In this tutorial, we’ll show you step by step how to customize your Pipeline CRM dashboard, covering everything from adding multiple sales pipelines to setting up personalized views, so you can quickly access the sales metrics that matter most.

What Can You Customize on a CRM Dashboard?

Custom CRM dashboards offer flexibility when selecting and arranging the information displayed on your CRM home screen. The available customization options, including the data types, number of elements, and size of dashboard tiles, will vary depending on your CRM provider.

Many CRM solutions also enable you to control who can view and edit specific dashboard elements by applying user permissions. This ensures that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized individuals.

Here are some common components you can include in a custom CRM dashboard:

• Sales performance overview: sales pipeline, deal lists, and sales metrics.
• Leads and customer data: lead status, customer segmentation, and new contacts.
• Tasks and activities: upcoming tasks and recent interactions.
• Reports and analytics: daily, weekly, or monthly reports on KPIs like win rate, churn rate, and campaign performance.
• Customer support: open tickets and resolved issues.

Related: are you in the logistics, real estate, or professional services industries? Learn about industry-relevant KPIs to track and accurately monitor your business growth.

Why Is a Custom CRM Dashboard Essential for Your Business?

Customizing your CRM dashboard is essential when managing multiple sales pipelines. Each pipeline often has distinct characteristics, including sales cycle length and key metrics, that require tailored monitoring.

For instance, a residential real estate brokerage might prioritize conversion rate, sales cycle length, and number of new listings on its dashboard due to residential properties’ shorter sales cycles. In contrast, a commercial property sales pipeline might benefit from metrics like deal value, average deal size, and revenue forecast, given the longer sales cycles associated with commercial buildings.

Top tip: when should you switch from a single to multiple sales pipeline? See 5 scenarios where implementing multiple sales pipelines can boost your sales productivity.

Beyond these pipeline-specific metrics, customizing your CRM dashboard offers several additional advantages, including:

Enhanced Focus and Efficiency

Display only the most important information, reducing distractions and promoting a focus on high-priority tasks.

Tailored Insights for Specific Roles

Provide sales reps, marketers, and customer service agents with the data they need. Managers can track KPIs, revenue, and team performance at a glance.

Instant Access to Critical Data

Track real-time updates on sales performance, customer interactions, and marketing campaigns, enabling quick and informed decision-making.

By tailoring your CRM dashboard, you can effectively organize data, streamline processes, and enhance team collaboration. This way, your sales team will have access to essential information in a format that supports their workflow and improves overall efficiency.

How to Customize Your Pipeline CRM Dashboard for Multiple Sales Pipelines

We will show you how to tailor your Pipeline CRM dashboard. For this example, we’ll modify it to host multiple sales pipelines.

Step 1: Create a New, Customized CRM Dashboard

From the Dashboard dropdown, select ‘Add To Dashboard.’ Give the new dashboard a title and select the first type of content you want to add to it.

With Pipeline CRM, you can add as many tiles as you like, such as the sales pipeline itself, deals slipping away, and the latest email interactions. You can also add custom content, such as list views, reports, and goals.

To track multiple sales pipelines efficiently, we recommend adding different dashboard elements based on the focus of each pipeline. For example:

• Short vs. long sales cycles: use monthly vs. quarterly sales reports and forecasting.
• Simple vs. complex sales cycles: focus on high-level vs. granular sales workflows.
• Free vs. paid sales pipeline products: highlight different sales steps, such as nurturing and qualification for free products vs. onboarding and post-sales support for paid products.

Step 2: Edit the New CRM Dashboard

Besides adding new dashboard elements, you can also resize, reposition, and filter them to further customize your Pipeline CRM dashboard.

To resize tiles, click and hold the icon in the lower right corner of the tile. While holding the icon, drag the tile to expand or decrease its size. There are no fixed size requirements for tiles, allowing you to customize their dimensions freely.

To reposition the tiles, click the icon in the upper left corner of the tile and drag and drop it into place. Dashboard filtering now exists on individual tiles, allowing you greater flexibility to curate a dashboard filtered by individual tiles.

To filter the tiles, click the users dropdown and select the users for whom you wish to see data. You can filter by users on the deals slipping away and the sales pipeline tiles.

Step 3: Save the New Tailored CRM Dashboard

After tweaking the dashboard, you must save the changes or save them as a new dashboard to keep the customization.

After saving a dashboard, you can ‘star’ it to indicate that it’s a key dashboard in your workflow. Simply click the star icon on the left of the dashboard name when the dashboard is open. All saved dashboards can be found in the dashboard dropdown.

Step 4: Share the New Customized CRM Dashboard With the Team

Once you’ve saved a dashboard, you’ll see the Share button in the upper right corner of the dashboard view. You can share the dashboard with specific individual users or globally across the entire account.

Note that when sharing a dashboard, the content will always follow the original visibility rules. For example, if you share a dashboard with a list of deals that the shared users don’t have access to, they will be able to view the dashboard but not the content on the included list.

You can also set a shared dashboard as the default dashboard for your account. This will not change the settings for any other users.

Watch this video for a complete tutorial on customizing your CRM dashboard on Pipeline CRM. You can also find detailed instructions in this written guide.

