Using snippets to simplify sales communications
Let’s be honest—as sales people we spend a lot of time chained to our keyboard, dealing with mundane tasks like typing repetitive things into the CRM, fixing little mistakes, or searching for the right response to a sales inquiry. Those are all things that are taking precious time away from the important things—making more sales.
Simplifying your processes and sales communications is a crucial step towards increasing efficiency, limiting potential confusion, and closing more sales. It is the job of the sales teams to find the best methods and processes available to them and then simplify them as far as possible while still maintaining an excellent level of results.
Two apps that should be part of every efficient salesperson’s tech stack to help level up your sales process and make sales touches more frequent and efficient is the power duo of Close CRM and TextExpander.
Combining the high-performance sales workflow capabilities of Close with the productivity and time-saving power of TextExpander will get your team closing more sales. Let’s dive a little deeper into why this duo of apps can be the key to better productivity in our sales process.
Looking for ways to enhance your sales techniques? Our article on sales productivity tools is your gateway to success.
The importance of data consistency
The admin part of keeping sales data consistent can seem a little dry at times. However, using tools can make this process easier and considerably less time-consuming.
Keeping data consistent is crucial to successful sales for several reasons. Firstly, by maintaining an accurate record of opportunity progress, salespeople can quickly and easily time their communications. For example, you may set up notifications highlighting when a prospect hasn't been called or emailed in some time.
Maintaining accurate records also allows for seamless teamwork.
With one central point of information, it is easy for others on your team to identify the current status and view previous records associated with an opportunity. Being able to quickly access opportunity information is especially useful when leads are passed on to other team members or when a team member needs to quickly check an opportunity status and owner, such as when they are on the phone to the customer.
As rules and regulations on data protection continue to tighten, maintaining a clear record of all communications will make it easy to prove compliance if the need for an audit ever occurs.
How to use TextExpander in Close
The TextExpander sales team has been using Close as our CRM for some time, and we’ve developed a strategy to combine our smart snippet technology with Close to rapidly deploy our sales process and record crucial data.
The TextExpander account executives use
[TextExpander templated snippets](https://www.textexpander.com ?utm_campaign=partner_blog&utm_medium=partner-organic&utm_source=close_blog)
or predefined text and images that can be expanded in any application with a simple keyboard shortcut, and personalize them with
[fill-in options](https://textexpander.com/blog/textexpander-how-to-personalize-your-snippets-with-fill-ins/)
that allow you to add rich detail to your chunks of text. We use these snippets within Close to speed up our CRM updates while making our notes more robust and efficient. Here are some examples:
TextExpander Snippet: “close.opp”
This snippet offers a fast and easy way to add notes to opportunities in Close, including
[drop-down menus, fill-in fields](https://textexpander.com/help/desktop/fillins.html) and [automatically added dates](https://textexpander.com/help/desktop/datetime.html)
TextExpander Snippet: “qclose”
This snippet uses many of the features above, this time for adding qualification notes in the Notes section of Close.
TextExpander Snippet: “// SDR”
The team strives to meet high goals of outbound activity. One of the most important things is to ensure they track the activity closely to avoid no time being wasted and to make sure all documentation is unified. This snippet provides a fast and consistent way to the data they need to track their activity.
Tips on using Close with TextExpander snippets
TextExpander and Close don’t just work together for CRM updates: there are countless ways you can apply snippets to boost your sales success on Close. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Create go-to sales messaging
Most sales professionals find themselves regularly sending the same messages and information to key clients. Using TextExpander, you can create snippets that let you rapidly bring up, personalize, and deploy these key messages, saving you time. Whether you’re pitching a lead or answering a sales inquiry, your premade snippets will quickly get you the text you need in your email client, on social media, in a live chat session—wherever you type.
Using snippets in this way also ensures a level of consistency in sales team messaging—you can share snippets of brand messages, sales pitch language, signatures, and product descriptions with everyone on your team so your whole team stays on point with the same message every time.
Banish repetitive tasks and errors
Any business with multiple salespeople will require key information to be input into their CRM throughout the sales process. For example, you may be required to enter information such as business name, contact name, business area, and potential value once a new opportunity comes through the door.
You can use snippets to rapidly fill out this information. While using snippets on these occasions will save you a matter of seconds each time, when used over a large team who are inputting multiple opportunities this can add up to considerable time-savings.
Test sales sequences
Over time, experienced sales professionals will have tried and tested various emails with varying levels of success. By creating snippets for sales emails that have previously generated good results you can use these to quickly change and test sales sequences within Close.
For example, you may currently use a series of six emails that are sent to cold leads. Using snippets for high-performing sales emails you can quickly chop and change these to see which sequences work best.
Rapid team management
Those who manage sales teams can use snippets to quickly execute team management tasks through Close. By creating snippets for common tasks, you can monitor progress through the CRM and ping out instructions based on your findings.
For example, you may notice that one of your sales people has failed to follow up with a crucial lead. In this case, you may create a snippet that kindly asks your team member to ensure they follow up as soon as possible.
Using snippets for CRM success
CRMs like Close are a powerful tool when fully utilized by your sales team. Pairing snippets with your CRM is a great way to rapidly speed up the process of data and information input so you can take your time back and use it to gain more leads and close more deals.
Interested in learning more about TextExpander and how it can help you improve your CRM productivity?
