Any salesperson will tell you that the most crucial aspect of their job is “closing deals.” But, in reality, most of their time isn’t selling but taking care of administrative processes. The survey shows that sales professionals spend only 34% of their time selling (source). That means they invest the rest of their time in data entry, research, scheduling, and reporting tasks.
Fortunately, there are ways to optimize your sales team’s time and efficiency. Chief among them is “process automation.” Yes, by automating your sales process, sales reps can quickly whittle down the tedious administrative duties and give your leads the attention they deserve.
Related: How Marketing Automation Boosts Inside Sales Productivity
But how do you ensure that your automated sales process is flexible enough to match your requirements? Don’t worry; in this article, we will show you some beneficial sales process automation that offers space between workflows and productivity and helps you devote more time to your most valuable asset, “customers.”
1. Lead generation
Your sales workflow typically begins with the lead generation process. While carrying out this step, your sales teams and reps are often pulled in dozens of directions to ensure that the right leads are fed into your marketing funnel. This may consume much of their time, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll get potential leads. However, lead generation automation may ensure you have qualified leads.
Lead generation automation uses data and insights from your previous prospects to understand your leads category. In addition, it uses several other factors such as geographic location, experience, and other specific criteria to discover possible good fit customers for your business. Therefore, by automating the lead generation process, your sales teams can focus more on closing prospects than finding new ones.
2. Sales calls
Outreach is a crucial part of any sales team’s job. There are many ways to reach out, such as through email, LinkedIn, or social media, but dialing phone calls can be a huge time suck if not done carefully. This is where an auto dialer can be helpful. Automating sales calls can allow your sales reps to move their hands on other important tasks and, eventually, boost their productivity by more than 300% (source).
3. Sales follow up
Finding new customers is crucial for your business, but you shouldn’t forget that keeping in touch with your existing customers can take you a step closer to your desired results. Yes, but how do you do that? The answer is “follow-ups.” If a lead is not responding to your messages, it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t interested. They might just need some follow-ups.
However, manual follow-ups can consume a lot of time. Consistently drafting and sending the same message could tire out your staff and cause them to lose productivity. Instead, you can design a few templates and automate them. This keeps you engaged with the existing customers and may help you gauge their interests, issues, and needs for which they might be looking for a solution.
4. Email marketing
Only 50% personalization is enough for your sales emails (source). Beyond that, it might not help your email campaigns succeed. Therefore, you don’t have to work too hard on personalizing your emails. You can also customize it with automation!
All you have to do is just add some personalized elements to your email templates and automate the process. These days, email automation tools can also help you uncover valuable insights such as open rates, click-through rates, and many more. Hence, leverage your email campaigns through such tools and get ahead of your competitors!
5. Scheduling meetings
You may discover your leads and connect with them, but the real struggle is when you have to schedule a meeting with them and get them to commit. While doing so, you may contact them too often or appear pushy and annoying. So, automating your sessions is the best way to end such problems.
When you automate your meetings, your customers will be sent right to your calendars and have the option to choose a time that works best for them. In this manner, you can smoothly conduct your meetings without intruding on your customers’ privacy.
Plus, automated meeting schedules can keep you updated with all the meetings during the sales process.
6. Deal management
Sales can be a heavy-touch process involving many phone conversations, face-to-face interactions, and email exchanges. Since your sales reps typically engage with more than one customer at a time, it can be difficult to maintain a clear view of every deal. But, with automation, you can record and keep track of all your calls, emails, meetings, and other customer interactions will eventually help you strike a good deal.
7. Lead screening
Your sales teams must focus their efforts on “qualified leads” rather than just any other lead, because potential leads have the potential to close your sales more quickly. Hence, it is always better to prioritize your leads in the sales process.
Reviewing your customer’s behavioral and demographic data can help you identify those “good-to-go leads.” This might sound simple, but it does take hours of your time. However, by automating your lead screening process, you can monitor the scores of your leads and, hence, take the following appropriate action in your sales journey.
Your sales teams no longer have to spend their days replying to perfunctory emails or checking and double-checking their schedules. Because as you are aware now, sales process automation clears their path and enables them to do what they are best at, “selling.” So we better hope you will harness sales process automation to your fullest and generate additional revenue for your business.
