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HOW TO MAKE EMAIL YOUR NEW
Favorite Sales Tool
Travisse Hansen Product ManagerInsideSales.com
Chris da Cunha VP of Email SolutionsInsideSales.com
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Are you ready to see email in a whole new way?
Most salespeople view their sales email the same way they view their personal email. They see it as just another commu-nication channel. It’s just a way to get their communications from Point A to Point B. But sales email is so much more than that. If you use it properly, email can become one of your most powerful sales tools.
Three types of sales communications happen in every deal: email, voice and web meetings. Our research indicates that the typical deal takes about 30 emails, six calls and one to two web meetings. So it’s obvious that email is the leading sales communication tool in terms of volume.
InsideSales.com conducted a study in which we asked business professionals which communication methods they use on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, 96%
singled out email, putting it ahead of their office phones (80%) and mobile phones (61%) and way ahead of social channels like LinkedIn (14%) and Twitter (4%). We also found that busy decision-makers — your buyers — are more likely to respond to email than any other method. They also said they actually prefer using email over any other channel.
We discovered that email offers huge value to sales teams, but most of them aren’t maximizing it. So we set out to create an optimized sales email solution. InsideSales.com has applied the same data-driven approach it brings to sales calls to sales emails.
In this ebook, you will learn how email tracking software with predictive analytics solves some of the most common prob-lems facing sales teams. For example, a sales rep for EVault says email tracking allows him to see exactly what’s relevant to
his customers, so he knows what to focus on in his sales conversations.
You’ll also come away with a clear understanding of how you can use this breakthrough technology to act on buying signals, accelerate your sales cycle, and close more deals.
Introduction
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Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................2
About the Authors .......................................................................................4
Sales Problems Solved ...............................................................................5
The Power of Vision .....................................................................................6
How Vision Helps Sales Managers ...........................................................7
Tracking and Alerts ......................................................................................8
Close Deals Faster .....................................................................................11
Automated Data Entry ..............................................................................12
Vision Vs. Competitors ..............................................................................13
Quotes From Vision Customers .............................................................15
Frequently Asked Questions ...................................................................16
Summary & Credits ...................................................................................18
Published by InsideSales.com34 East 1700 SouthProvo, Utah 84606877-798-9633
Copyright © 2014 All Rights Reserved
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About the Authors
Travisse Hansen currently leads product strat-egy for InsideSales.com’s Vision product and eats, breathes and sleeps sales email. He pre-viously managed all internal products and process optimization at InsideSales.com. He received his B.S. from Brigham Young Uni-versity’s Marriott School of Management and strongly believes that technology can improve people’s lives.
Travisse Hansen Product Manager—InsideSales.com
Chris da Cunha VP of Email Solutions —InsideSales.com
Chris da Cunha, VP of Email Solutions at InsideSales.com, is an expert in the emerging field of sales acceleration technology, which uses big data, predictive analytics and science to accelerate the sales process and increase sales. Chris was the CEO of iHance prior to its acquisition by InsideSales.com. At iHance, Chris pioneered the growth and adoption of the patented Vision™ email tracking solu-tion and the Absolute Automation™ email integration solution, which twice won the Salesforce AppExchange Productivity App of the Year Award. Chris received a B.S. in electri-cal engineering from M.I.T and an M.B.A from Stanford University.
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Sales Problems Solved
Identify Engaged Prospects With Actionable Insights
Sales reps are usually completely in the dark when they send a sales email. Are prospects opening your emails? Are they downloading your pricing sheets? Are they forwarding them to other decision-makers?
Most salespeople simply don’t have access to enough information on the emails they send. As a result, you don’t know who to focus on or when to reach out.
With all this uncertainty, sales reps just pick up the phone and start calling blindly, like bats without sonar.
Sales managers are equally in the dark. They often have to sit down with each rep and try to figure out where each deal stands. When did we send the last email or make the last phone call? Many sales man-agers struggle to understand the status of the pipeline, and they have no idea who their reps are emailing or how effective those emails are.
+ +Who is Interested? When to Contact? What Content?
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The Power of Vision
Vision email tracking by InsideSales.com solves these challenges for sales teams with patented, enterprise-grade technol-ogy. It answers three key questions.
