How to Maximize Field Sales Engagement on the Road (3 Steps)
- Samir Majumdar
- November 29, 2022
- 8:02 am
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How to Maximize Field Sales Engagement on the Road (3 Steps)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Samir Majumdar
Samir is the CEO and Co-founder of Veloxy. After spending 20+ years creating corporate systems, boosting revenue, and eliminating inefficiencies, Samir started Veloxy to help sales professionals shorten sales cycles, accelerate pipelines, and close more deals.
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Field Sales Engagement is the process of engaging prospects, leads, and customers in face-to-face meetings.
It’s a fundamental process in field sales because customers are looking for face-to-face consultations and conversations with their vendors. This is especially true after a hiatus of sorts during Covid.
Thankfully, we found that 62% of field sales reps are optimistic about an increase in field engagement and the recovery of business travel in 2023.
So how can you predictably maximize your sales engagement levels when you’re on the road?
In this post, you’ll learn how to optimize your sales engagement in the field while making your number on a consistent basis. Let’s get started!
Step 1. Optimize your travel plans and routes
Step 2. Automate email and phone outreach
Step 3. Track and respond to buyer signals in real-time
Don’t forget to read the Ultimate Guide to Field Sales Success
Step 1. Optimize your travel plans and routes
One of the biggest reasons for sales engagement struggles in the field is a lack of pre-planning. Sales managers want more meetings, opportunities, and closed deals at the end of each trip, but they’re always left with “just enough”.
Closing more deals becomes much easier for managers and salespeople with the help of a field sales engagement software solution. Such a solution helps kickstart the effort to maximize face-to-face meetings weeks, if not months before a territory visit.
Here are two easy ways to accomplish higher levels of field engagement prior to a visit:
1. Send Drip Campaigns
With field sales engagement software, you should be able to quickly segment prospects, leads, and customers in your CRM. You can do this geographically by town or county, or opportunity size or pipeline stage.
Here’s an easy step-by-step path to follow one month prior to each trip:
2. Use a Route Planner or Optimizer
Once you’re in your territory with a calendar full of meetings, you’ll likely still have 15 to 45 minute chunks of free time. So, how can you maximize sales engagement in such short windows?
Here’s a great, smartphone-friendly path to more success:
Here’s a great resource for finding the Best Route Planner
Step 2. Automate email and phone outreach
Okay, you’re on the road, and improving the customer experience at higher levels than ever before—great work!
But when you have finished all of your stop-ins and you still have time to spare, how else can you efficiently maximize your field sales engagement levels?
By leveraging the automation features of your field sales engagement software, that’s how!
Lead prioritization
When you can’t prioritize outreach by your proximity to customers, the next best thing is to prioritize by their propensity to buy.
Now, I’m not suggesting you come up with a sophisticated lead prioritization algorithm all by yourself. And please don’t use spreadsheets or A to Z lists!
I will suggest you leverage the Sales AI built into your field sales engagement software. The machine learning and artificial intelligence uses sales-focused algorithms and your CRM history to optimize your outreach to increase the likelihood of connections and purchases.
Here are two ways you can use lead prioritization to maximize field engagement:
1. Emails Blasts
Now, we’ve already discussed drip campaigns for pre-travel, but what about when you’re already at your destination?
With lead prioritization, you can quickly and easily select a list of ready-to-buy customers and send them an email template. If you’re using a sales engagement software built for field sales, you’ll likely only have to spend 30 seconds to 1 minute accomplishing this task on your smartphone. Yes–it’s that easy!
2. Call Blitzes
While emails are a great low-effort high-reward way to reach ready-to-buy customers, call blitzes are more likely to speed up the buying process and get you more meetings.
Similar to email blasts, quickly access your prioritized lead list and one-click call your hungriest contacts. If your lead prioritization is more sophisticated than most, your list will be prioritized in real-time, thereby connecting you with buyers who are commonly active at the very minute you call.
Step 3. Track and respond to buyer signals in real-time
Geolocation and lead prioritization are two of my favorite features in field sales engagement software. But what if proximity and algorithms aren’t cutting it for you on a trip?
It could be time for you to tune-in to buyer signals! Buyer signals are real-time notifications delivered to your devices when a customer performs an action that suggests they’re available to engage and/or ready to buy.
Here are the two most popular buyer signals used by field salespeople today:
1. Email tracking
Most sales professionals are accustomed to reviewing mere open and click-thru rates. Luckily for them, sales engagement tools have evolved to include email tracking solutions.
Here are some email tracking notifications you can receive in real-time:
If 81% of emails are opened on smartphones, then calling your contacts immediately after they engage with an email puts you on the fast track to success! And when you’re not working from your car, you can receive these push notifications from the comfort of your gmail or outlook inbox.
2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
If you follow our cold email best practices, you’ll know that visiting a contact’s LinkedIn profile prior to outreach is a great move. I call it the “double tap to double response rates”.
Over 300 million LinkedIn users log-in and are active on a daily basis. If your prospects, leads, and customers have a similar engagement level with their phones and inbox, it’s best to cover all of your bases in each outreach attempt.
With this being said, make sure you turn on your LinkedIn notifications on your computer and smartphone. That way, when someone views your profile, that acts as a green light that they’re possibly available to talk. At the very least, it signals that your messaging is getting noticed.
And don’t forget to use Sales Navigator to improve your “Who’s viewed your profile” reporting!
Don’t forget to read our 10 Field Sales Tips for Social Selling
Final thoughts on sales engagement in the field
Field sales can be a challenging career–but it doesn’t have to be. The more face-to-face meetings you have, the more energized you are on a daily basis, and the more money you’re making on a quarterly basis.
Follow the steps in this blog post and you’ll be on the fast track to success!
If you’re looking for even more field sales insight, please visit our other popular reads: