Sales Automation: How It Can Supercharge Your Business

  

Do you need sales automation for your business? If you are unfamiliar with the concept, or even skeptical of its efficacy, you may quickly answer: "No, our company is doing fine without it." But is "fine" good enough in today's cutthroat market? No doubt, you want to give your business every possible advantage for success. And sales automation, when deployed properly, is a huge advantage for any organization. 

Let's briefly review what sales automation is. Then, we'll discuss the key benefits it brings to the table.
Two sales managers use their tablets to review growth charts and the effects of their sales automation strategy.

What Is Sales Automation?

Sales automation has been defined as "the mechanization of manual, time-consuming tasks using software, artificial intelligence (AI), and other digital tools. It aims to manage or own responsibilities that sales reps and managers do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis."

That's kind of a wordy explanation, so here's something simpler: Sales automation is the process of taking away routine tasks from your reps, and helping them to become more efficient at selling. Sales automation (often referred to as "sales process automation") allows your team to focus their energy on sales activities that require a "human touch," while computers do all the tedious work in the background.

As you can imagine, sales automation covers a wide range of tasks and action items. These can include appointment reminders, log entries for customer interactions, pipeline management, and so on. However, the important thing to remember about sales process automation is that it isn't designed to replace your human agents. Instead, it's designed to assist them to be the best salespeople they can be.

What Are Some Specific Benefits of Sales Automation?

"That all sounds great," you may be saying, "but how exactly can sales automation benefit my business? And what tangible results will I see if I decide to implement it?" Excellent questions! We can't discuss every aspect of business operations that could benefit from sales process automation. But here are five specific areas to consider:

1. The ability to identify high-value leads more efficiently

Prospecting and cold-calling are two of the more challenging aspects of the overall sales process. Wouldn't it be nice if your sales team could prioritize accounts based on hard data instead of educated guesswork? With AI-driven sales automation tools, they can do just that. Those tools can alert your reps to potential clients with a high chance of purchasing from your business, based on your organization's unique parameters.

2. More efficient lead scoring

How can your sales reps know which leads to spending more time on, and which ones to temporarily "put on the back burner?" An automated lead scoring system can be an invaluable asset in this regard. Your scoring model can leverage data from past customer interactions. It will correlate that information with indicators from your current leads to determine which ones to prioritize.

As a simple example, your lead scoring system may assign one value to a lead that visits your website. Then, it will assign another value to a lead that downloads one of your eBooks. Yet another value will designate a lead that spends several minutes on a particular product page. The point is, with an accurate, pre-programmed lead scoring model in place, your reps will be able to qualify leads more quickly and engage with prospects that are closest to converting.

3. Easier and more effective lead nurturing

It's vital to nurture your leads as they progress through your funnel. Even a single well-timed piece of content delivered to their inbox can keep your brand top of mind for them. As a result, they are encouraged to buy from your company.

Automated tools can make your lead nurturing process easier, less time-consuming, and more effective than it's ever been before. Think about an automated email sequence that's triggered whenever a user purchases one of your products. The sequence may include an order confirmation email, a welcome email, an email with tracking information (if the product is being shipped to their home or business), and a follow-up email after delivery.

If you automate that workflow, then you'll never have to worry about missing a "link in the chain" because a rep forgot to manually send one of the messages. Speaking of which...
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4. Fewer leads "slipping through the cracks"

Nobody's perfect, and we all forget things: our car keys, our sunglasses, our wedding anniversary (well, hopefully not, but you get the idea). However, when one of your sales reps forgets to follow up with a warm lead or completely misses a scheduled meeting with a prospect, then it's your company that takes the hit. 

Fortunately, automation can greatly reduce "human error" in this regard. Automated alerts and reminders in your CRM system can help reps stay more organized. They'll get a heads-up about important upcoming appointments and events. Moreover, you can use automation to fill up your reps' calendars, and make them part of the inbound sales process. (Trust us, they'll enjoy that much more than cold calling all the time!)

5. A more centralized approach to sales

Do you already use a CRM platform as the main "hub" for your sales process? Then you can leverage automated log entries into increased transparency and visibility throughout the stages of each deal. For instance, if a prospect calls your customer service line with a specific complaint on Monday, then the sales rep who's scheduled to follow up with them on Friday will have that information on hand and can adjust their approach accordingly.

In addition, centralizing your sales process results in faster and more accurate reporting. The result is your management team can make better sales decisions - decisions based on hard data, instead of gut feelings.

In summary, sales automation is a key that can unlock many doors for your business. If you use it wisely, then you'll reap many benefits from it. To learn more, reach out to our team of friendly sales automation experts at OverGo Studio today. We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have!

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Companies today are always looking for an edge over the competition. They are also exploring ways to optimize their sales processes in order to win more customers and increase revenue. Many businesses have killed those two birds with one stone, so to speak. How? They have developed a sound sales automation strategy. And they've implemented that strategy into their team's workflows.