SALES TEAMS USING ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION
There is never-ending pressure on salespeople to close deals. Sales people often feel trapped in a never-ending loop of squandering important time that could be better utilized for lead generation and nurturing when a firm employs laborious manual methods.
An answer to this frequent problem can be found in robotic process automation, or RPA.
Of all the labor-intensive, manual sales duties, such as lead filtering, reporting, and CRM administration, at least one-third can be automated with RPA. Sales teams may then concentrate on nurturing leads and reach a larger number of clients, which will increase conversions.
RPA: WHAT IS IT?
RPA automates business operations that are often completed manually by employees using software. An enterprise can set up “bots” to handle any repetitive, boring business processes that would normally take up your team’s time and squander expensive resources by using RPA technologies.
RThese procedures can be completed more quickly by an organization using RPA technology than if they were carried out manually. This lowers operating costs and frees up your team to concentrate on higher-value, higher priority work.
REASONABLE POSSIBILITIES OF RPA IN SALES
RPA may automate conventional sales operations for sales teams, resulting in higher lead generation and productivity.
In fact, early users of sales automation have the following advantages, per a McKinsey & Company report:
- Spending more time interacting with customers
- An increase in client satisfaction
- Increases in efficiency of 10 to 15 percent
- Potential for up to a 10% increase in sales
- Even still, just one out of every four businesses has made use of automation in their sales teams.
Let’s examine more closely at the many advantages RPA can provide for your sales team.
EXAMINING RPA'S ADVANTAGES FOR SALES STAFF
ADDITIONAL TRANSACTIONS
To improve the likelihood that a lead will convert, RPA bots can assist in making sure that every lead is appropriately qualified and nurtured.
REDUCTIONS IN COSTS
Based on estimates from McKinsey & Company, companies that have automated their sales department can save between 10 and 15 percent on expenses.
AMPLIFIED OUTCOMES
Sales teams won’t feel burdened and will have more time to focus on higher-value priorities when tedious manual processes are removed. Rather, they’ll experience an increase in motivation, focus, and productivity.
WORKLOADS OPTIMIZED
Your sales staff may streamline their workflow and offer better customer service to both current and new leads by using RPA bots as virtual assistants to do manual tasks linked to your CRM, emails, spreadsheets, and more.
ENHANCED CONNECTIONS WITH CLIENTS
RPA bots can gather lead data and provide live chat support for basic product inquiries around-the-clock, freeing up your sales team’s time to concentrate on the interpersonal aspects of fostering client relationships.
CLEARER REPORTS
For any sales team to be successful, reporting is crucial. Unfortunately, though, it can take a lot of time. RPA bots can gather information from several sources and compile it into a single report by automating the reporting process, which will greatly increase the insight available to your team.
ALIGN CLIENT DATA BETWEEN SYSTEMS
Reporting can be made easier and more seamless by using RPA bots to combine all customer and third-party data across several platforms.
CYCLERS OF SHORTER SALES
Deals can be concluded more rapidly by automating processes like quote generation, customer research, and even paperwork. This shortens the sales cycle and provides your team more time to generate new leads.
AUTOMATED MANUAL SALES PROCESSES USING RPA
After learning about the advantages of RPA for sales operations, let’s examine whether specific tasks can be automated with RPA bots.
MANAGEMENT & AGGREGATION OF DATA
Your sales staff can use RPA bots to compile contact information about customers. As a result, sales representatives won’t have to waste time looking up crucial contact details like names, phone numbers, and companies. Additionally, these bots can enter this data into your CRM and search the internet and other apps for additional information to add to your database of CRM contacts.
COMPILING REPORTS
It can be quite time-consuming and challenging to obtain important insights while sifting through data dispersed over several spreadsheets, as was previously indicated.
Thankfully, RPA bots are ideal for this kind of activity.
RPA is capable of sifting through data sets that are split up across several systems and:
- Determine new rivals
- Keep an eye on the promotions, events, and messages that your rivals use.
- Provide analysis of account activity
MANAGEMENT OF LEADS
Without requiring any work from your human personnel, RPA chatbots can be configured to re-engage prospects who are stalled in the sales funnel. The automated systems communicate with clients via email or text messaging, responding to any queries they might have.
AFTER-SALE CLIENT JOURNEY IMPROVEMENT
The journey does not end when a contract is closed. To maintain long-term business, sales representatives must continue to cultivate solid relationships with their clients.
Sales departments can use RPA to streamline online ordering, tracking, and inquiry management, hence optimizing the customer journey.
INVOICING
Without automation, sales representatives must manually enter data into their CRM system, which must then be repeated for the finance department in a different system.
It takes a lot of time and effort to input data consistently when processing sales orders and invoices by hand, and it can be challenging to do without making mistakes.
Compared to a human sales agent, RPA bots can enter data and send bills to consumers considerably more quickly. In addition to seamlessly transmitting data between systems, the bots can accurately determine and add in the purchased items, quantity, discounts received, and total expenditure. They can also download the information in PDF format. This enhances client satisfaction by ensuring payments are received more swiftly.
MARKET COMPETITIVENESS & OVERSIGHT
Are you sick and weary of logging hours on end manually monitoring hundreds or thousands of product prices and contrasting them with those of your rivals? RPA is a great way to avoid this all too typical mistake.
Regarding competitive pricing and monitoring, RPA collects, evaluates, and gives automatic updates on competitor data, enabling you to efficiently track and keep an eye on their price in real time. You can keep a competitive edge, increase profitability, and optimize your pricing by doing this.
SEARCHING FOR NEW OPPORTUNITIES ON RFP/BID WEBSITES
RPA bots can be used to cruise RFP and bid sites for new prospects, saving human recruiters from having to spend hours on end looking for new clients.
Additionally, custom filters can be applied to exclude specific projects, displaying only possibilities with high potential.
COMPUTING QUOTES
This entire process, from creating a quote to entering it in various systems like CRM and ERP and sending it out to prospects, can be quite laborious. Sales representatives can concentrate on more crucial responsibilities by having RPA automate every stage of this procedure.
AUTOMATION OF EMAILS
Sending emails to leads and clients at different points in the sales cycle is standard procedure. However, what if your sales team could automatically send out pre-written emails without having to do any work?
RPA allows for the triggering of emails to be sent to both current and potential consumers. This comprises:
When deals are closed, send out “thank you” letters along with marketing materials.
emails with sales pitches and more
SALES TEAMS' DIFFICULTIES IN THE LACK OF RPA
TEMPORULY WASTED
Like any process, sales teams’ manual labor costs time that could be used for lead nurturing and deal closure. Employees feel less motivated and productive as a result.
MISTAKES ARE POSSIBLE
Inaccurate reporting is eventually produced by human data entering and sorting through numerous spreadsheets, which can lead to mistakes and discrepancies.
HALF THE LEADS
As was previously noted, sales representatives have less time to locate fresh leads and close them when they are wasting it on laborious manual procedures.