Fusion Guardian: elevating safety for reps in the field
Being a field sales rep might not sound like a potentially dangerous job at first. But when sales agents are heading out alone into uncertain environments, they need to be sure that their employers are keeping them safe – including by giving them the right tools in case of an emergency.
Our Fusion Guardian software is designed to give exactly that protection. From real-time location alerts to discreet ways to call for assistance, it helps you set up the right measures and procedures to give peace of mind to your reps and sales managers.
Protected reps perform better
Whenever a company sends sales agents out into the field, they have a legal obligation to ensure their safety. This includes everything from providing the right training and conducting risk assessments, to maintaining communication and keeping track of their wellbeing.
But there’s more to it than satisfying regulations. Field reps on their routes need to know that there are protections in place should they find themselves in an emergency situation – and that means tangible measures they can take, not just a written procedure to follow.
If your people feel safer while they’re out doing their job, they’re more likely to perform at their best. A more protected field sales team is also often a more diverse one. We know that far fewer women operate in the field compared to men because safety is more of a concern. Having better emergency tools and procedures in place can have a positive impact on how comfortable they feel heading out on routes.
Real-time protection, wherever they are
When we made Fusion Guardian, it was built in response to a client’s needs. They wanted to go further in their duty of care towards their field sales reps by offering more real-time measures within their field sales software they could use in case of an emergency.
While your field sales reps are out at work, Fusion Guardian can report back their exact GPS location and instant alerts. That means if they need assistance you can know precisely where they are, not just which route they were walking at the time.
In case of an emergency, Fusion Guardian gives them a discreet panic button so that they don’t have to take any further risks in notifying your team. And with a simple user interface, they can be confident of still calling for help even under pressure.
For the management team receiving alerts, you can also set up the response framework however you need to. The procedures that go on in the background can be tailored, meaning you can specify how notifications get escalated and who is informed at each stage.
Safety isn’t optional in the field
It’s easy to assume that knocking on doors isn’t much of a hazardous workplace for field sales agents. But when your reps knock on those doors, they’re entering uncertain environments, meeting with strangers and even going into homes.
When they’re out in the field, they’re in a situation you can’t control. We’ve heard of situations where sales agents have entered a potential customer’s home and not been allowed to leave. And while not every rep will be in that kind of danger, there’s always a chance for things to go wrong when they’re putting their safety in the hands of a stranger.
Ultimately, your people want to feel that they’re protected when they’re on their sales routes. If they know someone has their back in case they need it, they’re less likely to feel isolated and better able to focus on engaging with customers.
Speak to us to learn more about how Fusion Guardian can help safeguard your field sales team.
5 industry trends affecting telcos and their sales outcomes
When the telco industry is constantly evolving, so too is the way that telco sales teams approach launching campaigns, engaging new customers and maximising their resources.
Whether it’s finding new ways to strengthen a sales team or thinking tactically about how to enter new territories, the telcos that find the most success will be the ones that are agile enough to roll with the changing landscape.
There’s a talent shortage causing brain drain
One of the biggest factors in how telco sales teams are changing is the problem of talent shortage.
Recruitment has taken a big hit as a result of the pandemic and the following economic uncertainty, with fewer people willing to risk their job security by seeking new opportunities. Fewer candidates on the job market makes the talent you do have that much more valuable – and when someone does leave, telcos are having to find new ways to soften the blow of brain drain.
If bolstering your sales resources has become harder recently, you’ll have to focus on capitalising on the channels that are available to you. Sometimes that means being more open to building remote or hybrid sales teams, so that you can access the best talent wherever you’re located.
But it can also mean rethinking what you look for in new hires. Some telcos are taking in younger candidates, who might not have the usual level of experience or proven knowledge but have the right attitude to build competency for the long term. With the right training and systems in place, the right team can be in place too.
Sustainability issues are at the frontier of connectivity
The last few years have seen some major leaps forward in what ISPs can offer customers, such as 5G and gigabit broadband. And with those advances comes a push to extend connectivity into the hardest to reach rural areas.
A lot of the fibre in rural areas is still being run on poles rather than in the ground. That leaves networks highly susceptible to storms and damage, an issue that might only become more pressing as the climate crisis and more unpredictable weather takes effect. As a result operators and legislators are putting significant investment into digging and laying new, more resilient cables in the ground.
As those networks expand into more and more territories, they won’t just bring more reliable connectivity for consumers – they will also create more opportunities for ISPs to sell and expand. But taking advantage of that will require more than sending out reps to talk about download speeds.
Building trust in your brand will be crucial in winning those customers. If their area has been underserved by slow or patchy broadband in the past, they might not take to a new provider as quickly as expected. Before they consider signing a contract, they first need to believe the promises being made to them.
