Why Field Sales Automation is Critical to Your Sales Success

One of the most vital parts of any company is sales. The sales team can face a lot of challenges, from managing sales data to following up with customers. There are a number of ways your field sales team can get bogged down with tedious tasks. How many of these scenarios seem familiar to you?

• A deal fell through because you forgot to follow up?
• You lost valuable time playing phone tag with a prospect to set up a meeting time?
• You called your leads in alphabetical order instead of best fit?
• You spent too much time digging through files to find the information you needed?
• You had to bounce back and forth between programs updating the same information in multiple places?

If any of those situations ring a bell, you need sales automation.

What is Sales Automation?

Sales automation is a software solution that handles the repetitive and tedious day-to-day tasks for your sales team. It can lower the cost of sales and boost productivity by handling the time-consuming administrative and reporting tasks so your sales team can focus on what they do best. In fact, more than 30% of sales activities can be handled by automation. 

Here are some of the tasks sales automation can take care of:

• Forecasting
• Lead management
• Content management
• Opportunity management
• Store compliance checks
• Activity tracking
• Visit routing for field sales
• Reporting and analytics

The Benefits of Sales Automation

Sales automation is definitely an investment. Not just the initial buy-in, but also in the time and effort it takes to integrate automation into your current sales process. You’ll be happy to know that the investment is worth it. Here are some of the benefits you can expect to see after adopting sales automation.

Streamlined Sales Operations and Increased Productivity

Sales reps are hired for their tenacity, their honesty, and their ability to build good relationships with customers. What slows them down the most is having to deal with mundane, repetitive tasks like building sales reports, writing and sending reminder emails, and traveling back and forth between the office and customer visits. With much of the tedious administrative work being covered by sales automation software, your sales team is free to do what they do best: Create customer relationships and sell. They can plan the most efficient route, have the necessary information at their fingertips, and let automation take care of reminder emails.

Better Insights and a Clear View of the Customer

Using sales automation to create automated email reports and customer order history tracking can help field sales reps have all the information they need when they need it. Past and current sales information can help your team better understand their customers’ preferences and order patterns.

Real-Time Data in One Place

Nothing is more frustrating for a salesperson than meeting with a client and not having the information they need, having to either reschedule or rush back to the office to get it, and come back to the customer later. Even worse, if the information they have on-hand is out-of-date. This is the main problem with having sales data spread across multiple applications. Sales automation can serve as a central hub for all your sales information - current product line, customer preferences, buying history, customer communications, etc. - so your sales rep only has to work in a single application.

Accurate Forecasting Based on Current and Past Trends

Sales automation software tracks sales trends from past and current sales while also following scheduled orders and ongoing opportunities. With comprehensive sales data like this, your team can make dependable forecasts with the most accurate information available.

Avoid the Risks of Sales Automation

Sales automation software gives you the ability to automate many aspects of your sales process. But like anything, it can be taken too far. If you get carried away and automate too much of your sales process, you'll lose that human element that makes your sales team connect well with customers. Remember, the one thing automation can never replace is that personal touch.

Prospects get turned off from being pestered with autodialed calls and slogging through piles of automated emails. If you take it too far with these tactics, your conversion rates could suffer. So the best advice for using sales automation is to use it wisely.

If you’ve decided to start looking for a sales automation solution, you’ll want to know the top 5 features to look for in field sales software before you make a final decision.

Have more questions about how sales automation can improve your sales? Click here to request a demo and talk to an expert to see how Perenso can help.