As a business or sales leader, you're well aware of how repetitive certain tasks and workflows inside your sales processes can be. However, to keep the wheels of the sales machine moving, you need to identify what's restraining your progress and make improvements to spearhead growth.
Inefficiencies in the sales process can drain the energy out of your sales team and stifle revenue out of your business. Plus, a seamless sales process is not one that's bogged down with repetitive or manual tasks, which only consumes more time and money.
And while there are instances where you'll notice a potential hitch in operations, your sales team isn't likely to come running to let you know how they overlooked a critical aspect of the sales process. Neither will they tell you how they could not track a deal. They likely won't own up to the fact that they forgot some crucial details from a meeting or didn't make a conversion due to poor judgment, either.
This article isn't about how you can reorganize your sales department or take your salespeople through another training and orientation. Today, our focus is on how you can leverage automation into your sales process that requires little to no human effort. This way, you can enable your sales team by allowing them to focus their time and expertise on other productive-centric tasks.
Sales automation can be defined in several ways. It is more like a mentor who helps you realize certain tasks that don't need your time. It can also guide you through busy days and challenging times. Automation further helps you prioritize the most critical duties, so you don't make costly mistakes.
In today's competitive business landscape, salespeople have so much on their plate. According to Forbes, more sales reps spend half of their time on activities that bring little to no income. Administrative duties typically take a huge chunk of their time, about 25%.
Once a luxurious method of running sales processes, automation is now an essential part of the customer acquisition and retention journey.
Once a luxurious method of running sales processes, automation is now an essential part of the customer acquisition and retention journey. This trend has seen more businesses leveraging technology to command more market share. Sales automation comes fitted with artificial intelligence to automatically perform mundane tasks a sales rep would take a whole day to complete. It also helps eliminate human error from the process.
There are many ways why leveraging automation in your sales can work to your advantage. For example:
Several sales tasks should be completed during the entire sales process, and these tasks take a lot of valuable time. To cut back on that time, consider automating your processes with these tips:
One key responsibility of sales teams is to send several emails, sometimes hundreds or even thousands each week. Using an email template helps simplify thinking and avoid human error when drafting the contents of the mail. Save the time with automation by utilizing semi-personalized email templates that you can reuse and repurpose as often as you want.
A CRM software like HubSpot provides immense functionalities that you can utilize to schedule personalized appointments by sharing a list of convenient dates and times with your leads.
You can leverage automation tools to create several custom pre-recorded voicemails. Your salespeople can then program these messages with their voicemail with just a single click.
For once, you won't need your yellow notepad. Neither will you have to take notes every time you call a prospect. An automation tool that records every call log and call outcome is your saving grace.
If you've done manual lead scoring by sending details of leads to your sales reps on an ongoing basis, think how much time and effort you can save if you use an automation tool. This way, regardless of whether your leads reach out via phone, email, or website, you can automatically direct those inbound communication to the ideal sales rep or department.
It's about time you upgraded from the traditional phone book and replaced it with something 21st century-like. You also don't need to use Google to search out prospects or build a list. Instead, take advantage of multiple automation solutions available to build lists easily and effectively. You can search out the best leads for your business using different segments. For example, you can list them depending on the company's size, their industry, and similar details that can be easily transferred into your CRM.
Your marketing team should develop different templates for every specific industry you work with. This way, they can easily edit any parts of the presentation and reuse them. It's a process that's only possible with automation.
Your CRM is only as good as the information you put in it. But obviously, many CRMs are not properly leveraged because the process to keep them updated is manual and time consuming. Most sales reps would rather spend time conducting outreach that logging information into the CRM. Everyone benefits when your CRM can be updated through automation.
Examples include:
With automation, your sales team can receive reminders when a target account has been dormant for some time. Your team can also receive automated notifications or tasks when a high-value prospect visits your site's pricing page.
Popular automated sales notifications include:
Now that you know how you can leverage automation into your sales processes, your next step is to learn how to generate sales leads for your company. At the Gist, we could be able to help. We also work primarily with HubSpot, so check out our sales enablement page for more information or get in touch with us to schedule an exploratory call.