Leveraging Technology To Improve Sales: Our Favorite Tools

According to a 2024 survey of sales reps, respondents spent an average of 56% of their time on non-customer-facing tasks. The same study also found that the highest-performing reps were those who maximized their time interacting with customers. In fact, the top group (reaching 130% of their sales quotas) spent an average of 60% of their time on customer-facing tasks. 🤯

So how can you reduce the time you spend on administrative and misc tasks so you can spend more time with customers and potential customers? The answer: Letting technology take care of some of those tasks. 

Leveraging technology to improve sales doesn’t have to mean buying expensive software or spending hours trying to decipher technological mumbo-jumbo. (And it doesn’t mean handing over all your work to AI. 😉) There are a ton of tools out there that are affordable and easy to use and can help you knock some tasks off your to-do list…giving you more time for customers.  

Here are a few Figgy Favorite tech tools we use for sales ourselves and recommend to our clients.

Lead Generation: Boosted Posts and Ads

We often utilize boosted posts and ads on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as Google ads both for our own business and on behalf of our clients. Here’s a quick overview of these tools.

Boosted Posts on Facebook and LinkedIn

This may be one of the easiest ways to improve your reach and bring in new leads. 

Boosting a post on either Facebook or LinkedIn essentially turns a simple post into a paid ad where you pay a small amount to have your post reach an audience beyond your current followers. You simply decide which post to boost, set your budget, choose your target audience, and determine how long you’ll keep your post boosted. With just a few clicks, you’ll be in business!

We won’t go into the details of how to boost a post—you can check out Facebook’s instructions here and LinkedIn’s instructions here. But we will take a moment to discuss how to know what posts to boost.

In short: boost posts that are already doing well. This may seem counterintuitive at first—wouldn’t it make more sense to boost a post that isn’t doing well to improve its performance?

But think of it this way: When a post is getting a lot of engagement, that tells you it’s relevant to your followers and has a good chance of catching the attention of a wider audience.

I think you’ll agree that a post like that is worth putting some money into for better reach!

Ads on Facebook and LinkedIn 

You can also place ads on Facebook and LinkedIn. Ads allow you to choose from different ad placements and define an objective for your ad. They offer more advanced targeting options and give you more ad formats to choose from than a boosted post does. They also have better analytics so you can track key metrics to determine the success of your ad. 

On Facebook, ads can show up as your target audience scrolls through their newsfeed, watches Reels, or checks their Messenger inbox. Facebook also offers a type of ad made specifically for gathering new leads, which allows you to create ads that prompt people to fill out a form, answer questions, or call you.

On LinkedIn, you can choose from ad options like:

• Sponsored content: Media-rich ads that show up in your target audience’s LI feed 
• Sponsored messaging: Direct messages sent to your target audience’s inbox
• Text ads: Pay-per-click desktop ads
• Dynamic ads: Personalized ads based on a person’s LI profile data, such as company name or job title

When it comes to choosing the type of content to include in your ad, consider what content draws the most interaction on each platform. For example: If infographics seem to be popular with your audience, consider creating an ad with an infographic. 

Google Ads

Outside of social media, Google Ads are your best bet for lead generation. They offer quick results, are highly scalable, and have robust analytics and targeting options. They’re a cost-effective way for you to reach your target audience, with unlimited potential for growth. Plus, they offer a lot of flexibility so you can start, stop, or adjust your campaigns at any time. 

Learn more about Google Ads in this blog!

Prospecting: LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is a must-have tool. It allows you to nurture relationships and drive sales by helping you:

• Identify key contacts and qualified prospects with advanced search capabilities
• Quickly research leads and accounts so you’re better prepared for sales conversations
• Gain valuable insights into potential customers, including company hiring trends, department staff count, and recent hires
• Get lead recommendations based on target audience, relationship signals, and shared experiences
• Receive alerts for opportunities to reach out when decision makers are most receptive
• Create dynamic org charts to better understand how your prospect’s company is organized

Advanced plans also offer CRM integration, ROI reporting, and buyer intent signals. And while this tool requires a monthly investment, it will more than pay for itself. In fact, a 2023 Forrester study found that LinkedIn Sales Navigator yielded a 312% ROI over 3 years, and paid for itself in less than 6 months! Check out plan options here to determine which is best for your budget.

Prospecting Research: ChatGPT

I recently listened to a podcast that suggested using ChatGPT for prospecting research. They recommended scheduling a task for ChatGPT to look every morning for press releases (hirings, promotions, etc) or other events related to the industry you’re targeting. It would then send you a daily report with that information. 

This is a great way to find new prospects who might fit your criteria, with the idea that those major events could open up an ideal moment to reach out to those contacts. After all, calling someone to congratulate them on a new position, an acquisition, a court case they won, or other major accomplishment is the perfect way to break the ice and start a conversation.

Scheduling tasks like this is currently supported by ChatGPT o3 and o4-mini. You can find instructions to set up your own scheduled tasks here.

Scheduling: HubSpot Meeting Scheduler

Automated scheduling is a total game-changer and by far the easiest way to start automating mundane tasks. If you’re not already using a meeting scheduler, it’s time to start! At Wild Fig, we love HubSpot’s Meeting Scheduler for this job (but you could also use Calendly or another similar option).

With automated scheduling, you control the calendar of your availability, share the link to your calendar with prospects, and they can instantly schedule a call or meeting at a time that works for them. It saves SO much time going back-and-forth trying to find a time that works for you both. And if scheduling a meeting with you is simple, prospects are more likely to do so.

Plus, HubSpot’s Meeting Scheduler (and likely other automated scheduling tools) syncs with your Google or Office 365 calendar in real-time to make sure you don’t double-book yourself.

​​Learn all about the HubSpot Meeting Scheduler and get started FREE here!

Sales Follow-Up: Automated Email Campaigns

Another thing we use HubSpot for is to set up automated email campaigns to follow up with leads. This is the “set it and forget it” of sales tools. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without it!

It’s a simple concept: You create an email campaign that you then set in motion after a sales meeting to keep in touch with a prospect until they either sign up or tell you they aren’t interested. 

But it’s a lot more complex to set up than it sounds. So unless you have the knowhow and the time to set up automated campaigns, it’s best to lean on a pro (like Wild Fig…see what I did there? 😉)

So if you’d like to explore automated email campaigns or other tools for leveraging technology to improve sales, but feel overwhelmed at the prospect of getting started, we’ve got your back. Schedule a quick discovery call with me to learn how the Wild Fig team can help!