The rapid advancement of technology has changed almost all aspects of business, including sales. Among the sweeping changes to behaviors and processes on both the seller and customer sides of the equation, one thing has held steadfast: the telephone. Telemarketing and sales calling are as widely used today as they were decades ago. In a post-pandemic world, the art of reaching out over the phone has become even more important than ever. Despite seeming old hat, telephone sales have also enjoyed a quiet technological revolution that has seen most sales calling – especially in high-volume environments – go digital. The calling revolution has been driven by the increasing accessibility of cloud-based power dialers, which have made landlines and traditional enterprise phone systems all but obsolete. 

Power dialers are game-changing tools because they provide an enormous amount of utility to sales organizations for a very reasonable cost. The benefits dialers offer make them a major upgrade over traditional desktop phones and range from increased efficiency and productivity, to more agent-friendly work environments, to easier closes driven by today’s unprecedented data availability, and beyond.

 

Power Dialers Increase Efficiency in High-Volume Operations

Power dialers are mission-critical software in high-volume phone sales environments because they enable agents to make more calls in a given shift and, thus, to contact more prospects. In a numbers game like telephone sales, this boost in efficiency and productivity can have an enormous impact on revenue generation. The potential ROI on a high-end power dialer makes it an easy investment decision for any sales organization that leans heavily on calling. 

 

Power Dialers Reduce the Potential for Agent Burnout

One of the biggest issues facing high-volume sales environments is the burnout and eventual turnover of sales agents. Even in script-based environments, mastering the sales process takes time and experience, meaning high turnover undercuts an organization’s success. A good power dialer automates most of the most repetitive calling tasks, like manual dialing, thereby reducing the repetitive mental strain on agents and improving the work environment. Automation like this can have a big effect on burnout, helping agents stick around longer and reach their full potential as salespeople. 

 

Power Dialers Can Enhance, Enable, and Speed-Up the Sales Process

Power dialers don’t just increase efficiency; they can also increase the effectiveness of the sales process when combined with the deep customer insight provided by a CRM. Power dialer-CRM integration enables agents to quickly and easily reference complete lead data (and add new data) right while they’re on a sales call. That access to on-call data results in two things. First, it ensures agents enter each call with the most complete information possible, better enabling them to offer the right solutions, manage customer objections, and minimize redundant discussion. Second, it makes the sales process feel more personal to the prospect, a key aspect of good sales in an age where customers don’t want to be treated like a name on a list. 

 

Top Features to Look for in a New Power Dialer

Not all dialers are created equal, and not all features are equally important. That makes selecting a system with the right features key to reaping the full benefits power dialers have to offer. Among those features, arguably the most important are widescale automation, local presence calling, and easy CRM integration. 

 

Widescale Automation

Increasing calling efficiency is all about leveraging automation, so it is important to look for a power dialer that automates as many processes as possible. At the very least, that means automatic dialing – a feature that allows agents to build out their day’s call list upfront and then let the dialer automatically launch each new call once the previous one has finished. Partial automation features like one-click dialing and one-click voicemail drop are also extremely valuable. One-click voicemail drop, for instance, enables agents to press a single button to instruct the system to leave a pre-recorded voicemail, forgoing the need to wait for the beep and reclaiming an enormous amount of wasted time. 

 

Local Presence

Local presence is a feature designed to significantly improve one of the most important KPIs in sales calling – answer rates. When sales agents make calls to prospects in a different area code, that unfamiliar number showing up on the call display is a cue to the recipient to ignore the call. An unfamiliar number guts answer rates and an unanswered call can never result in a sale. Local presence enables agents to select their outgoing number from a list of fully-owned numbers that can be loaded into the system or, in some cases, bought from right within the power dialer for a nominal fee. The result is that agents can match their outgoing numbers to the geographical areas they’re calling, boosting answer rates by as much as 65%. 

 

Seamless CRM Integration

The ability to utilize customer data from a CRM system is crucial to getting the most out of any power dialer, which makes easy CRM integration an extremely important feature. Not all dialers can integrate customer resource management software, and of those that can, some are easier than others. The other option for users not looking to struggle with integration at all is to choose a platform that is both a CRM and a power-dialer right out of the box, like CRMDialer. In any case, the ability to both pull customer data from a CRM and feed data back into the CRM while on calls is perhaps the most powerful feature any dialer can offer when it comes to making closing deals faster and easier. 

 

The Difference Between External CRM Add-Ons and Integration by Design

With CRM integration of such high importance, there are key differences to understand when comparing stand-alone power dialers that can add CRM functionality and CRM platforms that include a power dialer as a built-in feature. 

 

Stand-Alone Dialers:

Most purpose-built calling platforms offer certain types of CRM integration through APIs, direct connectivity with certain partner platforms, or through third-party connections like Zapier. Platforms like PhoneBurner offer exceptional, feature-rich calling software, but their outside CRM integration suffers from two major drawbacks:

1) Complexity: Regardless of how easy it is to integrate an external CRM, there will always be friction points and bugs because the two systems were designed separately from each other. That means hiccups and limitations in functionality are inevitable. 

2) Cost: While it might be easy to integrate a separate CRM with top dialing platforms like PhoneBurner or Five9, it certainly isn’t free! Choosing a stand-alone dialer and integrating it with a CRM means two monthly bills for software that are supposed to work as one unit. Paying for two platforms is not efficient, and those kinds of needless expenses are the enemy of profitability. 

 

CRM/Power Dialer Combos:

The benefits of CRM systems that come with fully integrated power dialers are clear. Because the systems were designed specifically to work hand-in-hand, the ability to use the two simultaneously and ensure seamless data flow is unmatched. The cost is also generally significantly lower than paying for a CRM and a dialer separately and linking them together. Maintenance and upgrades are also made simpler, and employees only need to be trained on one system instead of two. 

The only real drawback to fully integrated platforms is that there just aren’t that many on the market. It’s that rare combination of a feature-rich customer resource management system and a leading power dialer that make CRMDialer the go-to choice for so many sales organizations. CRMDialer offers an advanced dialer with widescale automation, local presence, a complete IVR system, advanced training and QC functions, and much more. It also offers advanced lead capture and management, built-in billing and payments, complete communications integration, a full analytics and reporting suite, email marketing, mobile access, and much more. Because of the complete and seamless integration, the dialer can be accessed, and calls can be launched in as little as a single click from anywhere within the platform, and users can navigate and use all parts of the CRM while on a call with zero friction or interruption.

 

The value offered by a good power dialer is significant, and there may be no better investment for sales organizations doing heavy telephone work. But why pay for a power dialer and a CRM when one platform can handle both tasks better than any linked stand-alone software? To find out more about everything CRMDialer can do with no need for add-on software, and how its wide range of integrated features can help your sales organization deliver a more efficient and effective sales process, sign up for your no-commitment 14-day free trial today!