Salesdialers are popular with businesses that have big teams who make lots of calls because they save time by eliminating number dialing and manual voicemails. Smaller teams can save time, too, but it requires a different dialer solution. How salesdialers fit small businesses is a question of both dialer features and calling approach.
Sales Dialers and Small Businesses
Small businesses that use people search tools like BellesLink are often using cold calls as a way to reach customers. Knowing that cold calling takes skill, they invest time and money to train their team. They aren’t making a lot of calls, though, so they use a basic business phone system.
Unfortunately, their calling skills alone don’t cut it. A lot of cold calling time gets wasted on dialing numbers, tracking calls, and leaving voicemails. Their contact rate is low and so is the ROI.
An average sales rep makes 52 calls each day, and 15 percent of their time is spent leaving voicemails. That adds up to 36 hours of wasted time each month—per person! The result is, their cold calling strategy fails to deliver for their small business.
You might be saying: Why doesn’t that small business use a salesdialer and eliminate all the manual work and wasted time, just like a bigger business does?
You’re right—they should use a salesdialer, too. Before we jump into how salesdialers fit small businesses, let’s take a step back and define what a sales dialer is.
What are Sales Dialers?
To say it simply, a sales dialer is a phone system that sequentially calls phone numbers from a list, eliminating the need to manually dial each number. Today, dialers are software delivered through a web browser.
Sales dialers aren’t new. But now they’re a must-have tool in every business toolkit. The cost of sales dialers has decreased over the years, making them an easy buy for companies of any size.
Types of Sales Dialers
There are three main types of sales dialers that businesses can choose from. Each type has some unique features. Not all of them are a good fit for small businesses.
Preview Dialers
Preview dialers make calls one at a time, on a single line. The next call begins when the current call ends. It’s the type of salesdialer that fits a small business best.
When using a preview dialer you can see your complete calling list during the session and you control the pace of calls. You can skip any number and you can pause between calls to make notes. You can also save your progress and come back to the session later.
This is how BellesLink’s Contact Dialer works. It’s a single-line preview dialer.
Progressive or power dialers
Power dialers also call one by one, but in this case, sales reps can’t select which lead they want to dial, a power dialer automatically calls through a list of leads.
As soon as one call is finished, it automatically dials the next lead from the list. For that reason, progressive dialers are better suited for teams with a set script and salespeople dedicated to making calls.
Power dialers, like Mojo, can use up to three phone lines to dial numbers in the background, while a call is in progress. Some cold callers don’t like this approach because when someone answers a background call they are not connected right away to the salesperson.
BellesLink customers say they prefer a preview dialer because they never loose a potential customer because they were kept waiting for the salesperson to come on the line.
Compliance is a potential issue, too. Multi-line power dialers and predictive dialers are beginning to be scrutinized by the Federal Communication Commission for their similarities to robocalls, which are prohibited by federal telecommunication regulations.
Predictive and automated salesdialers
Predictive dialers are primarily used by large teams and call centers. These dialers can call multiple numbers at one time and route answered calls to available agents. The benefit is, agents spend less time waiting to get connected with prospects.
A predictive dialer can work with a single rep available to answer calls. But to benefit from predictive dialing fully, you need at least 10 salespeople logged into the system. For this reason, predictive dialers are rarely a fit for small businesses.
Which Dialer Fits Small Businesses Best?
For most small businesses, a single-line preview dialer is the best fit. That’s because those businesses are focused on making quality contacts with customers, not just making lots of calls. Since preview dialers let the caller control the pace of calls, stop and restart the session, even skip numbers, they have the flexibility small businesses need.
Progressive dialers are the opposite. They are focused on making lots of calls in the shortest time possible. It’s a numbers-game approach that takes away the flexibility of a preview dialer, to have a little more efficiency. Talking with BellesLink customers, flexibility is more important to them than efficiency.
Multi-line power dialers and predictive dialers don’t fit small businesses at all because they require a team of salespeople making lots of calls in order to justify their cost and complexity.
Using Sales Dialers in Your Business
No matter the size of your business, if cold calling is part of your strategy, a sales dialer is a must-have tool. For small businesses who are calling lists of customers, a preview dialer is going to eliminate the time spent dialing numbers and leaving voicemail messages. The small difference adds up big and will reduce your total calling time by 15 percent.
The best thing is you’ll still have the flexibility to pause, restart, skip numbers, and take notes because a preview lets you control the pace. Power dialers and progressive dialers might look good, but their complexity and cost make them a less than ideal choice for small businesses.
To learn more about our preview dialer, check out the BellesLink Contact Dialer on our website. It’s included for free with a Pro or Business plan.