Your sales team is an integral part of your workforce. They’re the ones who deal with nurturing relationships with potential buyers and helping to break through any obstacles preventing them from making a purchase. It’s their job to secure the sale, meaning they play a large role in keeping a company afloat. It’s a challenge, but their job can be easier with a little help. By holding your sales team accountable with automation, you’ll increase your conversion rate and keep everyone happy.

In this article, you’ll learn what sales automation is (plus its benefits) and how to implement it to ensure your sales team stays on track when meeting goals. You’ll no longer need to worry about whether your company will hit its profit targets.

Key Takeaways:

• Sales automation is a way to eliminate repetitive tasks through the help of different tools and strategies, thus allowing your team to focus on more important jobs.
• Having one place for storing contacts and using lead scoring allows you to see which leads are most qualified, ensuring your team follows up with those inclined to buy.
• Assigning tasks and leads to individual members of the team take the guesswork out of their jobs and prompts them to focus on the most important tasks every day.

The Basics of Sales Automation

Sales automation comprises the various tools and strategies your team implements to eliminate the day’s more tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. With those things taken care of, sales team members can spend more time on closing deals.

It may feel strange for some to automate tasks, but it is the way forward. Today, it’s common for machines to complete typical work tasks. By the end of 2022, humans will account for 58% of logged tasks while on the job. That’s a decline from 71% in 2018. The remaining 42% of tasks will be managed and completed by machines. 

If you need a little convincing, here are the benefits of implementing sales automation:

• It Will Save Your Team Time: Instead of spending hours manually inputting data, you can automate it. Your sales team will be free to focus on other tasks, such as following up with potential buyers. Research recommends making sales calls within one hour of receiving the initial inquiry, which is hard when you have a lengthy to-do list. Eliminate some of those tasks, and there will be more time for making calls and sending emails.

Source: Deloitte Insights

• It Will Show Which Leads to Prioritize: Knowing which leads to pursue should never be a guessing game. Done right, sales automation tools can help you see which leads still need warming up with an automated nurture sequence and which ones are worth following up with personally. Your team to spend their time wisely, connecting with those ready to buy.
• It Can Help Close More Deals: By automating different aspects of the sales process, it will attract more leads and help convert them. For example, an automated nurture sequence can deliver massive results. In business, you do whatever you can to ensure your sales team’s success so you can hit profit goals with ease.

3 Ways of Holding Your Sales Team Accountable With Automation

Many leaders feel that holding people accountable is their biggest weakness on the job. However, it doesn’t have to be like that! Here are three ways you can implement automation to boost accountability:

Source: The Predictive Index

1. Have One Place for Storing and Managing Contacts

Storing contact information for leads in various locations (like individual spreadsheets) isn’t efficient. It’s unorganized and restricts access to other members of the team. For that reason, it’s smart to invest in a tool that keeps all contact information in one place. Then, every person on the sales team can access it, allowing them to reach out to leads while picking up where other teammates left off.

You can identify where each lead is in the sales process and hold your sales team accountable. Plus, you can track the tasks each team member has checked off to ensure everyone is pulling their weight. Doing this will also prevent missed steps and other issues.

2. Use Lead Scoring to Select the Most Qualified Leads 

Your sales team must pursue the most qualified leads to boost your conversion rate. That’s where lead scoring comes into play. You’ll want to consider how likely a lead is to close, how much they’re potentially willing to spend, and how quickly they might buy. Where someone is in your funnel, plus form submissions or conversations, determines this.

Actions such as opening an email, visiting a landing page, and purchasing can increase a lead score. Once a lead has reached a certain score based on these actions, assign a task to a sales team member. From there, someone can follow up personally. This task ensures that your sales team spends time prioritizing the right leads and securing the easiest sales first.

3. Assign Tasks and Leads to Members of the Sales Team 

Another great way of holding your sales team accountable is by automating the assignment of tasks and leads. While it’s fantastic if your team can take the initiative and perform a job without being told what to do, sometimes they need a little instruction to stay on track. Plus, you can have leads automatically given to a certain team member, so none of your leads go unnoticed. It also evenly disperses leads among your team, so no one gets overloaded with work.

Source: Lead Fuze

An example would be assigning a task when a lead takes action or a lead’s score has gone up. From there, new automation can trigger or assign a new task once your team has completed something associated with said lead.

Start Holding Your Sales Team Accountable

It’s time to empower your team and motivate them toward securing sales for your company. With the help of automation, you can eliminate the mundane tasks on their to-do lists so they can focus on what matters the most: closing the deal. Here at MXTR, we can help you implement automated processes that will help you attract the right leads and boost your conversion rate.

Contact us today to learn more about our services.