meeting with a client will result in a sale. Your reps’ chances of success don’t just depend on what they say at the time. They are based on the proposal they can put on the table, their market knowledge, and the strength of the whole marketing system behind them. In virtual selling times, you must add soft skills to this mix.

Making this possible depends on a vital factor: the right technology solutions that can become the best sales acceleration tools.

The Best Sales Acceleration Tools

It is essential to think holistically about the entire sales process when selecting the best sales acceleration tools, as you may otherwise miss some highly effective tools that aren’t positioned as sales tools per se. These tools will go a long way in changing the way your team works. 

1) Business Management Software

This type of platform is necessary because, in addition to controlling all operations, buying, and selling, it provides a safe means of storing and accessing essential information wherever you are, at any time. Additionally, these systems can simplify, automate, and control all accounting and financial processes.

It is highly beneficial for sellers who spend a lot of time in the field and on video calls to have access to this tool so they can prepare before each encounter and discuss the product with their customers based on the data they need. Examples are almost endless and include Microsoft Dynamics 365 or even some Salesforce functionalities.

2) Email Automation Platform

It can take hours for salespeople to send emails, answer questions, and follow up on prospects manually. Thus, it’s vital to rely on a platform that allows you to set up certain functions, automate routines, customize messages, and save time.

For these email platforms to be among the best sales acceleration tools, they must be of the highest quality and sophistication. You can think of HubSpot, Mixmax, or even Intercom, depending on your unique needs.

3) LinkedIn 

A seller’s time on social media can translate into lost hours if they are not used properly. But, one of these outlets stands out from the rest and can be an affordable part of the best sales acceleration tools in your stack: LinkedIn.

This corporate social networking site is one of the best options for expanding your sellers’ network and increasing brand awareness. In addition to finding new prospects, starting a conversation, and keeping them informed about everything the brand offers, it is one of the most efficient ways to attract new business via social means. Additionally, automation tools can help your reps filter contacts, connect with valid leads, and send automated, personalized messages.

Your reps can also use LinkedIn to position themselves as authorities in your field and build trust with their target audience, a proven way to accelerate sales. Make sure they are all developing content that matches your customers’ needs.

4) Conversation Intelligence and AI-powered Sales Coaching Platform

Initially, conversation Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms collected a lot of customer data, such as opinions, topics of interest, negative responses to products, topics of growth, FAQs, and so on. Due to their ability to track other critical metrics that contribute to sales enablement and acceleration, advanced conversation intelligence solutions have become even more valuable in modern times.

Technologies like voice-to-text, automatic listening, performance insights, and predictive engines make it easy for business leaders to analyze variables and develop strategies. 

Real-time analytics lets you evaluate or even predict the sentiment, search terms, key messages, and more about your audience. The following are several ways that your team, representatives, and you could benefit from this technology:

Personalized, scalable AI PoweredCoaching

Coaching salespeople does not necessarily require the same intensity, channel, pace, or format for every person. An approach that relies on standardized coaching or training may be a waste of time and resources.

You can create personalized, individual skill development paths based on the actual opportunity areas of each sales rep with an innovative platform. Even better, you can use it to identify and focus on the specific verbal and soft skills that your top representatives use and replicate these across the entire team. 

Get Personalized Learning Based on Best Practices

A top performer speaks differently, uses unique terminology, and covers more fine points than an average performer. They are able to convey emotion in their speech, or they may use specific phrases or body language to get the message across. 

Comprehensive software solutions can capture, track, and analyze these effective cues during live or recorded calls your top performers lead. Trainers and coaches can then be guided by science-backed data to train other individuals who may not yet possess the same skills as they have. 

Traditionally, even with personalizing your training methods, you could only coach a minimal number of subjects at a time. Gradual behavior change takes time. Scaling this approach becomes more complicated if your salesforce is large and dispersed.

However, with the right technology, you and your reps can measure and track their performance get objective feedback and AI-powered skills development training and assessment at any time, anywhere, on their schedule. Starting small could be a good idea with your staff, focusing on a few critical skills and observing their measurable progress. Eventually, the automated AI-powered coaching program will lead to the results you want.

