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Inside any sales process, several tasks can be considered repetitive but are essential to keep the cycle running smoothly. Such tasks are often distributed within the team, to share the load.
Aside from being repetitive (and some would even say boring sometimes…), these tasks take time and efficiency out of everyone who needs to perform them. The interesting thing is a lot of these actions don’t even really require human interaction at all, but if they are not accomplished, the business can not keep running.
In this context, Sales automation tools take care of all these time-consuming / potentially boring tasks that are performed daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. This has a direct positive impact on the efficiency of the sales team that can now focus on more revenue-generating activities.
In this article, we will define in more detail what Sales Automation tools entail, why are they so important and what kind of benefits you can expect from investing in them.
What are Sales Automation tools?
Sales automation tools enable the mechanization of time-consuming, manual sales tasks by using software, artificial intelligence, and other technologies and digital tools. The main goal of Sales Automation tools is to manage responsibilities and tasks that would otherwise have to be performed by the sales team on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
The beauty of Sales Automation tools is that it can take the pressure off your sales team and lighten the sales processes or workflows. Therefore, teams have more time to focus on activities where their added value is increased. For example, here are a few areas of sales workflow that can be partially or fully automated :
- Lead scoring
- Lead delivery
- Appointment scheduling
- Sales proposal
- Call/email logging
- Follow-up emails
- Customer onboarding
- Invoicing
Why are Sales Automation tools important?
Sales automation tools are key because it benefits businesses in multiple ways. Whether we are talking about sales representatives themselves or activities that can lead to revenue generation, sales automation has an answer to boost them all.
Below, a few reasons why sales automation is important to any business :
- It increases the performance and productivity of sales teams.
- It boosts efficiency.
- It accelerates and improves the accuracy of the sales process.
- It ensures that lead generation is extensive, avoiding that some of them fall through the cracks.
- It reduces response time, which leads to an increase in customer satisfaction.
- It streamlines the quality of time-consuming sales tasks.
- It allows efficient use of time for sales teams
- It keeps sales data accurate across the entire sales organization.
All in all, the importance of sales automation lies in its ability to benefit such different aspects of the sales process and free up time for sales representatives.
Sales Automation tools benefits
Sales automation tools have the potential to change the way sales teams function and execute their strategies. They can leave behind activities that are non-productive yet essential to the well-being of their sales cycle. If you are not convinced already, here are a few of the benefits that can be expected out of implementing Sales Automation tools :
1. Lead generation
With sales automation tools, it is easier for sales teams to define and filter criteria to meet the category of potential customers. With said filters, lead generation methods have higher chances of conversions. Indeed, salespeople will easily target relevant prospects and can now focus on addressing them with an even more targeted and effective communication.
2. Customer Information
From Sales Automation tools comes a great deal of statistical information that can be critical to the Sales team. Data can be leveraged to gain more knowledge about the industry they operate in and the customers they address. Such information can help in understanding the needs and requirements of customers in a much easier way.
3. Document creation and editing
From reaching out to a lead to going through the sales funnel and signing a contract, documents are always involved. Whether we are talking about sales presentations, demos, or even contracts creation, editing and personalization take time and effort. Luckily, Sales Automation tools can also help with these and help to create said documents.
For example, Bricks.ai helps salespeople quickly generate hyper-personalized sales collateral, leaving salespeople with much more time to focus on value-added activities.
4. Call Analysis
When on the phone with a client, a lot of valuable information can be overlooked. Nowadays, some tools can record, transcribe and analyze commercial calls. This frees up times for sales representatives as they do not need to review the call manually and can move on to their next appointment.
5. Emailing
E-email has a big role in maintaining strong relationships with customers. However, it also happens to take a lot of time to keep track and fulfill this activity. From a Sales Automation tools perspective, not having to manually handle such communication is extremely valuable. Nowadays essentially any type of email can be handled by automated systems: follow-ups, greetings, reminders, and even lead generation. From the first contact with a prospective customer to the payment of their first bill, communication can be almost fully handled with sales automation software.
6. Reporting
In Sales, keeping everyone in the loop is essential. However, by now you can probably guess this can be quite a time-consuming process. CRM handles automated internal communication with email and reports. Sales representatives do not need to spend time keeping their managers in the loop as it just happens automatically.Tools like noCRM.io make life easier for salespeople with simple data entry and for managers with sales activity reports to effectively manage a sales team.
7. Accuracy
This is perhaps one of the key benefits of Sales Automation tools, and maybe automation in general. When working with software, there is no human error, and data is always accurate. For example, sales representatives spend a lot of time in the field and can be dealing with an extensive product variety. In this case, it is difficult to keep up with prices. Automation centralizes prices and salespeople can therefore offer the correct pricing for any configuration of products in a blink of an eye, which helps close deals quicker.