Why you should automate your sales process

Statistics show that sales representatives spend, on average, only about a third of their time doing the actual job they are supposed to do – selling. So, how do they spend the rest of their day?A big chunk of their time is eaten doing manual but easy-to-automate tasks like crafting emails, scheduling meetings with potential clients, and data entry to name a few. As a result, the majority of sales reps record below-par productivity and this shows in the poor sales performance of the businesses they work for.Are you looking for effective ways to boost your business sales and revenue? A good place to begin is by automating your sales process.1. Creating and automating emails2. Lead tracking and monitoring3. Lead scoring4. Automated Reporting5. Other common business tasks worth automating

1. Creating and automating emails

When approached wrongly, emailing can be one of your biggest time consumers as a business owner or sales rep. The good news is that automating emails is easy as long as you do it right!While not every email can be automated, the majority, and especially those that you send frequently should. These include the welcome emails you send to new clients, reminder/follow-up emails for meetings, emails to thank buyers for completing a purchase, etc.Simple email autoresponders like ConvertKit, Aweber, or GetResponse should get this job done easily. If you want to automate your email correspondence even more, you might want to look at some of the more flexible email automation tools like ActiveCampagin and Drip. For a more holistic approach to automation you can also use marketing automation suites like HubSpot or Marketo for fully automated workflows.However, if you run a big business with a sophisticated record system consisting of prospects, leads, and active customers, you likely are working with more than one tool. Using for example a combination of HubSpot, Salesforce, and ActiveCampaign it might be worth while to sync your data in a single platform for easier management.

2. Lead tracking and monitoring

Being able to track what your prospects are doing on the web and on your website is one step in the right direction when looking to close more deals and sign up more new customers. Tracking helps you learn more about their specific interests which is a vital factor to determine the type of personalized pitch to send them. As we are providing a solution to find and monitor construction leads ourselves, we know about the importance of tracking and monitoring leads first hand.

A couple of useful tools to help you monitor the activities and engagement levels of your prospects and leads while visiting your online business include Google Analytics, and heat map tools like CrazyEgg or Hotjar. Using the information collected here, you can create effective strategies for communicating and influencing the purchase decisions of potential customers.

3. Lead scoring

One of the most efficient ways to boost sales and conversions is to categorize and prioritize your business leads. This helps to reduce the amount of money and time spent trying to convert low-quality leads and putting more effort into reaching the higher quality ones. The good thing is that you can easily automate your lead scoring process.Essentially, you will need a tool that assigns scores to all leads based on certain parameters like the action they take while on your website, their purchasing power, location, and gender among others. Most advanced CRM systems like Salesforce come with a lead scoring functionality to help you organize and rank your leads. Using the information you collect at this stage, you can focus on those that show the highest potential.

4. Automated Reporting

Salespeople have to generate reports for everything they do to justify their output and productivity to their bosses. As in any other repetitive task, automation is vital if a rep is to remain productive and achieve more during their workdays.But how can you automate reporting?One free tool worth recommending for this task is Google Data Studio, which lets you create and automate reports from a large number of different data sources. Though, a good CRM tool should also do the trick, as it usually lets you compile information to use in your reports – whether on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis. In the end, your work will only be to review and probably format and reorganize the information as needed.

5. Other common business tasks worth automating

Automated Invoice Generation

Most CRM software can track your exchanges with prospects and leads and even send an invoice automatically once you’ve updated your contract/deal as closed.

Automated Scheduling of Meetings and Appointments

The market is now flooded with automation tools to help you schedule meetings and send reminders when the date is due, so you never have to miss important appointments with potential clients.

Automated Call Management

You can now also automatically schedule and even record your calls using automation tools, provided you have the other person’s consent to do so (if you have to comply with GDPR). This type of software removes the need for multitasking during calls – for example, trying to note down important details. Later after the call is over, you can review it at your own pace and also use the recording as a reference point in future.Which tools are you using in your business to automate the sales process? We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.Learn more about sales tools on our blog. Learn more about CRM tools on our blog