Related: Conversation Intelligence Software: Is It Worth the Investment?

Obtain Data-Backed Coaching and Training

Sales coaches can offer suggestions to improve sales results when they listen or watch  sales calls. Coaches’ feedback depends on their personal (and manual) impressions and experiences, so it’s subjective and time-consuming. During this process, a great deal of personal preference comes into play as you take into account what is going to affect your representative’s communication the most. 

Your salespeople can use technology to determine what elements of a sales call are essential and what are missing, so they can contribute to a successful sale. They can upload video calls, record a live session, or record a practice interaction using different scenarios, for example. If you use the right software, you can automate this process, so subjectivity is no longer an issue in trying to identify the skills each employee should focus on to have more winning conversations.

It will be all about what the business benefits from the most. 

Automatically Identify the Best Calls

The definition of a successful call varies from company to company, and each client has different requirements. Even the best sales managers can’t always anticipate human interaction clues that make or break a sales call. AI catches and tracks these subtleties and analyzes them.

As a result, your sales representatives can learn what it takes to make a successful call and how to avoid making ineffective ones. Invest in a software provider who will help you establish customized KPIs and benchmarks and build those into the systems. Make sure your reps are consistently working on those metrics and create training paths and coaching programs designed around them.

An effective sales call should result in a prospect who is engaged, committed, satisfied, and happy, rather than just closing a deal.

Increase your Sales Representatives’ Abilities to Sound Confident and Natural

There is no difference between whether or not your sales representative is required to use a script during calls or if they are permitted to speak candidly. Your choice of conversation intelligence software should optimize the skills of any team member. Newer sales representatives can also benefit from it, as they become more familiar with the product they sell.

It is crucial that your sales representatives do not sound mechanical or detached when interacting with customers or prospects while using a script. Sales are all about building relationships built on trust. Advanced software can improve their communication skills even when delivering a scripted pitch in person or online.

The most comprehensive solution on the market will allow every representative to identify and measure their strengths and weaknesses objectively. They can improve their skills over time using training techniques built into the platform. Their conversations will become more organic, engaging, and less formal, which will lead to increased credibility and trust.

Make Decisions about Your Reps’ Growth

Following a period of outstanding performance, top-performing salespeople are often promoted to management positions. However, most top salespeople are not necessarily the most effective coaches. In many cases, this happens because they were not adequately trained and equipped to manage and coach others.

Businesses have always put a high value on training salespeople, and their sales managers have always centered their efforts on this. Although this fact is well known, few companies know how crucial it is to provide managers with guidance on enhancing their teams’ performance. A conversation intelligence platform can also assist this process. 

This tool can help both current and potential leaders become better communicators and managers.

Transforming the Best Conversations into Sales Acceleration

Sales departments must modernize their platforms so they can accelerate sales performance. With the right conversation intelligence platform, you can tackle many aspects of everyday sales leadership tasks with ease. Choosing the right partner will allow you to attain high levels of precision, scalability, and automation from the very beginning.

Your company can accelerate sales in a variety of ways with a platform that generates conversation intelligence based on behavioral science and AI-based data.  An automated solution is flexible, scalable, and empowers sales reps to take control over their own success, allowing sales coaches to guide them without so much hand-holding.

With Quantified’s AI-powered analytics and coaching technology, individuals can better connect with others within all organizations, allowing them to engage in meaningful conversations with the right people to reach their goals. 

With the QC Score (a single, definitive measure of communication effectiveness to track and improve your staff member’s skill levels against peers, industry, and aspirational benchmarks), they receive an objective measure of communication effectiveness in an easy-to-understand manner. They can compare themselves to their peers, competitive benchmarks, and other aspirational metrics.

Platform capabilities for feedback and coaching ensure customer interactions are assessed and evaluated based on behavioral dimensions that make the difference between success and failure. The tool helps your team members achieve high performance, resulting in accelerated sales. 

Few AI providers create their algorithms using human-scored databases of communication data. Quantified’s unique approach to human connection combines behavioral science, big data, and advanced algorithms. Combining behavioral and social sciences with human communication will help you identify interpersonal factors contributing to the team and individual success. Better conversations. Better outcomes. Request a demo today.