Five Reasons to Start Automating Sales Processes

There are many reasons to consider automating sales processes in your business. The most important one? Your competition is doing it. If you lag behind, they will have your business for lunch.

Improvements in sales tools are bringing higher conversions for sales teams. They’re improving efficiency, saving time, and increasing sales team satisfaction. For example, research from Aberdeen Group shows that firms which implemented sales force automation saw a 27% increase in their deals on average.

Automation saves time

A sales team performs many tasks in a single day. This includes scheduling appointments, sending emails, writing proposals, organizing and scoring leads, making notes, and so much more. There are at least 20-30 different daily sales chores that can be made more efficient with automation. Guess what? That’s a ton of time you’re going to save because it all adds up in the end.

A quality customer-relationship-management solution can help you automate or streamline most of these chores.  But it isn’t just about saving time on the front-end. A good CRM makes it easier to gather all that client data on their digital file.

Retrieving useful information is also a lot more streamlined and effortless when you use a CRM. When the optimal time to call comes, you will get to that information quite quickly. And then, as you’re dialing, all the relevant information is right there at your fingertips, well organized and easy to review. So it isn’t just that you’re saving time in gathering and organizing the data. Retrieving it is way more efficient as well.

The same holds true if a client or prospect calls you. With a good CRM, all their most relevant data will “pop up” right in front of you. And you can be armed with all the best information right away.

Manage your sales teams better

Understanding the quality of a given lead is crucial. If all of your leads go into a general pile called “people who might theoretically buy our product”, you’re wasting a lot of time. You will end up focusing the same effort on leads who are completely different. Some of them are much more likely to produce profitable outcomes, whilst others are a waste of time.

Different leads require a different time and resource investment. Understanding all of this will help your sales team understand how best to invest their time.

With quality sales automation, scoring leads is an easy and effortless process. This lets you better manage your sales team. They will know which deals are more important and estimate the probability of closing a deal. Moreover, you will have the information needed to assign the necessary resources to each deal.

Sharing data and fostering collaboration

Some of your employees are more individualistic than others. They aren’t naturally inclined to share information with others. But, sharing data between your staff improves collaboration and team effectiveness. It allows for the “institutional memory” needed for future reference, for doing a pitch or following up on a prospect.

Data sharing also fosters relationship building between employees. So, not only do you need sales automation for the above reasons, but your employees must see the value in it. They should write down their insights about clients. They need to note what they’ve learned about each prospect. When a prospect is on the line, your team will have already profiled the client and know how to get them to “sign on the line which is dotted.”

Automation also gives you a detailed history of every contract and customer. In an instance, you are able to view a complete history of past deals. Thus, you know the trajectory the company is following.

Some of your sales team members will most likely leave, or call sick one day. Imagine if you have zero information about that team member’s prospects. That’s a huge loss that can be measured in lost revenue.

Track employee accountability

Measuring the productivity of your sales team provides you with detailed insight into their performance. Tracking can give you even deeper insight, such as the amount of revenue an employee is generating, or the percentage of deals they are closing. 

This way, you can see which employees are most suitable for a particular type of customer. You’ll come to know which team members are better at selling which product. Moreover, you will be better able to provide the right training for the right employees.

You can view feedback from customers (or complaints), see the revenue they’re bringing in, what they are working on and much more. Thus, you can act when necessary. As a manager, acting on real-time information can be a game changer.

And if you decide to share the data with employees, be prepared to see an explosion in competitiveness between sales team members. That’s a good thing for everyone involved.

Good automation increases revenue

When you automate most sales tasks, you’re likely to see an increase in customer lifetime value. Pretty much all of the benefits we listed above will contribute to an increase in revenue.

In addition, automation is crucial for monitoring which customers and products bring the most profits, and in turn, those that bring the least. Thus, your sales team can make a targeted effort to increase revenue from those low-profit customers. It could be that they react to different products, or they have some other problem you’re not aware of.

If you need further help, feel free to ask

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the information in this article, don’t worry. It might seem easier to keep things as they are, but that’s just an illusion. Whatever the discomfort involved in retraining your staff to utilize automation, it will definitely pay off in the long run. You will find managing your sales team much smoother and effortless.

But if you want to make things as easy as possible, consider hiring a helping hand. The team at DemandZEN has helped hundreds of businesses like yours implement marketing software and get automation running. All you have to do is reach out and let us know. We’ll be happy to make automation work for you and your team.