What is sales automation anyway?  

Sales automation uses technology to perform manual tasks such as lead management, customer relationship management (CRM), sales content automation, sales forecasting, and more — reducing time, effort, and error as a result.  

The goal for sales automation is to work more efficiently and decrease manual tasks. That way, your sales teams can focus on what they do best — building relationships and closing deals.  

Did you know?

Sales automation can save your team
360 hours per rep per year.

What are the benefits of sales automation for teams like yours?  

Changing your sales process is a nerve-wracking business. First, you must identify which sales process automation improvements will strengthen your business. This will help you identify the right sales automation tools to invest in and encourage sales team adoption. And it all needs to be done without losing the personal touch that makes your prospects and customers excited to work with you in the first place. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.  

Here are some sales automation benefits you can expect when you take the leap.  

  • Improved efficiency: Automating repetitive, tedious tasks frees reps to focus on more strategic activities. In short, they’re able to be more productive with their time.  
  • Better customer relationships: The right sales automation software helps you understand customer behaviour and preferences, allowing your team to customise their approach. 
  • More consistent sales processes: You can easily replicate the most successful selling behaviours across your entire sales force.  
  • Smarter data analysis and reporting: Sales automation tools provide better insights into sales performance and customer behaviour, leading to better decision-making.  
  • Higher win rates: When you automate tedious tasks, your sales team can move customers through the deal cycle more efficiently.  

Simply put, using sales automation can greatly improve your sales team’s productivity and effectiveness, resulting in increased sales and business growth. 

  

What should your team use sales automation for? 

There’s so much that falls under the sales automation umbrella that it can be hard to know where to start. We recommend thinking through the outcomes you’d like to improve as a first step. Then, find the best sales automation software to suit that focus. (More on the specific sales automation tools you should explore later!)  

If you want to focus on go-to-market efficiency, turn to sales enablement automation. Sales enablement empowers teams to ramp reps faster, give them more time to spend on high-value activities, and improve employee retention.  

How? By giving reps a central place to find information, sales collateral, training, and coaching they need to succeed in their roles. After all, companies with dynamic coaching programmes achieve 28% higher win rates.  

To improve the buyer experience, focus on sales content automation. It helps you automate content creation, integrate data, approve and share content, and report on content engagement — saving your team time and effort every step of the way.  More importantly, it empowers your reps to personalise content in record time. This is even more important when you consider that 76% of consumers get upset when they don’t receive personalised buying experiences.  

If it’s operational optimisation you’re after, content automation can help there too. With it, you can craft personalised content that pulls in data from your CRM and other sources in a matter of minutes.  

That efficiency doesn’t have to stop at automated content. Consider a sales automation platform that streamlines meeting preparation, presentations, and follow-up with conversational intelligence that goes beyond meeting recordings. Most reps spend 70% of their time on meetings, so a tool that can speed up the prep process, generate personalised pitch decks, and use AI to recommend effective follow-up content is invaluable.

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What are some common sales automation pitfalls to avoid?

We’ve talked a lot about what happens when sales automation goes right. But what about when things don’t go according to plan? Here are some of the most common challenges teams face when investing in and implementing sales automation software — and strategies that can help you avoid them:  

Not including key stakeholders

Investing in sales automation software is a big decision, and your leadership team knows that. Look for sales automation solutions that display their return-on-investment (ROI) proudly and promise professional support from implementation through to optimisation. Make sure to get feedback from sales reps and your IT team early on so they support the change, too.

Inadequate training

Sales automation tools are only as good as the training you can provide on them. After all, no one uses a tool they don’t understand. To achieve optimal results, provide your team with bite-sized training that they can complete at their own pace and on their own terms.

Neglecting the customer experience

It’s easy to get so wrapped up in saving your team time that you forget your ultimate goal — winning customers. To do so efficiently, you need to double-check your data quality, prioritise personalisation, and most importantly, gather customer feedback as you optimise your approach.

Overlooking the emotional impact on your team

Relying too heavily on automation can make your sales team feel like cogs in a well-oiled machine. Encourage them to treat sales automation as a tool that can enhance their work, not replace it. Highlight team members that are using your new tools most successfully to share wins — and wisdom — along the way.

Forgetting to optimise your sales automation efforts

Implementing sales automation software and then taking a “set it and forget it” approach leaves opportunities on the table. Set aside time to review key metrics and adjust your strategies accordingly.

So, where does Seismic come in?

When you decide that sales automation is right for your business, let’s talk. The Seismic Enablement CloudTM combines the content, training, coaching, and insights your team needs to efficiently win more deals and improve over time. With strengths in content automation and integrations with the most popular CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft, Seismic is worth exploring. See it in action here!