What is Sales Automation: A Step-by-Step Guide

As a sales expert, streamlining the sales process is your ultimate goal. It brings maximum customer satisfaction and grows organisational revenues. However, this can only happen through sales automation.

But what is sales automation? Incorporating artificial intelligence, sales management software, and other tools to digitise the sales process is called sales automation. It eliminates the tedious and time-consuming manual sales processes. 

What are the Benefits of Sales Automation?

  • Speeds the sales process
  • Improves efficiency and performance
  • Increases the use of data in the business/sales department
  • Promotes customer satisfaction
  • Promotes good customer relationships etc

Your sales reps will focus more on selling instead of admin duties. So, how do you incorporate sales automation? 

Automate Sales Follow-Up

Have you lost a lead because you failed to follow up? Sales automation might be the solution you're looking for. Initiating a sales lead might be seen as a difficult task. However, following up on a sales lead is time-consuming and tedious. Also, the ineffective follow-up process might lead to the loss of potential prospects. 

In most cases, your sales reps spend days writing emails. This is not only tedious but time-consuming. Moreover, it doesn't demonstrate professional use of sales resources. Your sales reps need to do more than send the same email. 

How about relying on email templates? You don't have to write the same email over and over. A simple template with personalisation placeholders allows you to send emails quickly. With a simple call to action, this strategy can help you to convert your sales leads quickly. 

Besides, you can customise email send times. For example, following on your sales leads on business days is professional. Remember, your goal is to maximise the impact of your email, especially on weekdays when your customers are active. 

HubSpot tools to use:

  • Email templates
  • Email scheduling
  • Canned snippets
  • Tasks & activities
  • HubSpot for Outlook
  • HubSpot for Gmail
  • Simple automation
  • Deal-based workflows

Help Sales Reps Prioritise Outreach

As your sales reps will learn, not all leads are promising. They need to figure out who's interested and who's not. In this case, pursuing interested leads will be the ultimate goal. But how do you determine interested customers and those just looking around?

Lead scoring is a scientific approach that helps to segment leads as cold, warm, or hot based on specific inputs. However, you'll waste most of your resources in lead segmentation when it is done manually. 

Automation has been a productive technique in lead prioritisation. For example, sales reps are automatically notified when a lead is classified as hot. As a result, they will only undertake the final process of initiating follow-ups and closing the lead. 

Lead prioritisation saves time and helps eliminate unnecessary 'noise' in the lead generation process. Only potential customers are pursued. 

HubSpot tools to use:

  • List segmentation
  • Standard contact scoring
  • Company list segmentation
  • Company scoring
  • Contact-based workflows
  • Company-based workflows

Automate Lead Distribution

Creating awareness about your products is not enough. It would be best to assign the leads you'll be getting immediately to increase conversion rates. In most cases, tips are left unassigned, which leads to a loss of potential sales. 

However, as you assign leads, it's essential to avoid double-hitting some leads and avoiding others. At least, it would help if you had a formal way of assigning the leads. It's not only about optimum utilisation of resources but also covers a broad scope. 

Sales automation cuts response time. It also allocates leads equally. You want each asset to contribute to the sales team. You can assign leads by deal value, company size, industry, and territory. 

This sounds simple. However, you can easily duplicate lead distribution without sales automation software. To avoid such challenges, sales automation and lead distribution tools are necessary. 

HubSpot tools to use:

  • Contact-based workflows
  • Deal-based workflows
  • Tasks & activities
  • Conversation routing

Automate Day-to-Day Sales Tasks

As discussed above, utilising your resources is critical to the sales department's success. In this case, sales reps should concentrate on developing customer relationships and closing deals. 

In many organisations, salespeople waste precious time by concentrating on administrative tasks. Time-consuming duties such as monitoring opportunities, assigning accounts, setting reminders, and manual data entry hinder their real business. 

Here's some good news: Digital automation tools like HubSpot can automate admin tasks such as invoice generation and data entry, which helps your sales reps to concentrate on closing deals. 

The tasks discussed above belong to your sales reps. However, you need to make it easier and allocate your assets where it matters. For example, automating admin tasks emphasises the role of sales reps in chasing leads and closing potential deals. 

HubSpot tools to use:

  • Deals
  • Calling
  • Products
  • Quotes
  • Meeting scheduling
  • Company insights
  • Simple automation
  • Contact-based workflows
  • Workflow extensions
  • eSignature
  • Salesforce integration

Automate Sales Reporting

As you continue to chase leads, you need to focus on potential reports that can polish and enhance your sales department. This can only happen with efficient sales reporting process. Sales reports include; wins/losses, custom, revenue, lifecycle stage funnel, and contacts reports. 

As you can see, your salespeople are still handling unnecessary manual duties. You need to automate sales reporting by eliminating manual collecting, organising, and analysing sales reports. In addition, at any given time, your sales reps should be interacting with potential customers to increase sales conversions. 

Manual sales reporting is time-consuming and prone to errors. Automatic sales reporting gives your salespeople time to focus on potential leads while providing accurate reports. 

HubSpot tools to use:

  • Sales reporting dashboards
  • Sales productivity performance
  • Deal pipeline
  • Goals
  • Custom reporting
  • Hierarchical teams
  • Products
  • Calculated properties
  • Recurring revenue tracking
  • Forecasting

How Can DigiKat Assist in Your Sales Automation Process?

Are you struggling to manage your sales through manual processes? DigiKat is your sales automation partner. We'll help you manage your prospective sales leads through HubSpot tools. 

Our focus is to assist you in eliminating manual sales processes that are time-consuming, tedious, expensive, and overly repetitive. Instead, we want your sales reps to do their job; chasing and closing deals!

Are you fascinated by our sales automation tools? Contact Us today for more information.