An initial encounter with a new prospect requires an average of 8 touchpoints. Emails, phone calls, and text messages are among the touches. Maintaining constant communication with sales prospects requires a lot of time. In addition, the process gets harder to manage when your list of prospects expands. It can be overwhelming as you simultaneously take care of sales records, products, services, and customers. Sales process automation can help in this situation.

 

The sales strategy used by your team is a valuable tool. You may easily find areas for improvement by using sales process automation. Also, sales managers can control every step of an automated sales process without exerting too much effort. 

 

Let’s look at the definition of sales process automation and its typical examples since these are the crucial pieces of information we will discuss in this article.

 

What Is Inside Sales Process Automation?

 

Automating various steps in your sales process allows your sales representatives to concentrate more on connecting with and closing business with prospects and clients. It entails managing multiple sales process elements (such as customer outreach and sales reporting). Additionally, it guarantees that your sales process is efficient and consistent.

 

Sales process automation:

 

• Boosts your efficiency;
• Improves accuracy and speeds up your sales process;
• Ensures that your valuable leads don’t slip through the net; 
• Streamlines the quality of your sales tasks;
• Decreases response time, which can increase customer satisfaction.

 

Companies that implement high levels of automation into their sales process produce 16% more leads than those who implement low or no levels of automation (source). Additionally, sales automation will be appreciated more since the use of AI in sales is anticipated to increase by 139% between 2020 and 2023 (source).

 

Examples Of Automating Inside Sales Process

 

1. Lead generation

 

The sales pipeline starts with lead generation, so this is an excellent area to use automation. Landing pages and pop-ups with forms are just two examples of how you may utilize software to create leads automatically. Although incorporating chatbots is gaining popularity nowadays.

 

Lead generation is an excellent starting point for how sales automation might help your business save time. For example, salespeople won’t have to waste time repeatedly sending the same message because the program automates the first message of a customer-facing chat. But they can take over when it’s time to warm up a lead.

 

Related: Why Is FunnL The Only Tool You Will Need For Your Lead Generation Campaign?

 

2. Setup of sales email

 

In the high-tech world of inside sales, email is still one of the most sensible methods since it is a very effective sales medium that can be highly automated. The most successful sales emails are those that are put up as sequences based on the behaviors, answers, and data stored in your CRM of your contacts.

 

However, some tools can also help you automate follow-ups to ensure a lead never falls through the cracks. For example, use autoresponders to create nurture series depending on specific activities of your prospects or to send a series of personalized emails. 

 

3. User onboarding

 

You can automate the user onboarding process similar to other sales email automation techniques we have included in this list. For example, you can set up the software to send email confirmations, welcome messages, documentation, etc., instead of doing it manually. This way, you can free up time on other crucial tasks, such as sales pitching and communication skills. In addition, advanced tools give you the facility of intelligent onboarding.

 

4. Communication with prospects

 

The ability to maintain contact with prospects or existing clients and share content via marketing or private email sequences is another excellent example of sales automation. A CRM with text messaging features allows you to automate customized text messages with appointment information and reminders.

 

Also, you can immediately see summaries of all your calls – transcribed and analyzed – all because of sales automation tools’ new conversation intelligence features. 

 

5. Sales reporting

 

When they use automated sales analysis, sales representatives can get a clear perspective of customer engagement, marketing, and campaign performance, including form completion rates, email opening rates, and inside sales conversions. In addition, every sales rep can track lead and product revenue, activity history, orders, billing, etc., using sales reporting without combing through mountains of data.

 

6. Setting appointments or meetings

 

A sales automation platform’s scheduling and appointment tools ensure nothing gets missed. Easy scheduling keeps sales representatives from mistakenly scheduling themselves twice or skipping appointments, whether a follow-up meeting or presenting a demo to a new client. 

 

However, it gets better with automation software. For a genuine improvement in sales process automation, integrate your scheduling tool with CRM. The days of negotiating a meeting time via back-and-forth messages are long gone.

 

Related: Ultimate appointment setting tool for businesses

 

7. Making and sending invoices

 

Invoicing is an integral part of every business. It is a tedious but crucial process, making this the ideal spot to apply some automation.

 

You may build an automatic sales system that accepts credit cards, sends bills, and keeps track of who has paid using automated payments and invoicing. Then, even after hours, when your salespeople are unavailable, your company may automatically take payments and send invoices around the clock. So, no more manual labor is needed.

 

8. Lead scoring

 

Salespeople don’t have to spend extra time determining which leads are the warmest, thanks to the lead-scoring capabilities of modern sales software. In the past, lead scoring reality relied on firmographic information; however, behavioral lead scoring is now likely to be the most helpful.

 

Here are the final words. Such a thorough approach to sales automation makes it simple to oversee and follow your sales process, increasing your sales staff’s efficiency. So use these techniques and let the outcomes speak for themselves.