There’s a gap between FTTP rollout and uptake in UK and Germany
Germany is aiming to bring FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) to half their population by 2025. And on first glance, the nation seems to be doing well. After all, Germany has the highest growth rate in Europe. However, they’re also starting from the smallest initial base.
70% of the FTTP rollout is being championed by alt-net providers, but their efforts are limited due to a lack of open access. They’re also facing a consumer base that is confused as to what benefits Fibre can offer over Germany’s robust and historically successful copper infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in the UK, 42% of the population have access to full fibre but only 25% have taken it up. Here the gap has some stark causes, such as lack of education around Fibre. In 2022, when internet service provider Zen surveyed the same population, they found that 32% of UK adults couldn’t define what full fibre broadband is.
In order to meet gigabit targets, telcos need to meet the education gap, and customers will only believe what telcos say if they can prove they are trustworthy.
The customer journey now starts earlier
When trust plays such a major role in telco sales, it changes the way providers think about presales. The customer journey starts long before you approach them about signing a contract. That’s true for any telco, but especially for challenger ISPs who need to build up brand and product awareness in an area before they send their sales reps in.
For the results to be meaningful, this needs to be treated as part of a sales campaign. It’s often not, because it’s not directly linked to completing deals with new customers. Agents could go out and thoroughly canvas an area, but they’re only given a clipboard to record basic details – and at the end of the day, none of that information is fed into a sales system database.
If that information is lost between campaigns, your sales team will be going in blind when they set out to sign people up in that area. They won’t know who’s interested in a new service or provider and who isn’t. With that comes a risk of overlooking potential customers who would have been easier to win, or overworking people who aren’t looking to change their current deal.
One touch switch and other incoming regulation
The Telecommunications (Security) Act and the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) dominate the regulatory landscape for telcos and their sales teams, but the Gigabit Infrastructure Act is in debate in Europe and Ofcom’s incoming One Touch Switch is on the horizon in the UK. The latter will make it easier for consumers to change their broadband supplier, but it will also require telecom sales teams to match their broadband service to other providers’ deals – their speed, pricing and contract length
Telcos that embrace this and go further, building on the ethos behind One Touch Switch and other customer choice-centred regulation will become the telcos that customers trust. And since that’s a key ingredient in overcoming many of the telecom industry’s current challenges, from FTTP rollout to funding new rural infrastructure, it’s going to be a determinant of which brands come out on top.
To learn more, check out our thoughts on how telcos can launch tactical, effective field sales campaigns.
Leads +, Sales + or Enterprise: a buyer’s guide to PSI
Leads +, Sales + or Enterprise: a buyer’s guide to PSI
Finding the right platform to support your sales process isn’t always about looking at the price. It’s also about finding sales software that can deliver what you need today, and empower you to get where you’re going next.
Do you need to dig deep into the performance of your field sales teams? See the bigger picture of end-to-end sales journeys? Or do you need to tie multiple sales channels together in one clear place?
PSI's sales software comes in three configurations: Leads +, Sales + and Enterprise. We’ve put together this guide to all three to help you find the package you need.
Leads +
You can think of Leads + as our essential field sales tools – a foundational sales territory management platform for overseeing campaigns and rep performance.
At its core, this package is about giving more power to both your field reps and your sales managers. Leads + lets your field sales team work on an unlimited number of addresses and leads, and think more tactically about how you engage with them. With the Opti Route algorithm you can optimise routes for each sales rep, to ensure that each area is maximised without being overworked.
While your agents are out in the field, GPS tracking and real-time rep management tools give an eagle-eyed overview of their performance at all times. And as they report the results from every door, you can follow and collect powerful data insights to hone future campaigns.
The features in Leads + underpin the rest of our packages because we know that field sales is essential for telcos and energy companies. Whether you’re planning to grow to multichannel sales or you’re an incumbent who’s already there, you will always need the ability to manage your sales territory and your field reps.
Sales +
Sales + takes the foundation of our territory management toolkit and builds on it with an end-to-end sales package.
The entire sale - from first recording potential customers to closing the deal - is wrapped up in one place. As well as digital contracts and bank validations to complete the sale, that includes document templates, a customer document portal, and email and SMS communications. Engaging with customers at any stage of the process is seamless for both them and your sales team, and all of the communications can be customised with your own branding.
That means there is less manual intervention required to move the process along and no data lags that risk breaking a sale. Your entire team can access all the information they need in one place and as close to real-time as possible – they’ll be able to know the exact status of each sale as soon as the rep leaves the customer’s door.
