If there’s one thing that every business can benefit from, it’s sales automation. That may sound like a big statement to make, but trust us, it’s true! If done correctly, sales automation can:
- Standardize and automate your sales process
- Enhance your CRM
- Save time by automating and streamlining repetitive tasks
- Automate meeting scheduling and followup
- Lead rotation
- Set up email marketing campaigns with triggers
- And even integrate third-party apps for a more comprehensive system
The business benefits of sales automation simply can’t be overstated, and this handy guide will help clue you in on everything you need to know about the process of doing sales automation right.
How Do You Automate Sales?
Many previously time-consuming tasks that are typically completed manually by you or your sales teams can be taken over by an effective sales automation program. As a system that handles tedious jobs like kicking off emails and following up on hot leads, sales automation can save time while helping to grow your revenue and streamline your CRM.
Another major sales automation benefit is the visualization of your company’s sales workflow. By understanding the journey a typical customer goes through from the moment they reach your website through the marketing funnel and finally into the sales pipeline, you can create an overview of your sales workflow to see where you are excelling and where adjustments need to be made.
With sales automation software, you can build specific tasks and expand the workflow with branching logic that explores the path your lead takes. With a system like this, you can also combine tasks to create specific touchpoints. These are considered to be the turning point where the lead converts into a sale.
Using sales automation, you may also set up email messaging and lead nurturing campaigns that are customized to each lead’s current position in your sales funnel. In the realm of sales, one-size does not fit all. Consumers want to feel special, and sales automation can help you personalize your sales effort (in addition to your marketing efforts) to improve your chances of turning a lead into a customer.
Sales Automation Benefits For Email
One of the most popular uses for sale automation is with email marketing campaigns. Your marketing team should be focused on creating dynamic and engaging content for your target audience, not keeping track of emails and personally sending out each new message.
Sale automation for email will keep your company’s recipient list in order, and it will keep track of where your leads are in your sales funnel. Based on the lead’s behavior, email campaigns can be set up to send based on a series of triggers, from opportunity created to a closed-won sale. This allows your sales team to spend less time on the admin tasks of sales and more time on engaging personally with the leads at the precise time they’re ready.
Should you find that leads were almost at the finish line, and they abandoned their shopping carts, your automated sales program will send out reminders that encourage them to come back and complete the purchase.
If your business is B2B, your sales automations can trigger reminders for your sales representatives to reach out to leads with specific messaging based on their deal stage, and can support phone and personal contacts with automated email interactions or pre-set templates.
With the help of a robust automation system, your marketing and sales teams can better utilize their time to focus on more personal interactions for the business.
Sales Automation Benefits For CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is often considered the lifeblood of any company. If a brand doesn’t have good customer relations, it’s only a matter of time before those unhappy customers take their business elsewhere.
Automated sales for CRM can include data entry, setting up appointments, scheduling calls, creating important reminders and even generating invoices. With all of this customer data stored in one location, your team won’t have to spend time trying to find a customer’s email or past purchases. All the relevant details about your customers will be organized and easy to access via the sales automation dashboard.
Another helpful aspect of sales automation for CRM is lead scoring. Identify hot leads in real-time and score them based on factors such as page tracking, demographic fit and engagement. You can then use this information to amp up your marketing tactics to those who are more likely to convert from leads into customers. Then identify sales qualified leads for follow-up by the sales team or move an opportunity to a new pipeline automatically. Essentially, lead scoring takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
Sales Automation Benefits For Buyer Personas and Lead Scoring
One crucial aspect of any business is having a solid buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. Based on demographics such as age, gender, income, location and interests, buyer personas can help you adjust your marketing strategy to best suit your target audience.
Hand-in-hand with personas is lead scoring, which can help you identify the leads that best fit your ideal customer and have also taken actions which identify them as hot leads. Your sales automation system can automatically identify leads as they pass a certain lead score threshold and assign them as opportunities in specific sales pipelines, all custom designed to fit your business’ sales workflow.
Team Communications
A major issue that many companies face is miscommunication between departments and employees. Misunderstanding can lead to the same tasks being completed more than once. It can also be the main culprit of why other tasks are overlooked entirely. Perhaps one department didn’t follow-up because they thought another department was going to do it.
One of the many sales automation benefits is streamlined communications within the workplace. You can quickly update your staff members via email or text alerts (Did that contract get sent to the lead who’s ready to close? Did the BDR team schedule a brand new demo with a hot lead?). You can even set up automated workflows that act on specific triggers. This system can send out instant notifications for hot leads or sales, keeping everyone on the team informed of what’s going on.
Analytics & Reporting
At the end of the day, all of your marketing and sales efforts would be for nothing if you had no way to measure how well you’re doing in real time. A good sales automation program will give you daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reports showing a comprehensive overview of your marketing and sales analytics.
Automated sales programs can provide you with detailed information about your team’s activities with automated email reports, sales team rankings, deal reports and revenue reports.
Wrapping Up the Guide To Sales Automation
Companies in every industry and niche can enjoy the benefits of sales automation programs. A good automated sales system will save your sales team a lot of time by taking over redundant tasks, unifying your sales messaging and processes, and keeping valuable sales and pipeline data safely stored in one convenient location.
