Everything You Need To Know About Sales Automation
Updated: Oct 27, 2021
Sales automation refers to using tools and software to replace manual work, using artificial intelligence tools and other digital tools to effectively manage and execute business activities.
Following up on so many customers, spending a lot of time on leads, issues arising during the sales process, calling leads, prospecting leads, checking heavy and many files to find customers’ documents, and all other administrative tasks is something of the past. You can automate the sales pipeline and spare time for other developmental activities as well. With sales automation, you got all those activities covered at once under one central management system.
Are you a manager or a sales rep? You are tired of overwhelming responsibilities daily, weekly, and monthly. Don’t worry that sales automation got you covered with all those roles; these can be done in just a minute and only with sales automation.
We have asked a couple of hard questions, but they have a solution—sales automation. So get in on it today.
Why you need Sales Automation
• Captures sales leads
• There is accuracy and consistency in data produced
• Saves resources
• Timely response
• Produces quality work
• Increased productivity
• Good performance
• Good customer and satisfaction
• Delivery on time
• Increased efficiency
• Accuracy of the sales process and also make it shorter
Understanding the sales automation process refers to the system of finding answers to problems, fixing solutions for the whole sales process so that sales reps and sales managers can give more time to prospects and customers while giving less time to administrative tasks but to be majorly done by automation tools which makes the sales process uniform.
Sales automation is important for any sales business because it streamlines the whole sales process making it easy for everyone else to understand and also helps business managers to find out some lagging gaps that can be fixed there and then to increase productivity and also boost up sales, increases customer retention through further nurturing, following up and fostering.
One type of sales automation software or tools may be enough for your business. For example, CRM software to do all activities like arranging and tracking tasks, logging prospect activity, securing data and information, combining with other tools and feeding data into them, following and nurturing customers and leads. Alternatively, you can use other software and tools to accomplish the aforementioned tasks.
Closing a sale manually for some sales reps and managers feels like a burden; it seems to be so hard because it involves many demanding activities. Making and receiving phone calls, sending out and receiving text messages, sending out emails and replying to received ones, scheduling a meeting to see clients; this sounds like a lot of work. This is the sole reason why it is advisable to incorporate automation in the sales process.
Related: Marketing Automation - All You Need To Know; Including Marketing Automation Software And Tools
Manual data entry might slowly bring down your business performance and productivity due to lots of time spent studying customers, their interests. Moreover, as the business grows and expands, that kind of administration, engagement, and data handling might no longer work for you or become a little provocative.
Check Out MonkeyPesa's Affordable CRM and Business management tool.
As the business grows and explodes out managing and handling accounts data, sales chances, records, clients, leads, prospects, administering the sales process, stalk taking of products and services might become a little bit overwhelming to your employees, especially if everything is being done manually.
Saving money and time are valuable assets for your business, and this what sales automation exactly does; every entrepreneur wishes to save and get their business off the ground, but they have little knowledge about sales automation; I hope this piece of writing delivers you the best knowledge about sales automation and how best it can help your company grow.
Key Areas That Call For Automation
According to Vendasta,
• Needs assessment during client prospecting; using sales automation during needs assessment is vital because it helps you find out the client's needs, interests, and likes to deliver something in line with what they want.
• Managing clients’ orders; with sales automation, you may not need sales reps to track and approve those orders because sales automation automatically does that, thus quickening the process with the customers’ needs fulfilled.
• Tracking and administering/ keeping an eye on leads; sales automation follows up leads automatically, tracks their actions or whatever they are doing on your website, how many times they have checked in your website, and all the other activities that take place there.
• Marketing automation; this gives a strong foundation to your relationships, reduces manual work that has to be done by the marketing teams, and also saves much time that can be spent on other activities.
• Sales pipeline activity management; this helps to deal with manual data entry, streamlines communication within a business organization, and makes running other business functions smooth and efficient.
Sales Automation For Sales Representatives
Sales representatives and your sales team have a lot of tasks to complete. Sales automation will greatly improve their performance, efficiency, and productivity.
According to a study conducted by pace productivity, most sales reps spend a lot of time on administrative tasks, and only 22% of their time is spent on selling while in the field. This is so little compared to what is expected (50% of their time), this brings in a difference in the time expected to work and the time actually worked.
