Does your sales team spend too much time manually dialing contacts without enough conversations to show for it? Do your agents frequently encounter dead air, empty voicemails, disconnected numbers, and constant busy signals?
If so, it’s time to step up your outbound calling game with predictive dialing and autodialer software.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore why outbound calls are invaluable for revenue, the inherent challenges with manual dialing, and how modern technology can completely transform results.
By the end, you’ll have unparalleled insights into selecting and deploying dialers that maximize sales productivity, efficiency, and most importantly – your bottom line!
Why Outbound Calls Matter
Outbound calls generate a tremendous amount of revenue across nearly every industry. Whether it’s sales contacts, customer follow-ups, lead qualification, event promotions, or market research – talking directly to prospects and existing customers is invaluable.
In fact, over 50% of sales come from outbound phone calls. And outbound calls have 2-3x higher contact and qualification rates compared to email outreach.
No matter what you sell or who you serve – dedicated outbound calling efforts directly translate into more closed deals and higher profit.
The Realities of Manual Dialing
However, manually dialing calls using traditional phones or basic systems comes with severe productivity challenges including:
- Connecting only 20-30% of manually dialed calls
- Excessive agent idle and wait times up to 60-70%
- Tagging and logging calls is extremely tedious and error-prone
- Difficulty scaling outbound efforts across growing teams
- Inability to optimize call pacing or agent assignments
These dialing inefficiencies end up wasting precious sales time. That’s why over 90% of call centers now leverage autodialers or predictive dialing software.
The Promise of Smarter Dialing Technology
Modern predictive dialing and autodialer systems eliminate manual dialing entirely. Instead, software handles automatically:
- Dialing contacts from uploaded lists
- Connecting calls only to available agents
- Logging information about calls and agents
- Recording conversations for coaching
- Integrating with existing CRM data
This hands-free automated approach to outbound dialing has revolutionary implications!
Benefits of Predictive Dialers & Autodialers
Here are just some of the benefits sales teams see after adopting smarter dialing solutions:
- 2-5x more outbound calls made per agent per day
- 50-400% higher connect rates to qualified prospects
- 60-80% reduction in agent idle times, waiting by the phone
- Large databases dialed in a fraction of the time
- Detailed calling analytics for coaching and optimization
- Higher customer satisfaction from faster responses
- Improved data hygiene from system call logging
- Ensured compliance with calling regulations like TCPA
The difference is night and day – with significantly more conversations and connections to prospects that convert into pipeline and revenue!
Types of Outbound Dialing Solutions
Now that you know why outbound calls are invaluable and the upside smart dialers provide – let’s explore some of the leading types of solutions…
Progressive Dialers
Progressive autodialers handle automatically dialing a set number of contacts at a time – usually enough to keep a specific number of agents busy. As calls end, new ones are immediately placed. This balances maximizing calls made without overburdening available people.
Preview Dialers
Preview dialing displays each contact’s information to the agent before connecting calls. Even a few seconds allows preparing the proper greeting, looking up previous interactions, and getting into the sales mindset. Higher personalization means better conversations.
Predictive Dialers
Predictive dialing represents the most sophisticated technology leveraging statistics, agent inputs, and machine learning to determine optimal dialing pace. Predictive systems synthesize factors like handle times, agent schedules, busy signals, past contacts, CRM data, and more to connect callers in the most efficient sequence possible. This automation is why connect rates commonly lift 400%+!
Must-Have Features for Sales Teams
With a variety of capable systems available – focus on choosing dialers with features that enhance sales productivity like:
- CRM Integration – Sync contacts and logging call outcomes for follow-ups
- Local Caller IDs – Maximize prospect pick up rates
- Campaign Management – Outbound efforts around products, events, segments
- Disposition Coding – Classify calls as interested, not now, bad number, etc
- Voicemail Drops – Leave recordings for unavailable contacts
- Call Recording – Save calls to optimize agents
- Compliance Features – Handle TCPA, DNC requests
Prioritizing tools purpose-built to align calling with wider sales processes ensures maximum return on investment.
Leading Predictive Dialing & Autodialer Systems
With smarter technology now table stakes for professional outbound calling – countless robust solutions exist. Here is a sampling of leading options trusted by F500 enterprises to specialized sales acceleration startups:
Noble Systems
With over three decades perfecting call center software – Noble offers on-premise and cloud-enabled progressive and predictive dialers handling 400+ calls made per agent hour with precision queuing algorithms.
PhoneBurner
PhoneBurner focuses solely on supercharging sales development rep productivity. Teams connect 60+ more prospects daily via one-click predictive dialing, rapid call transfers, and deep integrations with CRMs.
Five9
Five9 blends an industry-leading virtual contact center solution together with versatile predictive, progressive, blended, and power dialing capabilities purpose built around compliance, scalability, and analytics.
ChaseData
For collection agencies and financial institutions, ChaseData provides compliant autodialers and predictive functionality able to synchronize directly with core systems to maximize right party contacts across portfolios.
Talkdesk
Talkdesk’s end-to-end contact center platform offers enterprise-class predictive dialing able to increase connect rates 300%+ by synthesizing historical data, availability predictions, optimal timing, and pacing algorithms.
VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft enriches its sales execution platform with automated pacing calculations balancing abandoned calls and agent readiness while still maintaining human oversite and maximum throughput.
Aircall
Trusted by modern sales teams – Aircall empowers outbound efforts through simple predictive dialing, local caller IDs, CRM integrations, contextual call notes, transfers, and monitoring to track rep activity.
Avaya
With renowned call center solutions – Avaya provides sophisticated outbound functionality from campaign management to advanced pacing models across channels like voice, email, and SMS.
CallTools
CallTools blends call tracking, recording, and powerful progressive and predictive dialing functionality optimized specifically around driving more qualified conversations for verticals like insurance and home services.
Best Practices for Implementation & Adoption
Once you select the right dialing system aligned around your sales processes – focus on effective organizational change management for successful adoption:
- Start with a pilot – First roll out dialing software to a small sales team to gather feedback and refine configurations before wider deployment.
- Train thoroughly – Ensure reps understand system capabilities and best practices for leveraging dialers.
- Plan campaigns – Build calling campaigns around products, customer segments, events or use cases.
- Monitor adoption metrics – Track contacts dialed, call durations, connections versus predictive rates to overcome objections.
- Motivate usage – Highlight early team successes to build confidence. Incentivize top performers.
- Continuously improve – Utilize system reporting on effectiveness to further boost productivity.
Following a methodical, metrics-based rollout methodology ensures your sales organization maximizes the benefits from smarter predictive and autodialer solutions.
The Future of Outbound Sales Calls
Leveraging predictive algorithms and automation to eliminate manual dialing is no longer optional for modern sales teams. The efficiency gains, productivity improvements, and revenue impact simply can not be ignored.
As dialing technology continues advancing with expanded self-learning capabilities – sales conversations will become even faster, insights will get richer, and agents can focus solely on building relationships.
By selecting and deploying the right outbound calling solution for your sales processes – there are literally millions of prospects to connect with and deals to close accelerating success!