If you’re trying to grow quickly, Sales + gives you everything you need to tighten up your sales and provisioning process, while letting your internal tech team focus on adding value to the business.
Enterprise
If you’re operating on the level of multichannel sales, Enterprise is the package that helps you integrate each channel into one cohesive process.
Enterprise brings all sales journeys together under one roof, no matter where they start or finish. If a customer journey begins with a field sales rep visiting their door but finishes online, that sale is treated as one end-to-end process within the system. There’s no lag as they move between channels, and no risk of customer details being lost or duplicated along the way.
Enterprise also comes with even greater flexibility. With the power to set up custom journeys, workflows and data reporting, you can map out the PSI platform to fit your existing sales workflow and optimise it fully.
If you’re ready to take your sales campaigns to the next level, speak to us to find out more about PSI can help.
Grow, compete, retain: why energy companies need to get ready to sell again soon
Grow, compete, retain: why energy companies need to get ready to sell again soon
Across the UK and Europe, consumers are looking forward to a time when they’ll be able to pay less for their energy usage. And with the wholesale price of gas falling to its lowest in almost two years, that time may soon be here.
For the energy sector, that means a chance to send their sales agents back out into the field and compete for new customers once again. But to take advantage of this opportunity to grow – not to mention to keep hold of their current customer base – their sales teams will need to be well ahead of the curve, and have the right tools and clarity to move intelligently when the time comes.
Your customers are waiting for prices to fall
In February the wholesale price of natural gas fell below €50 per megawatt hour. That’s a significant drop from its peak of €320 per megawatt hour in August 2022, and the lowest the energy sector has seen since September 2021.
In response to that, Ofgem in the UK has begun dropping its energy price cap. For the second quarter of 2023 it went down from £4,279 to £3,280, and it’s expected to continue falling to £1,966 by the end of the year.
But while wholesale prices are falling for energy providers, the benefit of that is still yet to trickle down to the consumer. Due to their fixed price contracts, customers are locked into paying the higher prices they’d signed up at.
When their contracts end, those consumers will be looking to switch to whoever can supply them for less – and that opens up a significant opportunity for energy providers who are ready to get out and sell again.
The advantage will go to the agile
In 2020, the year before the current energy crisis began, almost 6m customers in the UK alone changed their energy provider. When prices are low and competition is high, there is a large appetite among consumers to capitalise on better deals and more innovative tariffs by shopping around.
If the price of energy falls again in 2023 and the market opens back up, that appetite may well return. Energy usage has been one of the most daunting household expenses for many consumers over the last two years, with some being forced to choose between paying for heating or paying for food. If there is a chance for them to save hundreds on their next bill just by switching providers, they will be open to it.
The first providers to respond to that will be at an advantage, but they will need to be ready to move fast. No one wants to be out on doorsteps trying to sell now because they aren’t going to win new customers while prices are still high. But they still need to be proactive, not reactive, and start planning how they’re going to deploy their next sales campaign ahead of time.
That will mean thinking tactically about where to focus resources, drawing intelligent data insights on where gains can be made, and knowing how to maximise the productivity of your entire sales process. It will also mean asking yourself if you’ve got the right tools to move with that level of speed and precision – and if not, what do you need to get there?
Think smarter on customer retention
When it’s time to sell again, one of the biggest challenges for the energy sector will be that a competitive market won’t just mean an opportunity to grow your market share. If everyone else is out on doorsteps offering lower prices, there’s a risk that you could lose as many existing customers as you gain.
If you have the right sales system in place for customer acquisition, it’s easy to turn that same insight and tactical approach towards retention. The PSI system, for instance, can draw on the data you’ve already gathered, so all your current customer information is already at your fingertips – and that gives you a clear advantage over your rivals.
Your sales team will know exactly when your current customers’ contracts are ending and what kind of deal they were on before. That means you can get started on customer engagement before your competitors have had a chance to get their boots on. And with their details already in the PSI system, their retention form can be populated automatically – giving your customers an effortless, positive experience, and your sales reps a better chance to close the deal quickly.
With sales software that gives clarity and insight on the state of your customers, you can think intelligently about how to engage them long before your reps arrive at their door. To learn more, check out our thoughts on effectively returning your sales agents to the field.
The launch of Territory Management: a data-centric way to upgrade field sales performance
Field sales is about so much more than sales teams knocking on doors. It’s the entire process, from mapping out which addresses to visit, logging the outcomes of every conversation, and making sense of your data to make each campaign more impactful than the last.
Effective territory management is a crucial gear in that machine. But while there are plenty of territory management solutions out there, often they’re either bundled in with more than your company needs right now, or too limited to take care of things like compliance as well.
