For Online Sales Specialists, leveraging technology is crucial to working efficiently and communicating with our customers the ways they want to communicate. Technology can also allow us to work smarter, not harder. 

Often, we learn to use our tools at the beginning, but we don’t take time to stay current with new updates or to dive deeper into what our tools can actually do. 

Everyone’s so busy, and sometimes tech updates get lost in translation, so we wanted to take an opportunity to share a few things we’ve seen change and how you can incorporate them into your workday. 

Leveraging new ratings- We have multiple paths in this market, and we need to segment a bit further to provide better customer nurturing. Here are a few new ratings beyond No Response, Responded, etc., and how you can use them.

• Responded Nurture– Not quite as qualified as sales-ready for an appointment or a long-term prospect you want to keep in touch with.

• Responded Priority – Appointments are stopped, and you are in a holding pattern. Think air traffic controller. You have qualified them as appointment-ready, and you are waiting for the green light to be able to set appointments again. When it’s go-time, you can pull a segmented list by rating and community of interest. 

• VIP Responded & VIP Priority – Coming soon community interest lists don’t mean much unless you segment within the list. VIP Responded means you’ve talked to them, they are engaged, but you are still in the waiting zone for information and can’t quite qualify them yet. VIP Priority means you are able to qualify based on pricing, availability, timeframe, and wants/needs because you have the info to do so and you are ready to set VIP appointments when the time comes. 

Most CRMs have a reporting dashboard that can be set up to track monthly and yearly metrics. Take some time to get these set up. Don’t hesitate to reach out to support for help if you need it. Monthly, an OSC will want to measure at a minimum -

    1. Total new leads and by source 

    2. Appointments Set and Kept - totals and by community is also helpful

    3. Status of appointment and any sales occurred by community

You’ll still need to take these metrics and plug them into a simple reporting document to calculate your lead to appointment ratio, appointment to sale, and overall OSC Contribution. We recommend using Google Sheets.

*Source - Lasso CRM

Mass Email Outreach - Last year Apple changed the way they allow companies to track open rates on mass email outreach. Open rates are not accurate, but click-through rates still are! For online sales, this means that any mass mail communication you are sending needs to contain a clickable link to your website. When you pull a report on who has received your email, focus on the prospects who have clicked through to your website. This is a great list for you to pull and follow up with. 

Automation vs Personalization- If you have a large volume of inbound leads, definitely leverage automation for your non-responsive follow-up (post day one) and for 3rd party lead sources. Reserve personalized follow-up for website contact forms and responsive customers.

A couple of things to keep in mind – 

• Make sure your messaging is relevant for your current market, availability, and lead source – one size does not fit all.

• If your CRM has a built-in scheduler, make sure you are utilizing this for your short-term follow-up but also for your monthly nurturing types of outreach.

• If you’re typing the same email over and over, it’s time for a template. 

• Responsive customers you are actively engaged with and are trying to get to appointment need personalized manual follow-up.

• Label your personalized manual follow-up so you can prioritize your task list – F/UP #1, #2, #3, etc. If they ghost you after four attempts, move them to monthly nurture. 

These tips will help you work smarter not harder! 

You may have noticed that your calls show up as Spam when calling customers. No Bueno! You’ll need to go to your specific carrier to remove scam likely or blocked caller id. Here are the links and info to do so for the major carriers.

To remove the "Scam Likely" caller ID from those carriers, you will need to follow the instructions in the links provided below for each carrier: 

   • AT&T

   • Verizon

   • T-Mobile/Metro PCS

 

Lead Center Updates

• Pro- The ability to work directly on your computer or the app via softphone which is VOIP (Voice over internet). You can make and receive calls, handsfree, and text right within the platform. 

• Con – Requires strong internet bandwidth, which might be an issue if you’re on the go or working from home sharing your internet signal. Switching from internet to data causes some dropped calls and connection issues. 

If you’re having this issue, here’s the workaround. Instead of calls calling you as the lead center agent, change to dial your direct cell phone number within your call flow. 

Pro – Unlimited text characters and ability to send media – photos, video, floorplans, etc. Here’s a fun way to leverage this new capability. Create a quick send video text template! You can send a BombBomb video via text to a prospect from your specific signature number. Think – post-appointment circle back or even a day-30 hail mary no response follow-up. Here are the steps: 

    • Record your video template in BombBomb. 

    • Copy the link and save your gif thumbnail.

    • Create your quick send text template in Call Rail.

    • Insert link and gif right into the text template.

The advantage of doing this versus sending directly from your cell phone is the consistency in sending from your signature number. Plus you can create that easy quick template. 

BombBomb – Still a fantastic tool to reach out to your customers. Did you know that a person’s inbox affects their brain negatively? Breaking through the clutter with your friendly face makes a positive impact on your customers’ psyche. But, did you also know that BombBomb has a screen recording tool as well? As an OSC you can leverage this tool by recording a page on your website, showing how to navigate your floorplans, or even picking out a specific home for your customer based on what you discussed. This kind of follow-up feels extra good. 

It’s your job as CEO (Chief of Everything Online) to spend some time diving into your tools. Make sure to pay attention to those updates from your platforms, and if you aren’t sure how to use something, reach out and ask for help. Also, if you find yourself thinking that there must be a better, more efficient way to do something, there probably is!