Running an excellent sales program is mission critical to any business. Every owner is aware of this – but in recent times, it’s become almost impossible to dedicate the time and energy it takes to act on that knowledge.
Personal contact, great customer service, consistent follow-up, and getting a “feel” for the market almost sound like fantasies amidst the screaming pace of the digital world. But with sales and marketing automation, the impossible becomes the natural.
This is why marketing automation drives an average 14.5% increase in sales productivity. And the following easy-to-use automation tools are why figures like those could be at your fingertips, too.
CRM: Make Your Salespeople Unstoppable with Pipedrive
A good CRM system should not only make sales management a simple affair, but it should also make best practices automatic. Oh, and it should also be easy to use, so your team actually uses it.
With over 50,000 customers in 140+ countries, Pipedrive has proven that it checks all three boxes. Pipedrive can also automate just about anything – here are some of the top examples:
- Automate background research by using Pipedrive’s AI to collect info about your leads
- Automate customer relationship tracking by syncing phone calls, emails and online activity with Pipedrive so that it feeds into one single timeline
- Automate project management by having sales trigger instructions on the next steps for your service delivery team
- Connect pretty much anything to Pipedrive and set up long sequences of events by using Zapier (learn more about Pipedrive Automations and Zapier here).
You should also check out how you can (almost) entirely automate your online sales prospecting and sales process with the Triggerbee and Pipedrive integration.
List building: Use LiveChat to Build your Email List Fast
There are about a million ways to build a list of email contacts, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to getting your potential customer to fill out a form that says “Ok, here’s my email.”
That form is called an opt-in form, and getting your customer to complete it is the holy grail of list building. Form doesn’t look good? Customer will get suspicious. If the form offers more info about dog shampoo when your customer was just reading about skydiving? Not a chance. Forms aren’t working and you don’t know why? Good luck building your list.
LiveChat lets you create opt-in forms that pop up automatically in your live chat box, connecting to popular platforms like MailChimp. This is an excellent option because it allows you to organically build your list while providing better, more responsive customer service to your customers.
As a bonus, with the Triggerbee and LiveChat integration, you’ll get the full transcript between the chatter and the chattee in your visitor list.
Email: Automate Your Email Marketing with MailChimp
Studies show that for optimum sales efficiency, you should be emailing your list of prospects somewhere between three and six times per month. That might sound like a lot – and it is – but the data has proven that regular emails deliver sales and improve customer retention across all industries.
Here to help you manage that workload are email automation tools like MailChimp. Known best for providing an easy way to organize, schedule and automate email campaigns, MailChimp also goes above and beyond that offering.
Set up a series of emails to initiate when a new customer opts in, and you can and schedule an entire customer relationship. Set triggers to remind paying customers that you’re still there after a period of inactivity. Embed slick visuals into your emails, integrate with Shopify and other e-commerce programs, gather and analyze data about your customers, calculate ROI, and more. If you’re looking at email automation, MailChimp is a safe bet.
Demos: Sidestep Scheduling, Logistics & Communication Breakdown with Zoom
Zoom is a video-based conference call tool that is taking the business world by storm. Why? Because it’s free, easy, and flexible. Why else? Because communication and the logistics surrounding it have always been one of the most expensive parts of doing business.
Aside from being free and eliminating the need for all kinds of travel by essentially putting everyone in the same digital room, Zoom can automate stuff, too.
Schedule calls ahead of time by linking a Zoom call to calendar systems like Google Calendar and many others. Automate logistics and confusion by eliminating them: Your clients don’t have to have Zoom or download anything to use it. You can generate a simple link with Zoom, and all your client has to do is click it. If they have a computer or mobile phone with a camera, they can do a Zoom video or audio conference with you.
Website Tracking: Turn Website Visitors into Customers with Triggerbee
In the age of digital marketing, your website is basically your storefront. And if you’re not tracking what customers do on your site, you’re leaving them alone in the waiting room. They can ring the service bell, ready to make a purchase, but you won’t answer unless you can hear it.
Website tracking tool Triggerbee is that service bell. Actually, it’s more like a really good salesperson. Watching customers, learning about them, helping them get more information about what they want, following up, and offering all of your services in a proactive but friendly way. This is what Triggerbee lets you do for your web visitors.
Automatically sift through the window shoppers and identify real customers. Track the ones that got away and retarget them with the offers they’re ready to buy. And integrate literally all of the automation tools we just covered to help you bridge the final gap from web visit to purchase. Learn more about Triggerbee’s available integrations here.
Sales Analytics: Turn Data into Smarter Sales with Salesforce
What sort of customers give you the highest return? Which existing customers are worth the time spent on follow up? What kind of people should you be reaching out to? And, based on all your sales and customer history, what smart decisions should you be making?
These are the questions salespeople and data technicians spend untold hours trying to answer. Automate all that head-scratching by importing your data into Salesforce and letting Einstein Analytics do it for you.
A new product from popular CRM Salesforce, Einstein Analytics essentially does two things: it automates data entry, and it uses AI to answer all those burning sales questions. This product is deeply intelligent. It collects and collates data on every single customer interaction. It uses info about the customers to identify what’s working and why. And it uses THAT data to predict sales opportunities that you haven’t thought of yet. Think of it as a really good weatherman for what your sales team should do.
If you’re curious to learn more, check out the product features page for Einstein Analytics.