Where could sales automation come in handy?
1. Prospecting - If you have a LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator account, you can set up a custom filter using your combination of criteria. You will choose how frequently the email alerts come in, i.e., Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. A list of prequalified prospects will be availed to you based regularly. (LinkedIn only sends you new profiles, so don’t worry about seeing the same names again and again.)
2. Lead Qualification - The more information you have about your leads, the easier you will help them along the buyer journey. This information can range from the industry to social media activity. Again, tools like LeadSpace and LeadGenius can come in handy here.
3. Contacting - Away with manual additions of contacts. First, set up workflows with your marketing software to automatically create and edit records for leads who meet certain criteria. For instance, maybe you want to define a lead as “Qualified” if they have X title or Y role and have watched a product video or visited your pricing page.
Second, make sure you’re integrating your various lead sources with your CRM. That might be webinar participants, survey respondents, new email subscribers, event attendees, Facebook Lead Ads respondents, and so forth. If a native integration isn’t available, use Zapier (a third-party tool that seamlessly connects your apps).
4. Email Templating - Email marketing is so relevant if you use it right. To increase response rates, personalize 30-50% of the content but no more. Create email templates and avoid copying and pasting messages.
5. Sales Calls - Platforms like Gong, Wingman, Avoma, and Chorus pull out key pieces of your conversations (like which topics you covered, the action items you discussed, and which competitors came up) and even give you AI-powered insights about the opportunity.
Sales Automation For Managers
1. Reporting - You don't need to spend extra hours taking screenshots and drawing up analytics charts to reflect the work done by the team under you. You could send a daily stack ranking to your salespeople and a weekly revenue report to the director of sales suing QuarterOne.
2. Leads Management - Manually assigning leads is hectic. Choose your CRM perfectly to assign leads by geographic territory, company size, vertical, or a combination of criteria.
Furthermore, you can employ lead scoring automation. Lead scoring software uses demographic and behavioral data to determine how qualified a lead is, so salespeople know exactly which prospects to prioritize.
MonkeyPesa CRM
MonkeyPesa CRM is in the bracket of an all-in-one business automation tool. From sales marketing, automation or customer support. With the devotion to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), MonkeyPesa is a user-friendly tool. The pricing, features, analytics, easy-to-interpret dashboard make it ideal for you. It is the best CRM in Rwanda.
The CRM aids businesses to get prospects, insights, converts more leads to become customers and manages with customers across several channels. At the same time, they go through the selling process.
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The services offered include; Sales pipeline management which helps companies to sell faster and get more prospects into the business. The invoicing and billing system allows track time, generating invoices, Pro-forma invoices, quotes, and getting much more money faster. And the real estate system helps real estate companies to acquire property, landlord management, tenant and the necessary automation.
MonkeyPesa CRM Features:
Team collaboration
Contact management
Pipeline management
Data security
Insights, analytics and reports
Human Resource and payroll
Inventory and stores
Bulk SMS and emailing
Accessible Communication is a giant step into maintaining good relationships with clients. Strong relationships generate more sales and support, improve client satisfaction, and can even reduce business expenses.
A closed buyer is just as vital as a new lead. MonkeyPesa CRM allows you to create charges based on a prospect’s information, schedule calls for them at any point in time, take notes based on our interactions, and easily save and organize that data for future use. In a nutshell, you are moving a sales lead or prospect from one stage of your sales funnel to the next.
The MonkeyPesa CRM allows you to add contacts manually or via a file upload. Because the goal is to have streamlined communication in the sales process, you do not have to open another platform to make calls with your clients and prospects. The dashboard enables calls. In addition, all these interactions are captured in case you need to make clarifications and references.
Social Media is a very relevant tool of sales and marketing today. Every passing day, there is a new social media channel your clients and prospects sign up for. MonkeyPesa provides a centralized location for all your social media interactions — tweets, posts, reels, videos, comments, replies, Direct Messages.
Final Word
Your business needs sales automation to grow much more revenue and profits; you need an efficient, timely response, accurate records, accurate accountability, and any other business follow-ups; however, this can only be achieved if you are using sales automation.
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