The DriveSales™ | What exactly is sales force automation? [FAQ] and why it is important to salespeople!

Whenever a company ventures out to expand in any field, they look for efficient employees who can actually generate a massive amount of profits for the business and are hundred percent committed to their work.

Similarly, every sales company looks for talented and dynamic sales reps who can handle every situation

That might possibly arise while dealing with the clients. However, if such opportunities arise where your sales reps do not work up to their maximum potential, then what does this mean for your business?

Evidently, it will mean that a part of your human resource investment is going into unconventional directions that might actually not need that much attention that is being given to it. Certainly, these ‘extra works’ include email writing, data entry, regular internal meetings, call scheduling, and so on.

This automatically depicts that your sales reps are undoubtedly putting their all into the work but not what they were hired for. This shows a deviation in the selling process which directly reflects in the company’s finances and growth.

Thus, it is absolutely critical that you manage your company’s work with a proper structure and strategy so as to ensure that your sales reps are actually engaged in selling rather than other work that can be handled smartly using advanced tech.

To help with the same, sales force automation is the way to go.

Sales force automation:

Let us begin by first understanding what exactly is sales force automation. It is a rather simple and easy concept.

Sales force automation is any tool-based software, strategy, or process that structures a sales rep’s workflow and generally provides them more time to communicate with the prospects. Sales force automation tools are essentially a part of CRM(Customer Relationship Management) software and usually often focus on opportunity bagging and contact management.

Hence, sales force automation is an important method to augment and structure the usefulness of CRM software. It not only effectively manages the customer interactions but also streamlines and structures the data during the buyer’s journey till the deal is finally closed.

Now, the question to be asked in this situation is how it helps you out? The answer is fairly very simple and straightforward. Sales force automation decreases the load of managing and structuring the data entry your sales reps are actually responsible for by efficiently automating as much of the entry as possible.

Sales force automation features and applications:

1) Reporting automation — The teams can get the report for the day, week, or month every single morning which can help them structure and plan their day. From the top priority leads and individual status of deals to the sales rep productivity and assessments, every report and information is available.

This helps in saving time and ensures transparency and accountability amongst the sales reps.

2) Sales lead automation — For a sales business, leads are the most important resource. There might be situations with the traditional databases where your leads are just waiting to be explored in the huge chunk of data.

Thus, instead of having your sales reps manually figure out the data, you can configure and automate this setting to your CRM software. This will make sure that your leads are not forgotten.

3) Lead prioritization automation — As discussed above, the majority of the leads just sit in the databases waiting to be found. A lot of a sales rep’s time is spent in sourcing leads. That is a difficult task in itself. And if you even do it, the next challenge that comes is to figure out which leads to seek out first.

Thus, it is important to let the technology work its magic and ease out the process for you. Not all leads are time-bound and the ones that are, have different timelines. So, it is imperative that you automate your entire prioritization process so that your top leads get your attention first.

4) Record automation — A very important step for every business is to properly keep and manage records of all their deals and business contracts. Thus, a sales rep spends about two hours to close the deal and almost another hour to keep the records up-to-date.

This includes creating contacts, tracking information, logging and completing follow-up tasks, and editing the records with further improvements.

If this process is followed after every session of a deal, you can count yourself how much time your sales reps spend in this less-essential direction. He viable solution — automate the entire process.

5) Sales collateral automation — Sales collateral is a very essential and crucial part of any sales business. Not only does it build the credibility of your business, but it also tells your clients why they should invest in your product or service and how it will help their business grow.

Usually, sales reps spend majorly a third of their time and resources in searching or creating content for their prospects. Almost every sales company keeps its content across a few repositories, yet very few sales teams actually invest in improving the content access and effective utilization.

In order to save time from this arena, you need to keep the content that is easily available across the software that is simple and intuitive for less tech-savvy employees to work with.

6) Meeting scheduling automation — This is the favorite part of the sales reps as it is the domain they were hired for. But, scheduling a meeting and managing the calendar is undoubtedly frustrating and boring. Automating the scheduling and organizing process is quite simple and easy and moreover, it reduces time wastage.

Now, as an effective SALESPERSON! We can do three things from here.

1. Not ignoring the opportunity and blaming the situation for revenue loss.

2. Taking important notes and going back to revisit your sales strategy with the growth mindset.

3. Reaching out to The DriveSales™ if you need any specialized help for sales.

To conclude, what you choose to think also provides some idea of your development as a consultative salesperson. It is something like Siva Devaki quotes “Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.”

#thedrivesales