Sales Automation: How To Supercharge Your Sales Team

17 Aug Sales Automation: How To Supercharge Your Sales Team

Tracking leads, following up, analyzing reports, perfecting pitches, and outreaching are just a few of the responsibilities a sales team has ownership over. The workload is a lot for even the most seasoned sales reps to keep up with. When your team is more preoccupied with daily tasks than following up with potential clients, your business will struggle to gain consistent revenue.
This is where sales automation comes in. By using automation tools, your team has the time to finish their daily duties while still being able to focus on their main goals: making sales and hitting quotas.
Before you get overwhelmed reading the technical features of sales automation software, you’ll want to have an understanding of what it is and how it can work for your business. Learn the details of sales automation in this post and how your company can use it to supercharge your sales team.

What Is Sales Automation?

Sales automation is the process of using software to complete repetitive tasks that would normally be done by a human. This can include anything from sending follow-up emails to scheduling meeting times. Automating these processes not only saves your team time but also helps to reduce errors.
You’ll find several types of automation tools that handle all areas of the sales cycle. Tracking qualified leads becomes easier because you can automatically categorize them into different stages of the sales cycle. You can set up automation that immediately alerts your sales team a new lead is available and even assign specific team members to each lead, all without any extra work.
The tool can’t do this on its own, at least not yet anyway. You’ll still have to set up the right configurations when learning how to automate sales, but once the initial work is done your team won’t spend any more time on that task.
That’s why it’s important sales automation tools are easy to use so your team to take full advantage of them. When a tool is difficult to operate, your team will spend more time trying to learn how to use it than closing deals and building professional relationships. This would defeat the purpose of having a tool in the first place.
Knowing the sales process automation will only be useful if you know exactly how it can help your business thrive.

How Sales Automation Benefits Your Business

At the end of the day, the purpose of all automation tools is to increase your revenue by making the jobs of those who use them easier. But, learning the specific ways these tools can help will save you time and money from investing in the wrong tool or applying the wrong tool to the wrong area of your business.

Increases Efficiency

Tracking your team’s task using a project management tool is the best way to see results from an automation tool. Find out how much time your sales team is spending on researching, outreaching, actual selling, and other tasks.
Once you have a specific number of hours, you can integrate an automation tool in that area of the business. Compare the data and see how much time you are saving your team from doing menial, repetitive tasks. The efficiency your team will gain will help them become more productive and ultimately, make your business more money.

Keeps Reporting Consistent

Software only makes mistakes if it’s not configured correctly. If you’re worried about automating too much of your sales process and losing data, don’t be. Sales automation tools will keep a consistent report of all the information being inputted into the system. This is important for understanding what’s working in your sales process and what isn’t. You can also see which leads are being followed-up with and how often.
The best sales automation tools will also give you the ability to see which team members are using the tool most frequently and benefiting from it the most. This allows you to adjust your training methods for those who need more help or reassurance when using new technology.

Improves Reminders and Scheduling

There is no excuse for your team missing a sales call or double-scheduling two potential clients. Organization is key in sales and a good automation tool will help with that.
Automation tools will immediately schedule new leads with your sales team and assign specific members to the task. It will also automatically setup reminders for those team members at specific time intervals. Essentially, it’s a sales manager without a salary.

Reduced Your Cost per Acquisition

As the saying goes, time is money and with automation tools you’ll be saving a lot. Instead of paying for labor to organize data about your customers, your team will spend their time closing leads and building stronger networks.
Ultimately, this can have an indirect effect on your marketing team. When you are closing a higher percentage of your leads, you won’t need to spend as much obtaining new ones. Thus, lowering your overall cost per acquisition and saving your business money in the long run.

What Sales Tasks Can Be Automated?

Sales automation tools are quite advanced and can handle any number of different tasks. Getting the wrong one for your sales team will make their job harder, not easier. Learn all the sales automation ideas that can be automated so your team can get the most out of your investment.

Lead Qualifying

Figuring out which leads are worth spending your team’s time on and which ones are dead ends could save a significant amount of capital. Sales automation tools assign grades or numbers to leads based on their interactions with your website, their job title, company size, and other factors. This information allows your teams to prioritize the warmer leads first so all resources are directed efficiently.

Email Outreach

It can take a lot of time for your sales team to sift through emails, find contact information, and compose personal messages. Automation tools can handle all of those monotonous tasks quickly and easily.
You can set up automated email sequences that are triggered by certain interactions or inactions from the lead. This way your team only has to worry about responding to inquiries instead of trying to initiate them.

Scheduling

Managing a time to talk with the lead, assigning the team member who is available, and scheduling follow-ups can be a job all unto itself.
Tools can help automate this process by sending out invitations to leads that they can then book on their own. It can also auto-assign team members to tasks like calling a lead or following up without taking away anyone’s time.

How To Successfully Implement Sales Automation

Before you even download software, have a clear sales strategy in place. This will define the tasks you automate, the ones you don’t, and how your team will use the automation tool to close more deals. You’ll need to prioritize the right opportunities to get the best return on your automation investment. Getting a tool that qualifies leads when your team is confusing meeting dates isn’t going to help you close more sales.
To find what your team needs, build use cases for the tools you are considering. Talk with your team and find out where they are wasting time and which processes they find the most frustrating. From there, you can start to look for automation tools that will help with those specific tasks. Research the features each tool has and compare the data with what your team is communicating.
Once you have one picked out, you’ll want to start testing. Have specific goals in mind you’d like to accomplish and track each metric after you’ve implemented the tool. Once you find a tool that works and have tested it for several weeks, you can start scaling your efforts without fear of backsliding.

Using Sales Automation to Transform Your Results

Sales automation can be a huge boost to any sales team, allowing them to save time and resources on repeatable tasks. Automation can help with lead qualifying, email outreach, scheduling, and more. With Aktify, your team can automate their everyday SMS conversations with potential leads using robust data science and machine learning. Get started today to drive a 10X return on your investment and create authentic, meaningful connections with your customers.