1. Is your prospect engaged?
Vision tracks every sales email and pro-vides a detailed report on opens, file downloads, forwards and website visits. If you send an email to multiple recipients, which is often the case when you must win over multiple decision-makers at the same company, Vision can tell you which of these recipients is the most engaged and who is the least engaged.
2. Who should you focus on?
The ability to track email engagement and web visits is critical if you want to know who to focus on and who to call next. Depending on where you are in the sales cycle with each prospect, we can share best practices for using Vision Alerts to accelerate your sales cycle and close more deals. For example, if you get a Vision Alert from a new prospect you have never spoken to, use the InsideSales.com
PowerDialer™ to close the loop when you are top of mind. If you have a prospect who has disengaged and is no longer generating Vision Alerts, follow up via email or phone to re-engage them. Finally, if you have a prospect who is fully engaged, give them some breathing room until they complete their online due diligence. Then follow up with a phone call to close the deal.
3. When should you reach out?
Often, a sales rep will send an email and not know if it resonates. Our customers have told us that Vision solves this prob-lem. When prospects interact with emails, Vision sends real-time alerts. So sales reps can call their prospects at just the right moment. Our research shows a strong cor-relation between timely follow up and deals that close. There is an equally strong cor-relation between timely follow up and the financial success of individual sales reps.
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Vision logs every sent email to the Vision database and every sent/received email to Salesforce. Vision also scores every pros-pect interaction. Comprehensive reports show a sales manager which reps are working hard, who they are emailing, the content of their emails and the level of engagement.
A sales manager can log into the Vision database or Salesforce, look at any account, and instantly know the status of that account. This makes pipeline review meet-ings more efficient and effective.
Helps Sales ManagersHow Vision
Report for managers
Group / Rep / Account Emails Campaign Emails Opens Clicks Files Raw Score
Accounting 400 0 298 6 137 1830
Admin 880 0 862 14 42 1440
BD-Managers 367 0 367 107 42 1857
BD-Reps 5142 0 3427 316 306 11362
BI 510 0 448 5 28 840
Creative 107 0 53 9 15 347
CS - CAMs 5254 0 4814 147 326 9984
Aaron Wheeler 508 0 444 22 24 968
Arthur Buckner 92 0 84 6 2 172
Benjamin Paulsen 1 0 0 0 0 1
Brandon Mason 362 0 300 9 10 552
Brent Farrel 212 0 257 1 21 432
Burke Saraiva 262 0 212 12 12 502
ADP 163 0 153 3 5 243
CSC Global 3 0 1 0 0 3
Paychex 17 0 5 0 0 17
[email protected] 2 0 2 0 0 2
RE: NSS / ISDC open items & resolution 2014-08-01 10:10:59 1 0 0 1
RE: NSS / ISDC open items & resolution 2014-08-01 08:38:35 1 0 0 1
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When you craft an email, you can include as many attachments and links as you want. Vision converts email attachments into trackable links. We typically encourage sales reps to write short, pithy emails that will inspire prospects to act. The goal is to get a prospect to take the next step and click a link or open an email attachment.
Vision sends sales reps a variety of alerts:
Email opens: See the date and time when your prospect opens your email.
Session start: Tells you when your pros-pect clicks on a link.
File download: Notifies you when a pros-pect downloads an attachment, such as a pricing sheet or contract.
Yesterday’s activity alerts: A summary of the alerts from the previous day.
Tracking and Alerts
by InsideSales.com
EMAIL OPENED 09/10/2014Amy Fieldng - [email protected] 4:15 PM
VIEW | TURN OFF ALERTS | DISOWN
From : Travisse Hansen
Sent : Wed - 09/10/2014 - 10:46 AM
Subject : RE: Sales Proposal
by InsideSales.com
FILE DOWNLOAD 09/18/2014Amy Fieldng - [email protected] 2:17 PM
VIEW | TURN OFF ALERTS | DISOWN
File : Contract_offer.pdf
From : Travisse Hansen
Sent : Wed - 09/17/2014 - 10:46 AM
Subject : RE: Sales Proposal
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You can see who clicked on a link or down-loaded an attachment and what time it was downloaded. You can log into the Vision database and check out the contact record for a specific prospect. It shows you every email you’ve sent, every email that has been opened, all the file downloads and clicked links.
