By Yhordan Serpentini | October 28, 2022
As your small business grows into a larger company, you will have to find new ways to manage it. Gaining traffic and closing deals will become something of the past for you, the owner, as different departments—like your sales team—will take over for you, but you will still have to manage them to ensure their efficiency and effectiveness. One of the ways you can help your sales team(s) is through sales automation. If you are unfamiliar with the term, then here is what you need to know about sales automation.
What is Sales Automation?
Simplistically, sales automation refers to any tools, strategies, databases, or software that your sales team(s) is using to make their ability to close deals less time-consuming and repetitive. The technology or software used helps create automated systems for sales tasks, which significantly reduces the manual labor initially required from your sales team, resulting in faster and simpler working methods that will create more efficient and effective tasks, while also supplying accurate data.
On top of providing accurate customer data and information for better understanding and optimized marketing strategies, sales automation will also help you or a sales manager better understand the performance of your sales team—including areas they are succeeding and areas where improvement will be needed.
Additionally, your sales team needs to focus on the labor beyond sales automation, such as sales follow-ups, updates on the sales pipeline, and automation training. Failing to do these can result in losing potential sales, missing out on consumer and leads data, and a confused team.
Types of Sales Automation
Sales automation is a broad concept that spans a multitude of different marketing strategies, systems, and tools. There are a few sales automated strategies that we have written blogs about—if you are interested in them, visit our blog page!
The following include some of the most common types of sales automation:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Automated sales prospecting
- Automated scheduling
- Automated lead scoring & prioritization
- Automated reports
- Email automation
- Deal management automation
- Automated RFP management
Where Does Sales Automation Work?
Sales automation works in various areas of the sales process. One of the best areas for automation is records and data entry, as it will essentially create, record, collect, and manage important sales data, such as contact information, without having the tedious work put on the shoulders of a few employees.
Moreover, this automated system works great with CRM, as they both relate to the research and management of consumer data; however, it doesn’t end there. Pre- and post-sales is another great area for sales automation since it identifies certain ways your sales team can ultimately improve customer retention. This includes consistent follow-ups, summaries, service and product feedback, and call transcriptions. Having fast, data-collecting automation will free your sales team to focus elsewhere.
The following are some of the best areas for sales automation:
- Follow-up
- Sales management (reports & analytics)
- Sales calls (call transcriptions)
- Talent & qualification management
- Sales forecasting
- Lead management
- Sales pipeline management
Features & Benefits of Sales Automation
Sales automation comes with a multitude of features and benefits. We already discussed one of its benefiting features—automation, of course—but there are other features, too. Sales automation provides your sales team with task management—alerts of upcoming sales or tasks, providing guidance—accurate data for better lead management, automated forms of communication for broader and more effective methods of marketing, and automated data entry.
These features provide significant benefits to you, your sales team, and your business, with the most obvious being less time-consuming and tedious work for your sales team to manage. Moreover, you’ll also gain an accurate database, better customer retention, improved customer insight, a more efficient and effective sales force, and more opportunities for leads and closed deals.
Sources:
- Gell, Chris. “What Is Sales Automation: An in-Depth Guide.” Dialpad, https://www.dialpad.com/blog/sales-automation/.
- “What Is Sales Automation? The Definitive Guide.” Zendesk, 4 Oct. 2022, https://www.zendesk.com/sell/features/sales-automation/#how.
- “What Is Sales Automation? Strategies, Tools, & Examples (2022).” ActiveCampaign, 29 July 2022, https://www.activecampaign.com/sales-automation.
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