At PSI, we’re experts in sales for highly regulated industries like telco and energy and in creating software solutions that help companies get a competitive edge in the field. That same insight is now behind our latest release.
Our new Territory Management solution is built with the same technology that powers our successful multichannel systems, but we’re keeping it laser focused on optimising every part of your field sales channel. Here’s a quick rundown of everything you can expect from it:
Intelligent route planning to keep your reps on track
When you’re planning routes for your field sales team to follow, efficiency is the name of the game. No one benefits from field reps overworking the same routes or knocking on doors they should be passing over.
The heart of PSI Territory Management is being able to assign and adapt routes that make sure your field sales reps are as productive as they can be. Routes can be split between different areas, regions and target customers, and assigned specifically to different reps to avoid overlapping.
Agent management features also give each rep a GPS location. As well as giving managers more oversight to manage reps while they’re out on their routes, this also allows you to adapt routes in real time.
Our Opti Route tool combines that location data with information about the rep’s current mode of transport to streamline where they’re going next. Not only does that help sales managers to ensure more efficient routes, it also keeps their reps more engaged by not sending them round the houses.
Automated compliance that builds trust
If a potential customer tells your agent they don’t want their door knocked on again, it’s vital that they’re listened to. Not just out of courtesy, but to keep on the right side of compliance. But if that response doesn’t get properly logged or someone misses the memo to take that address out of the system, it’s going to cause a problem.
There’s more at stake here than avoiding penalties. It’s a case of showing your customers that you listen to them and will keep to your promises. If a rep shows up at a door they’ve been asked not to knock on, it erodes trust – and that kind of reputation damage can be as harmful to new telcos as a regulatory fine. On the flipside, keeping your brand reputation robust can give you a competitive advantage.
PSI’s Territory Management has automated compliance built into the system. As soon as a field sales rep logs that someone doesn’t want to be contacted, their address is automatically taken out of future sales routes. There’s no manual procedure, so no risk of human error meaning someone falls through the cracks.
That can also be configured depending on the response given to the rep. If they say they aren’t interested at all, their address will be permanently removed from the system – if they say they might be interested when their current contract runs out, their address will be fed back into agent routes as a lead to contact in the future.
As for address data, we know how crucial it is to keep that secure. Our software gives managers the power to silo customer address data and assign access to specific users at specific times, meaning the only people who get to see it are the ones who need to. This all makes field operations a far simpler task.
Always know where your field teams are needed most
Brilliant sales reps are obviously key to the success of a field sales campaign. But without the right direction and planning, even the best will leave opportunities on the table.
Our territory management software gathers and reports data insights that help you make sure that those sales opportunities aren’t getting missed. From knowing if reps are genuinely knocking on the doors they say they are to tracking the outcomes of each address, that data lets you pinpoint where your best potential leads are and what’s happening with them.
Penetration reports show how many doors in each campaign were knocked on, how many conversations were had and where those potential customers are in their journey. Whatever data the software is set up to capture is tracked and reported, giving an accurate view into exactly what’s going on in the field.
Losing connection doesn’t mean losing a sale
The best part is that your field sales don’t have to get interrupted even if your reps aren’t connected. With offline functionality, PSI means your sales reps can continue to access the whole process whether they’re in the city centre or the heart of the countryside.
The system stores all address and product data, route information and sales forms offline, and automatically switches to offline workflow as soon as the connection drops. Reps don’t have to hunt around for signal or come back another time – they can continue closing their sales, and trust that validations will be completed as soon as they’re back online.
That means your field sales reps can be confident they’ve always got the right data in their hands. Their time isn’t wasted, and this smoother rep experience will lead to better employee retention.
Ready to scale when you are
With the PSI system, flexibility is part of the package. You aren’t hemmed in to a daunting multichannel solution if all you need is to manage door-to-door field sales right now. But if you’re ready to start integrating more channels, our higher Scale and Market Leader tiers can open those doors for you.
That means when you’re ready to start scaling, PSI is there for you at every level. You don’t have to worry about retraining your team to use a brand new piece of software, or risk losing any data migrating it to a new system.
If you’re ready to take your field sales campaigns to the next level, learn more about PSI Territory Management.
Get ahead of your telco competitors with offline capabilities
The connected world has made life much easier but while networks are getting better and faster, there are still black spots. In our personal lives, the minutes lost to poor network connection might mean waiting for a video to load or for a call to reconnect.
But in a sales situation those vital moments of disconnection could translate into uncaptured data, frustrated potential customers, missed orders and lost revenue.
Pair this with the high expectations customers now have when it comes to synchronicity and seamlessness and it's easy to see why offline capabilities are an absolute must. Particularly for the telco industry, which should be at the cutting edge of connection. Field sales teams need to be able to close leads without limitations, otherwise there will be a limit on revenue.
