If you have a small business, there’s a strong likelihood you are always looking for more business. More opportunities. More doors to open. More sales.
Getting ready for that important sales call can be challenging in the face of demands from many directions. Staff needs, client challenges, the general business of life, it doesn’t matter: they can all impact your prep time.
Lets look at how Evernote can help you get ready for that sales call and how you can actually make use of Evernote to take notes during and after the call itself.First, we’re going to assume you already use Evernote, but if that isn’t the case, if you are new to this app, lets have a quick look at what it does in the broadest sense.
Evernote is a digital note taking tool that you can use to gather information from numerous sources. You can take your own notes, you can grab and save parts or all of web pages, you can email notes from your inbox (automatically too using this little recipe), you can attach files of all types, you can make audio recordings, and more.
Evernote is a tool that makes your life on the job easier.
For the sales professional, Evernote makes prepping for a sales call super simple.
Make Sales Calls Easy with Evernote: Step One – Prep
First you want to prep for the call. Obviously this can be an actual call over the phone or a visit to the potential client.
The process is the same in Evernote. Prepare yourself by gathering your research in a new Evernote note. Be sure to include any info needed to make the sales call successful.
One feature that you may benefit from in your research is Evernote’s Context. This feature pulls related content in to your prep note if it exists in either your own Evernote notebooks or in one of the connected services (from LinkedIn to the Wall Street Journal to the Nikkei to Lifehacker to Forbes, and more). As Evernote continues to roll out new services to connect to their Context function, you’ll see this give you even more relevant information for your sales prep.
Make Sales Calls Easy with Evernote: Step Two – Notes
The coolest thing about Evernote is the ease with you can capture notes during your call.
Lets say your sales presentation is being done virtually, using the phone or a webinar service like GoToMeeting. As the presentation or visit with the potential client is going on, you can take notes on your device of choice.
Since this scenario is a virtual sales call, you can have your computer open and ready to capture notes as you interact with the lead. Evernote has clients for Mac OS X, Windows, not to mention a full featured browser version that you’ll find very useful.
If you or your company use CRMs like Salesforce, and assuming your Salesforce admin has enabled it, you can integrate your Evernote into the actual Salesforce record. This is extremely useful in tracking your interaction with your potential client.
If your sales presentation is being made in person, your sense of what is appropriate for the moment may not make it possible for you to have your notebook open during the presentation. If you still want to make notes as your presentation goes along, Evernote makes it easy to be unobstrusive as you do so.
This is done by using either your smartphone (with iPhone versions or Android; others as well), or with a tablet like an iPad. Each of these have specific Evernote clients that give you note taking functionality that is easy to use, and syncs with your Evernote account.
Make Sales Calls Easy with Evernote:- Followup
Probably the most important part of the sales process is correctly planning your next steps. You can be a killer salesman, but if you fail to get your next actions correctly identified, you can miss your opportunity, and, thus, your quota.
Using Evernote as a followup tool is super easy. Of course you can always just type your notes on your device of choice, but if you are using an iPhone you have a killer tool at your disposal. This may be true for Android, but as I don’t have an Android phone, I can’t speak about how well the speech function works.
Frequently when I am on a sales call I will finish up by dictating my notes while they are still fresh.
Yes, you could just simply record a voice note, which Evernote supports, but you’ll find it far easier to actually use iPhone’s built in voice to text functionality to get your thoughts into an editable format.
After you have recorded your thoughts about the sales call to your Evernote, you can plan to go back and modify them as needed. This way the initial thoughts from the interaction with your potential client can be captured while they are still fresh in your mind, but you can also return to them to establish your next action.
Of course the whole point of the capturing your thoughts about the sales call is to give you the opportunity to prepare your next steps. That can be done at the bottom of your Follow Up notes, but ultimately you need to create your next step in the sales process in a new note.
Make Sales Calls Easy with Evernote: Step Four – Planning To Close the Sale
It would be pointless to hit the first three steps without this fourth step.
Your purpose is to make a 
sale, now or soon, or perhaps at a future point. This assumes that the outcome of the sales call itself is not a decision by the potential client to step away from you and your offering.
So, in a new note, take a few minutes (once you review your notes) to prepare for the next step in the sales process.
Once you have your thoughts and plans in place in the new note, you can actually set a reminder using Evernote’s baked-in reminder function to actually take the next action.
Final Thoughts
You may discover other uses for Evernote, or you may be far better at sales than I am.
But one thing I know is this: if you don’t prepare and if you don’t followup, you will be far more likely to lose a sale.
Using Evernote is a great way to make sure that you don’t let that happen. It really is possible to make sales calls easy with Evernote.
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