One of the most common mistakes in selling products or services is wasting time on simple and repetitive tasks. The solution to this problem is the automation of sales, which allows you to eliminate unnecessary activities and significantly increase the team’s efficiency.
What are Sales Automation tools?
Sales automation is a broad term that describes a related set of applications that automate sales workflows. Sales automation tools are software solutions for sales teams to increase efficiency, consistency, and success. Most software vendors offer users a platform to create custom workflows that automate the sales process from start to finish.
Once a particular workflow is shared, it can be reused by other team members. Sales enablement can be a great way for a company to improve its pipeline. When properly designed, a sales-oriented platform can increase revenue and enhance a company’s overall pipeline.
The sales automation tools automate sales-related tasks such as lead generation, sales analysis research, hyper-personalization, email marketing, contact management software, etc. In addition, this automation software helps businesses manage all tasks by seamlessly integrating options with other applications. Therefore, consider using automation software to increase sales closer.
What is sales process automation?
Automation of sales processes is a series of activities aimed at increasing the company’s efficiency by implementing appropriate tools and systems that allow for the automation of many processes – both internal and external. Thanks to this, every entrepreneur can save a lot of time on manual coordination of work and take advantage of solutions that generate more traffic in business. Online sales automation tools are used by both small companies taking their first steps in the world of e-commerce and large corporations with an established position among the competition.
What do we automate?
Daily, salespeople perform many activities to lead them to win a sales opportunity. Management systems, such as CRM, help them organize their work. CRM systems allow you to automate many different areas, e.g.:
- collect emails from many mailboxes;
- store leads from many sources;
- enable efficient flow of knowledge and proper coordination.
Some of them are also equipped with the ability to automate specific commercial activities. In this case, the CRM system performs specific activities for a person.
However, if sales automation is to be efficient and bring measurable benefits, we should only try to automate some things. The automatic machine will work primarily with simple and repetitive activities that are performed many times.
The organization’s sales process can help in selecting activities for automation. Next, you should look at the activities undertaken by each of the salespeople and identify recurring areas – these are the ones worth trying to automate.
Online sales automation – how does it work?
Increasing market competition and greater awareness of potential customers make it increasingly difficult to gain their trust. They pay attention not only to the quality of the goods or services offered but, above all, to the time of order fulfillment. In outdated business models, the human factor was responsible for the organization of e-commerce at every level. Still, thanks to the automation of sales processes, its participation can be reduced to a minimum. Implementing support for ERP systems in the form of, e.g., BaseLinker allows, among others, to instantly create sales documents, synchronize inventory and prices, and send messages to customers on a predefined schedule.
CRM system in sales automation
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems help sales department employees organize their daily activities, strive to acquire new customers and conclude further transactions.
Through CRM systems, automation can be introduced in many different areas, such as, for example:
- collecting leads from various places;
- coordination and effective transfer of knowledge;
- managing emails from multiple mailboxes.
Some CRM systems can also automate the individual activities of salespeople, performing activity data for them.
However, it should be remembered that sales automation works best when we use it for simple activities repeated many times – then we will gain the most benefits and effects. In order to identify activities that are worth improving in this way, it may be necessary to look at the entire sales process in the company, the activities of the salespeople themselves, and the most common activities among them.
Benefits of using sales automation tools
There are too many to list! But we have tried to limit ourselves to only three advantages that create the so-called success triangle for any business and its sales departments:
You can significantly improve your business reporting process.
How can this advantage help you increase sales? You can improve your sales forecasts by knowing how many calls and emails your salespeople need to close a deal. You can choose the best way to follow up with potential buyers, knowing in advance whether they opened your letter or clicked on the link. You can conduct A/B testing to determine which email templates work best for your target audience. These are just some of the questions that sales automation software can help answer to improve reporting, increase sales force efficiency, and tailor your sales strategy to your ideal customer.
You can save a lot of time.
Optimize your workflows! For example, if your salespeople close deals by calling customers, you can improve their efficiency by freeing them from the hassle of creating and sending out emails. You can save time with automation tool features such as updating CRM records, collecting lead data, and completing required paperwork. Some platforms offer email templates with proven high open rates that can be used at various sales funnel stages. You can also use software that automatically updates customer data. This way, you will save time sending emails or making calls to contacts who are no longer interested in your offer, have changed contact information, or have duplicate leads in their list of leads. The list of possibilities is simply incredible!
You can quickly and efficiently qualify leads.
You can focus solely on prospective leads by automating lead qualification with dedicated tools. Why spend extra time manually sorting contacts if there is an opportunity to optimize this process? It doesn’t make any sense! You’ll get more value from investing the time saved into more important tasks by ensuring sales reps are busy nurturing qualified leads and segmenting their email campaigns based on qualification metrics.
Top 10 sales automation tools
Calendly
For larger teams, it gets almost impossible to manage at one specific time. Calendly helps you a lot in this regard. The team members set their own calendars, and Calendly automatically chooses the best suitable time for everyone. Calendly can also create online bookings. The basic automation features of Calendly are:
- It integrates with office 365, Google, and Outlook
- It integrates with CRMs
- It is user-friendly
- It is optimized for all devices
The pricing plan of Calendly is quite simple. It offers a free plan where one user can use one calendar. The Essential plan costs $8 per user for a month for unlimited events. The Professional plan costs $12 per month for each user.
