How to Automate Your Sales Team’s Pipeline
It’s 2018 and if you are still implementing traditional sales tactics, you are likely miles behind your competition. In a tech-focused world where answers are expected instantaneously, your sales process must work similarly. Using automation to speed up and streamline your sales process not only caused increased lead generation, but it will also make the jobs of your sales team easier.
Automation tactics like email drip campaigns, call tracking and chatbots allow companies to save time, while generating a targeted sales pipeline that delivers relevant content to prospective leads, while nurturing them until they convert into a closing. Here are ways a business can automate its pipeline to ensure a streamlined sales process and achieve sales goals in an increasingly competitive environment.
- Generate a lead framework that guarantees progression.
Using email templates, set up workflows within your CRM to organize pre-determined email activities according to a leads response. It’s also useful to use email drip campaigns and set up a series of automated emails for each list you have, in order to nurture them with relevant content and information relating to their position in your pipeline.
The use of chatbot has completely changed how we communicate with leads. When incorporated onto your website, chatbots will allow interaction that are automated, and can simplify the entire sales process. This will enable the potential lead to engage with someone from your company, without the initial effort of an actual employee. Make use of chatbots to provide a smooth nurturing experience with marginal effort from your front end.
- Evaluate and act based on data patterns.
We live in a world that revolves around data. Analyze your sales data methodically, and as you continue to move forward while paying attention to trends. These include cycle time, prospecting methods, email response rates and the nurturing methods that were fruitful.
If something is not working, don’t be afraid to change your strategy. The worst thing you can do is continue with the hope of change. In today’s technology-driven age, if you don’t pivot where the data indicates it’s time, you will get left behind.
- Remove the extra steps.
Use your CRM’s automated lead creation function, which allows a lead card to be created with all known information from the source, whether via social media or email.
This eradicates time spent entering information into the CRM, and allows more time to focus on nurturing the lead into a sale. A lead card will also import information you may not have previously known about the lead if you had entered it into the CRM manually, such as social media presence and additional contact information.
Having more information available at the beginning of the sales process arms you with data that you can use to your advantage when moving them through the pipeline.
- Leverage automated task assignment.
When certain conditions are met in the pipeline, tasks can be automatically assigned to certain team members. This not only streamlines your pipeline, but it also helps with the internal organization of your sales team by increasing the clarity of task management and expectations.
For example, if a lead requires a follow-up phone call at a specific point in the cycle, your CRM can be programmed to automatically assign that phone call to a team member that is currently available. Rather than wait, this allows your company to make that call at the optimal time, greatly increasing the odds of a close.
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