Stu Holliday is the Chief Commercial Officer for ZYBRE, and he’s worked with field sales teams throughout his whole career. He says, “There’s definitely a knock-on effect of not being able to complete an offline order, on the customer, rep and business.”
But surprisingly, most sales software doesn’t include offline working as a key feature, and the bottom line of telco companies suffers as a result. If field sales teams find themselves in badly connected environments 15% of time, that’s a 15% increased likelihood of lost sales, reduced productivity and decreased team motivation.
Selling reliable connectivity anywhere
During new customer acquisition and customer onboarding, clients are looking for a reliable service. When companies try to sell connectivity but don’t have a dependable connection themselves, that reliability is challenged. This occurs in both urban and rural areas but for telco companies like Ogi, for whom remote regions hold much of their customer base, the impact will be even more significant.
Paul Main, the National Sales Manager of Be Fibre told us, “It is part of the government’s maUnlessnifesto to bring gigabit broadband to ‘every home and business across the UK’ by 2025. However, 4G connectivity only covers 85% of the UK so finding a mobile sales solution that operates ‘out of network coverage’ will play a critical role in ensuring we keep the promise.”
Some impacts are obvious. At the point of closing a sale or a key stage of data capture, stalled sales software forces customers to stand around in frustration and might lead to failed orders.
Elsewhere, let’s say a sales rep invests time in delivering a presentation to get a new business client on board. But after their winning conversation they can’t complete the sale – simply because they’re offline. Here it’s a double hit. The business loses revenue and the rep’s motivation also suffers.
Stu says, ‘’It’s not just about having good connection to be able to increase the speed and number of orders being processed, but it’s also about the effect on the mental state of the sales rep too.”
“Salespeople will get demotivated if they’re pressing confirm on an order and it’s not going through,” Stu says. “You’ll see their body language change, they may feel under more pressure to complete sales and therefore start pushing harder than they should for a new order.”
It’s all easily avoidable. Our sales software is designed specifically with telco field sales in mind, which means it’s designed to stay connected at all times. It does a lot more than simply allow a rep to fill out a form offline. Our software functions in its online capacity even when it’s offline.
How is that possible? Let's explain this key feature of ours.
How we designed our online platform for an offline frontier
When one of your reps is offline, our systems can detect this. And instead of simply waiting for an internet connection, our software responds intelligently, going via an offline route to update the server. This allows the rep to continue to collect customer data as part of the offline sales process, with the device then syncing this data once a connection has been made again.
Stu says, “PSI’s ability to process and timestamp an order offline automatically, is a game changer.”
“If you’re asking reps to select offline, load the new CAF, submit the order then try to turn it online again, productivity can be hugely impacted. Whereas the PSI system means performance is consistent and reps can sell whether they’re in rural areas, the top of a high rise or even at an underground business.‘’
You could say we’ve worked around the imperfection of the 99% connected world. And we’ve done it with a creative software solution that works how a customer looking to buy a connectivity package would expect.
This key feature also means our offline capabilities are fully GDPR compliant. The system still functions as one device processing the data in one fixed moment.
Of course, just like all modern cloud-based systems, the customer doesn’t know anything different has happened. The whole process is smooth and contained. And with less chance of sales breaking, teams are free to grow leads and own more effective territory management.
Sales software built by industry-vertical experts
PSI’s sales software are alone in offering this vital key feature. You can line up all the sales or lead capture products on the market, and PSI is the only option with GDPR-compliant, offline capabilities built in.
Paul says that this technology “will continue to allow us to push into UK rural areas that we have been unable to reach previously, serving our communities better and delivering our promises.”
We pride ourselves in providing a unique customer service to the telco industry and always scan the market to see what problems are arising so we can provide solutions from automation to multichannel sales.
All PSI products come with this dedicated industry expertise and focus built-in to the design and configuration, so you know you’ll always have the best systems running. Get in touch to book a demo and see it in action
Futureproof your organisation with end-to-end sales software
Not all sales solutions were created equal. Some are effective in initial lead capture, but for the telco industry in particular, it’s vital to allow businesses to fully map customer journeys and control sales processes within an end-to-end solution.
Lead capture versus end-to-end
Lead capture represents the wide start of the sales process after which teams need to convert leads into customers. New customer acquisition is full of contact points at which the sale could break down and businesses face increased risk of potential customers changing their mind if their sales process has to pause for breath. It’s ultimately down to the point of sale, and all lead capture tools can do is kick start the sales journey.