Focus on What Matters with Customized CRM Dashboards

Don’t let cluttered dashboards hinder your sales team’s productivity. By customizing your CRM dashboard to prioritize essential metrics and information, you can empower your team to close more deals, even when managing multiple sales pipelines.

We recommend adopting a customizable CRM like Pipeline CRM to streamline daily sales activities. Beyond dashboard personalization, Pipeline CRM offers features such as custom data fields, data validation, email drip workflows, and robust sales reporting.

Ready to experience the benefits of a customized CRM dashboard? Try Pipeline CRM for free for 14 days and see how it can transform your sales process.

Despite the rise of digital channels and consumer fatigue, phone calls and SMS remain effective sales tools in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In fact, the increasing number of ad blockers and opt-outs can actually benefit businesses by helping to identify genuinely interested prospects.

This blog explores leveraging this opportunity by integrating phone and SMS capabilities into your CRM. We’ll delve into specific dialer CRM options, provide step-by-step setup guidance, and share best practices to optimize your call and text sales outreach campaigns for maximum impact.

How To Make Calls and Send SMS Messages via Pipeline CRM

Our SMS integration allows for seamless two-way communication with your customers. This means you can build and maintain relationships in real time directly from your Pipeline CRM dashboard. 

Once integrated with Pipeline CRM, you can send SMS messages from various points within the platform, such as contact, deal, or business card profiles. Simply click the “SMS” icon to start a conversation.

The SMS messenger window will open from the bottom. If you have any SMS history, it will be displayed in the message window. From there, you can send SMS messages to your customers. 

Once you’ve set up your call and SMS providers, you should see:

• Options to create click-to-call and click-to-text buttons
• Options to make and receive calls, track missed calls, listen to voicemails and call recordings
• Options to generate an automated LeadCaller
• Your recordings and voicemails
• A list of calls as well as inbound and outbound CRM text messages
• Depending on your provider, you can also monitor call quality, usage, and device status and set alerts

Which Phone Call App Works With Pipeline CRM?

Pipeline CRM has native phone dialer integrations that work with several caller apps, including Aircall, CallRail, and RingCentral.

Don’t see your phone/SMS provider on our phone integration list? With Zapier, you can connect more than 277 different phone/SMS providers to Pipeline CRM. 

6 Benefits of Phone and SMS CRM Integrations

Integrating phone and SMS capabilities into your CRM can significantly boost your win rate. Let’s explore how.

• Increase prospect engagement: By engaging customers through various channels, you can boost conversation rates and improve sales outcomes. SMS, with an impressive 98% of open rate, is a valuable tool in this strategy.

• Automate prospect follow-up: With phone, SMS, and email integrations, you can set meeting and appointment reminders, send market updates, and even send automated follow-up messages to prospects still on the fence. 

• Boost your expansion rate: Multiple touchpoints lead to more data. The more data you accumulate, the better your up-sells, cross-sells, and add-ons will be. If a prospect hopes for the best in a losing position, your recommendations (based on past sales data and experience) can provide value to clients and increase sales revenue. 

• Improve client retention: Multiple touchpoints mean your clients can reach out for support using the channel that works for them. With integration, your company can be hyper-responsive to client support requests.

• Scale communication: Integrating and centralizing your sales outreach tactics, marketing communication, and customer support means you can more easily manage the growing volume of messages from your prospects, clients, and vendors. 

• Segment prospects efficiently: Are you looking to pitch clients who have invested X in the last year? Maybe you’d like to connect your best sales reps with clients who spent $$$ with your firm last year. Your integrations pool and centralize this data, making it easy to filter, segment, and search. 

The more touchpoints you have, the easier it is to nurture, sell, and close new customers. The more data you have, the more precise your targeting and sales messages. 

Learn more about the benefits of adopting dialer integration into your sales CRM system.

When Should You Use SMS or Calls in Your CRM?

Contacting your prospects by phone may put them off, especially if they’re in a younger demographic (e.g., millennials). On the other hand, if you focus your attention exclusively on SMS messaging, you may not be able to get the kind of results you aim for.

So, when do you use these tools in your CRM? According to a recent report, email and SMS serve different purposes.

Consumers rely on SMS for: 

• Incentives, offers, and deals (e.g., mortgage rates are at a 60-year low)
• Personal alerts (e.g., low balance, account updates, notifications, etc.)
• Personalization and staying in the loop (e.g., the IRS has just changed the rules again)
• Branded messages: 98% of mobile users will read a branded or business-based SMS message
• High engagement: 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes!

What about phone calls? Consumers accept phone calls in the following situations: 

• 61% of customers want to speak to a person during the purchase cycle
• 75% believe that a phone call will produce the fastest response
• Customers want to talk on the phone when they’re making a high-value purchase

On the other hand, email is used to: 

• Indoctrinate, segment, and win back clients CRM
• Educate, inform, and persuade clients 
• Offer incentives (e.g., irresistible offers, discounts, coupons, deals, etc.)
• Build, establish, and maintain community

This idea varies from industry to industry. If you want a clear answer for your organization, you must test these factors yourself. Let your data do the talking.

Increase Your Deal Win Rates With Call and Text CRM Integrations

Sending texts and having a sales call are easy ways to build meaningful relationships with prospects, customers, and vendors. With the right structure and a consistent action plan, you can maximize the deal wins, revenue, and value your CRM generates, one contact at a time. 

