Sales Prospecting Perspectives

As an inside sales rep, your call plans most likely include effective email prospecting strategies. You’re giving out your email to everyone you talk to in case they want to contact you later. You’re sending reports to your superiors and asking for advice from your managers, all within your inbox. You’re inundated daily by messages from clients, prospects, marketing, and more. It’s no surprise that email takes up 28% of the average workers’ time, according to McKinsey & Company. To put things into perspective, that’s one-fourth of your day spent in your inbox.

For many inside sales reps, email is one of the most powerful prospecting tools. However, spending more time on email tasks than on role-specific tasks like agile selling for prospects with the right fit may result in a negative dip in quality conversations each quarter. Here are some email prospecting tools and apps every inside sales rep should use to streamline their email tasks and organize their inbox:

Streak has an interesting value proposition: “You already live in your inbox; shouldn’t your CRM?” The company was born out of the frustration of inside sales reps having to switching between the email inbox and the CRM. This free Gmail app allows you to manage prospects through the entire sales cycle, as it keeps track of the status and details for each customer. Just group your email recipient into the right “box” (i.e., lead, pitched, demo, closed) and schedule follow-ups with them to increase their status.

Streak also streamlines the process of writing repetitive emails with what they call “Snippets,” customizable email templates for each stage of the sales cycle. Email templates are helpful when sending out messages to mass recipients, but customizable templates are even more helpful for tailoring and personalizing your initial message for the prospect’s experience.

Yesware “removes barriers to productivity” according to their website. This Gmail app allows for simple email tracking, to see who opens your emails and clicks on your links and when they’re completing those actions. It also can sync with Salesforce, so tasks and contacts can be viewed in both Gmail and your CRM.

Over the years, Yesware has also expanded to offer the possibility for email reminders, custom email templates, and analytics and reports on sales team inbox activity including email opens and response rates. Identify which of your prospects are opening your emails and track their activity with email tracking software like Yesware.

Signals is also an email tracking app, and is a recent competitor of Yesware. If you’re a HubSpot user, Signals offers integration with HubSpot, which can be immensely helpful for email marketing and prospecting. It also allows for Apple Mail integration, which YesWare does not. However, if you send an email to more than one participant, HubSpot does not have the capability to identify exactly who is opening it. You’ll get the most out of this tool if you send more 1:1 emails.

Both Yesware and Signals compete for sales professionals’ time. We recommend trying a week trial of both to see what works for you (and then sharing your thoughts with us in the comments section below!)

After learning when your prospects are opening your emails through email tracking software like Yesware and Signals, use that knowledge to improve your prospecting strategy. Use Boomerang, a simple Firefox and Chrome plugin that allows you to schedule emails to be sent at an optimal time. Boomerang displays these emails in a dashboard that is easily accessible from your inbox, and allows you to change the date or time of your scheduled emails at any time.

While scheduling emails is its core offering, Boomerang also offers email reminders, which archives your email and then sends it to the top of your inbox when you want to be reminded of it. Its response tracking feature is also helpful as it reminds you to follow up with people if you don’t hear back within a given time frame.

How often do you email prospects from a list and receive an annoying message in response that reads, “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently?” According to this article, 17% of Americans create a new email address every 6 months. If you’re sending emails to dead email addresses, you’re losing valuable prospects.  It’s important to make the most of your time by having the correct data at hand. One tool that can help boost your email efficiency is offered by NetProspex. With NetProspex’s service, you can assess, cleanse, enhance, and grow your data. Start with a free sample of the Data Health Scan, which will provide a real-time view of the health of your data and will enrich your database by filling in any gaps or correcting any errors in your records, validating any email addresses before you send out any messages.

NetProspex also offers services such as CleneProspex, which measures email deliverability and spam trap risk, phone connectability, duplicates based on email addresses, and more, supporting a healthy CRM. According to SiriusDecisions, companies managing data quality experience a 66% revenue increase. The most efficient and effective emails are sent using up-to-date information, and NetProspex offers an easy solution. AG has seen NetProspex’s effectiveness firsthand through our AG Opportunity Connect program.

Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that gives a quick overview of your email recipients and prospects - including their picture, email, location, job title, and social networks, as well as any previous email interactions you’ve had with them. Rapportive, which helps build rapport, shows as a sidebar, so it doesn’t interrupt your workflow. Just sign in with LinkedIn and Twitter and all pertinent information about your prospect will be available on the right.

Rapportive also shows the recipient’s most recent activity on social network sites, which could help you add value to a conversation they already started. For example, you could write, “I saw that you tweeted about cloud security. You may be interested in this lastest post about ___.” This is a great way to bring context to your emails, and it organizes most of your research about a single prospect into one, localized place.

With these email prospecting tools, you can streamline your email prospecting for more productivity, response rates, and open rates. Consider implementing one of these tools today for a trial period and assessing which email prospecting tools are best for you.

What other tools would you add to this list?