This is a guest post by Lucy Fuggle, Content Writer at PieSync.
The difference between a good salesperson and a top-performing one is often as simple as efficiency. The best salespeople have incredible sales and communication skills, but they also stay on top of their pipeline, send the right messages at the right time, and never miss the boat when it’s time to close. It’s not always easy, though, especially if you’ve got a packed pipeline.
Automation makes it much easier to be a highly-effective salesperson. Here are some of the sales automation hacks you need in your toolkit if you want to close more deals, stand out as a top performer, and still have time to spare.
1. Set up lead scoring based on criteria that matters
As with any job, the majority of your results will come from a fraction of the work you do. For salespeople, the most closed revenue will come from the qualified leads that are a great fit from the start. To pinpoint who these people are and focus on the work that matters most, lead scoring is one of the most valuable automation hacks.
Get clear on what a good lead looks like and give points according to these criteria. You can do the inverse for timewasting leads that will rarely buy your product or come with a high churn risk. Your criteria could include company size, country, or industry. With lead scoring, you can focus your attention on leads that have the best chance of bringing you long-term revenue and streamline your interactions with the rest.
2. Save time with follow-up sequences
Do you spend a lot of time chasing emails? It can seem like it’s part of your job as a salesperson, but it really doesn’t have to be. With follow-up sequences, you can set up email sequences that automatically follow up with your lead if they haven’t got back to you.
If a lead goes quiet, you can also use automation to enroll them in a workflow with valuable resources or sales enablement content to help guide them down the funnel so they’re more sales-ready. By making use of A/B testing features, you can continually tweak your workflows to send the best-performing copy to your leads at the right time.
3. Automatically assign leads to the right person for the job
Each person in a sales team wants to have enough leads. However, there’s a fine line between having a full pipeline and being so overloaded that you can’t give a lead your dedicated attention during calls or stay on top of email. After using lead scoring to pinpoint qualified contacts, use assignment rules to distribute your sales-ready leads in a round-robin pattern. This keeps everyone’s pipeline topped up with the most relevant leads without them becoming overwhelmed.
4. Integrate your sales apps
You can’t afford to have disconnected apps and messy processes if you want to be an effective salesperson. To save you time and keep your contacts organized, make the most of integrations that keep everything in sync between the different tools you’re using.
This could be syncing your Zoho CRM contacts with a marketing automation tool, accounting app, VoIP, etc. Furthermore, with a bidirectional integration set up, you can rest assured that contacts will be updated in both apps as their lead status changes, if you add tags, or if they ever unsubscribe.
5. Streamline the handover to onboarding and account managers
To be an effective salesperson, you can’t just focus on closing deals. You need to think longer term and prepare a new client for the rest of their time with your business. To prevent your deals from churning, first ensure that you only sell to qualified leads that are a good fit for your business. After that, it’s essential to carry out a seamless handover to onboarding and account management.
You can use automation to simplify this handover. Set up triggers to notify your client services team about a new deal and to pass on any information they need to know. You can even automatically set up tasks for your colleagues to make the handover as seamless as possible. When it’s time to introduce the new client to the person who will be looking after their account, use email templates to make the introduction quickly.
Becoming a better salesperson is an ongoing process. To build your career and get ahead of the competition, you should be continually seeking learning opportunities and refining your skills (get some insider tips here). But it’s important to think about the tools you’re using, too. Small adjustments here can mean big results overall. When set up correctly and continually optimized, features like sales automation really can be at the foundation of your success.
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