What is Sales Automation and Why Your Business Needs It

Introduction

The most important thing in sales is more sales! To get more sales, organizations must transform their sales processes to run like a machine that brings in leads and converts them into customers. Sounds great, right?

This can be done through sales automation solutions. Businesses can automate sales processes to improve their efficiency and close more deals. With the right sales automation tools in place, they can streamline the sales cycle and close deals faster.

If your organization still manages sales processes manually, it’s time to consider an automated sales system. A system that can transform your operations and automate sales processes to make them effective and efficient.

Let us dive deeper.

 

What is sales automation?

Sales automation is a process that involves using software and technology to automate repetitive and manual tasks. These tasks may include follow-ups, scheduling appointments, maintaining records, generating proposals, and more. The main aim of sales automation is to minimize manual efforts, time, and the risk of errors. With automated sales, organizations can boost team efficiency and free up sales reps to focus on more important tasks.

Sales automation involves using solutions like CRM and CPQ tools to bring efficiency in various tasks such as follow-up emails, setting up customer meetings, drafting quotes, fetching data etc.

 

Advantages of sales automation

According to the 2020 report by McKinsey, organizations that adopt sales automation report higher customer satisfaction, efficiency improvements, and sales uplift. Let us understand in detail about the benefits that automation in sales brings to the adopters:

 

Increased productivity

Sales involve various repetitive and tedious tasks that consume a lot of hours of the sales reps. Adopting sales automation tools can help them automate these time-consuming tasks, allowing them to complete their work quickly and more effectively. With sales workflow automation, sales reps can not only complete their tasks speedily but also focus on multiple items at the same time. This automated sales process boosts their productivity and allows them to concentrate on more important tasks, like closing deals.

 

Improved lead management

When it comes to lead management, sales reps need to take care of innumerable tasks, such as messaging, segmentation, and nurturing. Sales automation helps them streamline these tasks by organizing and segmenting leads and managing outreach messages. Sales reps enjoy an automated sales pipeline that reduces manual effort and makes things smooth.

 

Better customer experience

Customer experience improves when customers get timely and personalized responses. Sales automation platforms help sales reps deliver bespoke messaging to customers at the right time, when they request some information or perform an activity, like a form submission. Through this automated sales communication, customers feel more satisfied and contented.

 

More sales opportunities

Sales automation solutions act like 24/7 sales reps for customers by providing them with relevant information, capturing their details, segmenting them as marketing-qualified or sales-qualified leads, and other sales-related tasks. This helps organizations generate more sales opportunities and, thus, more revenue.

 

Enhanced reporting

Sales automation platforms track the performance of sales reps, identify trends and gaps, and high-performing campaigns. This automated sales analysis helps sales reps generate accurate and real-time performance reports. Through these reports, the organization can take better decisions, adjust strategies, optimize workflows, and improve sales forecasts.

 

How sales automation works

Sales automation has two key factors at its core

1- Data

2- Technology

A combination of these factors (data and technology) enables automation in sales for organizations. Here is a close look at how sales automation works:

 

Data is gathered and updated

Sales automation tools like a CRM solution capture, record, and manage customer data. This data is constantly updated and supplied to sales reps at different stages of the sales cycle. All this is done automatically as different business assets are synced together. CRM solutions ensure that sales reps have the right information at the right time. For instance, when a sales rep is having a first-level talk with a prospect, he or she can gain information like designation, job role, organization size, and business objectives through CRM.

 

Data is analyzed

Data collected from various sources in the CRM is analyzed to generate performance reports and relevant insights for the sales reps. Modern sales automation solutions come equipped with AI and ML technologies that help analyze sales pipeline and customer activities to predict trends, gaps, success rates, and the risk of lost opportunities. For instance, AI can predict the chances of a lead converting into a customer by analyzing the lead engagement and intent.

