At Fision, our goal is to make the lives of sales and marketers easier, we also aim to unite the two departments in the process. Every company touts marketing and sales alignment, but few companies are succeeding to make it a reality. Last week HubSpot, a marketing automation leader, entered the sales game with a focus on email simplification.
With our goal of making life easier, we figured we’d share this new find with our sales brethren out there. We hope that this is another tool you can use to make you a better sales person and make your working life more fun.
Most People Think Email is Evil
One of the many problems with email is that after you as a sales person send an email to a prospect you are stuck waiting. If you don’t get a response; you send another email. It’s a waiting game until the prospect takes some action, and as Sweet Brown says, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
In an effort to win over its comrades across the aisle, HubSpot has created Sidekick (formerly called Signals) to “make your email workflow easier, better, and faster.” This easy to use Google Chrome Extension truly makes email a bit more enjoyable.
Informed Sales Reps Send Better Emails
Sidekick pulls available business information about the recipient from their email and social media profiles. This allows you as the sender to see some basic information about the recipient, their company, your past interactions with them and some recent social activity. It gives you some context on whom you are emailing so you can make the email relevant and compelling.
Send Emails at the Ideal Time with the Scheduler
The email scheduling feature is coming soon, but the premise is simple. You can now schedule your emails so they arrive to the person’s inbox at the time you want. This isn’t new technology, but the fact that it is free is very exciting for small businesses or other people who don’t have access to email scheduling software.
Informed Sales Reps Can Make Better Follow Ups
Tracking opens and clicks is nothing new. Software companies have been providing this marketing campaign data for a while now. However, HubSpot is a big believer in giving away awesome stuff for free, and with Sidekick, they’ve done it again.
Once the recipient opens and/or clicks your email you receive a notification. Whether this activity warrants a follow-up is up to you, but at least now you have the tools you need to make an informed decision. If a follow-up is in order, you can glance back look at their timeline to see all the interactions they have had with you. This obviously helps shape your conversation and maximizes your chances of moving them further through the sales funnel.
Once the Google Chrome Extension is installed, all you have to do it click the “track this email with Sidekick” button in your email provider. It currently works with Gmail, Outlook and iMail. You can receive up to 200 notifications per month for free; it’s $10/month for unlimited notifications.
3 Ways It Will Benefit Sales Reps
+ It will help you craft emails that resonate with a particular prospect.
+ It will help your prioritize your follow ups based on who has responded and who hasn’t, ensuring you are reaching out to warm or hot leads first.
+ You will spend less time switching between applications and spend more time selling and schmoozing.
+ *Bonus*: HubSpot CRM (also free) will be coming out early 2015.
In Case You Were Wondering…
Though they are cool company, we are not a HubSpot client or partner. We just like to stay up-to-date on tech industry news and this caught our eye as something that marketers & sales folk might like.
We’d like to hear your thoughts on Sidekick. Would you use this? Does it creep you out that someone knows when you opened their email? Tell us about it in the comments.