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Learn how to create an automated sales system that will free up your time and help you sell more products or services. Set up these tools and win!
March 15, 2023
If you're serious about scaling your business, you can’t be doing everything manually. Creating an automated sales system is the best way to save valuable time so you can focus on other parts of the business.
Intrigued by the notion of creating a well-designed automated sales system to draw more sales? Where do you start? How to use an automated sales system to monitor sales and boost performance?
In this guide, you'll learn everything about creating that million-dollar streamlined system with sales automation. All you need is determination and support from the right resources, like The Sales Connection.
Let's dig in.
Sales automation refers to a chain of commands automatically executed and distributed by a computer system to attract paying customers. About 33% of sales tasks can be successfully automated, from prospecting to email templates to reporting.
After the sales automation system setup is complete, you can sit back until the system books you in for an in-person session with a lead. At that point, the lead is already extremely interested in purchasing your services. You are much more likely to sell to this person than all the random cold-call leads.
The sales automation sequence can be broken down into three main steps:
Let’s say you're a sponsored travel expert selling courses. You want to attract aspiring influencers to join your community and purchase from you. To raise awareness about your work and expertise, you may offer new prospects a free copy of your e-book. You can promote the giveaway on all your platforms, creating a landing page to capture your email addresses. Most email marketing programs allow you to do this.
Once they insert their email address to get the copy, the sales automation starts. It automatically delivers the e-book to the prospects and puts them into your sales funnel. The awareness part is to get your audience interested. Directly blasting your service fees can be repellent. Refrain from selling anything right now, and only offer sincere and useful advice.
Depending on your niche, product, and product cost, the nurturing step can take several days to several weeks. During this time, an automated email sequence is set. Your prospects will receive information about your business and how it benefits them.
The nurturing emails have to relate to your business while providing genuine value. You don’t want to sound like you only want them to pay. Based on the sponsored travel niche, you can prepare some emails with links to your website on topics like how the pandemic has created opportunities for travel influencers, how to land your first sponsored trip, what to prepare for a press trip, or how to pitch to luxurious resorts for sponsorship.
Your target audience will find the information relevant and useful. Hence, they will become hooked on your business and trust your expertise. A relationship takes time to build, so insert your expert knowledge without being pushy. For a course that costs $1,000+, it might take several weeks to build up trust and convert sales. However, a small purchase under $100 may only need a few emails. The optimal time frame differs from business to business, which can be determined through data collected by the automated sales system.
After a while, either your audience will begin to trust you, or they will leave. That’s when you arrive at the deal creation part.
The system will automatically invite potential customers to book a free consultation call. You take over and deliver your sales pitch to clients. In the deal creation step, you can offer discounts or other perks to lock in interested customers.
After the call, you can also set up an automated follow-up with a proposal to remind the prospect to sign up. An automated sales system can be linked with a payment system so the client can pay immediately. There you go! You've closed a deal just like that.
A sales automation tool allows you to create the entire automation in the system. It's an effective way to combine and test out various business strategies. A customer relationship management (CRM) tool handles this process, managing and nurturing the relationship between you and your client.
A CRM tool collects and stores customer data to analyze their preferences and likelihood of responding to your call to action. With a CRM tool, you can strategize and formulate suitable business plans.
According to the timeline you set, the sales automation tool automatically distributes emails to prospects. It records prospects’ reactions and promotes them to the next sequence if they have high enough scores.
It digitizes manual work typically carried out by sales reps. The system follows a chain of commands and books sales calls for your agents with high-potential customers.
Traditionally, these steps are manually taken by you or a sales rep (if you have one). You must keep track of each engagement and direct prospects down the sales funnel to close the deal. Everything becomes easier with sales automation.
Based on how your prospect reacts to your initial contact, you must develop an appropriate sales strategy. Artificial intelligence (AI) can intelligently analyze data and then distribute relevant content. For example, if your prospects only click on emails discussing luxury travel and European destinations, the AI can be set up to direct nurturing emails on these topics to them, which reduces the sales cycle drastically.
The statistics are well-documented and displayed within the system. You can calibrate the minor details to polish the sales automation regularly. This minimizes the chance of human error and is a much faster way to obtain reliable data.
Instead of wasting time on these repetitive tasks, sales automation relieves you or your busy sales reps of dull duties to spend your energy on securing deals. An automated sales system filters out uninterested customers and brings better-quality prospects to your sales team. Now, they can work their magic to turn these people into paying customers.
Once a business develops an automated sales system, it can use it for a long time. Only the initial setup may be time-consuming. After that, updating the content is fast and simple. In the long run, it saves your business the budget of hiring sales reps to complete cold calls and other tasks to bring in leads.
Nearly one-quarter of employers use automation in their business to lower operating costs, especially to help them expand their business. Offloading the tasks to software is effective in maintaining quality with a lower budget.
Here's a step-by-step guide to creating a sales automation system for your business. Some of the steps may not apply to your niche. Follow the ones that apply.
Do you want to adopt an email campaign? Email campaigns are the most common method to arouse interest and stay connected. Some businesses choose to use social media like Facebook and Instagram. You should take a look at where the majority of your target customers are and where they spend most of their time.
If you're willing to invest more, you can also have sales automation software set up across all platforms. It helps new businesses, as they are still figuring out which channel brings in the most profits. CRM tools will assist in developing impeccable sales sequences to achieve specific purposes.
CRMs we love:
Your prospects don’t always end up in the same sales funnel. Some may sign up for newsletters, freebies, or alerts. You will set up respective funnels for these actions. It's critical that the first email is instant. Your prospects need to get an email either confirming their registration or delivering the freebies.