Email forwards: Vision even tells you when your prospect forwards your email to somebody else, so long as Vision has previ-ously identified the person. That’s incredibly valuable information for a sales rep. If a prospect is forwarding your data sheets to other decision-makers, that signals a high level of interest. Another practical example is when a prospect forwards your price quote to a competitor. If Vision has tagged the competitor’s IP address, we will notify your reps so they know to disengage or sharpen their pencils and potentially match your competitor’s price.
Most sales reps become power users within 15 minutes of using Vision because it’s so intuitive and useful.
Embed Vision Into Salesforce CRM
Companies that use Salesforce can inte-grate Vision directly into their Salesforce account. You will have access to the Accounts tab, Contacts tab, Campaigns tab and the Reports tab.
For example, if you click on the Accounts tab, you can view interaction history for specific accounts. Vision also uses an algo-rithm that scores contacts and accounts based on their level of interaction so you can instantly see which accounts are the most engaged.
Use as a Standalone Solution
Vision does not require salesforce.com or any CRM to work. As a standalone solution Vision works directly with your email client, whether it’s Gmail, Outlook or your iPhone.
Tracking and Alerts
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by InsideSales.com
Regular Emails | Campaign Emails
Emails Email Opens Sessions File Downloads
Last 7 Days of Activity
4k
3k
2k
1k
0kFri, 9/12 Sat, 9/13 Sun, 9/14 Mon, 9/15 Tue, 9/16 Wed, 9/17 Thu, 9/18
Coun
t
All of these links are clickable, so you can get more detail.
Here’s what the Reports tab reveals:
A sales manager can click on any of these links and scroll down into sales. You can scroll down to the account level. You can even see who a rep is emailing. The dashboard allows you to understand all of a rep’s email interactions in a single glance. Equally important, you can see all of the shared relationships between your company and another company. You will instantly know ALL of your colleagues who have relationships with a specific contact or account. This is invaluable for large organizations
Tracking and Alerts
Reports tab
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Sales Reps Close Deals Faster With Real-Time Email Insights
Tyler Madrigal has used Vision in three different capacities at EVault. He has lev-eraged Vision as an inside sales rep, an inside sales manager and a field sales rep.
EVault, a Seagate company, is an industry leader in network-based data backup and disaster recovery solutions.
Before using Vision for email tracking, EVault’s sales reps couldn’t gauge pros-pects’ interest based on nonverbal cues. They often forgot to follow up on old opportunities, and they usually had no idea when a past prospect had developed renewed interest in their solutions.
“As an inside sales rep, the biggest disad-vantage that you have is that you lose all nonverbal communication with your pros-pects,” Madrigal said. “I needed a way to see who was accessing the data sheets I sent out.”
After implementing Vision, EVault’s sales teams could see which data sheets pros-pects were downloading and who they were sharing this information with.
“Vision allows me to see what’s relevant to my customers,” Madrigal said. “I know what to focus on in my sales conversations.”
Vision also helps identify when a stalled opportunity have become re-engaged. Madrigal was working a deal when discus-sions stalled over funding, he marked the opportunity as closed-lost and moved on. Six months later, he received a bunch of Vision alerts telling him the prospect was visiting his company’s website, opening emails and downloading data sheets.
Close Deals Faster
“I called him immediately and we ended up closing that deal, which was a $300,000 contract,” Madrigal said.
As a sales manager, Madrigal noticed that many of his less-experienced reps struggled with their forecasting accuracy. Thanks to Vision, he could quickly scan through his team’s interaction history with prospects.
“It shortens forecast meetings with my reps,” he said, “and it gives me more con-trol of forecast accuracy. The integration with Salesforce allows me to see the entire customer conversation.”
The best thing about Vision is how easy it is for sales reps to use and embrace. It doesn’t require any special training. You just keep sending your emails as you always have, and now you have access to the insights you’ve always wanted.
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Absolute AutomationEmail Logger & Contact Creator for Salesforce®
Vision works with all email clients. It automatically updates its database, so you always have real-time data you can use to accelerate sales.
Sync Your Emails With Salesforce
Spend More Time Selling Thanks to Automated Data Entry
In addition to Vision, we offer an email sync product called Absolute Automation. You can download this app directly from the Salesforce AppExchange. Absolute Auto-mation saves sales reps time because they no longer have to enter data manually into Salesforce.