Try Pipeline’s dialer and sms integration CRM today. Get started with a 14-day free trial.

The competition for new customers in the construction business is aggressive and cutthroat. Customers today are educated, demanding, and price-conscious. If you want to nail your construction sales pitch and win new customers, it starts with construction lead management. 

What makes construction lead management so important? How does this improve your sales pitch? This blog will answer these questions and give tips on leveraging CRM data to improve your construction sales performance.

How Construction Leads Quality Impacts Sales Pitches

Let’s take a look at the data. According to Startup Bonsai:

• 53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation
• Nurtured leads produce 20% more sales opportunities
• Nurtured leads generate 50% more sales at 33% lower costs

This is all great news. How is any of this a problem? 

In the ‘How to create sales workflows that close deals 3x faster’ blog, I shared research breaking down your lead flow. Here are some key numbers:

1. Only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy at any given moment
2. Another 37% need to be nurtured
3. A whopping 60% are unqualified leads; they’re not willing to buy

If you’re like most construction companies, you’re spending a significant amount of money on your leads and sales processes. However, only 3% of those leads are active buyers.

To overcome these challenges and improve your construction sales process, you’ll need to apply the following:

• disqualify prospects quickly
• identify prospects who need to be nurtured
• identify the prospects who will be the most profitable for your business

How are you supposed to find this out? The easiest and most accurate way is to use a CRM for construction. But, before we go there, let’s learn how to create a solid construction sales pitch.

Construction Sales Process: The Anatomy of a (Successful) Sales Pitch

The Structure of a Construction Sales Pitch

What does a successful construction sales pitch look like? Well, for starters, it’s targeted and relevant. 

Building a successful sales pitch depends on a few important assumptions. They form the building blocks you’ll need to craft a compelling sales pitch that resonates with your construction prospects. Let’s take a look at these assumptions. 

• You know what your prospects want
• You’ve qualified your prospects
• You’ve avoided predatory prospects
• You know which prospects need to be closed or nurtured
• Your construction sales pipeline has the precise workflows you need to win more deals

We can create a successful sales pitch formula if we agree on these assumptions. This sales pitch will have the following elements. 

1. The prospect’s problem or dilemma (e.g., if we don’t fix this now, the cost will triple later)
2. Specific and relevant examples of prospects with the worst-case scenario 
3. Your solution to your prospect’s problem
4. Case studies showing how you solved a prospect’s problem 
5. About your company

This is independent of your quote or proposal. If you’d like to add a quote or proposal to this framework, add it where it makes the most sense. 

Examples of a Construction Sales Pitch

Here’s what a construction sales pitch looks like:

Hi Prospect, 

When we spoke on [date], you mentioned that you were dealing with the following issues: 

• Project delays: You need this project completed within 13 months, no ifs, ands, or buts. If we don’t meet this deadline, we can’t afford to finish the project. However, if we don’t commit to this project, the cost will triple later. 
• Cost overruns: The last time you repaired your roof, the cost was 75% cheaper. Thanks to supply chain issues, all of the other contractors are telling you the cost has increased dramatically by another 33%.
• Meeting expectations: Construction site compliance is an important must-have for our project. Our previous contractor used subcontractors who refused to follow the rules, creating a disaster and unnecessary OSHA violations. 

Follow-up Actions for a Construction Sales Pitch

If things go well, you’ll just acquire a new client for your construction business. But what if things don’t go as planned? What happens if these issues aren’t resolved? Send a follow-up email.

Below, you can find two email options. You can either send one of them, or send both. Don’t forget to send the email telling a bit about your construction company, what you can do for them, and what you’ve accomplished so far.

Email Option 1

Story of ABC Corp.

One of our suppliers shared this story about your competitor, ABC Corp. They’re facing the same challenges outlined here.

Just one difference. 

They didn’t resolve the problem. They procrastinated, and all of the issues you mentioned you’re worried about, your worst fears, came true for them. Their project was delayed by an additional 24 months, leading to a 317% cost overrun. Their project failed to meet expectations, and many of the employees responsible for managing the project lost their jobs. It was a complete and total disaster.

Based on these, here’s what I propose. 

First, we have to meet your 13-month deadline. If we don’t, very bad things will happen. We’re going to restructure your project, focusing exclusively on necessities. Extras or nice-to-haves in your project will be treated as secondary. 

Next, we need to prevent cost overruns. This means maintaining strict financial controls over your project. Aggressively pushing for refunds and credits, using financing, and substituting materials and supplies are all important.

Finally, we’ll prioritize realistic expectations ahead of time. If we’re going to meet your deadline, this means we’ll need to avoid fuzzy, implicit, or unrealistic expectations. We need to focus on slashing and burning expenses across the board to meet XYZ’s 13-month deadline. 

[…]

Email Option 2

Case Study: XYZ Inc. comes in $253K under budget

The Overview 

XYZ Inc. needed to finish its roofing project in 13 months. As a property developer, they had several projects on the horizon that they needed to complete. They needed to close the book on this development project so they could begin four new development projects in the pipeline. 

The Problem
A looming recession meant XYZ needed to get its risky development projects out the door. If this project continued past the established deadline, they could lose as much as $334K monthly. Cost overruns with their previous developers meant they were behind schedule and over budget. 

