Three ways automations you can help supercharge your sales team

If you ask people what the most valuable thing in the world is, a common answer is time. It’s the only thing we can’t buy more of, or get back. Realistically, the best we can do is make sure we’re not wasting the time we do have. That we’re being as efficient as possible. 

Efficiency is somewhat of a pillar in the tech world. There’s an obsession with optimizing workflows, and cutting out any wasted energy. One of the main ways companies, teams, and even individuals, accomplish that is through automations. 

If you’re not familiar with the term, automation, very basically, is the process of turning a manual task into an automatic one. Cars are a great example. They either have manual or automatic transmissions. Not only is an automatic simpler to drive, it also saves mental, and physical, energy for the driver since they don’t have the added difficulty of manually shifting. 

For salespeople, there’s a similar issue. There are a lot of tasks that may be done manually, that could be done automatically. And just as it is with a driver, when you automate tasks you free up energy that can be used elsewhere. 

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of three ways automations can supercharge your sales team. We’ve also included a few ideas of some simple automations you can implement to kickstart your efforts.

Save time

Did you know on average salespeople only spend around a third of their time actually selling? Though that may sound wrong, it’s true. The majority of their time is spent responding to emails, doing data entry, and attending meetings. 

It’s not to say those things are wastes of time. In a lot of cases they are tasks that support selling efforts. Though they are important, in some cases you should be able to automate. Which, in the end means more time to sell.  

For example, when setting up an initial demo call, how much does the message vary from prospect-to-prospect? Probably very little. So, in a case like that you could easily automate the sending of the email through a CRM or something similar. 

If you look at an average salesperson’s day, you’ll likely find a number of similar examples. Research found 53% of employees said they could save as much as two hours a day through automations. When you’re able to automate those more routine items, your team has more time to spend on higher-value communications that really do require their time and energy. 

Simplify selling

As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of tasks salespeople do on a regular basis that aren’t actually selling. Things like updating deal records, or creating proposals are both necessary but are time-consuming and those additional layers can serve to further complicate the selling process. 

Through automations you’re able to make some of those tasks much easier. For example, with Qwilr you’re able to save templates for different sales proposals so there’s a simple starting point anytime a rep needs to put one together. Further, you can even connect with your CRM to update deal records when someone accepts deal terms and signs. 

Both of those not only save a lot of time, but also simplify the whole process for the salesperson. They don’t have to worry about trying to design a sales proposal or worry about updating the record. All of which adds up to a simpler selling process, and more time they can spend on tasks that add to the bottom line. 

Another great use of automation to simplify the selling process is through lead scoring. If you’re not familiar, lead scoring refers to taking any number of attributes a lead may have (job title, company they work at, etc.) and assigning a value to each, and then weighting each. That formula generates a score that points to how promising a certain lead may be. 

There are any number of sales tools that allow you to set up lead scoring and have it done automatically. Lead scoring can help your agents better prioritize certain leads over others. In fact, research found organizations that use lead scoring regularly see around a 77% higher lead generation ROI when compared to those who don’t score leads. 

Improve reporting

If you had to drive from New York City, to Chicago without a map, it would be pretty difficult to do. Sure, you could probably get there eventually, but without a guide of some sort the likelihood that you’d be totally successful in the task is low. 

The same can happen if your team doesn’t have access to reliable sales data. In order for your team to get where they’re going, it helps a lot to know where they currently are. In fact, research shows employees who know what’s expected of them, and how they’re performing, are more engaged than those who don’t. One of the best ways you can provide those insights is through reporting. 

Building, and sending out reports can be very time-consuming, but with automations it’s a much simpler task. With tools like Databox you can create dashboards and even have daily, weekly, or monthly reports emailed out automatically. 

With that information your team could see how they currently rank amongst the team, which can help improve performance. You can also create reports for overall team success so the people you report to are in-the-loop. That way you’re not only saving time for yourself, but you’re saving time for others, too. 

The initial set up time can take a little bit, but don’t let that scare you off. Once it’s up-and-running, there’s not much you have to do to maintain it. So, it may cost you a little more time upfront, but in the long run will save you. 

Next steps

Time. In every aspect of life it’s incredibly valuable. So, doesn’t it make sense to do whatever we can to save as much as possible? Through automations you can do just that. In the process you may also find you make more than a few people’s lives a little easier and your team more productive. 

Implementing automations do have an upfront time cost that can seem daunting, but in the long run the time you save will far outweigh the initial time spent. So, don’t let that scare you off. Also, you don’t have to try and implement every automation at once. You can take it at whatever pace works best for your team. 

The most important thing is just to start. Once you do, you might be surprised how it changes your team for the better.