Sales Process Automation for 2020

To begin, create a framework that guarantees lead progression from start to finish.

Understanding these stages will help you make better decisions as to what methods will lead to pushing your lead towards the final decision to buy. A lead on who has not been reached out to at all is considered 'new.' The second stage, the connect stage, is when an organization reaches out to a new lead to qualify their position and see if they can offer help. During the discovery stage, an organization looks into different ways of helping a lead and begins to create an opportunity to solidify the sale. In the opportunity stage, you will give the lead a proposal asking for their business.

To ensure you complete each lead stage smoothly, you must utilize the correct tools. More than anything else, you need a way of making sure that every new request automatically lands in a single, unified inbox. That way, there’s no risk of losing a hot lead simply because you forgot to check a particular platform. Kommo centralizes conversations from across all your communication channels: phone, email, and messaging apps.

After that, pre-created email templates paired with workflows within your CRM will trigger pre-determined email actions depending on the lead's response. Use email drip campaigns and set up a series of automated emails to a particular list or lead to nurture them continuously with relevant, timely content and information about their position in the pipeline. By crafting specific emails using elements such as personalization tokens or an eye-catching subject line, you ensure the lead that you are willing to go the extra mile to deliver valuable, relevant content in each email you send.

Another route to take in automating your sales pipeline involves utilizing chatbots. Statistics show that when integrated on your website, chatbots promote more interaction with leads than most avenues. Chatbots like Kommo’s Salesbot enable a potential customer to engage with someone from a company automatically, without requiring the initial effort of an actual employee. Most chatbot software includes options to send specific responses based on the message. When a chatbot determines the need of the lead they are chatting with, the chatbot will notify the appropriate team member and will be assigned that lead. Choosing to utilize the functionality of chatbots results in a seamless, nurturing experience for the lead.

Analyzing and pivoting based on the patterns of big data results are popular tactics these days. The vast majority of companies using internet marketing aren't working with big data, and it's imperative for sales professionals to make pivots based on what's working, versus what's not. There are multiple sets of data to keep in mind when analyzing performance, including:

Which pages are your leads visiting most often on your website? How much time are leads spending on the site? Taking these metrics into account and adjusting your website appearance and functionality based on your website analytics will help you measure the performance of your landing pages, and insight on what is going to keep your lead on the site, and move them towards a conversion.

What times of days are best to make prospecting calls? How many calls should a sales rep make before the prospect is expected to move to the next lead stage? Closely monitoring call tracking statistics such as these will help your sales reps pivot their strategy and ensure their call strategy focuses on conversions

What is the CTR (click-through-rate) of your emails? Email marketing is an imperative element of any sales strategy. Use a marketing automation software (You can learn more about Kommo's digital pipeline capabilities here) to pull weekly reports to track metrics for all emails sent to ensure you are not only sending relevant content to your prospects but that they are sending at the most optimal time of day. For example, if you are getting a low open rate for specific emails, this could be attributed to a weak subject line. Try A/B testing different subject lines to determine which subject lines yield a higher open rate.

Nearly eight in ten salespeople say that once they figure out what works best, they do not change anything. Follow suit and use data trends to make more informed sales decisions. And remember, your marketing activities also directly correlate with your sales activities. The constant analyzation of what is working versus what is not will help you further develop a comprehensive pipeline that creates organized responses based on the needs of your particular target market.

Remember the most effective pipeline is a seamless one. Take a moment to envision the abstract concept of the sales process automation. A prospective sale must progress through the steps from a net new contact, to prospect, to lead, and then a closed customer. Of course, things don't always progress perfectly, and that's okay. Some contacts are going to veer off the paved path; it's important to remember that sales representatives cannot save every single sale. All you can do is arm your sales team with the correct tools and resources to make steps as seamless as possible, ensuring a positive, enriching experience for both the sales rep, as well as the lead.

Always seek to use your sales automation CRM to eliminate extra steps when possible when nurturing a lead. Utilize your CRM's automated lead creation function to allow a lead card to be created inside your CRM with all known information from the source, whether it be through social media or email. This allows for less time spent entering tedious data into the CRM, and more time focusing on closing the sale.

Additionally, a lead’s business card will also import richer information you may not have previously known if you had entered the lead CRM manually, such as social media presence and additional contact information. This enables you to view a clear vision of the lead at the start of the sales process, and arms you with information that you can use to your advantage when moving them down the pipeline.

Clogs in the sales pipeline can occur when multiple components of a sales process automation are not working correctly in tandem. When this happens, prospects lose their forward momentum and do not follow through to the next step. When their progress slows to a crawl or even comes to a dead stop, the cycle has failed. As more and more leads enter the pipeline but do not exit according to plan, an organization's profits begin to decrease. The time may even arrive when the clog becomes so bad that it ends up bringing down the entire business. Thankfully, there are ways to manage and prevent this from happening.

Organizing contacts into lead stages, as we discussed in the first stage, helps ascertain where a lead is in the sales cycle. Setting up lead stages in advance and deciding which stages are best for a specific pipeline can benefit an organization greatly. Once you enter a lead into the CRM, triggers set up on each stage of a pipeline and automatically move leads forward. When you reduce manual processes, this allows for a more efficient, accurate progression of a lead to the selling point. For instance, if a lead clicks on a specific link in an email (to schedule an informational call, perhaps) this particular action enacts a move to the next lead stage, allowing for a seamless progression.

Making tasks assign themselves is the final key to success. When a lead meets certain conditions in the digital pipeline, tasks are then automatically assigned to certain team members. This will not only streamline your sales pipeline, but will help with the internal organization of your sales team. In turn, this helps increase clarity within task management and the overall expectation of what everyone needs to accomplish. For instance, if a lead needs to follow up with a phone call, the CRM can be programmed to automatically assign that to the lead's assigned sales rep. Once the sales pipeline is automated, a company will immediately reap the benefits.

When sales representatives are capitalizing on opportunities and tracking their progress, leads will no longer drop off the sales cycle. Lastly, representatives should be able to work their pipelines faster because everything is consecutive and in one place—no more rifling through emails and notes in order to move on to the next step.

From a management perspective, once the sales process is faultless, an organization will be able to gather reliable data and identify bottlenecks that help improve the sales process. Above all, automation allows sales representatives to build relationships with their prospects, which should directly impact the bottom line by increasing conversions.

Looking for more? Learn how to boost your sales by automating communication next.

Originally published Feb 09, 2018, updated September 05, 2020

✅ Kommo is a pioneering Messenger Based Sales CRM software that helps businesses achieve more sales and create long-lasting relationships with their customers. It is a tool that enables companies to reach better results and increase their profits.