Sync email from all servers and cli-ents. It doesn’t matter where you send or receive your email. Absolute Automation logs all of your emails automatically and in real time. It’s fully automated. It includes inbound and outbound email sync.
It syncs to contacts and leads. If you send an email to a contact, an account that already exists, we can auto-create the con-tact and log the email to the account.
We built our own custom object for Sales-force users. So you get a custom email tab. We log the email once. If you send an email to multiple recipients, it is logged into Salesforce automatically and efficiently.
Absolute Automation is the No. 1 rated email productivity app on the AppEx-change. It also won the Best Productivity App of the Year Award on AppExchange in 2008 and 2010.
Automated Data Entry
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How Vision’s Features Stack Up Against Other Email Tracking Solutions
Reporting and analytics: Vision is the only enterprise-class email tracking solu-tion. We have a few competitors that have come out with products that are easy to install and appear to do it all. But when you take a closer look, you’ll see that their functionality is deficient and their reporting is incomplete. People use mul-tiple email clients on laptops and mobile devices today. Most of our competitors only support one email client, so they’re only tracking and reporting on a fraction of your interactions. Vision offers 100 percent coverage by tracking every email, whether it comes from an iPhone, Outlook or Gmail.
Email opens, links and website visits: Most solutions provide these features. Vision uses first-party cookies. We have persistent tracking, so we track all interac-tions for the entire lifetime of a prospect. If a prospect returns to your website
Vision Vs. Competitors
Features Vision™ by InsideSales.com Consumer-Grade Email Tracking Tools
Email Tracking
Reporting and analytics • •Email open and link tracking • •Website visit tracking • •Attachment download tracking • •Zero-touch tracking •Multi-recipient tracking •Forward tracking •Track from all major mail servers and clients •No end point management •Enhanced delivery via optional dedicated IPs •Patent protection •Email Sync to Salesforce.com*
Sync from all major mail servers and clients •Fully automated •Inbound and outbound email sync •Sync to contacts, Accounts and Leads • •Custom email tab and object •
*For Salesforce.com users only; Salesforce.com not included.
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independent of clicking through an email, Vision will notify you in real time that the prospect is on your website by name.
Attachment downloads: Some com-petitors allow you to copy and paste an attachment, or upload an attachment, and they spit out a link. This requires manual work. Vision simply enables sales reps to send an email with an attachment or multiple attachments. It automatically con-verts attachments to trackable links on the fly. You can also send the email to mul-tiple recipients and know which recipient clicked on your attachments. We call this zero-touch tracking.
Dedicated IPs: Email delivery is a core competency of InsideSales.com. As such, we provision a dedicated IP address to each customer so that the customer controls its own email reputation. If one customer sends out a lot of spam, it won’t affect the IP or email delivery of any other customer.
Multi-recipient tracking: Include up to 10 individuals on a single email, and Vision will tell you exactly who is interacting with the email and when. This feature differenti-ates Vision from many of our competitors.
Forward tracking: If your prospect for-wards your email to a colleague or anyone outside the company, Vision will tell you who forwarded the email and who it has been forwarded to by name if the second recipient has been previously identified in the Vision database.
Server-level setups: We can do server-level setups that can be set up once at the server and will work with all email cli-ents and mobile devices with no further setup required. This is the most effec-tive way to set up Vision. For companies that cannot do a server install, we offer a Windows Outlook plugin that takes less than three minutes to download and set up on the sales rep’s desktop. Whether you choose the server or client setup, the
user experience is no different than it was prior to using Vision. We knew from the outset that the only way to achieve 100% adoption and utilization is to let sales reps continue to send email like they do today. Simply write your email, include any links and attachments that you normally include, and click the Send button.
Patent protection: We own the patents on this innovative technology, and the pat-ents have been validated in court. They are rock solid, which gives our clients peace of mind in using our products.
Vision Vs. Competitors
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Of all the sales tools they use internally, Vision is the most valuable to their sales reps.
— OpSource
“Sales is like playing poker and Vision tells you what cards your
prospect is holding.”— Informatica territory account manager
“Vision is the equivalent of fishing with dynamite.”
— EVault rep
OpSource is a great example of a company that started using Vision in sales and later transitioned to using the product in customer support.
