Add Rewards to Make Your Sales Engagement Tools Work Harder

The ever-advancing technology used for sales engagement tools has definitely changed the way your teams sell.

The days of going door to door, sending emails one by one, and manually calculating revenue totals and quotas are over. The technology makes a lot of tasks easier, but sometimes, learning and managing all those tools can be overwhelming.

READ MORE: Boost Your Rewards Strategy for Sales by Understanding These Buyer Trends

The Landscape of Sales Engagement Tools

So how many platforms do salespeople actually use? On average, it takes 10 tools to close deals, according to Salesforce’s State of Sales report.

Reps have noticed. In Salesforce’s survey, nearly two-thirds (66%) say they’re drowning in sales engagement tools. Juggling all that also “is one of the reasons reps don’t spend enough time selling” — only 28% of their week, compared with 34% in 2018, Salesforce says.

Despite all the tools that sales teams have at their disposal, it’s still not easy to get prospects to engage. Gartner reports that recipients open less than 24% of sales emails, and it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a prospect by phone.

Increase Engagement With Rewards

One way to help both the overabundance of sales engagement tools and the lack of engagement is to optimize the efficiency of your reps’ efforts. To do this, consider adding rewards, which can be a powerful tool in their own right, allowing your team to make the most of their outreach.

By using incentives to complement your sales engagement tools, you can:

• Increase email open and response rates. Highlight a reward offer in the subject line to make your team’s messages stand out in prospects’ crowded inboxes.
• Reduce no-shows for demos, meetings, and calls. Incentivizing attendance helps ensure that your sales reps aren’t filling their calendars and wasting time on prospects who don’t even show up.
• Speed up the sales cycle. Once you’ve gotten the engagement, reward-based promotions that are time-sensitive can help move prospects through the buying journey more quickly.
• Rebuild trust with a frustrated customer. For account managers and other reps using their sales engagement tools to nurture customer relationships, increase retention, and encourage repeat purchases, rewards can help show your commitment to making it right with those who are unhappy with their experience.

Making Sales Rewards Simple

The last thing you want to do when you add incentives is expect your team to learn a separate rewards platform. You’re trying to reduce the burden of sales engagement tools, not make it worse.

That’s where integration can help. Using a platform like BHN Rewards, which can integrate directly with sales engagement tools such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, allows you to empower your reps and enhance the functionality of the software already in place. Not only can salespeople send rewards directly from the customer relationship management (CRM) tool, they can also track the progress of that reward in the contact’s record. By setting up notifications when the recipient opens and redeems their reward, reps can use those milestones as additional reasons to reach out and build a more personal connection.

The messaging that you include in the reward delivery email can help you grow your engagement even more. Check out these CTA templates to maximize every touchpoint.

about the author

Hannah Prince

Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.

Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.