Time is precious in sales and marketing because you only have a few minutes to reach customers before they go to a competitor. Unfortunately, many franchises will lose quality leads and valuable time trying to perform a list of manual tasks that leaves room for errors. However, there is a solution: sales automation.
Sales automation will shorten your sales cycles and bring in more revenue through more efficient processes that reach customers quickly and effectively.
Let’s dive into the complete guide to sales automation for franchises that covers all your questions about the benefits and features of a sales automation platform.
Key Takeaways:
- Sales automation uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace or streamline manual processes.
- A sales automation platform unifies your franchises, collects data, improves productivity, and increases your revenue.
- Your platform should include features for collecting data and using it for qualifying and distributing your sales.
- The measurable real-time results you get from sales automation help you optimize your strategies.
What is Sales Automation?
Sales automation uses digital tools to perform manual tasks with the assistance of technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning. For example, instead of manually entering information into a spreadsheet or a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, sales automation can collect and display data in a formatted report for you to view in real-time. It also performs automated tasks like:
- Sending out emails
- Analyzing customer information
- Forwarding customer details to the appropriate sales teams
An average of 51% of companies use automation in their sales and marketing, and 58% plan to incorporate technology in the future. Because sales automation for franchises is very complex, many teams use technology stacks that allow them to pick and choose the most effective tools for their industry and add specialized software into one stack.
How Can Automation Improve Sales?
CRM platforms have a projected market size of $35 billion by 2023. They are one primary way you can automate your sales. Below are several benefits of using a sales automation CRM and other automation tools in your stack.
Source: Finances Online
Unifies Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Sales automation helps eliminate data siloes in your business, a common issue in franchises that have data spread across several locations and departments within the organization. Instead, each franchise and department can enter information into a cloud-based CRM that compiles that data into one convenient place for everyone to access.
Bringing your data together will also align your departments as everyone can access information from other teams and locations. This is especially relevant for your sales and marketing teams as they can work with the same customer analytics and collaborate in their efforts.
Saves Your Business Time and Money
Sales teams spend about 35.2% of their time selling. However, automation can perform manual tasks in an instance, freeing up your sales team to focus on tasks that increase sales. This can shorten your sales cycle and bring in more revenue. Automation can also boost your productivity by 20%.
Provides Valuable Customer and Sales Insights
Companies unanimously agree that first-party data is key to their media strategies. It provides a unified customer view and allows them to customize their sales message and other techniques to appeal to customers.
Sales automation can pull data about customers from different departments and general consumer behaviors. Then you can view reports that summarize those insights to help you make smarter data-driven sales decisions that offer a personalized experience to customers.
Increases Your Business Revenue
A primary function of a quality sales automation platform is its auto-response and lead distribution systems. These tools allow you to move leads to the most compatible sales rep and respond to customers faster, which improves your chances of a sale as 35-50% of sales go to the business that responds first.
Source: Fit Small Business
Improves Your Customer Satisfaction Rate
Improving customer engagement and experience is why 35% of sales and marketing teams use automation in their processes. Your faster response time and customized experience through automation and improved data analytics will help you connect to your customers more personally and increase their satisfaction rate.
What Types of Sales Automation Features are Available?
Here are five features of sales and marketing automation platforms for franchises.
1. Data Collection
Your sales automation platform will collect detailed consumer insights to help you understand your customers. It should also collect data on your sales processes and teams to help you analyze how well your franchises and reps are performing and whether they are meeting their quotas.
2. Lead Tracking
Tracking consumers as they move through your pipeline helps you know where each lead is and what information they received. You can also view any communications they had with your franchise to avoid repeating information. Instead, your sales team can provide valuable and relevant information in each customer interaction.
3. Lead Qualification and Distribution
You can avoid losing leads when you use sales automation for lead qualification and distribution in your franchise. Your platform uses lead scoring to prioritize customers before distributing them to the best sales team or franchise location. The salesperson who receives the lead will also receive a notification so they can respond promptly to create a shorter sales cycle.
4. Customer Follow-Up
Sales automation platforms help you follow up with customers more efficiently with different tools like automatic messaging and notifications that help you quickly respond to each inquiry. You can also add more tools to your stack to develop your follow-up processes further, like automatic booking and scheduling, automated sales calls, and more that ensure you connect to each customer.
5. Measurable Results
How do you know whether your sales and marketing efforts are effective?
A sales automation platform will give you results you can measure and reports that will provide a comprehensive overview of how well your sales efforts performed. These reports will also help you find areas to improve and optimize.
How to Choose the Best Sales Automation Platform for Your Company
The MXTR automation platform is designed specifically for franchises and your needs. Our advanced features enable you to track and monitor all leads, which will increase your revenue and help you meet your sales quotas.
Schedule a demo to see why our marketing automation platform is your solution to sales automation.
Featured Image: istockphoto
