Regardless of the industry your sales reps are working in, they need to keep their focus on the most profitable customers to beat their sales quotas. As the competition grows in the ever-fluctuating business world, the sales representatives begin to realize the importance of being at the top of their game. That is why more and more sales professionals turn to sales automation tools to help them improve their sales efforts and increase the productivity to the highest levels. Sales automation promises to improve the efficiency of your sales team through automation of your key business operations. Specifically, sale teams can benefit from sales automation tools in a few ways:
360-degree Overview of your Prospects
It is crucially important for your sales representatives to have a clear vision of who their customers are if they are going to meat and beat their sales quotas. Advanced sales force automation is capable of collecting and safely storing the most important data on potential and existing customers. For example, in www.bpmonline.com/crm/sales-automation-software you can get access to valuable information that includes, but not limited to the industry, business size, location, noteworthy events, customer’s career history etc. Both B2B and B2C sales reps can get a better understanding of your customers, understand their needs and preferences to maintain a constant dialog and build long-term relationships. For B2B sales professionals, another important issue that needs to be addressed is identifying key decision makers as only 65% of sales professionals can access these influencers. Generally, the B2B buying group consists of at least 5 people. It would be a complete waste of the sales rep’s efforts if they were targeted at the wrong person. That is why you need to have a sales automation system with excellent contact management tools. Moreover, having a 360-degree overview of your contacts will enable you to map out the company’s buying group on a visual diagram and then identify their relationships, influence level, and loyalty to your company. Such chart can become one of the most important tools while making the necessary steps in the sales process.
Automated and Sales Process
Statistically, the companies with established automated sales processes are experiencing an 88% quota attainment while businesses with a formalized sales process observe 18% higher revenue growth than companies without one. At the same time, 60% of work tasks require an agile approach towards process automation while 40% of more routine activities can be dealt with through traditional business process management systems. Obviously, leveraging business process management tools in the sales automation system can lead your sales team to more productive results. Effective sales automation systems are equipped with powerful lead and opportunity management tools that will help your sales team close more deals at a higher pace. To help sales reps deliver on this goals, you must arm them with sales automation software that includes business process management as a core capability, to support their activities with actionable data. Overall, such functionality will enable you to boost sales productivity by:
- Automating of routine sales operations to free up time for activities with higher priority, such as generating quotes and meeting with prospects
- Testing different approaches to identify and liberate sales bottlenecks
- Replicating the processes of your most successful salespeople and applying them universally
- Teaming-up with other departments to design and introduce processes that bring marketing, service and finance departments into the loop at the right time to help close a deal
- Pursuing continual improvements to permanently introduce and automate new processes so as to keep up with the rapidly changing business environment
Field Sales and Mobile Sales Automation
Mobile automation solutions are taking the world by storm. The ability to access valuable information regardless of the user’s location or a gadget they use is the reason of its popularity. Taking into account that your sales representatives spend a huge chunk of their time in the field, it’s obvious that a powerful mobile automation system with field sales tools is a must. Consider this: almost 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that the sales representatives are unprepared for the first meeting. Therefore, your sales team definitely needs to have a mobile sales automation at hand. That way, your salespeople will be fully prepared for meetings, as they will get access to any data on the progress of their sales efforts, lead information or any relevant presentation that might come in handy during the negotiations. The necessity of having a mobile sales automation in place is backed up with solid facts – businesses that leverage mobile automation software report an up to 35% increase in achieving sales quotas, which resulted in improved sales performance for 59% of sales professionals.
Obviously, top-notch sales force automation solutions are equipped with various essential tools for sales forecasting, reporting, document management, business process management and so forth. However, you would be able to achieve truly stellar business results if you merge your marketing automation, customer support automation and sales force automation on a single platform of CRM system, as all of your core teams will be in sync with each other to improve the efficiency of your key business operations.