How Sales Automation is changing Sales.
Sales Automation is all the rave nowadays.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a massive shift towards inside sales in the B2B world. Teams are leaning more and more on prospecting to build up their revenue. As a result, an entire sales software space has opened up, with hundreds of tools that will help sales teams sell faster. Per Venture Beat as of 2017, there are now at least 5–6 different options in every part of a team’s sales stack
Sales tools are making it easier for salespeople to send more emails, make more phone calls, and touch thousands of accounts per week. With the sales process optimized, there should be no issues for sales teams to hit their quotas, crush their goals, and help their company to achieve their revenue milestones.
Yet …60% of salespeople won’t hit their quota this month. It’s no secret. Most people don’t like being “touched” by a salesperson.
Sales has a bad name.
It’s hard to deny that salespeople conjure up a bad image in most people’s mind. There is a stereotype of salespeople being pushy, calling you, and sending never-ending emails about how their services would be tantamount to you or your organization’s success. All it took was a few bad sales people to make this happen (dishonest, lazy, inattentive, or selfish).
The reason sales reps don’t hit their quota is because they aren’t focusing on the basic foundation of a sale: the relationship.
Sales tools have made sales reps jobs easier and yet harder. Since they can touch many more people, now it’s harder to build that meaningful relationship.
When sales software first came out, its intent wasn’t to make reps prospect faster, and reach more accounts. Its purpose was to help sales reps manage their relationships better.
Today, many tools are being misused to help reps have as many relationships as possible. And yet, reps import hundreds of thousands of leads into their system, send mail merges, and think the same message will fit every prospect. As you know it’s hard to dance with two guys/two girls at the same time. Quantity and quality often does not go well together.
The most successful salespeople have a high EQ (Emotional Intelligence). They understand that sales is not about transactions, it’s about relationships. Buyers don’t make their buying decisions based on rational decisions. They decide to buy based on emotional instincts, relationships, and trusts. Sales isn’t just the art of presenting value. It’s also the art of building trust and relationships.
The best salespeople do their research to understand their prospective buyers.They consult, and qualify them focusing on a relationship first. They aren’t just trying to sell. They are finding angles to add value and establish relationships.
This is what many rookie salespeople fail to grasp. They send selfish emails about themselves. They send the same email to thousands of accounts. They call every company with the same phone script. People don’t form relationships with email copy and phone scripts. They form relationships with other people.
The average response rate to cold emails in the industry is 3%. If you send 1000 emails, you will get 30 responses back. Our sales team test by writing highly personalized emails. The average response rate that they get was between 25%-35%. If they send 100 emails, they get 30 responses back. They are getting the same result. But there are 900 other future prospects that have not been touched, have not been annoyed by the “spam generic emails”, and can still be touched in the future!
Recently our VP of Marketing, Ryan O’Hara received a cold prospecting email from Matt Sharp, a SDR from Salesforce. Ryan posted a copy Matt’s email on social media saying that the email “buttered him up real good”. Ryan’s friends know that Ryan loves Tom Brady, and the email started with Tom Brady. Matt did his research and made Ryan feel good.
How Can Sales Automation Help to Redeem Sales?
Sales Automation software needs to put personal touch at the center of salespeople’s workflow while automating the parts of selling that don’t need human intervention.
There are hundreds of tasks that sales teams deal with everyday that don’t really need creative thinking. Tedious things like finding and verifying contact info, building lead lists, enriching inbound leads, setting up reminders to follow up, studying lead data to learn who is the best target, finding the angle to relate with the prospect, constructing workflows…even just hitting the Compose button in your inbox, etc. These things can and should be automated.
Sales Automation can add intelligence by presenting facts and information available on the internet so it’s easy for salespeople to make connection and put their personal touches in it. Sales Automation can integrate with marketing automation and other sales software to give the full details and information about prospects. Sales Automation software can help salespeople to maintain quality conversation while helping them to increase the quantity conversations that they are having. Sales automation can help salespeople to scale their personalized touches.
Imagine a world where each email that arrives in your inbox is a thoughtfully crafted email. An email that that is being written by someone who’s thoughtful and personal, who has clearly done their work and research.
An email that makes you smile and makes your life brighter.
That’s the future of sales.