 

Tools generate new documents

Sales automation software helps sales teams generate new documents, such as quotes, proposals, emails, reports, and other sales-related documents based on customer data. The content is generated automatically in no time which could take hours to complete if done manually. For instance, a CPQ tool can generate customized proposals for a customer comprising all details, like, organization name, size, location, product requested, pricing, and more.

One thing that is clearly understood is CRM and sales automation have a strong relationship. Let us understand this relationship below.

 

CRM and sales automation

CRM acts as the foundation of sales automation for businesses. It holds everything from contact details, meeting notes, deal stages, and communications. CRM then updates and analyzes the data to automate various tasks, such as drafting emails, delivering newsletters, creating meeting notes, managing deal stages, and various other tasks without manual intervention. As CRM automates sales processes, sales teams benefit from:

• Centralized data management
• Better efficiency in task completion
• Higher consistency
• Real-time updates
• Improved accuracy
• Higher win rates

 

 

 

 

5 key reasons businesses need a sales automation solution

Businesses have come a long way since the days of files and diaries. Though many of them are still using Excel sheets and Word documents, sales automation tools like CRM and CPQ are changing how sales are managed. Here are 5 main reasons why a business needs sales automation.

Enhanced operational efficiency

An automated sales process accelerates repetitive and labor-intensive tasks, reducing the dependency on human intervention. These tasks consume a lot of time and effort, including follow-ups, drafting proposals, creating reports, and other data entry-related tasks. By minimizing the time spent on these tasks, sales reps can focus on high-value tasks, resulting in better efficiency and maximum output.

 

Consistency

Sales automation brings the required consistency and uniformity in operations, ensuring customers enjoy a standardized experience across the organization. Standardized processes bring accountability and reliability within the sales team. Organizations can benefit from consistency in:

• Proposal and quote generation and management
• Sales pipeline management
• Follow-up emails and messages
• Reporting and analytics

 

Business scalability

As businesses expand, sales processes are required to match the scale and meet the growing demands. Without streamlined systems in place, sales reps may face inconsistencies and missed opportunities.

That is where sales automation come into action. Sales automation tools streamline and automate sales processes to match the pace of the growth of the organization. With automated sales processes, sales teams can handle large amounts of leads and customer data, without increasing dependence on manual efforts.

 

Improved customer relationship management

CRM tools automate sales processes that help organizations manage customer interactions more effectively. Using sales automation, team members can access customer data and preferences to personalize conversations and offers. This not only improves the interaction between sales reps and customers but also enhances the entire sales journey. Ultimately, it fosters strong relationships which leads to repeat sales and referrals.

 

Detailed performance insights

Sales automation solutions help organizations dive deeper into various aspects of the sales processes by generating insights and reports. Using this automated sales analysis, organizations understand what’s working and what’s not. They can learn:

• Whether customers feel satisfied
• Whether sales reps are performing as per standards
• Whether deliveries are being made on time
• Whether sales are growing

 

 

 

 

Sales automation types that businesses can deploy

Sales automation touches every part of the sales process to make it streamlined and automated. Here are some ways that organizations can implement sales automation:

 

Sales Outreach Automation: Sales automation solutions generate and deliver outreach messages to leads and potential customers without manual intervention. These messages are sent to prospects based on their activity or behavior. Furthermore, they are also customized to make the messages more engaging and personalized.

 

Automated Sales Pipeline Management: This is among the top examples of automation in sales. Sales automation platforms manage the entire sales pipeline by updating deal stages, segmenting leads, assigning sales reps, and setting reminders for timely follow-ups.

 

CRM Sales Automation: Customer relationship management or CRM collects and organizes customer data, such as conversations, meetings, page visits, form submissions, and more. All this information is synced to provide relevant insights and reports that help sales reps communicate with customers better.

 

Automated Sales Reporting: Sales automation tools generate detailed and accurate performance reports, including graphs and charts without manual input. These reports comprise various data points that present a comprehensive picture of the sales processes.

