ISOs operate in an extremely competitive environment and outperforming your competition in both recruiting and service is key to maintaining healthy growth and maximizing residuals. That makes your independent agents some of the most important members of your team, and the job they do one of the most important functions of your ISO. Any tool you can provide those agents to boost their performance and make their jobs easier is a worthwhile investment, and a call center equipped CRM, like IRIS CRM, is designed specifically to do exactly that. By making your calling operations both more efficient and more effective, you can ensure your agents turn more prospects into newly signed merchants, and, in turn, generate fatter residual checks for everyone involved.
The Importance of Effective Calling Operations in Merchant Recruiting
Merchant recruiting is a sales process, and like most sales processes, it takes multiple touches between your agents and your prospects and establishing a relationship, building trust, and addressing the merchant’s needs are the keys to success. But it isn’t realistic to expect your agents to conduct every interaction face-to-face, and that means the success of your team’s calling operations in many ways is the success of your ISO.
There are a lot of factors that go into good telephone sales, and a lot of them are intangible. But one of the most important factors is how informed your agents are on the prospect – how much they know about the prospect’s needs, the prospect’s business, and any and all previous interactions. In a sales environment where a handshake and a good in-person impression aren’t possible, going into each call as prepared as possible can be the difference-maker between signing a new merchant or losing them to a competitor.
The Importance of Efficient Calling Operations to Growth and Cost Management
Telephone sales is also a numbers game. Every good sales process starts with a large volume of prospects at the top of the funnel who are then moved through the buying cycle until a smaller number of closed deals emerge from the bottom. That means two things: first, the more capacity your agents can handle at the top of the funnel, the more signed merchants will emerge from the bottom. Second, time is money, and any inefficiencies in your calling process are costing you.
A top priority for all ISOs should be finding ways to streamline calling operations so agents can make more calls throughout the day, speak to more leads at the top of the funnel, and move hot prospects through the sales process faster.
How IRIS CRM Improves Your ISO’s Calling Operations
IRIS CRM includes a full-featured power dialer designed specifically to streamline and enhance your ISO’s calling operations to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your merchant recruiting. It improves effectiveness by tying the dialer directly into the platform’s lead management suite. That means even when they’re on the phone, your agents will never be more than a click or two away from the entirety of your ISO’s collected data on each and every prospect. The improvement that offers in your agents’ lead knowledge and sales call preparation is priceless.
On the efficiency side, IRIS CRM’s power dialer enables your agents to make significantly more calls by automating as much of the process as possible. By eliminating the wasted time and repetition involved in things like manual dialing and leaving voicemails, your agents can breeze through their calling lists faster than ever before. For ISOs operating nationally, the built-in local presence feature also enables sales calls to be made from any area code you choose, sending answer rates through the roof.
IRIS CRM’s power dialer also offers a host of valuable additional features, from a complete IVR calling system to listen-in and recording for quality control and training, advanced dialer metrics, and much more. To find out everything IRIS CRM can do for your ISO’s calling operations, schedule a free guided demonstration today.