Sales have always been about building relationships and adding value. Sales acceleration and automation tools truly help streamline selling activities, but nothing will replace the impact of authentic interaction and building trust over time.
This is why sales organizations must always seek to level up their connection with prospects, leads, and customers. Letting them know they’re valued should be top of mind in all interactions with sales reps.
To keep this chain of value-giving rolling beyond the initial call, a way to level up meaningful conversations and continuously add value is by taking down detailed notes.
This is key especially when you’re working with larger accounts in B2B sales that would require multiple touches before getting to the closing stage. Coordinating efforts to build trust and add value can only be done if call notes are accessible to everyone, keeping the team on the same page.
Value of note-taking in sales
Sure, sales reps might say that they are able to retain all important details from calls and diligent note-taking is another blocker that hastens their process. However, looking at note-taking as an insignificant activity puts your team in threat of dropping potentially long-term clients and larger deals which would need multiple follow-ups — and follow-ups are where these notes shine.
Any sales rep who knows that phone conversations trump other channels of communication will attest that in order to warm up calls, you need to have at least some information from the prior call, even if it was brief. A single piece of information–even the prospect’s previous comment about the weather–can change the mood of a call, impacting its outcome.
Important notes to take:
- Actionable follow-ups
- Changes in the lead’s contact record
- Key pieces of contextual information
- Feedback on product, sales, or customer support
Connect Sugar to your phone system for better call notes
Updating entries on Sugar can be drastically improved by bridging the gap between your phone and your computer. Computer-telephony integration tools like Tenfold connect SugarCRM to any existing phone system you might have, allowing you to take call notes right on a floating UI (screen pop) that appears each time there’s an outbound or inbound call.
A lot of information often falls through when a rep has to transfer notes to the CRM because they manually took them down on Notepad or TextEdit, not to mention the lost time spent on manual data entry. CTI solutions automatically log call data on Sugar and also allow reps to not have to pull up a separate application when a call comes in or is made.
To see how a solution like Tenfold can help you take better notes among other benefits, you mayschedule a free demo with us.
Final thoughts
The importance of note-taking in driving the sales process cannot be overstated. As a tool to make it happen, CTIs let your team leverage the details and efficiencies of saving all prospect and customer information combined with the strategic change of ensuring the whole team is up to date on the status of a deal. Taking notes and doing it efficiently at scale will turn more prospects into customers.