Average Americans check their mobile phones around 150 times per day. This almost constant attachment to cell phones leads to opening most SMS messages within three minutes of their reception.
While some still view texting as an unprofessional way to communicate, it has the potential to alter your interactions with customers entirely. Rather than spending five minutes on a phone call to relay the necessary information, you can send a brief text message.
The Benefits of Inside Sales SMS
Business SMS messaging is the newest direction for interacting with your clients. Incorporating SMS messaging into your inside sales process expands your communication capabilities and deepens relationships with your customers.
How exactly can business SMS messaging help agents work with their customers?
Immediate Communication
SMS messaging boasts near-instant communication with the recipient. Send messages directly to their text inbox and put the power in their hands. Customers can choose whether or not a message needs a response; if all they need is the information, they have it. If they need to follow up on the text, they can either respond or call your agent back.
Phone calls, although instant as well, take more considerable amounts of time to complete. Instead, use a pre-written SMS template to compose a message to your client and send it in the click of a button. Save time on both yours and your client’s ends when you use SMS messaging.
Ensure Message Reception
With the current state of email communication, both from a person-to-person and a marketing standpoint, it’s easy for emails to get lost in the shuffle. Most people receive an average of 88 emails per day; how can you be sure they receive your message?
SMS messages have a reported 98% open rate. There is very little spam, and only a few marketing attempts, in a text message inbox; this gives customers a better chance of seeing your SMS message compared to your email.
Why waste time writing a message with such a high chance of being lost? Instead, send a direct text message, something they’re much more likely to receive.
Using Their Preferred Channel
The success of your inside sales depends upon building and maintaining rapport. Each person has a preferred method of communication. Some like to talk on the phone while others would rather receive an email. Paying attention to and using a prospect or customer’s preferred method of communication is a necessity in the process.
Business SMS messaging is quickly overtaking both phone calls and email as a primary method of communication for many businesspeople. It’s no longer an unprofessional way to communicate. When a text message works for the information, why waste any time with another approach?
Have your agents determine from the start what their customers’ preferred method of communication is. Many times SMS messaging proves more than adequate for the message they need to send. If agents learn a client doesn’t mind text message communication, it benefits both parties.
Using the Power of Business SMS Messaging in Your Inside Sales
SMS messaging provides instant communication between parties. It also allows recipients to respond on their own time, or to receive a message without having to reply at all if it requires no response. Finally, some customers prefer one channel of communication over another; maybe they would rather receive a text than a call.
Regardless of the particular reasons you choose to use it, it would help if you started using SMS messaging as a part of your inside sales process. If you don’t actively use it, at least providing it as an option for your sales team can give them the chance to see how it works for their approach.
