In many ways, a business is only as successful as its sales department. A skilled sales team will track down valuable leads, build prospects’ trust and, ultimately, close deals.
However, this process involves many time-consuming processes. It would be better if teams could cut out the manual tasks and focus on what really matters: making sales. This is where sales automation comes into play.
But what is sales automation, and how does it help your sales representatives? More importantly, what automation strategies can help boost your lead conversion rate? Let’s find out!
What is sales automation?
Sales automation software is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and is primarily used to carry out manual tasks on behalf of the sales team. It’s an umbrella term for a variety of different tools, including lead generation, CRM, sales analytics and email marketing.
Thanks to a type of AI-powered technology called machine learning, which can learn and adapt independently, these tools can carry out sales tasks without human oversight.
Automation tools can handle a variety of tasks throughout the sales pipeline, including:
- Collecting data for lead generation
- Automating follow-up messages for new leads
- Handling data entry, such as inputting customer contact information
- Scheduling sales calls with leads
Automation tools create more streamlined processes by cutting out manual activities and enhancing the sales efficiency of teams. What’s more, sales teams will be thankful to cut out tedious tasks. They’ll feel more enthusiastic about their work and achieve better results.
Of course, sales automation software isn’t just designed for automating manual tasks. Tools can also provide useful data analytics, helping you to improve the sales process. Teams can learn more about individual customers and tailor their offerings more effectively.
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6 Sales automation strategies
Hopefully, you now know the answer to “What is sales automation?”. There’s no denying that automation tools are handy. But like any other technology, they require the right approach to be used effectively.
With that in mind, here are some automation strategies to get you on the right track:
1. Make use of prospecting features
The process of gathering leads manually takes time and often involves setbacks. Your sales teams will need to pursue outreach tactics, such as cold calling or emailing.
Often, potential leads are unresponsive, and messaging may even be blocked by email providers. By making use of sales automation’s prospecting features, teams cut this process down considerably.
When prospecting, a sales automation platform scans the internet for prospects who are likely to be interested in a brand. They then produce a list of potential leads for sales teams to pursue.
When using this feature, sales teams should decide how regularly they want to receive new lists. It’s useful to have a long list of leads, but make sure that teams aren’t overloaded.
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2. Set up a lead-scoring system
An efficient sales team always knows the best leads to pursue. But without automation, this process is much more difficult. Sales personnel will need to research and assess each lead individually. This process can be very time-consuming and involve multiple administrative tasks. This means less time spent on actual selling.
The best software for lead generation can carry out lead scoring for you. The software will look at customer data and evaluate it based on your lead-scoring criteria. It will then gauge their interest and overall likelihood of converting.
To discover high-quality leads, you’ll first need to establish a lead-scoring model. This should include the following information:
- Demographic information: What is the age and gender of a lead? Where are they located?
- Online engagement: How has a lead interacted with your brand? Have they signed up for sales emails, viewed content on your site or enlisted in a free trial?
- Lifestyle information: What sorts of careers do your target customers have? What are their interests and hobbies?
Once you’ve established your scoring system, you’ll need to choose a target score. When leads meet or exceed this score, your automation tool will recommend them to sales teams.
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3. Enhance your lead nurturing
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Once you’ve identified a list of leads, it’s time to pursue them. Lead nurturing can take time, as your teams need to build relationships with customers. Usually, this process seeks to sustain regular communication by sending follow-up emails or sharing interesting content. Luckily, sales automation can enhance this process thanks to personalization.
It’s no secret that modern customers expect experiences that are tailored to their needs. As many as 89% of decision-makers believe that personalization will be critical to their success in the next three years. Consider how you can automate personalized experiences within your buyer journeys.
Some tools have customer segmentation features to separate leads into groups based on factors such as their funnel stage or level of interest. You can then send highly targeted leads based on their position in the customer journey. What’s more, tools can automatically send messages at key stages, such as when a lead moves from one segment to another.
Consider the different stages within your journey and the kind of content that will enhance customer satisfaction. Previous campaign data, analytics insights and competitor campaigns can help you find messaging that lands.
4. Monitor your success
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Lead nurturing can be a process of trial and error. Sales automation tools bring data and increased accuracy, but you still need to verify you’re on the right path.
The best automation tools feature automated reporting. This enables sales teams to track the successes and failures of their lead nurturing campaigns. To take full advantage of this feature, it’s useful to identify a set of metrics that indicate whether you’re on track to meet your sales goals. Below are just a few examples of metrics that you might track:
- Email click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of customers who click links within email campaigns. A high CTR indicates that content is engaging your leads and you’re successfully boosting email clicks.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The amount of money your business spends to earn new customers. Successful lead nurturing tactics should take less time and resources and lower the CAC.
- Conversion rate: The percentage of customers that complete a set of predetermined actions. As customers warm to your brand, they should progress through the sales funnel, and the number of sales conversions will increase.
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5. Utilize chatbots
In the past, chatbots have notoriously had a reputation for being unhelpful. Luckily, in recent years, the technology has improved significantly. Modern chatbots are powered by AI and machine learning, and they’re capable of having intelligent conversations with customers.
Users can input questions, and a bot will use data from various sources to provide intelligent responses.
They’re a form of sales automation technology that can help sales teams in numerous ways. For instance, a chatbot could improve lead generation by collecting contact details. The technology can also help you close deals, using customer data to recommend potential products.
Sales representatives should consider how they can utilize chatbots within the buyer journey. This might involve A/B testing different ways of presenting your bot to garner maximum user interactions. For example, does a bot load when a user lands on a page or after they click a button?
6. Enhance your outreach
Modern customers are everywhere, using email, social media and smartphones. To capitalize on this, your business should be similarly omnipresent. Of course, managing multiple platforms at once is difficult for sales reps. The same difficulties don’t apply, however, to sales automation software.
Sales managers should consider how automation can help them build more effective outreach strategies. Listed below are some examples of how you could reap the benefits of automation.
- Set up email automation: Software can set up email automation that fires based on specific user behaviors. For instance, you might establish a trigger that sends a welcome email when a user creates an account on your site.
- Integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM): Your sales intelligence can be integrated with your CRM software to log all interactions with customers. This information can help you gain a more complete view of sales funnels.
The top sales intelligence tools can even alert sales reps when customers perform certain actions.
- Create more personalized messaging: Data from your CRM tools can be used to target individuals across different platforms. This way, you can automate highly personalized messages via social media, email and SMS.
- Gain detailed analytics: Most automation tools come with built-in sales analytics software. As you carry out outreach campaigns, you can collect valuable audience information and campaign benchmarking data. You’ll know how to better interact with qualified leads and carry out more effective campaigns.
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Make the most of automation
Sales automation software isn’t going away anytime soon. Instead, more and more businesses will be reaping the rewards of this transformative technology. And, of course, sales won’t be the only department; automation is elevating almost every aspect of business. To stay ahead, it’s best to embrace this technology sooner rather than later.
Here, we’ve answered the question, “What is sales automation?”. We’ve also looked at some essential strategies to help you implement automation effectively. Why not reflect on your existing sales tactics and see how the technology can help you?
One thing is certain, once you introduce automation, you’ll never go back. So, get automating!
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