The Solution

When we were hired, our project deadline was six months away. We needed to work within the budget and time constraints XYZ established. A cost overrun would jeopardize XYZ’s four subsequent projects and create a devastating and ongoing financial loss. We instituted strict financial controls to keep costs low. We found creative ways to finish the project in the required timeframe. We prevented a cost overrun by aggressively pushing for refunds on excesses, pushing for credits, using financing where available, and substituting materials and supplies.

The Results

We finished XYZ’s project with one and a half months left. We narrowly avoided a cost overrun after taking the project over from a previous developer. Using the insights we learned from this tough project, we found an additional cost savings of $2.3 million for their four upcoming development/roofing projects. Here’s what Alton James, Project Manager at XYZ Inc., had to say about our work on their project. 

“We came to you guys out of desperation. Our previous contracting team pulled out mid-project. Cost overruns became a very real concern. We weren’t going to be able to finish our project within the 13-month timeline. The financial loss and the employee turnover would have been devastating. When Stacy, your PM, told me you could dig us out of the hole, I laughed.

Four months later, here we are. Our project is actually profitable. That’s just wild.”

[…]

Email Ending

About Your Company

We have a guarantee.

Let us manage your project from A to Z; we’ll come in on time and under budget. Guaranteed, or we’ll pay you 25% of your project price. Our team is among the top 4% of all contractors in North America. Our workers are consistent, highly trained, and certified. Our roofing products come with:

• A 50-year product warranty 
• A 10-year workmanship warranty
• Limited Lifetime warranty on siding 

Here’s the team that will manage your project.

[…]

Now you know how to find and nurture promising leads. The next step is creating a successful construction sales pitch. 

How Pipeline CRM Transforms Your Construction Sales Game

Pipeline CRM helps companies like yours decrease time-to-close, increase productivity by 50% or more, and boost sales by as much as 10x. Don’t take our word for it; let us show you how Pipeline CRM can help you attract, win, and retain customers.

Effortlessly Find Promising, High-Quality Prospects

Which prospects get your attention? 

This is an important question. If you spend your time with 60% of prospects unwilling or unable to buy, any construction sales pitch you present will fail. On the other hand, if you spend time with the 37% of prospects who have a need but aren’t yet ready to buy, your construction sales pitch will also fail.

What does this mean then?

Your salespeople need to spend the majority of their time closing deals. They need to spend their time with the 3% of prospects who are willing and able to buy. That’s great, but who are these people, and how do you find them? Your will CRM tell you. 

If you’re in construction sales, you know customers want a few things: 

• The best contractor their money can buy
• The best service for their money
• The lowest price for their project 
• The fastest turnaround/least disruptions for their project

This is helpful information; if you add these details to Pipeline CRM, you can use these data to segment and disqualify your prospects. This is how you optimize your construction sales pipeline and close more sales.  

Pro tip: This guide explains how to measure lead quality, allowing you to focus more on promising prospects.

Foster Effective Lead Nurturing

What about lead nurturing? The same thing applies here. 

If your prospects respond to content that outlines why your company is the best, you can tailor your offers around that. If they’re looking for the lowest-price contractor (and you want to cater to that), you can segment your prospects that way. Allow your prospects to self-identify. 

This is why good documentation – using your CRM – is important. As prospects make their way through your construction sales pipeline, you’ll find you’re able to determine several things:

1. Whether you need to close or nurture your prospects
2. The anatomy of a sales pitch and closing your prospects
3. How to nurture your sales prospects 

Now you know how to find and nurture promising leads. The next step is creating a successful construction sales pitch. 

CRM Software Feeds a Winning Construction Sales Pitch

General contractors face an uphill battle filled with heavy competition, low margins, and skyrocketing supply costs. Customers today are educated, demanding, and price-conscious. If you want to nail your sales pitch and win new customers, it starts with construction lead management. 

As prospects make their way through your construction sales pipeline, you’ll find you’re able to determine several things:

• Whether you need to close or nurture your prospects
• The anatomy of a sales pitch and closing your prospects
• How to nurture your sales prospects 

This is how you create a compelling construction sales pitch, nail it, and close more sales.

Use the data from your construction CRM to segment and disqualify your prospects.

Pipeline CRM helps construction companies like yours decrease time-to-close and boost productivity. Learn how Rainier Custom Homes reduces the sales cycle by 53%, cutting it from 130 to 62 days with Pipeline CRM. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial, and see how we can help you attract, win, and retain customers.

Other notable reasons why logistics companies struggle with lead generation include: 

• Inefficient internal sales processes
• Lack of strategic agility
• Poorly curated value proposition 
• Lack of technological adoption

Methods to Help Boost Lead Generation for Logistics Companies:

1. Create a Formal Sales Process

The first step in elevating your lead generation process is to build a definite sales process. This way, your entire team will be focused in a unified direction and have a well-defined framework to follow. Break down your sales pipeline into basic parts:

• Lead generation channels: decide on the channels you will be using to generate leads. This could be a mix of email, content, social media marketing, cold calling, industry trade events, etc.
• Lead evaluation: not every lead is worth pursuing. You need a proper scoring system in place before your sales team takes them up. The best way here is to opt for reliable logistics CRM software with lead management features.
• Evaluation of client needs: constantly assess customer data to stay on top of changing customer needs. Train your reps to understand a lead’s challenge and offer solutions accordingly.
• Proposal: make a formal presentation describing the services you offer, showcase your USPs, and take questions. It should build a strong base for deal negotiation. 
• Deal closing: this is where you prepare contracts with the agreed-upon terms, close the deal, and offer your client a smooth onboarding.  

