After years of struggling to keep up with customer demand, sales teams are now better equipped than ever. Sales engagement platforms provide a real-time view of customers and their purchase intent - which means more time spent on the right opportunities and less wasted energy. Sales reps can then use these insights to focus on potential buyers who will be ready for a sale soon.

Most Sales teams are challenged with the constant task of finding new leads. Sales engagement platforms offer a solution to this problem by providing Sales reps with an easy way to find, qualify, and engage prospects on the spot. Sales engagement platforms help Sales Reps save hours each week by automating tedious tasks like scheduling meetings and following up with potential customers who were not interested in connecting at that time.

what is a sales engagement platform

Often, Sales Managers are tasked with the difficult job of improving sales performance. Sales managers have a lot of responsibilities that can range from managing employee schedules to planning pitches for potential customers. One way that Sales Managers can improve their sales performance is by implementing a Sales Engagement Platform (SEP). A SEP provides important insights into how your company's products and services are being used so you can identify opportunities to better engage with your customers on a personal level.

Sales engagement platform (SEP) solutions are typically software-based applications that bring together the sales and marketing functions of an organization. These platforms help to consolidate data, increase prospecting, provide analytics for decision making and generate new leads. Sales engagement platforms offer a competitive advantage by analyzing each customer’s journey throughout the buying process and helping to build personalized campaigns tailored to their needs.

A sales engagement platform enables your company to get data about their seller's marketing activities. This is done through integration with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, among others. The information gathered by the software helps companies understand how these efforts are impacting revenue generation for each of its products or services sold in different regions across the country.

This type of system also allows you to track new leads generated from all digital marketing initiatives that can be fed into a CRM database which will help management measure lead quality over time while prioritizing product development efforts based on customer feedback metrics. It also gives teams access to reports detailing where users click most often when they visit your website pages so they can make changes accordingly if needed.

What is the Need of a Sales Engagement Platform

Efficiency comes with the now-a-days' practice where all employees (in an organization) directly or indirectly contribute to make customers happy. With a sales engagement platform, there is enhanced communication and collaboration across the employees, who work on specific areas of making customers happy.

For example, when an internal or external customer calls on any helpdesk number, the contact center agent can immediately know what solutions and services are available for that customer and be able to offer it right away. Onboarding new business partners and employees also becomes easier with the Sales Engagement Platform - all their details would be automatically captured in one place where they can see everything they need to access to start working (for instance: files/folders).

• High performance is achieved with the sales engagement platform because it enables employees to access all relevant information that they need immediately and collaborate easily in order to achieve maximum productivity. It offers a highly interactive dashboard where every user would be able to see his personal contribution, report cards on key activities, graphical representation of metrics chosen by the manager for personalized visibility into performance ratings. 
  

• With a single view into who has worked on projects, teams can then see how everyone contributed - or not - allowing them to make better decisions about resource allocation. Support knowledge base articles are created faster as these employees are now working with current information. Sales Engagement Platform also provides instant notification of what's changed across apps related to the project/task they are currently working on so that they can quickly make necessary changes and updates.
  

• With more visibility into the entire company, managers benefit from having access to employees' progress that helps them make better decisions about whom to hire or fire; who should be rewarded for their efforts; and what training needs to be put in place. Sales Engagement Platform also provides an easy interface where managers can see who has worked on projects/tasks, which makes it easier to assign specific tasks with a target time within which it should be completed.
  

How do SEPs Improve Sales Efficiency?

SEPs are designed to increase sales efficiency by automating the entire sales cycle, saving your team time and reducing opportunities lost due to miscommunication. Sales reps can use SEPs to create detailed profiles of customers that are integrated with account-based marketing campaigns so they know which messages resonate most effectively at each stage of the buyer’s journey. They then have visibility into what all their colleagues are doing across divisions, helping them prioritize activities based on high-value accounts while easily tracking initiatives across divisions.

Most importantly, because SEPs provide a central location for team collaboration, there’s no need to send emails or make phone calls to get answers. Instead you can search key contacts at any level of an organization by name, company or topic so you always have the most up-to-date information. Key contacts can be tagged based on their role to create custom views for each team, so reps know exactly who they need to connect with at any given time. This minimizes confusion and reduces the number of important conversations that are missed due to miscommunication or bad timing.

Few Best Practices for Select a Sales Engagement Platform

With so many sales engagement platforms to choose from, it can be difficult knowing where and how to start. To help you get started with your research and analysis we’ve asked our team of experts for their advice on the best practices when selecting a Sales Engagement platform:

• Look at different types of opportunities that would fit into your pipeline using real data. This will give you an idea what type of automation is used in which stage, such as alerts or task assignments based on lead score (e.g., high opportunity > send campaign; medium opportunity > schedule call). The more familiar you are with this information before diving into another system, the faster and easier it will become to migrate all these great automations over to your new system.
  

• Make sure the system is fully integrated with your CRM and marketing automation tools, such as Salesforce or Marketo. You want to easily move data between these systems without having to retype all of it again! It may take some time but it’s worth spending that time upfront rather than repeating this process in multiple steps later on when you find yourself needing more functionality down the road.
  

• Look for a comprehensive solution which meets an organization's unique needs across sales, service & support functions throughout the entire customer life cycle. Customer experience is everything so look out for features like gamification, peer recognition awards and quarterly contests etc., they're all great ways to boost morale within each department especially amongst today's millennial workforce.
  

• Make sure the system is scalable to your business needs, but also flexible enough to be able to meet future demands or changes in workflow/processes. You should consider how many users can access and use these tools simultaneously - for example if you have a sales team of 50 people plus support staff across multiple locations this could become costly very quickly! The more expensive options might seem like overkill at first glance but they allow for growth into new markets with ease while being able to remain cost effective when it comes to maintenance fees etc., so take that into consideration before making your final decision.
  

Above all else make sure it meets each department’s needs such as sales automation, marketing automation, customer service & support functions across its entire life cycle. Keep in mind that great technology does not equal success on its own, but rather it is the processes and people who make up a successful business.