Informatica’s entire inside sales team and most of its field sales reps use Vision. As inside sales reps graduate to field reps, they take Vision with them. Informatica told us that this powerful email tracking solution enabled their sales reps to transi-tion from blind cold calling to targeted and intelligent warm calling.
Quotes FromVision Customers
Sends about 20 emails at 8 a.m. and lets Vision alerts guide his calling efforts.
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Q: Does this product have to be tied to a CRM or can it be tied directly to Outlook?
Vision was built to work directly with your corporate email server (e.g., Google Apps, Exchange or Office 365) or email client (e.g., Windows Outlook) and does not need to be tied to any CRM.
Q: What is the installation process for Vision?
We provision a dedicated IP address to each customer. This enables our custom-ers to control their own email sending reputation and it also enables us to offer the most advanced patented features on the market, such as multi-recipi-ent tracking.
So our customers need to have some-one in IT set up a couple of DNS entries to take ownership of the IP address, plus one line of javascript on your website to
Asked Questions
persistently track website visitors. Finally, we need to relay your email to our Vision tracking servers. This routing can either be set up at the server level or the client level. Our installation can be completed in less than 30 minutes and Vision works thereaf-ter with zero support necessary.
Q: Does Vision rate or score leads?
Yes. Vision uses a mathematical algorithm to score each lead or prospect based on the level of interaction with your emails, content and websites. This score enables your reps to focus on prospects who are most engaged.
Q: Does Vision work with Salesforce?
Yes, Vision can be fully integrated with Salesforce so you can have full access to Vision directly from within Salesforce. All of the Vision tracking alerts are logged to Salesforce, and Salesforce accounts are synched with Vision accounts. Vision also
includes the award-winning Absolute Automation email integration solution, which logs all inbound and outbound email to Salesforce.
Q: Who in an organization uses Vision?
Typically, 100% of inside sales and field sales reps will use Vision. In addition, we have customers that have rolled out Vision to their customer support teams, accounts receivable teams, HR teams and legal teams. Anyone in your organization who is sending high-value emails and would ben-efit from knowing who is interacting with those emails is a candidate for Vision. Not surprisingly, the CEOs of most of our cus-tomers use Vision.
Q: What is the price for InsideSales.com email solutions?
Our current pricing for Absolute Automa-tion email integration on a standalone basis for Salesforce customers is $10
Frequently
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per user per month. We sell Vision email tracking to everybody, whether you’re a Salesforce customer or not. Vision is $49 per user per month. If you use Sales-force, we include the Absolute Automation features with your Vision license at no additional cost.
Q: What upgrades do you have planned?
We will integrate Vision with our Click-to-Call and PowerDialer solutions so that our customers can use these products together seamlessly. There is a natural fit between these products because email engagement is one of the best predictors of interest and ought to be one of the key drivers of PowerDialer Seek lists. We will also add some smart features using our Neuralytics™ predictive analytics engine. This technology will enable your sales reps to send the right message at the right time for optimal results.
Data VisualizationPredictive AnalyticsHiring & MotivationCommunications
Sales Acceleration TechnologyImprove sales through science with InsideSales.com.
• Contact the right prospects, in the right way, at the right time.
• Work smarter by predicting which leads you are most likely to contact, qualify, and close.
• Motivate your sales team by making the sales process visual, competitive, and fun.
• Bring your sales data to the forefront by making it visual, meaningful, and actionable.
Asked QuestionsFrequently
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Now that you know how you can use email to identify your most engaged prospects and close deals faster, it’s time to start implement-ing what you’ve learned.
Vision shows your reps exactly what’s relevant to your customers so they know what to focus on in their sales conversations. It will also notify them when an old prospect they’ve given up on re-engages with your emails and content. These prospects are some of your best because they are more likely to buy. Our research shows that they will usually buy from the sales rep who contacts them first.
Vision by InsideSales.com accelerates the sales cycle and drives rev-enue growth with real-time, actionable sales insights.
For a more in-depth discussion of the best practices shared in this ebook, watch the webinar featuring Chris da Cunha and Travisse Hansen, available here.
CONTENT
Chris da Cunha | InsideSales.com
Travisse Hansen | InsideSales.com
WRITER/COPY EDITOR
Leo Dirr |
DESIGNER
Scott Humphries |
Summary & Credits
