# What is sales automation? A guide for successful deployment Sales automation is essentially the use of software and technology to reduce the repetitive (and usually manual) tasks involved in your sales process. By shifting these repetitive sales tasks to automated systems, you reduce the workload on your human staff so that they can focus more on the essential task of closing sales (and ultimately generating revenue). But what are the actual processes you can consider handing off to automation, though? - **Follow-ups**. These are essential. Fail to follow up in a timely fashion, and you could be losing a lot of potential sales. By automating the process, your sales team will be prompted to reach out again to those prospects (instead of relying on human memory, which isn’t always reliable). - **Pipeline updates**. Sales pipelines are often complex—but always essential—and everyone should be aware of what the pipeline looks like at all times. By automating updates, you can keep a better eye on where your sales leads are, analyze and do forecasting more accurately, and keep every member of your team up to date on developments. - **Training**. Automation can even help with onboarding new sales reps. If you’re onboarding 10 or 20 new reps, it’s much harder to spend time with each individual—so leave it to automation (more on that later). ## 5 examples of areas ripe for sales automation—and the best sales automation tools for each As a sales leader, there are a few specific areas in the sales process that I’d look to automate first. Six, to be exact. ### 1. Record creation One of the most tedious—and time-consuming—administrative tasks in your sales cycle is manually inputting the data you collect from phone calls, website forms, and emails. Collecting that data is essential, however, since it’s a must-have for any sales professional and provides important information about previous interactions, buyer personas, and past purchases. Having an automated system that collects contact information, transcripts of sales calls, and other details can help reps build a good sales call plan and save them a ton of time. ### 2. Data entry (activity logging) Logging sales activities is something that’s usually done manually—and data entry is, again, one of those things that leaves you with less time to do other more impactful things. If you can take this one thing off your sales team’s plates, it can give them back a lot of time. Dialpad integrates with many popular CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho to automatically log your sellers’ activities in the CRM. ### 3. Outbound efforts Outreach is a key part of many sales teams’ jobs—and phone calls are of course a big component of that. There are other forms of outreach like email and social media or LinkedIn messaging, but phone calls in particular can be a huge time suck if you’re not careful. ### 4. Communications Your sales reps may be communicating across multiple platforms—and to multiple prospects. How can you keep track of all these messages, phone calls, and voicemails? Automation, of course. ### 5. Onboarding and post-sales When that prospect is finally ready to say “yes,” the second part of their journey begins. Onboarding them and providing follow-ups and good after-sales service and response times is a huge part of increasing customer retention and each customer’s lifetime value. ## Types of sales automation software for managers and reps ### 1. CRM Unless your organization sells extremely high value or high ACV products with a super small TAM (total addressable market), the likelihood is that your salespeople could be handling tens or hundreds of new leads per month. ### 2. Lead scoring Depending on the size and nature of your business, you may have hundreds or even thousands of prospective leads. How do you decide which ones you shift from any targeted marketing to more “hands on” attention from your sales team? ### 3. Reporting Reporting on sales activities is the business equivalent of your least-favorite housework task. The one that nobody wants to do. Collecting data, analyzing it, then formulating strategies based on what you found is crucial to progress. ### 4. Sales collateral repository / coaching I mentioned earlier that it’s possible to automate sales training. Let’s look at how to do it. For many managers, overseeing a team of five or 10 or even 20 reps isn’t uncommon. ### 5. Email automation Even in this advanced digital age, sales email campaigns are still a crucial tool for business. Your emails cover not only your marketing but other areas, including after-sales service and customer surveys. With a projected 319.6 billion emails sent every day, that’s a lot of work. ## Sales automation benefits for teams of all sizes Beyond just improving efficiency by removing manual tasks from sellers' plates, sales automation offers several other benefits too. Here are a few of them: ### More focus on high-value sales tasks ### More consistent follow-ups ### Improved data management ## The challenges of adopting sales automation technology (and how to overcome them) Of course, making a switch to any type of new system will always come with a set of challenges. (And you should never focus so much on automation that you neglect customer satisfaction.) Here are a few challenges that sales automations might present you with. ### A steep learning curve ### Integrating with your existing workflow ### No all-in-one solution fits all ## Ready to take the first step toward sales process automation? How can you provide a personalized sales experience—while still automating sales tasks strategically so that your team can truly focus on closing deals instead of spending so much time on low-value tasks?