Sales professionals use a wide variety of tools to do their job. Customer relationship management systems, lead generators, task managers, marketing programs, and scheduling software are just some of the sales tools that help reps at every stage of the sales process.
With so many different kinds of tools that help you work more efficiently, it can be easy to forget that one of the most powerful sales tools is already at your fingertips—your Gmail.
The trick is in knowing how to make the most out of your inbox.
Here are 12 Gmail productivity hacks that every sales representative should know.
Contacting clients and responding to emails is just one aspect of a sales professional’s job. You also have a wide variety of other tasks, and you probably have a ton of meetings as well. What if we told you that you could handle all of these right from your inbox?
That’s right, you can add emails to your task list and Google calendar. This way, you’ll have easy access to the things you need to do in a small window at the side of your screen. As you make your way down the list, you can check off your task items and stay on top of your workload.
How many emails do you receive in a day? As a sales rep, you’re probably getting dozens or even hundreds. That can easily clutter up your inbox, making it difficult for you to sort through what’s urgent and what’s not. Plus, if you’re overwhelmed by your unread emails, you’re more likely to avoid the stress associated with putting it off until the last minute.
You can solve this by setting up filters for your inbox. You can have Gmail automatically sort all incoming emails depending on the sender, certain keywords, attachments, and more. You can even set up auto-delete for spam and other messages you know you don’t have time for.
If you send email blasts on the regular, you know how difficult it is to scroll through your contact list and add each recipient one by one. Speed up the process by creating contact groups and email lists for your most-emailed contacts. You can create multiple lists based on a wide range of categories, such as potential leads and closed deals.
Creating a contact group is pretty simple. In your Gmail, select “Contacts”. Then choose all of the contacts that you want to add to a group, click the Groups button, and then select “create new”. Enter in a name for the group, and voila! It’s that easy. Watch a 2-minute tutorial on how to create contact groups in Gmail:
If you’re like most people, you probably have one email for work, one personal email, and maybe even a few others that serve other purposes. Having multiple emails is one way to keep your inbox organized, but it’s also a hassle having to switch between accounts or even email providers.
You can (and should) manage your different email accounts from just one Gmail inbox. And you don’t even need a special email client to do it! Gmail allows you to look at and even respond to all of your emails from one place.
Spending minutes or even hours looking for the right email is not a productive use of your time. You can save yourself some time by organizing your emails through labels. Labels help you categorize emails and can be set up to automatically apply depending on a number of parameters.
Also make use of Gmail’s archive function, which stashes away emails you don’t need but don’t want to delete. You can also enable a “Send & Archive” button that archives your email conversation until the recipient replies. This gets rid of emails you’ve already taken care of, further decluttering your inbox.
Writing the same email over and over again can get pretty tiring. You probably already have a template that you copy and paste from, but you can make it even easier and more accessible with Gmail’s advanced Canned Responses feature.
Canned Responses allows you to create and save your most-used messages, paragraphs, or phrases. All of your saved canned responses can be quickly added to your email through a drop-down menu in the same window. This is a great and fast solution to those repetitive emails asking the same questions over and over again.
Everyone has certain tasks that they do repeatedly, like copy-pasting, compose a new email, delete conversations, and more. While clicking on them seems pretty easy enough, there are ways to increase your productivity through fast keyboard shortcuts.
Google helpfully provides a list of pre-programmed shortcuts, which you can access by pressing Shift + ? while Gmail is open. Once you’ve activated keyboard shortcuts in your settings, you can use any (or all) of the 32 shortcuts. Or, to make it even easier, you can configure your own shortcuts!
Smart Compose is another one of Gmail’s winning features. As you’re writing your email, Google uses AI and machine learning to suggest phrases or sentences that complete your text. This works similarly to predictive text on your phone.
While predictive text doesn’t always get it right, it’s good enough for the most common phrases and sayings. All you have to do is start the sentence, and Google’s recommended predictive text will appear in gray. If you want to use the suggestion, just hit Tab and Gmail will automatically insert it for you.
Have you ever sent an email, then immediately realized you forgot one important statement or perhaps, attachment? Maybe you realized there was a typo, or perhaps you accidentally sent it to the wrong person. It’s a universal experience that’s usually harmless. But as a sales rep, one wrong email could hurt your prospects.
Thankfully, those mistakes don’t have to be permanent. You can enable Gmail’s “Undo Send” feature, which allows you to recall an email within a certain time period. You’ll have to act fast, though — you can only cancel an email up to a maximum of 30 seconds after you send it.
Reading, sending, and replying to emails can be tedious at best and distracting at worst, but it’s a necessary part of being a sales rep. The important thing is to do it every day without letting your inbox take over your whole day.
You should aim to schedule your emailing time so that you can get through all of your emails and still be productive. Once or twice a day is more than enough to reply to everyone in a timely manner. Then, outside of that scheduled time, make sure you turn off your notifications so you can focus on other tasks.
As incredible as Google is, there are only so many features they can include in Gmail. But that doesn’t mean you have to settle for whatever Google can offer—you can add a ton of functionality by installing Gmail and Chrome extensions.
Extensions are powerful add-ons developed by third-party providers that can boost your productivity. There are “generic” extensions like those that check your grammar and writing style, and there are also extensions specifically designed for marketing and sales professionals.
Speaking of sales-specific Gmail extensions, you can’t get any more powerful than ZynBit. ZynBit will transform how you do sales. The tool integrates right into your email inbox and makes Salesforce, the most popular sales CRM tool, a lot less tedious to work with.
You can super-charge your inbox and access client information without ever leaving your browser. Any edits or changes you make in Gmail will be automatically reflected in your CRM and vice-versa. So you never have to worry about updating data across multiple platforms—ZynBit will do it for you.
Also, scheduling meetings and creating tasks is now even easier with ZynBit. Instead of manually adding meetings to your calendar, ZynBit actually sends a copy of your calendar to your clients. Then, clients can just simply choose one of your available times. And just like that, your meeting is scheduled and synced across all of your apps.
You can also count on ZynBit to provide you with valuable insight into your clients. Like tracking your emails and find out how your prospects are engaging with your content. This will help you prioritize cases and follow-up with the right people.
You only have a finite amount of time and energy—save it for the more important aspects of sales, like closing deals. These Gmail productivity hacks help you focus and prioritize so that you can get things done. Remember: work smarter, not harder!