Growbots
Millions of decision-makers and influencers back up this platform. The lead generation tool of Growbots helps you manage email drip campaigns and integrates well with CRMs. The hot leads can easily be converted into sales professionals. The eBay features of Growbots are:
- Hot leads can be converted into sales professionals
- Improves campaign results by 40% within one month
- Provides instant contact lists
- A/B testing
- Access to a vast database
- Targeting specific companies and profiles
Growbot offers an All-in-one plan to all users, which costs $199 per month, where you can use all the features offered by Growbots.
Hubspot Sales
Hubspot is considered the best automation tool. It provides a cloud-based system with ease to the users and helps you connect with your team members in an effective way. The variety of tools helps the sales teams of each organization at every stage, starting from identifying the leads to closing the deal. Hubspot Sales come with CRM functionality which helps you manage the clients efficiently. The benefits of using Hubspot Sales are:
- Follow-up emails sent to get the leads at the right moment
- Accurate notifications about leads clicking the links etc
- Automated data entry
- Engagement history in detail
- A user-friendly application
An individual salesperson can use it for free to access essential functions. The paid plans start at $40 a month to $3,200 a month, depending on the availability of functions and users.
Yesware
If you have a tight schedule and cannot spare time for sorting out meetings, preparing demos, and reaching out to clients, then you should consider using Yesware. It allows you to improve your performance and manages all your tasks in one go. The best features that Yesware offers are:
- Integration and installation in one click
- Quick meeting scheduling
- Seamless integration with salesforce
- Meeting templates (Customizable)
You can access email tracking, personal templates, reports, presentation tracking, and analytics for $12 by getting the Pro version for each user. The premium version costs $25 a month, including template sharing, team reporting, campaigns, role-based permissions, and a centralized billing system. The Enterprise version unlocks all the pro features for $55 a month.
Pega Sales Automation
It is a powerful software that strengthens your sales cycle and increases productivity to boost revenue. The hot leads are identified using lead scoring, which helps the sales process. The key features of this application are:
- Identifying the key opportunities for reselling and repeating the purchases
- Personalizing the deal generation
- Email and Outlook integration
- Linkedin partnership
It offers reasonable packages starting from $140 a month. Another Intelligent package costs $170 per month for each user. The top Engagement packages cost $240 per month for each user, which allows you to unlock all the premium features too.
Autoklose
Autoklose provides an all-in-one sales platform that helps you in generating quality leads. The basic aim of Autoklose is to prevent all sorts of sales teams from wasting their precious time making cold calls. It also has the feature of real-time contact management, email tracking, email campaign management, and contact management. Autoklose offers the features like:
- Integrated third-party providers for identification of hot leads
- Integrations with Office 365, Novell Groupwise, and also Salesforce
- Shortens and strengthens the sales cycle
It offers the paid plans titled Starter package and Small Business package, which cost $49,99 and $149.99, respectively. The Enterprise package is also available that is customizable, and you can get the details from their sales team.
Contactcloud
It is considered one of the sales teams’ most powerful contact management tools. It is designed to handle two functions – importing contacts from various places into a single place and tracking down the contact information for specific tasks. The basic features of CircleBack’s Contactcloud are:
- Cloud-hosted tool and a browser extension
- Export of 50 contacts a month
- Integration with Office 365 and Google Apps
LeadFuze
LeadFuze is a powerful lead generation tool that AI. Powers it allows all its users to access the verified contact information for leads in any industry or position. The key features of LeadFuze are:
- Integrations with CRMs
- Double-verified emails
- Market and account-based lead searches
RollWorks
RollWorks offers a B2B sales automation system. This platform provides support, lead generation, and engagement automation. It also sends follow-up emails at the right moment to grab sales. RollWorks offers:
- Powerful lead tools
- Bi-directional CRM integration
- Detailed reports
- Robust lead generation tools
RollWorks offers three packages. The starter package costs $975 per month, including several features, and the sales teams give the details of the other two packages.
PredictLeads
Like other apps listed above, PredictLeads is a powerful data management tool used by organizations that get into different blogs and websites to get relevant contact information. The vast net of PredictLeads gives insight into job openings, product launches, and other important factors in order to close hot deals. PredictLeads comes with excellent features like:
- Follows the target companies
- Identifies the prospect companies using query parameters
PredictLeads offers one paid plan titled Professional plan, which costs $490 a month.
Conclusion
All of these sales automation tools are incredibly powerful! You can test each of them yourself and spend much money on subscriptions. Trying a few platforms with a free plan or trial period is enough. But before you do this, carefully study the features of each tool, its capabilities, and what benefits it can bring you. Ask yourself the big questions: what tools can solve your pain points, what platforms are more affordable, and what tasks are better to automate?
By conducting thorough research and carefully considering your options, you can select the best sales automation software to help streamline your sales process, increase efficiency, and drive growth for your business.
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