Automation is the future. For a long time, enterprises have known this. Way back in 1989, the Havard Business Review estimated that automation had successfully cut direct labour costs to just 8-12% of total production expenditure in a manufacturing company. However, technology is now starting to seep into other business areas.
Consider the contact center. Operations can automate desktop processes, quality management, and even entire customer queries. Yet, there are many more automation opportunities out there, particularly in regards to sales.
6 Tasks to Automate for Higher Sales Revenues
“Automation tailored to sales operations is a win for companies, customers, and sales reps,” reports McKinsey & Company. Here are six examples where this proves to be true.
- Strategy and planning – By analyzing historical and real-time data, contact centers can uncover the best time to reach out to customers. Operations can then harness workforce management (WFM) software to automate resource allocation in line with these findings.
- Lead management – Analytics tools can qualify leads and prioritize them. With automation, the contact center can then action follow-ups to convert customers or upsell.
- Configure, price, quote (CPQ) – Contact centers can automate a workflow where bots assess customer requirements, set pricing, and formulate quotes. It is even possible to create a discount management flow.
- Order management – To complete the sales process, contact centers can exploit the power of automation to check on available credit levels, invoices, shipping, procurement, and other order-related services.
- Post-sales engagement – Automate customer follow-ups to overcome common post-purchase issues, avoid returns, and secure loyalty. It may also help upsell spare parts, run through maintenance info, etc.
- Administrative support – Analytics helps automate administrative tasks, such as post-call summaries. It also speeds up the reporting process, giving managers real-time insights to enhance sales performance.
Of course, these recommendations hinge on technology maturity. Robotic process automation, natural language processing (NLP), and speech analytics are critical technologies to bring these use cases to life.
Yet, by generating an appropriate ecosystem, sales teams will make fewer errors, optimize resources, and bolster revenues.
The State of Automation in Sales
Despite this potential, the maturity of sales automation programs lags far behind those of other business areas.
For example, McKinsey & Company found that IT functions report the highest level of automation in an enterprise, followed by finance and supply chain management. Sales ranks sixth on the list of ten automatable functions.
However, businesses can take several proactive steps to push sales further up this list. These include:
- Adopt a mindset of standardization – Many perceive sales as a uniquely human function, with the ability of individuals driving discrepancies in sales performance. Yet, alongside talent, companies must value standardization and non-discretionary judgment to increase automation readiness.
- Start with the low-hanging fruit – Tasks such as sales data entry, automated follow-up emails, and the like are easy to automate. Also, such automation offers a welcome break for team members who can focus on more rewarding tasks. Instead of more sophisticated applications like AI-based lead scoring, these provide the quick wins that build confidence in automation.
- Integrate with the broader business ecosystem – An integrated landscape allows cross-application workflows. Also, such an approach enables data exchanges across platforms for automated decision-making.
By building these tactics into their sales automation strategy, companies benefit from high productivity. Sales agents also enjoy greater job satisfaction and customers receive offers that are much more relevant to them. Everybody wins!
