Automation Sales Sales Automation 101: How Automation Supports Your Sales Processes Kalli Ringelberg Aug 8, 2022 14 mins read Blog Sales Automation 101: How Automation Supports Your Sales Processes Sales automation removes many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks that can plague sales reps, managers, and other members of your revenue-generating teams. In essence, it’s the missing link that you never knew you needed but suddenly can’t live without. But what type of automation should you choose? Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is powerful but rigid, as well as expensive to implement. While Application Programme Interface integrations, or API integrations for short, are easier to implement but are limited when the process you want to automate becomes more complex. But what if there was another way to maximize your sales processes with automation? A hybrid way. We have invested so much time in simplifying the adoption of automation at Wrk because we want to make sure that Sales leaders can spend their time empowering their team to even more ambitious goals rather than trying to manage a complicated platform. Our Hybrid Automation Delivery Platform—the world’s first, by the way—contains a perfect mix of industry-best automation technology all in one place. This means our Delivery Platform doesn’t merely connect your data together, but it actually delivers the work you need, when you need it— giving Sales leaders and their teams the one thing we could all use more of: focused time to tackle higher-value tasks. The reason you’ve worked so hard on establishing effective sales processes is to make sure that everyone follows the same steps, to offer consistency to your clients, and to guarantee that you can predict what your near future will look like as your business grows and evolves. Our sales automation solutions are here to make your sales processes more consistent by streamlining the quality of your responses, enhancing your information exchange, and improving follow-up procedures, while also freeing up time and energy that is better spent prospecting and nurturing your leads. Adopting solid sales automation processes and support tools with an easy-to-use Delivery Platform can benefit your business and your revenue-generating teams in multiple ways. Let’s take a look at some of them below. Benefits of automating your sales processes Increases the productivity and performance of your team with Wrkflows that focus on automating steps such as enriching your lead list and nurturing your existing lead lists. Maximizes your team and company’s collective efficiency by helping to manage your sales data and collect missing information on your clients. Enables your Finance and Management team to accurately predict growth and scaling for the upcoming year by delivering consistent results and projections. Ensures clear communication by providing a dashboard available to all members with access to our Delivery Platform. Decreases the response time with automated responses, quotes, updates, and touchpoints that go beyond a chatbot. This can increase your retention and customer satisfaction rates. Stretches your budget further by delegating tasks to our Delivery Platform—freeing up time for your team members to close more deals, without sacrificing quality or consistency. Want more reasons to see why automation is right for you? Read more here. Pitfalls to avoid with automation Just like there are significant upsides to sales automation, there can also be counterpoints if the automated process is used incorrectly. Not all tasks should be automated. The most common danger when it comes to automation adoption is the urge to automate every single aspect of your sales processes which in turn can make emails and outreach seem quite robotic and overly technical. As a human, there are irreplaceable aspects of your intervention and you can see this highlighted in correspondence. Clients often want to have an actual human on the other end that can empathize and creatively resolve their issues. Prospects, in particular, prefer not to be pushed through automated steps and instead want a personalized approach. In fact, if you look just at emails, even the simple fact of adding a personal name versus a generic email address can increase your open rate by up to 35%! The more time you have to tweak and personalize the email, the more likely you are to start to build a relationship with your prospect (and, ultimately, close the deal). Why? You may ask. Most people don’t want to feel like they are just another prospect on a long list of leads. Taking the time to write them an email with empathy and compassion will likely make them feel more compelled to respond. Think about this every time you’re cutting corners and copy/pasting an email to several people at once. It doesn’t go unnoticed by your client or prospect and it’s easy for them to feel like they aren’t important. This will significantly decrease the odds of them wanting to work with you. For more ways to level up your email strategy, check out this blog. Certain tasks will still require and benefit from your team members’ direct input. The best approach is to find the perfect balance between your current team and automated steps and processes. The fear of being completely eliminated from the sales cycle is easily debunked. We simply empower your team, and delegate tasks to our one-of-a-kind human + technology approach—in other words, Hybrid Automation. Humans can think outside of a box that automation comfortably operates in. For more tasks that you should and shouldn’t automate, check them out here. Dive deep into Wrk’s Hybrid Automation In order to keep all your sales tasks organized and visible, Wrk developed the world’s first-ever Delivery Platform. Our platform doesn’t just connect jobs via different API integrations together, nor does it merely transform your data from one format to another, instead, it actually delivers the work you need. The technology powering our platform is called Hybrid Automation to guarantee that you have all the power of automation right at your fingertips, and all in one place. The hybrid element takes the best of automation technology such as RPA, API, and bots, and combines access to a real human workforce for tasks that require a uniquely human cognitive ability. We combine the best automation technology on the market to help growing organizations deliver their work quickly and effectively, without leaving any gaps. And we don’t lose the value-added from human input. All this is brought together effortlessly with an easy-to-use hybrid Delivery Platform, designed so your team can focus on what matters most and so you can scale without losing quality or having to add significantly to your budget. We offer