Isn't it hurtful when a junior sales rep tells a sales manager it's risky to work with someone like you? Would you be comfortable hearing that?
No, right?
Sales managers play a vital role in sales automation and technology decisions.
Not only do they rule out unnecessary requests, but they also encourage the implementation of a sales stack that generates more leads and business.
Having said that, the idea of automating sales processes doesn’t come easily to sales managers. Due to the apparent insecurity of controlling maximum processes, they avoid automating manual and non-core sales activities.
But what managers fail to understand is that sales automation offers a competitive advantage to companies and accelerates the overall business cycle.
“Organizations that encourage sales process automation, generate around 16% more leads compared to those that don’t support or lack automation”- Hinge Research
Just to understand the potential of sales automation in business, here’s a short success story from Harvard Business Review article-
The above sales automation example makes it clear that automation delivers long-term sales outcomes and improves customer experience to a large extent.
And yet, sales managers are not aligned to invest in sales automation.
Today, we’ll try to go in-depth to understand;
- What is sales automation?
- What stops sales managers from adopting sales automation?
- What are managers missing out on by ignoring sales automation benefits?
- Why should sales managers invest in the top sales automation software?
What Is Sales Automation?
Automation is a process of using technology to streamline sales processes and optimize human intervention at different levels.
Companies can enjoy profitable businesses by applying efficient and effective sales processes.
A McKinsey study shows that more than 30% of sales activities can be automated to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
With that, let’s get into the common hindrances sales managers experience in adopting automation software.
What Are The Common Objections Sales Managers Present To Avoid Automation?
Sales managers often neglect the automation requests because of these reasons:
- Few managers lack the knowledge of automation’s potential,
- Fear of losing control of certain parts of the sales process,
- Unreliable responses and customer interaction activities,
- Reduced chances of personalization,
- Change management and its business impact,
- Delayed return on investment (ROI),
- And, Late delivery and expectation mismatch challenges
are the major hindrances to sales automation adoption.
Sales managers may not be mistaken to avoid the thought of too much automation—fear and concerns with automation are genuine.
However, the delayed adoption creates problems for the new trainees and joiners. Sales reps and AE’s find manual work and tasks highly stressful and monotonous.
Making notes and data entry can cause less creativity and lead to poor selling ideas.
So, today, let’s address the first and parent challenge of Sales managers- lack of awareness of sales automation potential.
What are managers missing out on by ignoring sales automation benefits?
- Reduction in human error- By eliminating manual processes and streamlining recurring activities, improve accuracy and reliability.
- Free up time for selling-Freeing up sales reps from non-core selling activities makes more time for core selling activities.
- Better customer service & experience- With the help of automation of customer feedback and behavior analysis, sales teams can increase customer coverage availability and improve customer satisfaction and first-call resolutions (FCR).
- Shortens sales cycle length- Automating routine sales tasks allows reps to focus on customer queries and address concerns faster and more accurately.
- Builds scalable models- Automation builds the capability of scaling operations and critical sales activities.
- Thorough tracking and monitoring- Adding automatic tracking expands traceability, improves audits and root-cause analysis, impacts quick decision-making, allows tracking in a central location, guides on the right timings, right calling opportunities, right customers, and the right topic.
- Identification of risks & threats- Automatically and timely detection of bottlenecks in the sales process to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
- Higher access to market intelligence- Sales automation contributes to better market trends, insights, and behavioral analysis.
- Cost reduction- Cost is the most significant benefit any company or manager loses by not opting for automation because automation reduces expense on surplus resources and outsourcing.
Why Should Sales Managers Invest In The Top Sales Automation Software?
Now that we have covered the benefits of investing in sales automation, we must introduce the teams and processes that can benefit from the implementation of automation.
Sales Manager
- Lead Assignment- Reduce time in assigning leads and letting leads slip through the crack
- Dashboard & Reporting- Access to overall performance and customer progress reports.
- Lead qualification- Quickly qualify and score leads with the help of automated scoring.
- Performance Management- Self-scoring systems make feedback processes shorter and more productive.
- Sales Coaching- Automated scoring and call recording analysis make sales coaching techniques sharper and more accurate.
Sales Rep
- Call recording data management- Managing, recording, and analyzing call data and entering notes in CRM systems are streamlined.
- Email automation- Apart from personalized emails, the routine email sequences flow by themselves.
- Pipeline management- Improve pipeline quota with improved qualification and lead data.
- Prospecting- Better searches with more filtered and detailed views.
- Lead management- Receive a comprehensive view of accounts, contacts, and industry.
- Call quality- Achieve better call quality by automated performance evaluation.
- Meeting scheduling- Schedule meetings and calls by one-click and zero data entry.
- Proposal creation- Answer proposals faster with minimum efforts and maximum data.
How Can Sales Managers Get Started with Sales Automation?
Needless to say, sales automation is a game-changer for B2B businesses.
Before it’s too late, sales managers must design a thoughtful strategy considering organizational maturity level, IT infrastructure, existing sales stack, and process mapping, as well as the company’s capabilities. You’ll need to look at a few more critical points.
- Managers may also have to take into consideration the sales automation of CRM and integration with other tools because CRM is a critical piece of all sales processes, and many of your sales automation responsibilities will fall flat without a robust CRM.
- Sales stack Integration will be another area of concern to keep all types of data under the same umbrella. Data synchronization and reporting are smooth and free of duplicate data with accurate integration.
Related: Boost sales performance by Integrating Conversation Intelligence with your Pipedrive CRM tool.
Managers need to structure unique plans to automate sales processes and optimize them such that the new method is productive and efficient.
As a recommendation, managers should start planning and researching today without wasting anymore time.
Like it or not, no organization can function without sales automation, and delaying the implementation will harm( cost business and client) the team and organization in the long-run.
Implement the sales automation software tools, and let the results speak for themselves.
Have you checked out the latest sales automation in a sales call recording? Experience for FREE.
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