2. Identify and Target Key Accounts

To ensure quality lead generation, you need to identify companies who will genuinely be interested in your services. This way, your sales team won’t waste time running after cold leads with a low chance of conversion. To do this, you must first create an ideal buyer persona/s. Assess customer data and market trends to lay down the attributes of your ideal customer. Then, compare your leads to the outlined traits in your personas. 

Make a list of companies that fit the image closely, identify their decision makers, and acquire their contact information. It’ll serve as the foundation of your outreach efforts.

3. Focus on Inbound Marketing 

Inbound marketing is a self-sustaining resource for generating a steady flow of quality leads into your sales funnel. As it brings prospects already interested in your product, the chances of conversions are much higher than outbound leads. 

Your website is your best source to pull inbound leads into your pipeline. It has to be user-friendly and SEO-optimized to maintain consistent traffic. Ensure your website content has relevant keywords and target your audience’s specific challenges.

Add clear CTAs on relevant landing pages to encourage visitors to inquire about your services. You must also ensure your website has a responsive design. 

Showcase client testimonials and promote them on your social media pages. Improve your content marketing with valuable and informative blogs, white papers, and e-books. It builds your authority in the logistics industry and boosts inbound lead generation. 

4. Automate Your Outreach 

You can’t spend hours creating emails for individual leads manually and expect a decent response rate. It’s time-consuming and leaves a lot of room for error. 

Worst part? Among all the chaos, your recipient may not even receive the communication on time. To scale your lead generation, you need efficient and agile campaigning methods — which you can enable with automation. Reports show that with sales and marketing automation:

• Lead conversion rate increases by 107%
• Average deal size increases by 40% 
• Companies reach 17% better sales forecasting accuracy

With reliable logistics CRM software, you can automate your sales workflows and engage your audience across multiple channels with personalized outreach programs. 

You can create engaging emails in seconds with the AI email assistant and automate your email marketing, freeing up your team’s time to focus on strategies and improvements. 

Related: How To Write Sales Emails With AI In Sales CRM Software

5. Use AI-Powered Lead Generation Platforms

Businesses are becoming increasingly tech-reliant in the logistics industry. If you are not one of them, you may just fail to source and manage leads properly. Opt for logistics pipeline software with features to find and target the right prospects in seconds. These platforms will collect intent data and let you create an ideal customer persona, identify sales triggers, build prospect lists, and prioritize leads. 

Make sure your chosen platform integrates with your logistics CRM software. 

It should also be scalable and easy to use. 

6. Participate in Trade Shows and Industry Events 

Build strategic partnerships with other businesses in the logistics ecosystem to expand your reach. Research shows 68% effectiveness in B2B demand generation. So, the best way to network with industry peers is to attend trade shows and corporate events. 

Here, you can meet potential clients, increase brand awareness, and even drive leads. Even if you can’t convert leads during the event, you can acquire qualified contacts for the top of the sales funnel and nurture them with follow-up communication. 

7. Cold Call High-Quality Leads

Use your key accounts list and run cold calls. Create a concise, engaging cold calling script that focuses on the value you can provide. Make sure you add your USPs to the script. Talk about the common pain points. Then, establish your services as the solution. For example, if you offer end-to-end logistics services, you can talk about how frustrating and expensive it is for businesses to handle multiple vendors. Then, tell them how you can offer every logistics service they need at affordable prices. 

The right CRM for logistics will help you keep all deal details in a centralized dashboard while your preferred dialer for further convenience. You can access their contact while running cold calls without jumping in and out of applications. 

Related: 6 Advantages Of Using Dialer Integration In CRM Software

8. Refine Sales Prospecting

Nurturing logistics leads are complex. As there is no tangible product for you to showcase, you may need to nurture the prospect across multiple touchpoints. 

Categorizing leads based on the touchpoints they are currently in helps you take the best route to nurture them. Logistics CRM software like Pipeline offers an advanced lead management feature where get lists like Leads No One Has Contacted in 7 Days, Deals Expected to Close This Week, or Deals Closing With No Next Task Set. Based on these criteria, you can refine and personalize your sales prospecting for each lead. 

9. Create Case Studies

Want to convince your audience that your logistics services can drive the promised results? Create case studies to support your pitch. They act as social proof and offer detailed insight into how you solved problems for your existing clients. 

Case studies also build niche expertise and boost credibility. 

Start by explaining the customer’s goal. Describe the logistics roadblocks and challenges they were facing. Detail how you helped them overcome the problem. Don’t forget to add tangible results you helped your client achieve and quotes about their experience with your supply chain services. 

10. Analyze and Improve

No matter how thorough your sales strategy is, it won’t create sustainable lead generation sources without constant improvements. By analyzing your sales pipeline, relevant KPIs, and your sales team’s performance, you can pinpoint gaps in your setup. 

