IS UNDERSTANDING SALES AUTOMATION SO CRITICAL?

Updated on :September 28, 2023
By :Zebravo

If you are a sales executive willing to strike a deal on the first go, you must have a sufficient number of influential contacts. Also, you must possess the patience and inbred skill to convince a prospective client. But does it guarantee that you will be successful in your attempt to sustain the potential client? Well, the answer is no. 

Exponentially speaking, time management can become a big hurdle in the way of satisfying customers. Interactions via phone calls, text messages, emails, and personal meetings are all traditional practices to gain a potential understanding of the customers, their marketing goals, and needs. 

The technology is getting more sophisticated with the introduction of digital transformation trends. This has allowed sales managers, executives, and reps to adopt innovative tactics and root for the next-generation sales management tool to engage more customers and strike productive deals. 

One of the futuristic trends that have played a crucial role in streamlining and escalating sales management and activities is sales force automation software. The incredible application has simplified sales reps and executives' various burdensome tasks to enhance their efficiency and business productivity.  

What is Sales Automation? 

When it comes to the sales processes, numerous tasks require a repetitive functioning that cannot be completed by a single human mind in a technical sense.

Sales automation is the computerization of such time-consuming, manual sales tasks by taking the aid and support of artificial intelligence (AI), software, or other digital tools. 

In simplified terms, rationalizing the tedious sales process tasks for any company's sales team's smooth functioning is the sole function of sales automation.

Technology is necessarily a boon to our generation, and having a practical knowledge of the applicability of these technological advances is what exactly sales automation does.

On top of everything, sales automation saves your business from escalating waste of time and money, the fuel to your venture.

Besides turbocharging your business's efficiency, sales automation accelerates your sales process, uplifts your sales reps’ productivity, maintains consistency of the sales data with your organization, permits the sustainable use of scarce resources, and much more. 

But to unleash the benefits of sales automation, get improved visibility of the sales team, and access real-time actionable insights, you must integrate your sales activities with customer relationship management (CRM) software. This helps you to manage the sales territories, inventory, and orders. Also, you can conduct sales forecasting, and with increasing the up-selling and cross-selling activities.

Why does sales automation matter?

advantages of sales automation

Why so much about sales automation? Is its understanding worth it? Is it so critical to know about sales automation? Yes, it is. This section tells you why.

Anyone related to the complex, time-consuming process of sales processing has gone through one or more of selling woes like-

  • *Spending hours to add leads in the CRM
  • *Instead of calling leads based on best fit, you stumbled upon getting it in alphabetical order
  • *Forgetting to follow up became the reason for your huge financial loss
  • *Unable to figure out 'the' right time to meet
  • *Locating a specific deck or customer testimonial ate up your very precious time

Well, you just got an answer to why sales automation and its fundamental understanding is essential. 

By now, we have made out that sales automation is an inevitable resource for a business that wants to succeed. It is just more than a vendor buzzword.

Here are some unavoidable benefits that sales automation serves to your business:

IMPROVE YOUR REPORTING

Employing sales automation to your business ensures :

  • Sales and marketing aspects of your business reboot and pace themselves up like an okay- oiled machine.
  • You are improving your sales forecasts by knowing the number of your performers' calls to close a sale.
  • Addressing a prospect in a better manner 
  • Keeping track of your promotional emails
  • You can view detailed records of previous calls and email activities. It helps you to keep track of your best-performing email templates. 
  • It helps you prioritize sales engagement tasks, which is guaranteed to boost your sales percentage.
  • They are maintaining a record of the reactions that prospects are making towards specific actions.
  • Identify the needs of your ideal customer and the sales strategy that fits them the best.

TIME AND EFFICIENCY

The majority of respondents showed their inclination towards the tools to save time and improve efficiency. This should come as no surprise.

Sales automation provides you with creative options for dealing with customers. 

Sales automation as a time-saving tool can test various messages until the best template is found and decided. 

Take, for example; the phone reps would not have to waste their valuable time crafting and constructing emails if they have well-tested templates for that process. 

With sales automation, you can practice A/B testing, testing diverse subject lines and signatures to conclude what works best for your clients. 

You can also reduce manual dialing, which has a direct positive impact on the rep's productivity. 

Another supreme advantage of using sales automation is that with the 'automated phone sales software,' businesses can quickly drop prerecorded messages, dial phone numbers, and keep track of your business/company's phone activity. 

