Ways to Win with Sales Automation in 2021

Perhaps you’ve heard the popular statistic citing how sales reps spend only a third of their time actually selling, while more than half is spent between administrative tasks and searching for content. In an increasingly competitive sales environment, your reps must make the most productive use of their time. Looking to grow your customer base and accelerate your sales productivity this year? Sales automation is the must-use strategy that can help you achieve your 2021 goals.

Here are five ways that sales automation can help you crush your quota.

1. Refine and align—prior to automation

Properly aligning your Sales and Marketing teams prior to implement any automation tools is essential to success. This alignment includes open and actionable dialog with all qualification criteria and metrics being in sync, including a unified revenue funnel and sales cycle.

Consider your processes for lead identification, distribution, follow-up, nurturing, and communication, as well as automated lead management to help segment and score the value of your leads. A shared vision between Sales and Marketing must be developed to connect your demand generation machine to your sales results, and ultimately your revenue.

2. Produce email templates & campaigns that drive results

Email is still a great customer communication channel, but to use it effectively consider personalizing emails to increase open and conversion rates. Best sure your sales reps select a good template and personal their message to the prospect. This can be set up via your CRM like HubSpot or in your marketing automation tool. Keep in mind, the best communications often use natural human tendencies and psychological principles, including concepts such as the fear of missing out, curiosity, and humor. Try each and see what works best for your sales and your customers.

3. Define your golden hours

Refine your automation process to capture the golden hours where your conversion rate is at its peak. Use data and analytics to determine your golden hours, or the time of day in which selling is prime, by digging into your historic sales data. While your golden hours may depend on variables such as industry and time zone, it’s important to ensure your reps are aware of these peak hours, and strategically plan automation around these times. This is especially true if you’re selling into other time zones, be it across the country or into a market in Europe.

4. Make the most of your data

Data feeds all aspects of marketing and sales automation. Tracking your tasks in your CRM and staying accountable are paramount for success. For example, call tracking and marketing automation platforms enable teams to automatically provide contextual sales data that helps close deals. Successful sales teams are able to collect, store, and organize data—and then leverage it to use it to their advantage.

5. Keep your sales team motivated combining creativity with technology

To ensure that your automation efforts do not become stagnant, it’s important to introduce some creativity into your efforts. Try gamification which provides immediate feedback and creates a structured set of goals for team members to reach. These efforts blend technology and creativity and offer on-the-job training, education, and sessions that help reps develop their skills in fun, applicable ways.

Use these five tips to take your SMB sales efforts to the next level with automation. And by engaging your customers with the scale and repeatability that automation can provide, you’re well on the way to crush your quota each and every quarter.