Doing business in the year 2020 is like playing a game that is full of raging fires that one has to skip and deep abysses that one has to avoid. So, how do you play this game and ensure that your business comes out with a top score? Well, that is a question that everyone seems to be asking today, and let us get right into it. The best way to do business in this day and age is with two vital things – information and automation. This is where the technology called sales automation comes into the picture.
So what exactly is sales automation? It might seem like a small word or a combination of two small words, but this technology has the power to drive entire businesses and their teams towards fruition as far as goals and targets go. A sales automation process basically organizes the information and big data that has to do with your business, to create functions in the sales pipeline for each and every member of the team with carefully backed tools so that a conversion is made as far as lead, prospects and customers go.
There are many benefits of using the sales automation process. Here are the ones we like the most!
Better Organization:
When you are running a business, you are dealing with many leads and prospects on a daily basis. This is partly because this is the fact or side effect of running a business, and partly because we are living in the information age where there is an explosion of information and hence, opportunities with every click and on every possible channel. In such a case, the best case scenario to beat your competition would be to act on that information before your competitors can.
But how does one act on so much of information in a timely manner and how does one organize this information to help in engaging the lead or prospect during every step of the sales automation process? Further, how does one find the time to communicate the same to other team members at various steps in the same sales pipeline? The answer would necessarily lie in sales automation. With this tool or system, you can be sure that the information is being captured, relayed and used in a way that the prospect or lead would be wooed into a conversion every single time.
Efficiency at its Best:
When you employ a sales automation process, you are also ensuring that the efficiency becomes a part of your business culture. The information and the functions within the sales automation process would merge together seamlessly for complete efficiency. The notifications to each team member and each customer would go out in an efficient and automated manner, which means that no more time would be wasted on monotonous and mundane activities like sifting through data, coordinating with other team members who have done various tasks in the same sales pipeline and then compiling and sending one of the many hundred emails that have to go out in a single day.
This would make the work of your sales teams members that much more efficient and they would be more geared towards tackling core tasks like engaging better with the lead, prospect or customer in a way that would ensure higher and better results. When there is automation in place, there would also be little room for chaos and misguided efforts that would essentially be a drain on your resources.
High Quality Leads:
Everyone wants them, but you cannot get them unless you have turned over a dozen stones to find the right one housing the diamond of your dreams – in this case, the perfect customer. When you approach a customer, you have a list in place. This list would be the various parameters on which you would ideally approach a customer. When a customer is reached and only when he or she adheres to at least 6 or 7 things on that list, you would go ahead and engage with the customer. Now imagine how much time you have wasted. Instead, if you go with a sales automation, you can simply run these parameters through the automated system to form a framework based on which leads would be sought out and presented to you.
You can then save the time you would have spent in looking for these high quality leads manually, and you can swoop right in with the correct team members, positioned to take on the task of engaging these would be customers. In such a case, the sales automation process would also ensure that you do not miss out on any high quality lead since it would be automated to recognize and identify each and every lead on each and every channel as per the list. This would ultimately lead to better lead scoring and lead qualification as well.
Better Reporting:
Now that you have set the framework in place and you are on your ways towards engaging the customers long and efficiently enough to earn conversion after conversion, there is only one crucial thing that you must do. Now, this is something that many business owners routinely miss out on. When you automate your efforts, you must also gain analysis of the automation efforts and the framework on which it carries out its automated duties. This will help you understand what is going on as far as the sales automation goes.
A sales automation process would also give you better reports and analysis since every effort and task is run through the system and recorded on the same with a grade accorded to each performance. This would make it easier for you to understand the performance of every individual element, step and member in the sales pipeline process. When you have this analysis or understanding, you will be in a better place to take the right action for the process to be improved.