- Salespersons will spend a lot of time searching through your files to identify the specific customer testimonial or deck they need.
- Your sales force may forget to make a follow-up, which may cause them to lose a deal.
- Identifying the best time to meet particular prospects will be a challenge.
- Adding leads or opportunities to your CRM will become a time-consuming affair.
- Your sales team may tend to call leads in alphabetical order instead of focusing on the best fit.
- Sales process issues may escalate as a result of overlooking them for an extended period.
If you want to address or steer clear of the problems above, you need to invest in sales automation. The term sales automation refers to the mechanization of manual, time-consuming sales tasks using tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and customer relationship management (CRM) software, among other solutions, to realize the sales objectives of an enterprise.
Some of the benefits of sales automation include:
- Maximizing the use of scarce resources.
- Improving the performance and productivity of your sales team.
- Ensuring consistency of sales data across your entity.
- Allowing you to enjoy operational efficiency.
- Increasing customer satisfaction by reducing response time.
- Accelerating your sales process and improving its accuracy.
- Streamlining the quality of your sales tasks.
- Preventing your sales leads from falling through the cracks.
Here are some of the ways you can use sales automation to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales team.
1. Sales Pipeline Management
Most probably, your sales team relies on a simple spreadsheet to guide a lead through the sales funnel. That involves noting potential cross-sell or upsell opportunities, passing a client between account executives and business representatives, tracking critical information for a particular customer's file, among other things. That can be a lot of data for a single Excel file to accommodate.
You also need to understand that errors, unnecessary follow-ups, and losing leads are some of the issues your sales team will encounter when using a simple spreadsheet. The solution here is acquiring a comprehensive CRM system. Such a tool promotes data accessibility from any device anywhere and at any time and also tracks leads from the moment they enter your sales funnel.
2. Choice Leads Prioritization
Although all leads are theoretically valuable, you need to prioritize some over others. That is possible with the help of sales software that can establish which leads will be more valuable to your team. The tool also assigns a lead score that automatically prioritizes particular leads.
Following up with an individual who is ready to convert is paramount if you do not want to lose them at some point. By doing so, your sales team increases the chances of closing a sale, and choice leads prioritization allows salespersons to close the most critical deals within the shortest time possible.
3. Automating Call Logs
One of the ways to measure the performance of your sales team is by assessing the number of calls they receive daily, and that is why call logging is a necessity. The best part is that logging every incoming and outgoing call is not a problem when you use sales software. As such, your sales representatives can focus on making contacts and sales rather than spending time trying to prove that they are working the phones.
Tracking the frequency of following up with one potential customer is also possible through sales software, and one can close an opportunity out later on if there is no contact.
4. The Generation of Smart Templates and Email Responses
Salespersons send countless emails as first-contact points, follow-ups, and confirmations to both existing and potential clients. As much as that is the case, writing personalized emails to each customer may be a hard thing to do. And yet, your prospects need to feel important.
Additionally, leaving out relevant information (such as your potential client’s name) in the emails you send them is not an option. The fact that quality sales software uses AI algorithms to assess how an individual interacts with previous communications and content from your sales team implies that it is possible to develop a personalized email using such details.
On the other hand, some individuals rarely open sales emails, which means spending more than a few seconds creating such is not a wise idea. The availability of sales software with multiple easy-to-customize templates allows salespeople to craft simple exploratory communications for firing off necessary missives.
5. Building Lists of Qualified Leads
Part of the primary responsibilities of outbound sales development representatives is finding leads and generating lists for conducting follow up in the future. There are solutions to help such individuals trace leads by size, industry, and company, among other aspects, which ultimately results in a list of more qualified potential leads.
Cold calls are unnecessary at this point. The reason is that there is a reasonable expectation that a potential client wants what you are selling before your sales team makes the first contact.
6. Scheduling Follow-Ups and Appointments
Sometimes, a sales call ends with a sales representative promising to follow-up with a particular customer later that day, the following week, or after the new year. The only problem, in this case, is that the salesperson may not note the details of such a conversation down, which suggests that they will probably forget the appointment. This stops any potential sale in its tracks.
A scheduling platform can automate thank-you notes and appointment confirmations. That, in turn, presents availability, shoots friendly messages after essential calls, and sends emails and text reminders.
Conclusion
Your sales team is the face of your organization. So, improving the relationship between potential and current customers and your sales representatives from the onset is paramount. Investing in sales automation will help you not just achieve this but also improve the productivity of your sales team. You can get more information about our Sales Automation Programs by contacting us today!
Take advantage of our free Hubspot CRM Configuration to start modernizing your sales process. This is a limited-time offer where we will design a sales pipeline specifically for your business. Start generating more revenue and improve your close rates by building your first high-performing sales pipeline on HubSpot at no cost. Simply schedule a discovery session with our team of HubSpot experts.
