How automation can increase your business' productivity

Outreach representatives of your company have to juggle a variety of administrative tasks like research, contacts, follow-ups and many other tasks every day. The time wasted here can be utilized in other activities that generate revenue. If the tasks are managed manually, it decreases their productivity. In fact, using automation tools will make it easier for your staff to automate menial tasks. This allows them to focus on generating more revenue.

Companies purchase sales software primarily with an intention in mind that they will be able to collect data that will help to inform the evolving strategies of the business and derive long-term growth.

Studies say that outreach representatives usually spend 21 per cent of their time dealing with emails. This is a considerable part of their time, almost a quarter of a day, which can be utilized in talking to prospects. This calls an urgent need for email automation. Nowadays companies are investing huge sums of money in technologies that radically improve sales productivity.

Tech is now virtually a competitive requirement and companies are also willing to invest in sales productivity solutions. This calls upon a question, which process should be automated first in order to increase sales productivity? The answer to this question depends on the company’s needs and current position in the market. But there some processes that can and should be automated first.

Voicemails

On an average, a sales representative spends about twenty-five hours in a month just in the process of leaving voicemails and messages. A voicemail automation tool can leave a perfectly recorded voicemail. Dropping recorded voicemails can be as simple as clicking a button. This can save the considerable time of sales representatives. A team of twenty people can easily save up to 500 hours by using a sales automation software.

Call logging

Call logs should not be an optional task when it comes to a sales call. Every call either inbound or outbound can be recorded by using a sales automation tool. The logs are automatically saved in your CRM which saves a lot of time and now the representatives don’t have to worry about making any mistakes in the manual call log.

List building

Earlier it was a very arduous process. The process of list building is a very time consuming but equally important task. This problem can now be solved by using sales automation tools. They make easier to search for relevant leads by a host of factors including the size of the company, technology used by them, funding, industry and more. It’s never been easier to target the right contacts at the right company.

Email drafts

In the sales department reps usually send a lot of emails and this can be a very time consuming process. Email templates can save reps a significant amount of time. Reps can use a combination of email templates with personalized messages. The time that is consumed by emails can be cut into half by using semi-personalized email templates. The time saved here can be utilized in doing other sales related work with high revenue generating potential.

Select relevant content

If you want to be quick in closing any deal you must have the right content with you.  It can be very confusing for sales reps to always know which content is most relevant. This process can now be automated by the help of tools that learn which message or which content works in a specific situation. It pushes the right content to the salesperson at the moment when they need it the most. These tools can be used to match the content on the basis of a variety of factors that include industry, stage, location and more.

Providing contextual data

It is possible to automatically provide representatives with a ton of contextual sales data if the telephony platform is integrated with your CRM system. This data can help the reps to close deals quickly and efficiently. The data can be sourced from many places including marketing referral source, buying history social media feeds, past communication, news about the company and a lot more.

Deliver call scripts

Intelligent sales scripts can help the reps in closing deals with leads. A sales acceleration system can provide all the essential information to the rep. let me explain this with an example, consider a case in which a lead calls the company through an advertisement for app hosting, reps could be provided with a list of all the current app hosting packages and promotions.

Follow-up tasks

There are many calls which require a follow-up task in the B2B sales. Sometimes it can be in regard to sending a deck of product, other time it’s contacting a lead’s supervisor. Important tasks might slip through the cracks if you do not log them up in your CRM. A tool that automatically logs up the tasks can save the time of the reps and also at the same time ensure the forward movement of the deal.

Using local numbers for dialing

Local presence is a feature that allows the reps to automatically dial leads from a number with the same area code of the lead. This is done to lift the connection rates and enable reps to spend more time talking to the key decision makers. Using a local area code increases your local presence which can dramatically increase your call connection rates. According to studies, there is a four times increase in the rate of the call connection.

Matching leads and reps

Companies can automatically route their inbound callers to the right sales reps department with the help of an advanced call routing feature. This frees up reps from answering the calls that are not related to their department and also saves the time that was earlier spent in transferring the inbound callers to the right department. These type of intelligent routing tools can match callers with the best available reps on the basis of the time of the day, reps’ skills and other factors. This also saves the time of leads and ensure them a great customer service experience.

Appointment scheduling

Automation tools can make the process of scheduling appointments a lot easier. You just have to log in the data and it will be showing a variety of times that you are available for the appointment. Now the prospect can choose the best suited time slot and the appointment is scheduled, it can't get more simple than that. It ensures the convenience of both sides.

Taking notes

Manually taking notes after every call can make a dent in the selling time of the reps. But also it is a vital need to keep and maintain accurate records of all the outcomes of different calls. There are many tools available that can save a lot of reps time by automatically logging calls outcomes. This gives the managers an advantage, as they can now gain a deeper view of the performance of the reps as well as the quality of certain lead lists. Some tools also allow the reps to either automatically log disposition or enable reps to quickly select between the dispositions from a list after a call.

These are just some ways productivity of a company can be increased by automating certain tasks. They can be further customized depending on your company's business model and use cases. If you need help with process automation, do get in touch.