Skylead vs. Velocify by ICE Mortgage Technology

There are many LinkedIn automation products available, from Chrome extensions to desktop applications, to cloud-based apps like Skylead, and I've used many of them. Skylead stands apart with a simple, intuitive interface that is easy for my clients to use, is very economical compared to others, and is focused on continual improvement and customer service.

Incentivized

Small businesses who do not need complex reporting and analytics would fit well into the Velocify model. There needs to be specific segments that appeal to this type of CRM, and the best feature is within an added layer--dialer. The ability to turn things around and contact your leads immediately was very beneficial to us, and could prove to be a boon for a small to midsize business.

• Convenient message inbox for responding to new leads.
• Ability to integrate with CRMs and other 3rd party software for more automation.
• Smart Sequences that use conditional logic to send LinkedIn messages as well as emails.
• Customer service is very responsive and super helpful. They are a pleasure to work with.
• Skylead is constantly improving and adding/updating features based on actual users' input via a feature request forum.

Incentivized

• The prioritized queue allows for management to set contact standards and hold users accountable. It removes all the guess work out of what lead to call next.
• The Dial IQ feature is fantastic for powering through calls and maximizing speed to contact.
• The Shotgun lead distribution puts the lead into the hand of the user that is ready and available to call that lead immediately. No handing off a lead to an originator and hoping they call. This feature allows for the system to notify multiple users simultaneously and first user to press 1 wins the lead. Talk about creating a competitive sales environment!

• It would be nice to be able to add steps to a sequence in an existing campaign
• The user hierarchy is a little confusing, in terms of placing my end-user clients under my master account—a little unintuitive
• Similar to above, it would be nice to have an additional level of user access, for scenarios in which I have a client with multiple salespeople on the platform, each with their own login (as it is now, with access only to their own account), but also have a companywide admin account for a sales manager who has access to all of their accounts with one login (I think they are working on this feature).

Incentivized

• Velocify would be well served to create a more robust email drip campaign platform.
• Velocify could revamp their dashboards and prioritized views our individuals work out of daily. It's rather overwhelming when working with a lot of leads. Adding interactive graphics - calendars, easy to view alerts, etc would be great. (Big Purple Dot does this well)

Incentivized

I am sure that we as a company are likely to continue using Velocify. I am not involved in the selection process, but I have not heard any negative feedback and switching programs would more than likely be too much work

Users can gain a very good understanding of the system quickly. The administrator can use terms that are familiar to their company when setting the system up. Most new administrators error to the side of complexity when setting up the system. With Velocify less is more.

The system is always up!!

If the system is set up correctly it will be a game changer for your organization.

While I didn't speak with the Support team often, they seemed very accepting and reliable. My favorite was the company emails that we would receive whenever something wasn't working correctly so that we would know that it's being worked on, providing a bit of relief to the other employees that were having trouble.

Incentivized

The in-person training if you will is done via GoToMeeting or some other service. I have been told that the moderator goes way too in-depth and too fast.

Velocify offers online training via videos and written descriptions of implementation procedures.

If you plan to have more than 20 users on Velocify you should outsource implementation to someone that knows how the system can best be implemented for your business/process flows. If you have fewer proposed users try to use one of the canned levels.

Before we went with Velocify, we had Salesforce and Hobson's EMT Connect. Both of these systems were rather expensive and didn't give us exactly what we needed for lead conversion as well as the customization we desired. However, I feel that some of the reasons we went with Velocify were not exactly truthful as we found out during the implementation process or much later that there were things they said that they could do that once we started getting into the weeds with it they weren't able to execute. From a lead conversion and speed to lead standpoint, this is a good product. From a reporting and lifecycle management standpoint, this is a very poor product compared to the other two

The system is fully scaleable both vertically and horizontally across the enterprise.

• Faster lead conversion lead us to higher potential for "first school wins" philosophy.
• Negative return on time spent maintaining Velocify. Because manual reporting was needed and much had to be done outside of the system, there was a monetary loss of time because of this.
• Predictability was near impossible for us, and the fact that we had to purchase an email automation system because Velocify did not do anything we needed was a negative ROI for our business.