 

Sales Workflow Automation: Sales involve various workflows, such as approvals, drip campaigns, scoring, and segmentation which are easily automated using sales automation solutions. These tools create triggers that initiate different steps in workflows automatically when a prospect hits them.

 

 

How to implement sales automation

 

1- Evaluate your current process: The first step in implementing automation in sales is to evaluate your current processes. Businesses map out their sales processes, outlining each step or stage right from lead generation to closing the deal. This step offers a comprehensive view of the existing sales process that needs to be automated.

 

 

2- Find opportunities for automation: After the outline is created, businesses must identify steps or tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming. Also, understand if these tasks can be done without manual input. Once identified, prepare an automation sales plan that will define what you want to achieve.

 

 

3- Choose the right sales automation tools: When everything is planned, it is time to find and select a sales automation platform or multiple tools that your business achieve the power of automated sales. You can select CRM tools, CPQ solutions, and other automation tools as per your plan.

 

 

4- Train your team: Once the tools are selected, it is important to use them well to realize their full potential. Your organization must ensure that everyone understands how these sales automation tools work and how to use them effectively.

 

 

5- Monitor and optimize: As the sales automation solution implemented, this is the time to monitor the sales process and make refinements continuously for improvements and growth.

 

Sales automation best practices for businesses

To get the most out of sales automation, businesses should adopt some best practices that will help them accelerate automation and reduce delays and errors.

 

Constantly test the processes

Though automated sales processes offer several advantages, it is not a silver bullet to every problem. Businesses should constantly check and test the processes to ensure automation is bringing improvements rather than setbacks.

 

Monitor at every step

It makes sense for businesses to monitor every step of the sales cycle from lead generation to closing deals. The focus should be on improving the sales process through automation and fine-tuning strategies to keep them aligned with the business goals.

 

Review reports and insights

Keeping an eye on performance reports can help businesses track whether sales automation has brought benefits and at what level. It will also help them understand if the automation strategies are working as per expectations and if sales reps are making the most out of it.

 

Choose scalable tools

When implementing sales automation or improving automation strategies, it is important to choose scalable tools that not only meet your expectations but also scale as your business requirements grow and evolve.

 

Final thoughts

Sales automation, if done correctly, can bring a variety of benefits to organizations like reduced costs, better efficiency, and improved customer experience. This is a win-win situation for both organizations and customers.

With automation in sales, sales reps do not need to focus on administrative or mundane tasks, instead, they can work on building solid and ever-lasting relationships with customers. These relationships will generate repeat business and bring referrals as well, leading to more revenue opportunities.

If you are looking to automate product configuration, pricing calculations, and sales quotes, get in touch with our experts and see how Cincom CPQ can benefit your sales team.

 

FAQs

1- What is the sales process automation?

The process of automating the sales process by implementing sales tools is known as sales process automation. The main aim is to automate repetitive tasks and save the time and effort of sales reps.

2- How does sales email automation work?

Sales email automation is the process of automating the delivery of sales emails to customers. It works on triggers; when a customer fills in a form or clicks on a button (trigger) the email is automatically sent without human intervention.

3- What are some popular sales automation software?

Some of the popular sales automation software are Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zoho. These tools enable automation in sales for smaller organizations and bigger enterprises.

4- What is sales pipeline automation?

Sales pipeline automation is streamlining the various stages of the buyers’ journey that customers go through. Sales automation tools automatically track, segment, and manage customers through the pipeline.

5- Why is sales automation important?

The adoption of sales automation brings higher customer satisfaction, efficiency improvements, and sales uplift.

6- What challenges might businesses face with sales automation?

Sales automation involves implementing new tools and techniques which can be a bit tricky to learn and adapt to. This might lead to hiccups and delays for the sales reps.

7- Does sales process automation replace sales reps?

No, sales process automation amplifies the performance of sales reps and helps them achieve more in less time while reducing the chances of errors and delays.