IMPART EDUCATION

providing education

Sales automation can also play a vital role in educating customers and salespeople with comparatively less effort. They get better exposure to different processes with automation tools.

Emails and other communication get automatically paired with specific call tasks through the use of sales automation.

The messages are set on a specific schedule or triggers, and therefore no one has to take special pains to remember the sending timeline of these messages. 

You can also interrupt the automatic email and modify the drafted message according to a specific prospect to broaden your customization horizon.

You do not have to sit for hours in front of your screen and try working out the trial and error method.

You can make sure what your customers need to see and when they need to see your inputs.

After a significant period, if you wish to target an entire market, you can do so by automating your communication settings.

You can align your communication strategies in congruence with your marketing goals, specific to each account or group of stores.

LEAD SCORING AUTOMATION

Implementation of automated lead scoring will lead your marketing and sales team to thank you for that.

The struggle is associated with sorting through the prospects of scoring each lead manually. Sales automation does that error-prone and time-consuming work for your team.

Sales automation can also function as a diversification tool, as there is always ground for different conflicting ideas when other reps are allowed to score leads.

Every rep has an idea of its own describing the image of a qualified lead. However, if you employ sales automation for your business, it will be easy to define disqualifications and make necessary modifications.

You get a holistic perspective about your scoring factors, and updating them routinely, can keep your top-tier lead criteria up to date. 

The saved time from manually scoring leads can be used by spending quality time on the right leads.

With the automated sales process, you can also send customized messages to leads with appropriate quality scores.

What benefit do small businesses gain from sales automation?

FOLLOW UP REMINDERSfollow up reminders

After you chat and finalize a deal with someone, you do not have to worry about remembering the next meeting's date or time.

With quarterly targets and many incoming leads, it might seem a bit hectic to remember the follow-up schedule. However, with the tool of sales automation, this is not difficult anymore.

You can either get a follow-up call or an email with sales enablement content.

After you chat and finalize a deal with someone, you do not have to worry about remembering the next meeting's date or time.

With quarterly targets and many incoming leads, it might seem a bit hectic to remember the follow-up schedule. However, with the tool of sales automation, this is not difficult anymore.

You can either get a follow-up call or an email with sales enablement content.

EMAIL MARKETING

You can set your automated sales process to deliver a stream of informational email regarding your customers' product information and content. 

The emails continue their delivery until a mark of interest is shown from the other side. 

This can work for customers interested in your products but do not want to purchase anytime sooner.

DEMO SCHEDULING

If your customers are interested in a free demo session of your product, you can easily link your sales software to the demo schedule for picking up a demo at any available time slot.

If the scheduling process seems more straightforward to the prospect, then it may lure them into booking an appointment at any given time.

If your scheduling sessions go cumbersome, then you cannot execute your plans on a triumphant note. 

TEMPLATES

When you are trying to establish an impressive rapport in front of the prospects, a haphazardly written template can downgrade your impression. 

Writing a message is an inevitable process after communicating with the clients to book a demo or purchase your products.

Typically, sales reps make slight variations in the standard email and send it out to different customers. However, if you create impressive email templates, it will save your time to modify each email before sending it out to different sales process stages. 

Using sales automation can insert the name and customize the introduction to reflect a current, ongoing conversation. It will save you time, and you can make sure that you crack the deal.

Final thoughts 

Sales automation has gained momentum in the current scenario. It empowers a business organization to honk the sales pipeline, get optimal lead control, improve the customer retention rate, conduct more accurate forecasting, etc. In short, it puts a business in a commanding position. Also, implementing the Sales Force Automation Software or CRM Software becomes the icing on the cake, stimulating new opportunities, and streamlining several sales activities.   

If you plan to invest in an optimal tool to automate your sales, you can select the best free and open source sales force automation software such as SuiteCRM, Open CRX, Bitrix24, etc. In addition to these, there are various other options, including SalesForce CRM, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, Close, and more. The buyer's guide provides comprehensive details about the software. You can read it before purchasing the software. 

Zebravo
Zebravo

Zebravo is a top-notch and leading SEO Company based in the United Kingdom with a global presence. The organization provides best-in-class SEO tools and services to improve website ranking and drive more traffic. The independently owned SEO agency also specializes in PPC marketing, content and social media marketing, website designing, and more.