The leaders of successful companies today know that managing the customer relationship process is a key factor to the growth of their business. Reducing the cost of marketing and sales while improving its effectiveness drives sales growth and firm profitability.
To accomplish this, automating the sales process is critical. It not only reduces costs by making sales teams more productive, it increases revenue by ensuring that all potential sales opportunities are fully managed to completion.
Why Should I Automate My Sales Process?
In our previous article we discussed some of the benefits of sales automation which include:
- It provides sales managers with a complete view of the sales opportunities in the organization allowing them to better plan and manage the sales operation
- The sales team has all prospect and customer related data in one place providing higher productivity and better close percentages
- Qualified sales leads stay in the sales cycle until they are properly dispatched as either won, lost, or nurture which reduces lead fallout and improves sales revenue
10 Critical Sales Functions to Automate
So what functions of the sales process should you automate? Here we discuss the 10 most critical areas to focus on:
- Sales Forecasting and Quota Management
One of the Sales Manager’s most important responsibilities is to forecast future sales revenue for the organization. Providing management with an accurate sales projection allows them to plan resource allocation and expenses associated with sales.
Secondly, the sales manager needs to manage their sales rep’s quotas and work with them to ensure that they are attained. By measuring and managing this one metric, the sales manager effectively makes the forecast happen.
- Automated Incentive Compensation Management
Sales reps are motivated by the commissions they are promised. By setting appropriate quota levels and providing enough incentives, sales reps are much more successful. One of the greatest motivation killers for a sales rep is receiving an incorrect commission statement from his manager at the time of commission payout.
Managing and calculating sales rep commissions correctly is no easy task. Many compensation plans are complicated and vary by sales person even within the same organization. Automate this function to make commission calculations easier and more accurate.
- Upsell, Quote and Order Management
A sales opportunity not only provides a chance to sell the products and services that customers are interested in, but also provides the chance to sell related products and services based on the customer’s known interests and prior buying history. Automating upsell and cross sell capabilities provides the sales team with the information they need to expand every sales opportunity.
Creating and processing quotes can be a time consuming process for sale reps. Having a system in place that provides data in the right place at the right time reduces the sale rep work effort and improves accuracy. This accuracy makes the quote-to-order handoff process seamless as the data from the quote is used to create the sales order.
- Marketing Automation
Marketing is the key driver of sales in any organization. It requires focused and consistent planning and management. Without it you do not have any leads flowing into the sales process. Marketing automation is critical to facilitating an effective marketing engine.
Tracking marketing campaign return on investment (ROI) ensures that your marketing spend is being put to its best use. And coordinating multiple touch points where each prospect receives an outreach by email, telemarketing, direct mail, mobile, and websites creates a more effective and impactful firm image that builds trust and familiarity.
Coordinating the handoff between marketing and sales is equally important. After spending so much time and money generating leads there is nothing more frustrating than having qualified leads fall through the cracks.
- Customer Service Support
Customer service is a very important part of the sales process. Most firms marketing messages almost always describe how wonderfully the firm treats its customers. If every firm followed through on this promise there would be no unhappy customers. Unfortunately, we know that’s not true.
So how can we provide better customer service? Automation is a key factor in the improvement of service. Put a system in place that tracks customer issues so that quicker resolution can be provided and maintain a history of communications so that the sales team can see what has previously transpired with the customer before trying to sell new services.
These are just a couple of the reasons to automate customer service. Since selling to existing customers is significantly less expensive than obtaining new customers, you must do everything you can to keep them coming back for more.
- Real-time Dashboards, Reporting, Analytics and Planning
What you measure you can control. Automating reporting and analytics that provide key performance indicators (KPI) reduces the amount of time sales reps and managers need to produce these reports and allows them to do more important analytical tasks.
Identify the KPI’s that make the most sense for your business and determine the best way to present that information to those that need it. The firm’s leadership team may only want it presented as a dashboard so they can see at a high level the status of the sales function. Managers responsible for the tactical aspect of the business will need detailed reporting so they can actively manage the sales process.
Having the all the needed data in a system facilitates the reporting function and promotes continuous sales performance management.
- Mobile Access
Anytime, anywhere mobile access to your sales data provides your sales team the information they need at the time they need it. Outside sales teams will especially need this functionality. But you already knew this, didn’t you? Your team is most likely already asking for it.
What data should be provided? Your sales team needs to be able to view, enter and update prospect and customer contact information, see a history of communications and outreach, view support case information, access lead and customer status, enter and manage time and expense information, and manage activities for tasks, calendar, and calls.
Mobile access must be available from a variety of devices to accommodate the variety of technology your team is using. And each team member will certainly have multiple devices including iPad, iPhone, Android, etc.
- Integration with Ecommerce Platforms
If you don’t have a website that is optimized for capturing sales leads you are behind the eight ball. Get one in place now! Every business needs one. But having such a website is not enough. It must integrate with your sales automation system.
As an example, pricing data updated in your ERP system can flow to your website so that you are not updating that data in two places. In fact, all data that is used in both systems should be managed in one place and then synchronized on both platforms.
Another area of automation is capturing information of visitors on your site and the using their level of interest to drive your marketing and sales efforts. Those that are seeking information can be automatically placed in nurture marketing campaigns. Those that express more specific interest can be routed to the sales team for follow up.
Automatic processing of these and other leads types makes your sales process much more efficient. Review your ecommerce sales process and you will find the areas that need the most automation.
- Integration with Leading Social and Productivity Tools
Inbound marketing is the most cost effective way to generate qualified sales leads. Managing social media marketing should be part of every business’ marketing plan and your sales system needs to integrate with the social media platforms you are using.
Pushing marketing offers and events to your social platforms and monitoring the responses creates more interaction with your customers and better lead generation.
Your email and internal productivity systems also need to be integrated with your sales system. Calendar events, contact information, and communications can be shared and synchronized so that data is consistent across platforms. This provides better collaboration and productivity among your sales team.
- Partner Relationship Management
If you sell products and services through a partner channel, managing partner relationships is as important as managing customer relationships. In addition, your partners are as essential to you as your own sales team.
Partner information such as contact data, skill levels, and regional coverage will assist you in providing leads to the appropriate partner in order to improve the likelihood of closing the deal.
You will also need to manage lead generation efforts, joint marketing campaigns, and pipeline management. Managing partner commissions and incentive programs will be critical to your success. Make sure your system is set up to provide the variety of incentive programs you offer.
Automate Your Sales Functions Now
Sales force automation is more than just creating a sophisticated contact database. Since the sales function is the workhorse of revenue generation, automating sales is not just a nice to have. It is a MUST have.
If you haven’t automated the functions discussed here don’t despair. Most companies are not at this level of automation yet. And that provides opportunity! Imagine if you reached this level of efficiency in your organization! You would have quite an edge over your competition, wouldn’t you?
It’s time to put a plan in place to automate your sales functions now. Consider a system that can accomplish all of these integrated capabilities. Decide on one or two areas and take it one step at a time.
The time is now! Contact me for more information. I will help you move your business forward.
Question: What other sales and marketing functions do you feel should be automated? You can share your answer on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.