In contrast, end-to-end sales software can record all a customer’s information in one place after just one conversation, including installation dates if the customer is happy to decide there and then. Your backend systems will have all they need, and the customer won’t have to give it another thought.
The ISP and managed IT services provider Ogi discovered this when we set them up with an end-to-end solution that replaced their previous software platform.
“PSI enables us to complete a quick sale in 10-15 mins from start to finish,” said Alexander, Breverton, Telesales Manager at Ogi. “This probably would have taken a couple of days in our previous out-of-the-box solution.”
Any further communication then becomes an opportunity to nurture the relationship rather than hassle the customer for more information. With all a customer’s information neatly contained in an end-to-end sales solution, companies can also sell more enhanced services, such as add-on connectivity packages, or they can ask for Trust Pilot ratings, which are more likely to be higher after such a seamless customer experience.
Future-proof your organisation’s sales
So what if you’re a new contender in the market and you only want lead capture right now?
Well, with PSI’s sales software, businesses can choose to pay for an initial lead capture tool and build on it later as their needs and budget evolves. Other sales solutions don’t offer this option, companies would have to onboard a whole new system at a later date – often with great upheaval and expense.
With PSI, you can scale your sales solution easily whenever you’re ready. This makes it a great tool for businesses and startups with growth ambitions.
So if your new company’s eventual aim is to have a multichannel sales process with an automated customer onboarding journey, we can facilitate that step by step. We can give you a sophisticated lead capture solution as you start out and then build it out into an end-to-end solution later once you have the scope to take full advantage of it.
By choosing a solution that's ready to scale with you, when you do need an end-to-end solution, you'll find it much easier getting the internal buy-in you need. You won’t need to convince field sales teams or C-suite execs to invest time and energy in onboarding and training for a second piece of software – everything will already be in place.
Scaling with a team of experts
PSI offers a consultative approach to sales solutions. Our software is able to handle nuance and it can be reflexive to fit around your businesses growth goals.
We know that the more flexibility and data companies have available, the more they’ll get out of not just a sales solution but also business growth. In territory management for example, additional customer data captured in end-to-end sales software can be assigned out to field sales teams working in both on-net and off-net services.
Likewise, when growing an alt-net network, data can be entered into the PSI systems as the network is being built so that sales reps know which addresses already have build-out processes in the pipeline and which don’t.
With our software, your teams can also use the data to know when leads are coming out of another contract, so that they can target them with a sales campaign once their contract end-date draws closer.
Beyond standard SaaS. This is a partnership
We work with scalability and partnership at the forefront of all we do. If a business is currently using a field sales agency as its core team but wants to move longterm to an in-house telesales team, our sales solutions make that transitional period as easy as possible.
Sales agencies often use software platforms that work for their broad needs, not for a specific business model, target audience or growth area. When companies decide to part ways with that agency, all the initial customer data that’s been captured is owned by the agency. That makes any sort of transition a difficult prospect, and inevitably leads to lost sales.
In contrast, PSI’s sales software offers longevity. If you want to put a sales agency on our software, you can. And if you want to switch agencies, you can do so without losing any data – and the same goes if you want to take sales in-house. In short, with our software, your teams won’t need to start from scratch when you decide to grow.
We know the telco industry and our end-to-end software means you can feel secure in the knowledge you've not only got the right software behind you, but the right team of experts too. Get in touch and future-proof your business with a solution that’s ready to scale with you.
No more missed opportunities: how lead capture takes your sales results beyond what you're used to
Missing a sales opportunity doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Sometimes a customer needs a bit of breathing room, some time to reflect, or simply to reach the end of a contract before they can make that jump. Nobody wants to be pestered to buy into a new product or service, but perhaps a gentler approach, one that the potential customer can anticipate, is the way forward.
The question is: how do you achieve that?
How can a lead capture solution help improve your customer experience?
Certainly, the customer experience is of vital importance, even while they’re only potential customers. According to a study by PwC, 32% of customers will walk away from a brand after a single negative experience, and after several bad experiences, that figure rises to over 50%. Being harassed by sales representatives after having declined an offer is not going to endear the potential customer to change their mind.
Customer retention is easily as important as customer acquisition, as the initial cost of acquisition is larger than that of retention, and customer churn costs companies vast amounts of revenue. Loyal customers become advocates though, and according to Temkin Group, 77% of customers would recommend a brand to a friend after a single positive experience.
But is it a big deal? Why focus on missed opportunities? If a potential customer wasn’t ready to commit yet, why not just move on to the next? How would you even capture the missed sales opportunity?
Is multichannel sales the answer?