Choose a logistics pipeline software that offers accurate analytics. Pipeline offers a reporting feature that shows real-time updates on your lead’s progress and your team’s performance across time. You can even create custom data points and generate comparison charts to see which sources bring you the best leads. 

Takeaway

For a logistics company, providing top-tier service to existing clients is a primary focus. However, ongoing lead generation deserves attention if you want to scale your operation. 

Still, overwhelmed? Here’s a TL;DR version of actionable steps logistics companies can use to boost lead generation;

• Create a mix of inbound and outbound lead acquisition strategy
• Build strategic partnerships with industry
• Optimize your website
• Create case studies and collect testimonials as social proof

Finally, opt for reliable and custom CRM software with advanced lead management, automation, and reporting features. Pipeline offers a logistics CRM with all necessary logistics sales tools to generate and convert leads. 

Elevate your logistics company from a local go-to service provider to a growing enterprise. Start with a 14-day free trial!

Sounds good, right? But calling might not be the issue–it’s what you say to the prospect next. We’ve seen that a carefully mapped-out cold calling script can: 

• Integrate a structured direction into the conversation
• Help overcome objections
• Eliminate awkward pauses and misinformation
• Boost your sales team’s confidence 

So, in today’s article, we describe the steps to create such a cold calling script and talk about how a CRM for professionals like financial advisors can streamline the process.

What is Cold Calling?

Cold calling is an outbound sales tactic companies use to contact a potential customer who hasn’t shown explicit interest in the company’s services. (This potential customer also has no prior communication with the company.)

In the old(er) days, companies used cold calling as a part of business-to-customer telemarketing to sell their products to a broader audience. They were overly pushy and intrusive and painted a negative brand image.

Today, however, cold calling has become much more targeted and organized. Businesses, including financial firms, invest in a CRM for lead generation to analyze customer insights, create cold calling prospect lists, and segment them according to targeted demographics. Once all the data is gathered, they create cold calling scripts customized to each prospect segment on the list. 

Why Should Financial Advisors Use Cold Calling Scripts?

As a financial advisor, you may wonder, “I am good at my job, why would I need a script? I can just present my expertise and convince people.” 

It’s not that easy–especially since the prospect didn’t request the call. 

A cold calling script properly prepares you to handle questions, removes ambiguity from the conversation, and improves your chances of capturing the customer’s interest. 

What other benefits do financial advisors get from using a cold script? 

1. Keeps Sales Calls Consistent 

To pique a customer’s interest in your product, you must:

• Portray a sharp presence of mind 
• Control the narrative
• Convey exactly how your product can solve the prospect’s specific challenges

If your sales reps don’t have a script to follow, handling all these elements while maintaining a smooth conversation flow in every call becomes difficult. It may lead to inconsistent messaging and false promises, reducing your credibility as a service provider.

A structured cold-calling script ensures all your sales reps follow a structured format. It lists key points they must communicate and maps out the potential path of the conversation. This keeps all cold calls consistent, reinforces your expertise as a financial advisor, and boosts brand recognition. 

2. Boosts Sales Rep Confidence

Confidence is the key to making an impactful cold call. Without any reference, your sales reps may stumble over words and have awkward pauses. Your prospects may even think your agents don’t know what they are talking about. 

Keeping a script lets your sales team know what to say and how to handle queries with confidence and the utmost professionalism. Instead of worrying about them saying something wrong, your representatives can build connections with the lead.

3. Improves Employee Training

A cold calling script is valuable for training new sales employees. It acts as a proper resource for them to learn about your company and the financial services you provide.

In short, a cold calling script is a tangible framework for your new employees to learn from and get inspired.  

4. Helps Teams With Overcoming Objections

Objections are inevitable in cold calls. These can include concerns about fees, doubts about your expertise, or simply a lack of interest in the product at hand. However, your sales team must be prepared to address such objections confidently and turn them into opportunities. With a cold calling script, you can guide the sales reps with ideal responses to common objections. It will equip them to overcome resistance and nurture the lead.

5. Easier to Track Conversation Success 

Cold-calling scripts are easy to test and develop. You can run A/B tests, analyze which talking points are the most effective in generating leads or closing sales, and adjust accordingly. You can also use a CRM for financial advisors that offer dialer integrations and AI-powered analytics to keep track of your sales reps’ performance. 

For example, “Are you familiar with [Name of an organization you’ve worked with]? We tracked [XYZ] market trends and investment strategies for them and pivoted financial operations to their best potential. Last year, we saved them more than $15,000 in business expenses as well.”

6. Transition

In this step, your goal is to take the conversation from a sales pitch to a discussion. Communicate the estimated time the discussion may take and hint at the next potential step to take the conversation forward. 

Add something like, “I understand you’re busy, so I’ll be brief. Could you spare a few minutes to discuss the financial challenges your business is facing? If you prefer, we can also schedule a video call at your convenience.”

7. Questions

In this stage, you need to ask open-ended questions to turn the call into a mutual discussion to understand whether the lead is worth pursuing. 

You can ask questions like “Could you tell me a little bit about the methods you are using to save money?” or “What do your financial goals for the next quarter look like?”

Make sure the framework here is customizable to suit the client’s specific challenges. Ask the prospect if they have any doubts or questions, too. 

8. Closing

In your closing, try to set up a follow-up meeting or call with the prospect. Suggest potential dates and times to schedule the next discussion.