pre-built, pre-configured Wrk Actions that dynamically leverage the right technology for every step of your process while guaranteeing consistent unit pricing, speed, and efficiency. When you connect these Wrk Actions, our platform allows you to build fully-customizable Wrkflows that mimic your most critical sales processes seamlessly. Speed up your sales processes with Wrk’s Delivery Platform Discover how we can help you manage your clients, offer you support, reduce your response time, and enable you to bring home the best results and close more deals. We will mirror your most critical business process steps and help you determine what can be automated, and what requires your attention and expertise. This guarantees that you will always be working in the most efficient way and getting the most out of your time. Wrk’s Hybrid Automation model We created an on-demand, 24/7 community to help maximize the “cognitive piece” of automating tasks—skilled workers who can complete individual steps within a larger Wrkflow. Perfect Wrkflows for your sales processes As previously mentioned, our Delivery Platform allows you to create the perfect Wrkflow for your unique sales process. We also empower your team to take control of how your automations are set up. This means that you’re in control every step of the way. The Wrkflows you build with Wrk are typically comprised of 3-5 Wrk Actions (but could be fewer) that mimic a single sales cycle process. If we quickly reduce the average sales cycle to 7 main stages, we have: prospecting, contact outreach, lead qualification, lead nurturing, offer presentation, presenting solutions to objections, and finally, closing the sale. For all of these stages, we have a sales Wrkflow that could help you. Sales-focused Wrkflows for your sales processes Average sales cycle stages Prospecting You start with creating an efficient process that allows you to gather the data you need for your targeted leads before you start making calls. Our Lead Enrichment and Sales Data & List Management Wrkflows are designed to help you find the gaps and missing information in your lists. With steps that help identify and scrape the internet for missing data from platforms like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, and Crunchbase (to name but a few), and automatically update the profiles in your CRM of choice. Once this is done, you’ll be all set to start with your lead prospecting process. Learn how to close deals faster with our Wrkflows. Contact You have a vital role to play in this area, however, there are steps that you can automate while you focus on charming, empathizing, and finding creative solutions for your prospects. A call will always feel better—we’ve got a Wrkflow for that by the way—but if you don’t have the contact information, or they are not yet at a call stage, you can use our Personalized Email Wrkflow to get you through the door. Qualify your lead The process of automation when it comes to qualifying your leads—a process that requires your own expertise and analysis—will take you back to similar fields that appear in your prospecting phase. You can use the Lead Enrichment Wrkflow to add fields and get the missing information to narrow down your ideal lead profile. As leads provide more information based on their response and behaviour, you can work on progressive profiling, which will help you in the next step. Nurture your lead Leads can’t convert on their own. You know that, we know that, heck, everyone does. The truth is they need nurturing. When you apply automation to your lead nurturing process, you can ensure that every lead goes through each step of your conversion funnel consistently and on time. Our Lead Nurturing Wrkflow allows you to sit back and watch as our Delivery Platform automatically takes care of these key steps—allowing you to work on high-value tasks in parallel. For tips on how to nurture your leads with our Hybrid Automation technology, read more here. Present an offer This can be a very quick step, but it’s important to have a succinct way of providing each lead with a quote, proposal, and even contracts to be filled in during your client onboarding process. Our Quote & Proposal Development Wrkflow will help shorten your sales cycle so you can move on to the next stage of your sales cycle. Address all concerns There are many concerns that will require your own personal touch, and where you will, at times, need to think outside the box to come up with creative solutions. However, there will be instances where a Deal Management Wrkflow might come in handy to help with your client onboarding process. Close the sale This one is all on you! Closing a deal is exactly what we empower your team to do. We can help automate your process by keeping your clients, once onboarded, well informed and updated with any new quotes or information with our Customer Growth & Retention workflow. Need more convincing? Check out these unexpected benefits of automation here. Prediction for the future of sales automation Automation has come a long way in recent years, and the results are overwhelmingly positive for sales leaders across almost all industries. Automating your tasks will free up 35% of your time. Increasing your sales volume is about improving efficiency, speed of delivery, and consistency in results. The global sales force automation market is expected to double by 2023 (growing from $3.9 billion to $7.8 billion), with lead and opportunity management tools in greatest demand. Sales teams looking to scale or maximize their potential will have a considerable competitive advantage by adopting automation. Automating the important, yet time-consuming steps of your sales process with an automation platform that is simple to implement and easy to use can revolutionize how you work. This will allow your sales reps and revenue-generating teams to spend more time on what they do best—communicating with prospects and closing those juicy high-value deals. No IT or coding experience? We’ve got you covered there! At Wrk, we believe in empowering your team and simplifying the process of automation integration. And don’t fear, you won’t be alone on this journey! 92% of business leaders said they consider automation vital to their success. Wrk will be with you at every step of the adoption process to help you break down silos across departments, improve consistency with clients, as well as provide a predictable and painless onboarding experience across every channel. We have several pieces to support your introduction to the Hybrid Automation approach including several eBooks addressing your revenue-generating concerns. And if you’re looking to learn more about how we can help your business, then why not book a demo with us today? Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email