It is widely known that missed sales opportunities are a problem, but if sales targets are met, then solving that problem is not high on the list of priorities. When a business is emerging, or moving into a new territory, customer acquisition is essential, but finding customers who aren’t already under contract is a challenge. Making first contact with potential customers when their contracts are nearly up is highly unlikely, so what do you do?
A multichannel sales solution that captures and stores leads may well be the answer.
A call to a potential customer could reveal that they may not be 100% happy with their current supplier, but that they still have several months remaining on their contract. The ability to agree a time and date that they would prefer a call back ensures they feel in control and creates a warm lead for the sales team to follow up on.
Likewise, if the potential customer can choose to be sent a reminder via a channel of their choice, they’re more likely to welcome the communication. A multichannel sales solution joins the dots here – enabling a field sales rep to easily schedule in a phone call or an email instead of another door-to-door call.
According to PwC, 43% of consumers would pay more for greater convenience and 42% would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience – and by capturing leads with a multichannel sales solution, you can offer both.
These warm leads could be useful for forecasting future sales and gaining insights to the desirability of your products in the market. Effective territory management from multichannel sales software can also remove these potential customers from lists of sales representatives’ calls, preventing sales representatives from cold calling them prior to the agreed contact date.
One solution across multiple teams
Without using a joined-up multichannel sales solution, there is little incentive to pass on a warm lead to another team to follow up on. If a sale is made from a follow-up, the representative who made the initial contact often wouldn’t benefit from it at all. But if both teams are working from the same system, you can see when contact was made the first time and allocate the lead accordingly.
If a warm lead is successfully converted, then the reward and recognition from the sale can be shared between the teams. This creates an incentive to share leads and a greater chance of capturing a sale that may have been lost otherwise.
We have a compliant solution for just this need. To find out more about our multichannel sales solutions, check out the story behind our tech or learn how it fits together to give you a competitive advantage.
You can also get in touch to schedule a demo here.
Restart, rebuild, reimagine – the story behind our multichannel sales tech
According to research by EPFL university, 73% of start-ups need to pivot to a different market over time. The sector first targeted by a tech company rarely stays the focus forever, and so it was with PSI.
Before we stepped into sales software we worked with pharmaceuticals, trading excess stock to prevent pharmaceutical waste. It wasn’t long before we saw the need for improved sales applications in that industry, and the first one we designed transformed a pharma company’s manual, slow processes and made their customer acquisition much more efficient. This would be an ongoing theme for many years to come.
Honing in on telco, utility and sales software
We were soon doing the same for mobile technology projects, and after experimenting with a number of different directions, we found our stride in 2010 when we overhauled sales processes with Miller Brown and Eir, Ireland’s largest telco operator.
“The PSI platform was an instant improvement,” says Mark Higgins, Eir’s Head of Field & Affiliate Sales. “Not only are our reps better equipped, but I now have instant insight into sales. I can see which bundles are selling well, which regions are hitting their targets and the progress of orders. All in real time.”
We had found our sweet spot so we honed in on it. Over the next 12 years we designed and provided sales software solutions for telco and utility. Our 1.0 platform evolved to service these industries with increasing focus.
Tearing down and building up to multichannel sales
“Over a long period of time, technology that is built up like this becomes quite unmanageable,” says David Costello, CEO of PSI. “So we took a clean slate and rebuilt the platform to deliver everything we’d learned how to deliver, but in an efficient and scalable way – switching to web technology enabled us to support multichannel sales more effectively.”
At this stage our solution was matured, omnichannel, and could be configured with our domain expertise. These are some of the aspects that made us appeal to Ogi, an ISP and managed IT services company that is transforming Wales’ digital landscape.
“It’s very unusual to go out to market, as a start-up business, with a sophisticated automated sales process,” says Sally-Anne Skinner, Chief Revenue Officer at Ogi. “This is what we have with PSI.”
How we stayed agile
Part of the reason we were able to get this far has been our ability to pivot and keep on the frontfoot of evolving sales software and the needs of our customers.
“We’re privately owned and we’re not VC backed,” says David, “so we don’t have funding that’s driving us down a particular path. This has enabled us to focus on a niche market and be agile in responding to what our customers want.”
This agility was key for SSE Airtricity, a leading green energy company, who had to respond fast during the pandemic to enable their business to deliver more with the same resources. They also needed to stay agile for future product updates.
“Time is a major factor in this,” says Ernest Asensio, Retail Efficiency & Systems Manager of SSE Airtricity. “We needed to respond to changing requirements both initially from dialling up web functionality for business units, but also recurring as these business units would have a lot of frequent product changes… PSI Touchstone enables us to respond quicker and easier to save resources across multiple departments.”