After prospects have entered their respective automation sequences, it’s time to learn more about them and subtly drop your sales pitches. To collect data, you can set up free automated consultations.
Design questionnaires that collect information about your prospects’ company sizes, budgets, locations, goals, etc. Offer prospects critical insight that dissects their business model and give tips to succeed. It will convince the leads about your ability while enriching your data vault.
Every lead weighs differently. They don’t show interest at the same pace. Adopting a scoring system is an efficient way to prioritize your leads. Different actions earn the prospect different points.
For example, opening an email earns them 10 points, clicking open a link in the email is 50 points, and visiting more than one page on your website is 100 points. These points accumulate in the contact’s database. Once they reach 500 points, they can enter the next stage, which is when you reap the harvest by scheduling a call.
If a prospect is stuck at 450 points for over a month, the system can put them into a different sequence. Perhaps you can offer discounts, more freebies, or anything that arouses their interest to contact you.
A logical flow of incoming emails reminds your prospects why they are with you. Hence, they will want to schedule an in-person call at some point. Give them full access to an automated scheduling tool to avoid losing leads.
The scheduling tool allows prospects to book a 30-minute (or any duration) meeting with you. It can be connected to your online calendar to automatically block off any unavailable slots.
After the free consultation, it’s time to talk to the prospects about purchasing your services. Follow-up emails are expected within the first few days to encourage the prospect to hold on to a good deal while it lasts. Each email should remind the prospect of when the offer expires and how buying your service will help them excel in their field.
You need to include the full proposal and links to payment in the follow-up emails so customers can decide and pay directly. If you're selling a standard service (online course), there is no need to adjust each proposal.
Every premium automated sales system keeps track of the statistics of your sales reps. They show how efficient your agents are at turning leads into revenue, the average time to close a deal, how your prospects respond to different types of email campaigns, and more.
These statistics are vital to your business. They provide a holistic view of the strengths and weaknesses of the current sales automation. You can make tweaks and alter some sequences until you find the best way to generate sales.
The sales automation system does not end after a deal is created. It sends out invoices when they are due. You can select the payment methods accepted, such as credit cards, debit cards, and online transfers. With these friendly payment reminders, you can keep track of customers’ payment plans and take action if they have been missing payments.
An automated sales system is good not only for attracting new customers but also for retaining and generating more sales from your current clients. When they're enrolled in your online course, you can send them regular updates on how your advanced courses can benefit them.
Since trust is already established with your existing customers, the emails should lean toward the informative side rather than being salesy. You want your customers to see you as a friend. Repeat the automation process for your other products to get the highest revenue.
There are things AI can’t replace, and one of those is human effort. Only your sales reps can bring up realistic challenges they have encountered during pitches. They can spot the flaws in the automated process, as they are first-hand users.
At the end of each quarter, it's smart to review the current model with your senior sales reps. Statistics can’t always accurately identify real-life challenges your talented staff is facing. Use their input to polish the system.
In the sales world, an automated sales system has to go side by side with an automated marketing system to fully shine through. Without adequate support, your sales system will not thrive.
Every business owner, big or small, can benefit from an automated sales system. It gets rid of the redundant steps traditionally performed by humans to shorten the sales process and reach a wider and more qualified audience.
As a small business, you may well find it hard to reach a wider audience or spend hours manually prospecting for little return. People don’t seem to come across your profile on LinkedIn or Google as often as you'd hoped, and you're stuck on how to attract more leads.
Building a solid sales funnel is vital for any business. It can help you save time but also gather data to fine-tune your process and attract more qualified leads. Once you get clear on your funnel, it makes it easier to automate processes. Automating multiple steps helps businesses reach more people more consistently, gradually building trust with the audience. Save time and keep improving your systems over time as you test different strategies and gather more data.
Small businesses will find creating an automated sales system much more efficient. It can rapidly expand your pool of contacts and filter out potential paying customers.
An automated sales system is needed for your sales team because it:
Combining human effort with the best sales automation tools maximizes potential profits for your business. Sales teams can draw data and report anytime to review their performance and learn of changes in customer behaviors.
Your sales team can use the tool to experiment with the automation style and content to develop the best approach for your business. Since they can gather prospects’ information, they can deliver their sales pitches according to the prospect’s tastes and preferences. It will increase the success rate.
An automated sales system does not completely replace the need for building a sales team. Sales and marketing teams need to use a sales automation platform to focus on sales tasks rather than manual tasks. As a business owner, you need to intelligently combine an automated sales system with your hires. Your agents need to monitor the data and know when to step in.
Most of the time, prospects don’t appreciate being dumped into a pool of soulless automated emails. They aren't personal and don't always address their utmost concerns. Capable sales reps will identify the best time to step in and offer human consultation. Even if they can’t close the deal, they will retain a larger chunk of people in the future.
Market trends can change in a split second after a celebrity’s tweet or new product announcement. Your automation can be obsolete and will require updates regularly. An automated sales system does not catch these market trends, but your sales reps do.
An automated sales system puts your business out there and gains loyal customers. It's a key business strategy for sales reps and business owners. If you've wasted enough time doing everything by yourself, now’s the best time to get your sales automation going. With the help of The Sales Connection, you can easily generate top-quality leads that bring actual revenue with minimal costs.
Kayvon Kay
Kayvon has over two decades of experience working with high-level closers and perfecting his sales methodologies. He has earned the title of Canada’s #1 pharmaceutical sales representative and continues to share his expertise as a keynote speaker and through his multi-million-dollar coaching program.
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