4 Core Areas That Matter in Sales Automation
Sales automation is the process of digitizing manual and laborious sales tasks leveraging artificial intelligence, big data, RPA, and other digital tools. It focuses on managing the tasks perform by managers and sales reps.
Mar 29 2020 ● 5 min read
Sales Automation tools can benefit your sales team, revenue, and every aspect of your business.
Here are other notable benefits:
- It can improve the efficiency and performance of the sales rep.
- It can optimize your sales process and enhance your efficiency.
- It can enable you to streamline your sales task to achieve optimal quality.
- It can minimize the response time, which can impact your customer satisfaction.
According to a report by Forrester, sales automation tools can enable you to save up to 90 percent on costs. You can also optimize your efficiency while reducing those costs. That alone is a rationale behind investing in sales process automation.
So how do you automate sales? Why is sales force automation important? How and where do you begin?
Below are five areas of the sales process you can automate:
Four Areas That Matter in Sales Automation
1. Email
Studies have shown that sales rep spend about 21 percent of their time on emails daily. That's a whole lot of productive time - almost a quarter. This time can be used to follow up on prospects. That's the more reason you need to automate emails.
You can begin by asking the following questions:
- What sort of emails are commonly sent daily?
- What amount of time is spent on creating and proofreading emails before I send them?
- How much customization and personalization is required for each?
Most of the emails sent daily are repetitive. And that takes a big chunk of sales rep's time.
Create templates for your emails. Don't forget to personalize the signatures while linking other assets that can enhance lead nurturing.
For instance, you can link your product demo video or client case studies on the 'thank you for signing up' email. That will enable your customer to understand the features as well as the use cases better.
However, don't schedule emails based on the recipient's time zones.
Create templates for your emails. Don't forget to personalize the signatures while linking other assets that can enhance lead nurturing.
For instance, you can link your product demo video or client case studies on the 'thank you for signing up' email. That will enable your customer to understand the features as well as the use cases better.
However, don't schedule emails based on the recipient's time zones.
2. Lead Prioritization
Your business can generate a lot of leads from different sources. Some leads may be looking for freebies why others want to build a lasting relationship with your brand. While it's not reasonable to waste your time on the former group, your sales rep may not know that.
That's why you need to use some AI-based lead scoring tools in prioritizing your leads.
However, you might need to ask yourself these salient questions:
- Is your sales team spending so much time on qualifying leads?
- Is the conversation rate low?
- Do you have a longer sales cycle as a result of bottlenecks and leaks?
If you answered yes to all these questions, then you need to automate your lead prioritization process. You can read more on how to score leads.
3. Lead Distribution
Research has shown that when you call a lead within the first five minutes, you can increase the possibility of them picking up the call by 100times. However, that's not general for all companies.
Usually, your business can generate leads from anywhere- blogs, websites, and social media, and they are not assigned to a sales representative within the sales automation software for a more extended period. A gap exists between the time that a lead enters and when a rep follows up.
This is where you need lead distribution. Automating lead distribution can reduce the response time, which can consequently culminate into a higher lead conversion ratio. With sales automation software, you can assign leads by location, company size, industry type, and sales value.
This makes it faster for your sales team to follow up with your prospects. Not only that, but it will also enable you to optimize the efficiency of your sales and prevent reaching out to the same lead in multiple times
4. Day-to-day schedule
Aside from modular activities such as sending emails and qualifying leads, the sales team performs administrative duties daily. These inputs contribute to overall growth sales.
Some of these activities include:
Data entry
Sales automation software has the capability of serving as a single origin of truth. It contains data on customers, prospects, accounts, sales, and other related tasks. Nevertheless, a sales rep has to input these data manually. By using sales automation software, you can minimize both the time and effort you spend on the activities.
Appointments Scheduling and Reminders Setting
There's usually a flurry of emails sent back and forth at different intervals when you need to fix a meeting with a lead. Using a Sales Automation tool such as Calendly can eliminate that stress. Or, if you're in an outside sales rep, you can use a tool like SPOTIO to automate data entry, visit logging, and sales messaging while out in the field.
You can share a link to the link providing the available time slots so the leads can pick their preferred time slots. Both parties will receive a calendar invite automatically, and a reminder notification will be triggered before the scheduled time.
Invoice generation
You need to update the CRM as soon as you've won a deal. Your sales team has to swap to the billing tool to create and then generate an invoice for the lead. This is a sheer waste of time. You can use automation to generate an invoice as soon as the deal is updated to 'won.' Also, you should think about automating your invoice processing to cut costs even more. With AP automation technology transforming this process, you'll be able to save 50 to 75% of your money.
Why SalesForce Automation Is Important
A lot of business managers don't know the impact of implementing CRM or SalesForce Automation. They don't know if it's worth it. Several questions may surface if you want to make this decision. It is generally believed that the customer is the king, and sales automation is the secret behind acquiring new customers and generating sales from existing ones.
Unlike other enterprise tools that are only relevant in a particular zone, sales automation software can be applied to any size of business. Sales automation software can abbreviate your sales cycle for creating increased sales and optimizing your productivity.
Here are some reasons sales force automation can benefit your business.
Manage the Sales Team
Most times, your sales reps are busy with tallying sales call reports, either daily or weekly. With the Salesforce automation, they can establish and pause all of those activities. SFA can also empower your sales rep with a complete view of every metric they need to measure sales.
Prioritize
SalesForce Automation can help you list your quality leads. It can also enable you to know how your sales team prioritize tasks and select which ones to focus on. For most companies, what counts is not the number of sales, but lead quality. You don't want your most efficient staff to work on the cheapest low leads.
All you need is to ensure your resource is being maximized most efficiently.
Maximize Opportunities
Most software permit you to manage your communication with your customers and also help you not to miss any opportunity in the sales cycle. SalesForce Automation sends you reminders for each quality business deal. This can empower the sales team to focus on growing quality leads and sustain communication with them.
Published on Mar 29 2020
WRITTEN BY
Indrė Jankutė-CarmaciuIndrė is a copywriter at Whatagraph with extensive experience in search engine optimization and public relations. She holds a degree in International Relations, while her professional background includes different marketing and advertising niches. She manages to merge marketing strategy and public speaking while educating readers on how to automate their businesses.