For example, “We won’t take any more of your time today. Would you be open to scheduling a video or audio call to discuss more ideas on how you can design your budget for the next financial year?” If yes, communicate the potential date and time and ask about their availability.  

If they refuse, offer them a channel to contact you if they require any financial services in the future. Here, using a CRM for financial advisors will help your sales rep check the available dates and set up the follow-up accordingly. Pipeline offers a sales pipeline management feature where you can keep track of the scheduled follow-ups.

Tips to Write a Cold Calling Script for Lead Generation

Now that you know how to write a structured cold calling script, let’s see what aspects you must keep in mind to make it a valuable part of your lead generation strategies. 

Maintain a Positive Attitude

The prospect can’t see your face or body language. So, maintain an upbeat tone on the call to keep them engaged. The prospect should feel like you are delighted to assist them. Reflecting a kind and positive yet professional attitude may hook even the most difficult lead on the call for longer. 

Research Before Calling

Personalize the conversation to show them the solution you are offering is specifically tailored for them. This will show you took the time to understand the prospect, warming them up to your call. 

This requires you to dig deep into your client’s business and find out as much as you can about their operations and challenges. It helps you speak the prospect’s language and create a strong relationship. 

Look up your leads on LinkedIn to gain in-depth insights into what they do. See if they talked about any recent roadblocks their business faced. You should also check their website to understand their business better. Find out recent achievements you can mention during the cold call. 

Add Referrals to Your Script

Maybe your client hasn’t heard of your firm before. So, skepticism is valid. 

So, how do you make your business look credible? By adding referrals to your script. This can be your prospect’s peer in the industry or a competitor you have worked for. It will show you are an authentic and trustworthy business. 

Prepare Responses for Common Objections

Track previous sales calls with your CRM for financial advisors. Take note of the common objections prospects make during cold calls. Then, craft appropriate responses to each and add them to your script. 

Measure Calling Effectiveness

Monitor your cold calls and track the sales team performance on your CRM for lead generation. Measure the total follow-ups and demos scheduled against the total calls made to understand your cold-calling script’s effectiveness. 

See which script elements fail to keep the prospect engaged. Keep refining them till the results improve. You should also examine your sales team’s performance regularly on your CRM. 

Pipeline offers a sales team management feature where you can set and monitor sales goals and generate detailed reports on your sales team’s activities. 

You also get DialPad AI integration to track and analyze call data and offer accurate insights. Otherwise, JustCall lets you track call recordings and voicemails from the dashboard. 

Takeaway

Cold calling holds a bad rep. But with the right script, reliable dialer, feature-rich sales automation tools, and data-driven lead generation strategies, it can be a profitable outreach tactic for financial advisors. 

With Pipeline CRM, our sales solution integrates with all popular business dialers so that you can make calls and stay on top of your customer data from the same customizable dashboard. Try it out — sign up for our free trial, and start building relationships with your prospects today!

Ask the right questions.

The right questions give you a clear idea of the prospects you’re dealing with. These questions show you who’s who, the state of your relationship with these prospects, and the next steps you’ll need to take to move toward closing deals.

Let’s take a look at these questions.

1. How did you hear about us?
2. What’s your role in this process?
3. What’s your budget?
4. What’s your timeframe for purchasing?
5. What does the ideal product or service look like to you?
6. Suppose I provide you with the ideal terms/product. What are your immediate next steps?
7. Who did you work with last?
8. Why did you stop working with them?
9. Which potential deal breakers would keep us from working together?
10. What do you expect from our product/service?

Now, let’s break these questions down.

How did you hear about us?

This question is essential because it tells sales and marketing teams which lead sources are working. Using this intel, you can increase spending on the marketing channels that produce higher quality leads and less on the channels that fail to perform. This means more commissions for your salespeople and more revenue for your company.

What’s your role in this process? 

You’ll need to identify who you’re speaking with – gatekeepers, influencers, or decision-makers. Working with a decision-maker is rare with larger, more established companies, but it’s common with small businesses. A clear understanding of the role you’re dealing with tells you a lot. If you’re dealing with a gatekeeper who is withholding access to the decision-maker, lead nurturing or sending the lead back to marketing may be the smart play.

What’s your budget? 

Every salesperson wants an answer to this question, but no prospect wants to answer truthfully. Prospects are afraid of throwing out the wrong number. If your company charges $ but your prospects list $$$$ as their budget, they believe they won’t get a good deal. A better strategy would be for sales reps to throw out a range that forces prospects to self-identify (e.g., Our services range from $50,000 to $175,000 per year, is that within the ballpark for you?). Combined with the “how’d you hear about us?” question, you can gain additional intel on the quality of your lead sources.

What’s your timeframe for purchasing?

The answer to this question tells you if this prospect deserves your attention now, later, after a specific date, or never. This tells you about the action steps you’ll need to take to close your deal. [Now] could mean qualifying, following up, and closing. [Later] could mean adding prospects to your lead nurturing campaigns until they’re ready. [After # date] means you add them to your lead nurturing campaigns, then check-in and convert to [now]. [Never] could mean this prospect is blacklisted and removed from your prospect listings.

What does the ideal product or service look like to you? 

