Unfortunately, the average sales team only spends about 39% of their time actually selling. The rest of their time gets tied up doing admin and other tasks that aren’t part of their job description or that could be automated. But with some savvy sales productivity software and sales management systems, you can help your team gain their time back to focus on what they do best.

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Lead management systems for better qualification

As your business grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to know which leads are worth chasing and which are just tire-kickers. This is where a good lead qualification tool comes in. It can help you automate the process of screening leads for your sales team and keep up with lead flow so that you don’t let any potential good leads slip away.

Taking the lead qualification process out of your salespeople’s hands also gives them more time to nurture the leads they already have into loyal customers and, ultimately, focus on delivering a better experience to existing customers.

For example, Verse.io uses AI-powered SMS messaging to ask prospects pre-selected questions and filter for the best possible leads. With Verse.io integrated into your CRM, once a lead has been qualified, the record is updated in your system, equipping your team with the information they need to know if a lead is hot or cold.

eSignature tool for faster contract creation and signing

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop chasing down people for signatures, close deals faster, and stay more organized during the contract signing process? eSignatures make all of those things possible.

With eSignatures, documents can be signed anywhere at any time which means contracts typically get back to you quicker. Both sales teams and clients also receive electronic records of signed documents for secure keeping. An eSignature tool like Dropbox Sign allows you to autofill templates with customer data, send signature requests, and track signing statuses—all from your CRM.

Take Amenify, for example, a company that manages amenity services for multifamily portfolios. Amenify uses Dropbox Sign with Salesforce to seamlessly create templates and send master service agreements. The company now closes sales 33% faster and processes accounts receivable 25% quicker.

Text messaging platform for improved communication

With 46% of businesses admitting that they’ve lost a customer due to poor communication, having a simple, convenient way for your sales team and customers to interact is crucial. Fortunately, implementing a centralized messaging platform gives sales reps an effective way to engage with their leads and customers from one place.

The convenience of texting and live chat, specifically, allows sales teams to quickly answer questions, give customers updates, follow up on leads, and ensure that customers always have an easy-to-access point of contact. Sales reps and managers can also readily access both current and past conversations with customers if need be.

With a messaging platform like Podium, you can import contacts from your CRM and text customers directly within Podium. But you can also connect your Google My Business or Apple Business Chat accounts to Podium, allowing your sales team to easily and quickly respond to customers from those platforms in one place.

Appointment booking software for seamless scheduling

When sales reps are trying to juggle multiple customers and prospects, the last thing they need is to struggle with manually locking people into their schedules. Fortunately, appointment booking software saves time by doing the heavy lifting.

Not only does it let customers simply book appointments themselves, but it also gives you an overview of your entire schedule in one place, so you can see what's coming up, reschedule or cancel appointments, and set reminders so nothing falls through the cracks. Most appointment booking software also integrates with your email and calendar, so everything is seamlessly synced which means no more missed meetings or double-bookings.

One of the most popular appointment booking software out there is Calendly, which allows you to do everything previously mentioned and also integrate bookings with your CRM.

Call recording software for improved customer service

Making sales isn't just a matter of calling leads—high-quality, efficient communication is essential, and recording your calls is one great way to ensure you get through to customers.

For one, the ability to play back calls provides an excellent method for training sales reps on how to better communicate with customers in various situations. But listening to calls also gives insight into what leads and customers care about, allowing sales teams to tighten up their strategies. Plus, if a dispute ever comes up concerning anything discussed on a call with a customer, sales teams and managers can listen to conversations for clarification.

In addition to recording calls, the call recording software Gong.io can integrate with your web conferencing app and uses AI to provide topic analyses, talk ratios, and call transcriptions to help sales reps improve each customer interaction.

Ready to speed up your sales workflow?

When it comes to sales, every little bit of help goes a long way. So if you're looking to save time and give your team an efficiency boost, these sales productivity tools are a great place to start for sales process optimization.

But if you’re ready for a tool that can save your sales reps time and help them close deals up to 80% faster, Dropbox Sign is your solution. The convenience of eSignatures means you can get contracts signed quickly from anywhere in the world and, as a result, improve your sales team’s performance to quota by as much as 45%.

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