Sales Dialer Justification: 6 Reasons a Dialer Supercharges SDRs

By Joe Cronin, Inside Sales Manager Koncert

Your company invested in Sales Development Reps (SDRs) because they can reach hard-to-find decision-makers sooner and grow the customer base quickly.  This growth is notable because a prospect that is found via outbound calls, is much less competitive than a prospect that has filled out a form looking for similar offerings on other sites.

From a sales position comparison, SDRs are not as costly as other sales individuals to employ, but they are a considerable expense.  If you have SDRs making outbound calls for sales leads, you want them performing outbound dialing very efficiently, but more importantly, you want SDRs to have many sales conversations and to set lots of meetings.

If this were 1978, you could just give a hard-working SDR a calling list and a phone to generate business leads.  However, we live in a world where most decision-makers don’t respond to yesterday’s outbound dialing. An SDR team that is not armed with the best sales tools is destined to spend their day with multiple calls only to leave voicemails. It’s as if they are professional message deliverers. Rarely do these SDRs speak to decision-makers.  Even a highly skilled SDR won’t set many meetings if they don’t have many sales conversations. This aimless dialing decreases the ability to achieve KPI targets and leads to frustration or even job changes.

Here are 6 proven reasons why a Sales Dialer consistently supercharges SDR sales:

1.    Speed – A sales dialer gives your SDRs a sales tool that allows them to easily make 100+ dials per day.  A good sales dialer eliminates the need for a sales rep to manually look up phone numbers or make sure they're entering the number incorrectly. Sales dialers provide the business development reps with the ability to quickly finish a list by rapidly moving through from one call to the next with a simple mouse click for each call, in lieu of punching numbers on a phone. Great SDRs are hungry to get prospects on the phone to set their next meeting. (Please note, Robo dialers and predictive dialers, which isn't what we do here, may have inherent delays or call drops, which are not suitable for B-to-B calling and you should consider a sales dialer like our system that does not have these issues.)

2.    Ease of Use – Sales dialers make SDRs jobs easier–not harder. These systems have the capability to easily upload CSV calling lists or seamlessly integrate lists into CRM systems such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, etc. If the process is too difficult, a new sales dialer must be considered. SDRs typically don’t want to consume their time with setup procedures or lose control of who they are calling.  The selected sales dialer needs to allow SDRs to quickly load a call list while giving them the flexibility to select/de-select specific prospects in the list.

3.    More Prospect Pick-Ups with local caller ID – Beyond a high volume of dials, the best way to ensure more prospect pick-ups is by using a sales dialer that offers local caller ID matching.  Local caller ID matching enables the prospect to experience a local presence so they are more likely to pick up the phone.  Since SDRs are an overhead expense, companies need to make sure they have a positive outcome from dialing, sending emails, and leaving voicemails--they need to contribute to the sales pipeline by setting meetings. If a prospect sees an area code that is unfamiliar to them, they will let the call go to voicemail.

4.    Perfect Voicemail Every Time – A SDR who is leaving voicemail after voicemail tires quickly and leaves voicemails that don’t represent their company well. Sales dialers give you more time that's typically spent manually dialing to focus on leaving personalized voicemails that match the prospect or campaign.  

5.    More At Bats – The best sales dialer ultimately gives SDRs more “at-bats” or opportunities to speak with live prospects. Sales dialers give SDRs the opportunity to speak with more prospects and contribute to the sales pipeline faster.

6.    Meeting Setting Frenzy – A special thing happens when an SDR gets excited about setting lots of meetings: A contagious feeling of excitement.  Sales colleagues witness this success and are infused with the confidence to set their own meetings. However, the opposite also holds true: A day of leaving voicemails and only speaking to a few prospects, is a morale killer and eventually, SDRs perceive the company’s value prop as the problem.

Supercharge business development teams with dialing systems such as:

• Click Dialer - Click-to-call software residing within the CRM that allows users to simply click and dial any phone number, take notes, leave voice messages, send email, and quickly move onto calling the next prospect. This product improves sales productivity by up to 30% compared to manual dialing.
• Flow Dialer - Sales dialing software that expands the Click Dialer features to allow users to seamlessly dial your prospects using our patented visibility and control capability —improving sales productivity by 30% to 100% compared to manual dialing.
• Agent-Assisted Dialer - A human agent-assisted dialing solution that takes sales dialing to the next level by allowing a group of human agents to make 125-150 dials per hour while filtering through non-productive dialing activities such as navigating voice mail systems, and dealing with gatekeepers. Using an Agent-assisted dialer, sales representatives are able to engage on average 8 to 12 live conversations per hour with decision-makers. This product improves sales productivity by up to 800% compared to manual dialing.
• Koncert Cadence - Automated multi-channel sales outreach. Phone. Email. Video. Text. Social. The right cadences for different verticals, products, and stages of the buyer’s journey.
• Smart Platform - A predictive intelligence engine that analyzes, prioritizes, and scores prospecting lists ensuring your best leads are contacted first. Smart Platform self-learns by analyzing more than 5 billion data points and further improves outbound prospecting results by enabling users to customize the prediction algorithm based on a prospect’s installed technology, intent to buy, contact data, and best time to reach.