When Should You Invest in a Predictive Dialer?

A predictive dialer makes selling so much more exciting, doesn’t it?

Sales teams that have it have superpowers of sorts—they can close more sales, reach a wider audience, and not waste time listening to voicemails or busy tones when making outbound calls.

Isn’t this what every sales team is after? You betcha!

It's for this and many other benefits that having a predictive dialer is on the mind of most sales teams.

If your sales team is toying with the same idea, you need to know that investing in predictive dialers should be a decision that’s taken after much consideration. After all, you really, really want the tool to give you value for money.

Wondering when you should invest into one? We’ve laid down four key points for you in this post. Let’s look at them:

1. When You’re Gunning for an Efficient Sales Process

Dreams are made of having a workable and efficient sales process. A good sales process comprises many different steps—from prospecting to connecting, researching, presenting, and finally closing—a whole lot goes into each step.

The most demanding of all these is the “connect step,” which involves cold-calling prospects who meet the company's buyer persona. Many might debate this, but the truth is that there’s no other way to exceed your sales quotas than by talking to more people.

For this reason, you want more and more value to come out of the “connect step.” In reality, you’re essentially after two things:

1. You want your sales reps to be able to speak to as many prospects as possible—the more people they reach, the better their chances of getting qualified leads.
2. You want them to give quality time to these leads—instead of being under constant pressure, you want them to better handle the objections. You also want them to empower the prospects with all the information that will guarantee a sale without frantically jumping between their call lists.

A predictive dialer simplifies this step for sales teams and is known to cut the gap between answered calls to just 3 seconds. This helps reps save 45 minutes per day—the time they can devote to talking to more people and doing so by giving them a good ear.

With a predictive dialer, your reps can dial a lot more numbers than they would otherwise:

Improving the quality of the “connect step” also impacts the other steps of the sales process–in other words, it makes it more efficient. It’s a win-win for everyone!

2. When You are Selling High-Ticket Items

Predictive dialers are an excellent tool, but they may not be the best choice for selling high-ticket items.

Before you think of this as lame advice, hear us out...

Unlike products with low or medium value (say a $50 product), a high-ticket item or acquiring a customer with a lifetime value of at least $1000 and up requires the company to know “more” about their leads.

Before you even reach out, you need to build trust and context.

As a company, you want this step to be slow because if they’re willing to write you a check straight away, it shows their desperation. They may think they’re ready to sign up for your product, but the truth is that they haven’t done their homework—they don’t know much about your product's benefits and USP, how it will solve their problem, and what they can expect from it.

With all this missing from the equation, these are the worst kind of customers to have. They are extremely demanding, and you’ll have to spend more time servicing them.

Bottom line: if you offer a high-value product, stick to the long game and know that predictive dialers may not be your best bet.

3. When the Focus is on “Real” Sales

Every company expects maximum sales productivity from its sales team. However, despite a clear focus on improving productivity, it is often seen as missing.

Sales reps have a lot on their plate—they are busy handling paperwork, manually documenting sales activities, developing and seeking approval on proposals, wasting time switching back and forth between tools, and so on…

All these factors impact sales reps' productivity and take them away from “real sales”—in other words, they take away from the time they should be investing in talking to prospects, making follow-up calls, and closing deals.

It isn’t surprising that this impacts their sales quotas—57 percent of sales reps missed their quota last year, according to Forbes.

If you’re observing a rise in missed quotas, it is a sign that your sales team isn’t fully focused on "sales calls." It’s also a sign that you should consider adding a predictive dialer that integrates with your sales CRM.

Here’s how it will help you improve the productivity of your sales reps:

• It allows sales reps to improve their reach rate. Because sales reps aren’t wasting time waiting, they can make more calls and significantly improve their reach rate. By using Close’s predictive dialers, MakeSpace significantly improved its team’s efficiency and reach rate.
• It helps your sales reps focus on calls that matter. When they use a predictive dialer, sales reps get routed directly to prospects the moment they pick up the call, as opposed to wasting time on ringing, dial tones, and automated answering machines.

There are no doubt multiple reasons for low productivity and poor sales quotas, but if we make an attempt to make a small change, we can significantly improve the end result.

4. When You Understand the Regulatory Challenges

Companies using predictive dialers might experience call delays between a person picking up the call and a rep joining the call. This may seem insignificant, but it may impact your predictive dialer strategy as regulations govern such time lags, and the rules differ from country to country.

For example, according to US FCC regulations, calls that don’t get a response in two seconds should be considered abandoned, and a dialer must play a recorded message. UK companies also follow the same 2-second rule.

Conversely, Canada follows a strict Do Not Disturb policy, and predictive dialers cannot call a number registered in such directories.

These regulations inevitably raise the call abandon rate, which then impacts the cost that you’re incurring.

If you understand a company's challenges and limitations, predictive dialers make sense for your business. If not, they are not a wise investment.

Thankfully, Close users make it easy for companies to set a custom pre-recorded message.

Find Out if a Predictive Dialer Is Right for You!

As much as we love them, predictive dialers don’t suit the needs of every business out there. If your company is looking to invest in one, make sure to understand the real challenges faced by your sales reps and how a tool like this can help them achieve their goals.

If you sign up for a free trial of Close or request a demo, our sales reps can help you quickly determine whether a dialer is a good addition to your sales stack and, if yes, how to implement it in the most efficient way possible.