A long term solution for fast omnichannel sales
“We don’t just build and walk away,” says David. “We become an integral part of customer experience processes for our clients, and we constantly evolve these processes to do more with them.”
This is the case with Eir, who switched to PSI to manage their customer acquisition and onboarding in 2010. Usually, if a company stayed with a legacy system for long, they would have to take on the difficulties of moving the tech forward, along with the costs of the almost inevitable rebuild. Instead, Eir simply kept telling us what they needed and we kept evolving the system for them. And when we saw the opportunity to rebuild, we absorbed that cost.
“The simplicity of the system should not be ignored either,” says the Sales Director of Eir. “The PSI interface is simple, data is easily accessible, and the customer sign-up wizard is straightforward. This means that our reps can give more of their attention to clients, further smoothing the sales process and raising the quality of service we give them.”
PSI’s initial pivot to sales software and telco and utility onboarding was a result of listening to the market – and we’re still listening now. We’re paying attention to the market and to our clients, following the good ideas to deliver something of value.
To see what the latest version of our multichannel sales software can achieve for ambitious organisations, our work with Ogi is a prime example. Alexander Breverton, Ogi’s Telesales Manager adds, “PSI enables us to complete a quick sale in 10-15 mins from start to finish. This probably would have taken a couple of days in our previous out-of-the-box solution.”
To learn more about how we created this tailored solution in just a few months, see our case study on Ogi’s multichannel sales software.
How automation can accelerate telco and utility sales teams
How much hassle, how much waiting and how many manual tasks lie between a first ‘hello’, a completed sale, and the moment the service is switched on for a customer?
If telco and utility organisations make this first point of contact frictionless for the customer and sales rep, the benefit is simple: more sales close, more often. Automation is what will enable companies to leapfrog to this next generation sales and onboarding experience, along with its next generation margins.
Telco and utility companies are already beginning to make automation work from them. Chatbots are saving time for customer service teams, machine learning is helping to generate call-lists, and some organisations are making moves towards a zero touch customer experience.
Sales and onboarding teams, however, probably have the most to gain from automation, AI and smart integrated systems. They’re the ones for whom almost every minute counts – and for whom the seamlessness of the experience can make or break a sale.
What many systems lack
By HubSpot’s count, sales teams typically only spend 34% of their time talking to prospects, and most of the rest of their time completing tasks that could be automated.
We’ve seen before with clients that even if an application is quick to complete initially, progress often stumbles, trips and crawls its way through a company’s systems afterwards. Forms can take time to arrive at head office. Payment details might later need to be re-verified by phone.
Ogi, an ISP and managed IT services company, knew this pain first hand. “Out of the box B2B sales solutions tend not to be fit for purpose for residential sales,” says Telesales Manager Alexander Breverton. “There’s lots of manual provisioning, manually sending customer emails and manually sending terms and conditions.”
So what’s the alternative?
Automated systems at a glance
In McKinsey’s report, A Blueprint for Telecom’s Critical Reinvention, the authors argue that “telcos’ success will hinge on their ability to leverage data and deploy advanced analytics, AI and automation at scale to drive new sources of growth and change the broader economics of the business.”
Similarly, in Salesforce’s report A new chapter of Telco service transformation, the case is made that telco companies need to face up to the constraints of legacy architectures and build something new: “unified back-end processes and increased automation that support slick and cost-effective front-end design and channel experiences.”
Building new sophisticated architecture like this is a process that can take years – and much trial and error. But with Ogi, we demonstrated that it’s possible to configure a tailored, multichannel, sales-focused system in a matter of months, not years – with an intuitive frontend that new sales teams can quickly pick up and run with.
A new and inspired team
When a solution enables a sales team to validate, book installation appointments and complete the entire process on the spot, there’s a greater sense of completion. Nor does the sale’s associated commission still hang in the balance.
Sophisticated automation doesn’t just reduce admin time, it also ensures that the right data is in your reps hands, whether they’re on the phone, in the field, or following up on an incomplete web sale.
This kind of provisioning reduces frustration and helps to promote an inclusive sales culture, where telesales can pass a lead to field sales if they can’t reach them, and vice versa.
The Ogi experience
Ogi’s managers are now able to create automated, optimised routes and campaigns for field reps – and their field and tele sales teams have rich data to help them achieve better results.
Their teams can perform contactless sales with very little manual provisioning, booking installations at point of sale, and wrapping up a sale in moments. Everything else automates all the way to its final destination.
“PSI enables us to complete a quick sale in 10-15 mins from start to finish,” says Alexander. “This probably would have taken a couple of days in our previous out-of-the-box solution.”
To learn more, see our case study deep dive into how PSI helped Ogi scale and penetrate their market
