The sales process, or the sales funnel, involves tracking customer relationships from beginning (prospective customers) to end (customers). The various steps can be time-consuming and involve a lot of data input and analysis.
However, thanks to modern technology tools like CRM software, many parts of this process can be automated, thus saving you valuable time and resources. Following are tips on how you can automate various aspects of the sales process and additional benefits of doing so.
Why automate the sales process?
The sales process can often feel never-ending with all the steps and follow-ups required. Automating the process should be a key part of your business, as the following perks can have a distinctly positive effect on your bottom line.
- It saves time. Sales representatives need to spend their time on building relationships, nurturing leads,and closing deals — not manually entering data or performing cumbersome administrative tasks. According to State of the Inbound 2018 Sales Research, nearly 20% of sales reps say they spend upwards of two hours a day on manual data entry, which is time that could be spent closing deals.
- It avoids human error. As humans, making mistakes is bound to happen. Unfortunately, sometimes what seems like a small mistake can result in a business losing thousands of dollars. Sales automation can avoid errors sales representatives may make when entering leads into a CRM, grammar errors in emails and more.
- It increases efficiency. In a world where we have to work smarter, not harder, to thrive, every minute counts. If managers and sales representatives are spending hours a day on administrative tasks such as developing status updates and manually creating reports, they are not working efficiently. Sales automation helps managers better lead their teams and helps sales representatives better manage their time.
[Read: How to Choose the Best CRM Software]
Sales automation helps managers better lead their teams and helps sales representatives better manage their time.
Tips for automating the sales process
There are several tasks that need to be completed throughout the sales process that take up valuable time. To get some of that time back, consider the following list of expert-recommended tips for automating the sales process:
- Utilize email templates. Sales reps send a lot of emails! The use of email templates can take the thinking and human error out of crafting introduction and follow up emails from scratch. Save time and get the attention of your leads with a semi-personalized template that can easily be reused and repurposed.
- Schedule appointments. A CRM software such as Salesforce offers the functionality to easily schedule appointments by providing leads with a list of available dates and times.
- Leave a pre-recorded voicemail. There are various automation tools available that allow users to create a library of custom pre-recorded voicemail messages that sales reps can program into their voicemail with just one click.
- Log call outcomes electronically. Put away your yellow notepad and stop taking notes. Instead, use an automation tool that keeps an accurate record of call outcomes.
- Match leads with reps. If you’re manually emailing leads to your sales team on a round-robin basis as they come in from your website and phone, consider using an automation tool that automatically routes emails and inbound calls to the correct representatives or departments.
- Easily build lists. Throw out the phone books and stop doing Google searches to build your lists. A solution like Datanyze makes list-building easy by allowing you to seek out the best leads for your business by categories like company size, industry that can easily be exported and loaded into your CRM.
- Create presentation templates. Your marketing team should create a variety of templates for each industry you serve for your sales team to easily edit and use as part of their presentations.
Now that you have an idea of how to automate your sales process, learn how to generate sales leads for your business.
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