Over recent years technology has changed a lot of things in our lives. One of these is the way we follow up on leads and close new deals. Here is how you can use technology to achieve better sales results.
Use of mobile devices
As a business owner offering a consumer service, one of the biggest challenges you will face is being available to talk to a lead when he or she is ready to do business. Many of them will want to contact you when they are free, outside their work hours. Their work hours will normally coincide with your own. This means emails hitting your desk when you are away from the desk. You can talk to prospects on your mobile by setting up redirects from your landline, but what happens when they email you out of hours? The longer the lead sits unattended the less likely that prospect is to convert.
Technology to the rescue
Mobile devices have come a long way since the first iPhone of 2007. They are now cheaper and more durable than they were a few years ago. Some are even designed predominantly for business. What this means is that you are spoilt for choice. Virtually all smartphones today will allow you to reply emails on the go, answer and make VoIP calls on Skype, and chat on the barrage of IM applications that exist. You can also create and edit documents, scan documents and do almost everything you can do in your office. You don’t like small screens? Get a tablet! Don’t want to carry a tablet around? Get a phablet!
Use of presentation systems
Thanks to technology, you don’t always have to fix meetings and drive hours to discuss possible business deals and partnerships. Companies like Videonations offer tools and setups that will make it easy for you to share your slides, videos, audio, technical documents with people far away from you, in either live or offline sessions. These technologies have made it possible for people to enjoy interactive multimedia communications and build trust around the globe. What this means is you now have the ability to sell your products and ideas round the clock to anyone who is willing, leading to faster closure of deals.
Use of telecommuting tools
Telecommuting tools such as Dropbox and Google Docs have changed the way documents are shared. You no longer have to create new emails or forward old ones when contacting prospects. A simple link to the document will do the trick. Most prospective clients will appreciate this too, because it ensures they don’t have to download anything. It also makes things easy for you, as will be able to work in a more efficient manner, updating and evolving your sales documents.
These are some of the ways technology can help you close new deals and establish new business relationships. The online world of today is much like the offline world of yesteryear. The fundamentals haven’t changed, and people still deal with people. Remember that as you build your business.
