Automated Cold Calling: Use Progressive Dialer to Boost Sales

By 2025, scientists expect 38.5 billion devices connected to the Internet worldwide. The general trend for technologization and automatization of business processes has been observed for quite a while now. That is why technologically advanced companies like CIENCE are the ones establishing the sales trends in B2B outbound marketing.

A recent report by Bridge Group about SDRs discovered that to have higher revenues, you must adapt top-notch software and technologies to optimize the sales processes. Even more, 31% of all sales activities are potentially highly automatable with today’s technology. However, automation implementation in sales is still lagging, with only 26% of companies actually using the advantages of the technological era.

When it comes to telemarketing, progressive dialer has proven to be one of the best ways to automate cold calling and make it more efficient. In fact, 66% of high-growth businesses report that they are active users of auto-dialers programs.

CIENCE, as a trendsetter in outbound marketing, has adopted progressive dialer software in our cold calling outreach. We take the best out of combining top-notch technologies with a human touch to deliver the best results to our clients. Learn how a progressive dialer works and why using automated cold calling can help boost sales for your business.

What Is a Progressive Dialer?

A progressive dialer is an automated cold calling system that helps to optimize the dialing process by connecting SDRs to the call only if a real person answers it. The tool goes through the list of contacts provided by the company beforehand, disregarding voice machines, busy lines, or disconnected phone numbers.

Once it reaches a live person, the software automatically connects the outbound call with a free sales agent. A progressive dialer does not dial to multiple contacts at once; instead, it ensures that every call is connected to a free SDR at the fastest speed, avoiding long pauses between conversations and reducing the salesperson’s waiting time.

By using automated cold calling tools like progressive dialer, sales agents do not waste their energy on tasks that do not bring any value, like manually dialing the prospect’s phone number, listening to the dial tone, and waiting until somebody replies (and more often than not, the outbound calls remain unanswered).

Apart from that, the progressive dialer is a highly customer-friendly cold calling tool, which uses algorithms to define the right time to call and send a follow-up when needed. This type of call automation works best for B2B companies where timing is a crucial factor when pitching your service or product.

How a Progressive Dialer Benefits the Sales Process

Even though the automated cold calling has been around for a few decades already, its real value became obvious with the development of technology in sales. By combining a progressive dialer with advanced prospecting research methods like pre-targeting, intent data, account-based marketing, the sales process can move to a totally new level. Adapting a progressive dialer in your sales process can absolutely benefit both your sales team and your business in these innovative ways:

1. Speeding up the calling process

An average SDR usually makes forty dials over the phone per day. With automated cold calling, this number can increase twofold. A passionate SDR is willing to talk to as many people as possible, instead of listening to endless sounds of dial tones over and over. Progressive dialers allow sales representatives to quickly jump from one call to another by a simple one-button dial, instead of typing the whole number in the system (even inserting phone extensions), and connect to more people daily.

2. More calls, more opportunities

A progressive dialer helps to increase the number of sales opportunities by reaching out to a larger pool of prospects. The more at-bats the SDR can pitch to, the higher the chances are to set up the meeting. Even if the call does not end up with a target action, having more live conversations ensures that the sales pipeline is always filled up with warm leads.

3. Boosting the SDR’s productivity

Without automated cold calling, an average SDR spends only 10 to 15 minutes per hour on an actual conversation with a prospect, while the rest 45 to 50 minutes are spent on things not related to sales. Automating processes such as dialing numbers, leaving voicemails, scheduling follow-up calls, etc., can increase the agent’s talk time by up to 300%. This ensures that every salesperson, which can often be very expensive to hire and maintain, is busy with actually selling the product.

4. Increasing the number of pickups

Apart from a higher volume of dials, automated cold calling improves the call credibility by using local caller ID. Prospects tend to answer the calls more often if it is coming from a local area. If the number is unfamiliar, they are most likely to simply send it to voicemail. As a rule of thumb, real-life conversations always have higher chances of ending up successfully, compared to a recorded template voicemail.

5. Better personalization approach

Progressive dialers not only redial the correct phone number in an efficient way, but they also automatically present information available about the prospect once the call starts. This allows the caller to make their sales approach more personalized by using the information gathered beforehand. Without this information, many salespeople lose their confidence and fail to personalize their speech by simply repeating the general script.

6. Always making the calls at the right time

By using information received from previous clients, progressive dialers predict the best timing to dial each customer. This, again, positively influences the number of picked-up calls and reduces the call rejections. Apart from that, this information is extremely important when planning an outbound campaign that involves multiple channels. For example, cold emails always work better with a follow-up cold call set up a few days later.

7. Improving the sales team’s working atmosphere

In sales, there is one simple rule no one should disregard—happy SDRs always bring higher revenues. Automated cold calling tools work to help salespeople achieve their individual quotas easier and increase their confidence in sales. If you want your team to stay productive with you for a longer period, automated cold calling tools can help ensure they receive satisfaction from their job and perform more efficiently.

Use a Progressive Dialer to Improve Your Sales

Automated cold calling is a must for any B2B company with a sales department looking to compete in an industry that now relies on technology to increase profits and reach target goals. Progressive dialer proves to be a perfect solution for businesses who struggle to streamline the outbound sales process and increase the efficiency of their sales teams. It is easy to use, helps to boost sales, and sufficiently improves the SDR’s work routine.

Need help improving your B2B sales process? Book a call with CIENCE and find your answers.