6 Ways to Automate the Sales Process

The sales process of an organization that sells products or services is crucial. They can be repetitive tasks that require time and effort to accomplish each day or monthly, quarterly, and even annual tasks. They allow you to measure success, modify systems and procedures and evaluate workload, efficiency, and more. Failure to automate and evaluate such a sales process can not only reduce productivity in the workplace, but it costs business owners a lot of time and money. The advent of sales automation has enabled the business to overcome many of the hurdles, pitfalls, and confusion that surrounds the sales process. Sales automation allows business owners to perform repetitive tasks quicker and easier and with less downtime and human error. Everything from autoresponders to chatbots allows companies to employ fewer sales representatives while maximizing productivity. This saves companies money and increases their profit margin. Are you ready to get started with sales automation for your business? Below are six ways to make your business more efficient by automating the sales process.

6 Ways to Automate the Sales Process

CPQ Software

When customers browse the products or services of a company, one of the first things they will want to know is the price of your products. If your company sells configurable products or services which have a lot of variables behind their pricing, then you cannot just quote one fixed price. You need to factor in multiple configurations of their request to provide an accurate price. CPQ software automates the sales force journey and delivers a smooth sales process. This makes it easier for companies to sell thousands of products and execute cross-selling and up-selling practices to maximize profits. If you were to rely on humans alone to conduct these types of selling practices, then it would increase the chance of errors and inaccuracies. CPQ software ensures that you can deliver an accurate and speedy price quote to customers.

Chatbots

Chatbots have gotten popular over the last 5 to 10 years. They are basically like automated customer support representatives that answer questions for people over the internet. Instead of a traditional live chat session with a human representative, you would have a live chat session with an automated bot. It is programmed to understand your questions and generate the appropriate pre-scripted answers for them. Intercom sells a chatbot package to businesses called Custom Bots. You can organize the chatbot to ask follow-up questions and eventually lead your prospective customers toward the path of making a purchase. Care must be taken while selling Products Online Using Chatbots. A clumsy interface, poor English and vague responses – even though they automate customer relations – can diminish trust in your business or brand.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising is a top way to automate your marketing campaigns to generate more sales. You can set up an ad campaign where you run pay-per-click ads every day on Google and other popular search engines or through more focused independent rich-media buys. If you have set up everything correctly, you could generate daily leads and sales without having to do any manual promotions. Since you do pay for the clicks on your ads it’s important to do your research thoroughly. You will want to know as much as you can about:

• Your buyer persona
• Where your ideal customer congregates online
• Where on the sales process such groups are typically at and,
• The most lucrative calls to actions

Smart media buys allow quick entry into the marketplace and the number of readily available sales process tools allows a business to avoid clumsy mistakes in market campaign development.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is a straightforward and cost-effective way to generate sales. You have marketers sign up to become affiliates of your company. Then you promise to pay them a commission whenever they sell your product or service. You do not have to do any of the marketing because the affiliates do all of it for you.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, but it requires a lot more upfront work. But if you paid a service provider to manage the search engine optimization for your website, then you would automatically get ranked high in the search results when people find products or services within your industry. You will be required to do very little work because customers will find your website on Google and make purchases based on what they like. Search engine optimization continues to win a significant amount of the marketing dollar because most people searching online still consider an organic result to be more trustworthy. Even those who do click on ads will often circle back later and search for the business or brand organically. On top of that, SEO attracts business because once you have achieved your SEO goals, you can put your wallet back in your pocket and still generate sales – something that media and advertising buys do not do by nature. One way to find which tools are working best for maximizing the sales process through SEO is to join a few of the larger SEO special interest sites such as Search Engine Journal, Marketing Ninjas, or Moz.

Email Autoresponders

Email autoresponders can save your sales team so much time because they generate automatic email responses to people who signup for your newsletters or make purchases on your website. They can also be used whenever someone sends you an email, and you are not available to respond immediately. These people will at least know that their email was received and that you will respond to them as soon as possible. Email can still outperform all other marketing channels involved in sales process automation. Email marketing, when done with the right automation tools, can ensure good ROI, repeat custom, and the ongoing maintenance of trust and authority with your client base. Tools that allow you to autoresponder ensure fluidity in the sales process and will also increase the confidence of buyers. Email automation enables the business to reduce repetitive or mundane – yet significant – tasks in the buying process, allowing you to focus on innovation, analysis, and the development of more precise marketing strategies.