This qualification question flushes out your prospect’s fuzzy, implicit, and unrealistic expectations. This question tells you (a.) what your prospects expect, (b.) how to address these expectations, and (c.) whether it’s a good idea for you to pursue this prospect. If your prospects have unrealistic expectations and they’re unwilling to compromise, it may be a good idea to walk away; these customers are likely to initiate refunds and chargebacks. If prospects have a fuzzy or implicit expectation, you can ask more questions to make their expectations explicit, then determine if it’s something you want to tackle.

Suppose I provide you with the ideal terms/product. What are your next steps?

This question gauges commitment levels. Find out your customer’s internal processes. If it’s a B2C purchase, does your customer need to talk to their spouse? If it’s a B2B purchase, do the terms need to be cleared with legal or accounting? How they answer this question determines if they’ll make a purchase and how they’ll do it. If you’re dealing with a gatekeeper, they may say something to the effect of “I’ll need to discuss this internally with our team,” (indicating that they’re not a decision-maker. If you provide this prospect with the perfect product, service, and terms, the obvious answer should be, “I’ll make my purchase.” Any other response besides that indicates a lack of commitment on their part. You can then determine if you’d like to do some more digging or whether you should cut this prospect loose.

Who did you work with last? 

This tells you about the company they keep, their mindset, and where they stand on the social hierarchy. If they’ve worked with the bottomfeeders in your industry, this reflects poorly on them and sets the tone for your relationship with them. If they’ve worked for the best in your industry, they will have high expectations they carry over to you.

Why did you stop working with them? 

This tells you about their relationship and the reasons why they feel things failed with their previous company. This is a lot like an ex from a previous relationship. If they think their previous providers were wrong, they may maximize their previous providers’ mistakes while minimizing their role in their circumstances. This is important for you to know as this gives you an idea of what you’re getting into.

Which potential deal breakers would keep us from working together? 

These details are important because they tell you how to sell your customers on your product or service. This question qualifies customers, enabling you to identify the problems, objections, risks, fears, or deficiencies surrounding your business, product, or service. This gives you a chance to come up with a solution to these issues and defuse these concerns directly.

These questions enable you to sort your prospects.

This is essential.

The last thing you want to do is spend your time with the 97% of prospects who aren’t ready, able, and willing to buy. As a salesperson, you want to spend your time with prospects who will generate revenue for your company.

What happens when you find the 3% of prospects who are ready, willing, and able to buy?

How to qualify the qualified

If you’ve qualified your prospects, you’re ready for the next step in the qualification process.

The customer interview.

Here is a list of helpful qualification questions you can use to further qualify prospects who are active buyers. Here’s an important detail to keep in mind. Having a list of questions helps to keep things on track when prospects go off on a tangent. It also enables you to spot opportunities to jump in and redirect them. This is more about knowing what questions to ask than it is about the exact wording.

You don’t have to ask all of these questions. 

Rather, you’ll focus your attention on the questions that enable you to provide the most value to your prospects. For this interview, you’re looking for prospects who are willing and able to buy. If they don’t meet both of those criteria, they’re not a good fit.

Put them at ease, and make them feel safe.

Let them know you’re not gonna share what they tell you with anyone else unless they give you permission. Let them know they don’t have to share anything that makes them uncomfortable. Permit them to be as blunt or direct as they need to be.

Be conversational, not formal. Treat this as a conversation with a friend where you listen and ask questions about their circumstances and the things they’re going through.

They should do most of the talking; this means 80% listening and 20% talking.  Or 90% listening and 10% talking. This isn’t meant to be an exact ratio; it’s meant to show that your interviewee should be doing most of the talking.

Go off script, small talk is fine. Treat this questionnaire as a guide and not an absolute rule. If a customer goes off tangent for a bit, it’s alright. Steer the conversation back on track when you notice you’re not making progress.

Qualification Interview Framework

We call it a framework because qualifying customers can be complicated. A framework tells you about the information you need to know, enabling you to deal with the unexpected twists and turns that come with ideal customer interviews.

What you need to know

The answers to these questions are important. But the extras, emotion, and choice of words used – are also relevant.

• A list of all the problems your ideal customer has that creates the need for a product or service like yours.

• What’s the biggest problem from their perspective?

• Why is that the biggest problem?

• What’s the consequence if that problem isn’t solved?

• What does a solution to that problem look like to them?

• What’s the second biggest problem from their perspective?

• Why is it a problem?

• What’s the consequence if that problem isn’t solved?

• What does a solution to that problem look like to them?

• Why are you motivated to solve this problem now?

• What would cause/motivate them to give you a review?

• What would make your product or service unique from their perspective?

Important caveats

Don’t confuse an interview with a survey. When it comes to customer conversation, they’re often used interchangeably. But surveys and interviews have different purposes. Surveys are used to diagnose and/or assess, while interviews are investigative.

If you’re doing an interview, you’re looking for answers. Answers to things you know you should ask about and things you don’t know to ask about. You dig like a detective, asking questions until you understand what’s happening. With interviews, you can catch the subtle signals customers send (e.g., tone of voice, word choice, emotion, concerns, stories, etc.).

Asking the right questions gives you a clear idea of the prospects you’re dealing with. These questions show you who’s who, the state of your relationship with these prospects, and the next steps you’ll need to take to move toward closing deals.

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