Top 3 Sales Automation Strategies for Success
Sales automation makes the sales process simple so that reps can spend more time actually selling. If your team is debating on whether or not to adopt sales automation into your overall strategy, ask your reps the following questions. Have they ever spent too much time searching for a piece of content they wanted to send to a prospect? Have they wasted time manually adding leads into your CRM? Do your sales reps feel like they’ve ever put an opportunity at risk because they forgot to follow up? If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, you may need to seriously consider automating parts of your sales process.
Companies that are growing quickly are more likely (26.2%) to have a sales automation strategy in place. The entire organization will benefit from sales automation as it allows reps to engage in activities that drive revenue. Let’s dive into the top 3 sales automation strategies for success.
What is sales automation?
Sales automation is defined as the mechanization of manual time-consuming sales tasks using sales automation software and other digital technologies. Basically, its main purpose is to automate sales tasks that are done manually and slow down sales velocity. The most common benefits of automation include increased sales productivity, accuracy, and efficiency.
Also, sales automation systems streamline sales tasks so that the sales process is consistent across the entire team. For instance, data that has been collected in the sales meeting will automatically be added into the CRM. Customer details like contact information, the specific product or service they’re interested in, and more, can be pulled directly from the sales presentation or meeting materials and be instantly added into the CRM. Think about all the time this can save sellers! Now that we know a bit more about sales automation, let’s take a closer look at the top 3 sales automation strategies and tools.
1.Personalized sales experiences with automated
data collection
One of the best sales automation strategies is to use automated data collection to create a personalized experience. With the proper sales technology, all customer data and insights can be fused into your CRM for streamlined sales tracking. For example, all information that’s shared via input fields and ROI calculators will be automatically added to your CRM. As a result, this saves dozens of hours of manually inputting information into the CRM, enabling a team-wide increase in sales efficiency.
Furthermore, when a lead interacts with emailed content, the sales enablement platform showcases these real-time engagement insights. These insights help you better understand each prospect’s needs based on their content engagement. Next, let’s take a look at an example of automatic sales insights. A prospect spent time engaging with the value calculator your sales rep included in their presentation to determine the ROI of purchasing the product. The sales rep can see all the numbers they input into the calculator such as how many employees they have, their ARR, and more. Based on this information, the rep can better tailor their next interaction with the prospect to fit their exact needs.
Additionally, being able to customize automated communication — like email templates — makes certain all sales materials are humanistic. This helps create meaningful human connections to further improve the sales experience with each prospect.
2. Efficient and automated sales email follow up
Follow up emails are crucial to sales success. Forgetting to follow up with a prospect can cost you the sale entirely. In fact, sales reps who follow up in less than 24 hours receive an average 25% reply rate. And as time passes, so do your chances of further connecting with a prospect again. However, the right sales automation software will make following up a simple and quick activity. So, you’ll never have to worry about a team member forgetting to send a follow up email or sending one too late. Now, let’s take a look at using sales enablement software to build these automations.
Typically, after a meeting with a prospect, sales reps want to send them personalized and valuable information from the presentation. The best sales enablement platform will automatically display all the slides presented in the meeting after it ends. With a click of the mouse, the sales rep can select or deselect which slides they want to send to the prospect. From here, they can send the email directly from the sales enablement platform. This is a quick and efficient way to automatically follow up with a prospect post-meeting. The coolest part? The email will appear in the recipient’s inbox under the work email address.
3. Increased workflow speed with sales automation tools
There are many ways to improve workflow management, but sales automation tools like SMTP for Microsoft Office 365 integration allows sales reps to speed up their workflow. How so? For starters, this connection between your email inbox and sales enablement platform eliminates the tedious act of switching back and forth between platforms. Hey, listen, these minutes add up to hours that could otherwise be spent selling and increasing your top line!
Additionally, the meetings you add to your Outlook calendar automatically add and sync to the sales enablement platform. This enables streamlined workflow management without the headache of tech silos. Instead, sales reps can plan, perform, and manage all their communications with a prospect in one place.
Final Thoughts
Sales automation is critical to increasing the sales team’s efficiency and productivity. Without automation, sales reps spend valuable time engaged in manual administrative tasks. According to McKinsey, more than 30% of sales activities can be automated. Spanning all industries, organizations must leverage sales automation resources to remove tedious tasks from the sales process.
Find out how Prezentor can enable your sales team to work smarter, not harder, with sales automation strategies.