Why you need to automate your sales process… today!

If you’re still leaving sales funnel management up to your salespeople’s best guesses, you’re leaving a huge amount of money on the table. When it comes to consistent conversion rates, a few calendar alerts and call scripts just aren’t going to cut it – especially now that leading organizations are proactively managing their sales pipelines from automated, data-driven platforms.

The outcomes of a fully automated sales process are easy to see. Everyone of your salespeople will be empowered to follow up with leads at the times and touch points where they’ll make the most impact. They’ll be able to automate scheduling, so they’ll never miss a call or a meeting again. And most importantly, you’ll be able to track all sales activity from a single centralized dashboard, where you can make process adjustments throughout your organization in real time.

Here are six of the most powerful ways in which an automated sales process drives higher conversions – and boosts your bottom line.

1. Centralized customer profiles

You’ve seen how frustrating it can be to try to track a single customer across your website analytics, sales notes, emails, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and other platforms. Nothing frustrates a customer more than having to repeat themselves – and that’s exactly what happens when notes get lost in the shuffle. But with a single-platform sales automation solution, you’ll never lose a note or interaction again. Once you’ve imported your lead database from Excel, every contact form entry, email, social media comment, sales call and a piece of contact info – along with meeting invites, submission deadlines, alerts and other internal notes – is automatically included in that specific customer’s profile.

2. 360-degree views of every lead

Consistent customer profiles are powerful sales tools – but that’s just the beginning of the insight a sales automation solution can provide. Each time you click on a customer’s profile, you’ll see not only their contact info, alerts and notes but a graphical timeline that documents every interaction that customer has had with anyone in your organization, across every touchpoint. From this dashboard, you can easily sort that customer into a segment according to their industry, interests, stage in the sales funnel, or any custom tags you choose. And once you’ve created a customer segment, you can save that filter for automatic use in the future.

3. One-stop email and social communication

Tired of switching between apps and tabs, trying to keep up with your customers’ messages? Your sales automation platform puts an end to all that clicking around, by automatically pulling in emails from Outlook, Office 365, and any other IMAP email service provider you use – along with your brand’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Your salespeople and support staff will be able to access all these messages and comment threads from a single easy-to-use dashboard, so they can stay on top of every conversation, across every channel on the web.

4. Streamlined, personalized phone calls

No more scrambling for notes when a customer calls. Your sales automation platform keeps all customer information in the same place, and brings it up automatically when that customer calls – so your sales staff will never be “call blind.” Instead, they’ll be able to greet the customer with personal details and pick up the conversation right where the last call left off. They’ll even have access to transcripts of previous conversations, whether those took place on the phone, via email, or on any other channel. Automated real-time logs will make sure you can hold your team accountable for the time they spend on each call and pinpoint and eliminate friction points in your sales process.

5. Simple, dependable scheduling

Say goodbye to those long email chains for meeting schedules. When you’re ready to set up a call, all the participants will be able to negotiate their availability from the same user-friendly interface, turning even the most complex scheduling into a few minutes’ easy work. The chosen meeting time will automatically sync up with calendars in Outlook and Office 365, as well as online scheduling platforms like Google Calendar. Salespeople can set up times they’re available for calls, and send our messages enabling customers to choose from times that work for them, so you’ll never lose a sale due to a salesperson who “just couldn’t be reached.”

6. Coordinated, empowered sales staff

A motivated team is an effective team. Your sales automation solution goes way beyond the old ranking board and applies gamification principles to encourage your salespeople to compete and collaborate as necessary, in order to maximize their effectiveness. Set up custom leaderboards, real-time alerts, activity logs, email reports, and a wide range of advanced metrics, to make sales feel like a game, and keep your sales staff motivated to keep pushing their numbers higher. You’ll even be able to track each salesperson’s performance over time, compare two different sets of sales tactics side by side, and optimize your deal cycle around the unique strengths of each team member.

In all six of these ways, a sales automation platforms bring together data from a variety of disparate sources and empower your sales team to make contact at the right time, at the right touch point, in a personal way. The results speak for themselves: you’ll close more sales, use your time more efficiently, and delight your prospects and customers every step of the way. Many of your competitors have already on-boarded single-platform sales solutions, and are reaping the benefits right now – so the only question that remains is, why aren’t you?