“JPMorgan Chase offered to eliminate voicemail for thousands of employees. About 65% took the offer, resulting in over $3 million in annual savings.” - Forbes
Although it’s a digital technology, voicemail requires people to stop what they are doing and pay complete attention to a message that may or may not be important. Consumers, buyers, and decision makers are becoming increasingly more comfortable using self-service, digital channels to not only conduct their research, but make purchase decisions. And, with the introduction of bots, natural language processing technology, and robotic process automation (RPA) to name a few, people may not even realize they are talking to a robot!
It’s no longer enough for sales leaders to update their digital technology stack - they must work with IT to audit sales operations and apply automation to free up reps to apply their skills and expertise to only the most important prospect interactions.
Hesitant about sales process automation? Here are 10 reasons why it’s not going away anytime soon.
1 - Prospects must be followed up smartly across multiple channels
Remember the days when everyone answered their phone? Neither do we!! Your prospects all have unique communication preferences that are impossible to diagnose without sales process automation technology. You need tracking functionality to trigger automated messaging to the channels that they use the most - and optimized to be consumed on mobile phones, tablets, and computers.
2 - Manual dialing is a waste of time
Yep we said it - calling a prospect without understanding the time of day that they are most likely available and the sales collateral they have interacted with is for sales dinosaurs. Your sales process automation should include the ability for a prospect to connect immediately to the sales rep, and integrations to support logging these interactions in your CRM.
3 - 1:1 Messaging is a global trend
2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed on their phones,
according to a 2016 report from consumer statistics firm
Statista. While these interactions must be strategically thought through to ensure they are not received as SPAM, sales automation technology will continue to improve its 1:1 messaging capabilities.
4 - A bot army is about to be unleashed
10,000 companies are already developing artificially intelligent chatbots on Facebook alone.
“It’s easier to chat and text than sit on the phone” - Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook, via TechCrunch
5 - Big Data getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger
Recent Forrester research reveals most companies estimate they're analyzing a mere 12% of the data they have. With connected devices soaring in popularity and exponentially increasing the amount of available data to analyze, sales automation will need to ingest, analyze, and prioritize key pieces of information for executives to use in their decisioning.
6 - Mobile sales force automation continues to grow
Tablets and digital devices are streamlining the presentation and management of information from employees who are remote or part of field sales. Your sales automation tools need to support this mobile centric world and enable reps to connect to the information they need when they are out of office.
7 - Automation Continues to Increase Sales Rep Efficiency
With sales automation tools, including GetAccept, continuing to bring visibility and tracking into sales reps prospecting activities and close rates, reps of all seniority levels are becoming more efficient at their craft.
8 - The skills and roles of a sales rep is evolving too
Sales reps are now expected to be able to glean and pull insights from their sales automation tools, and understand how to use technology to enrich the interactions they have with prospects. They also need to collaborate with IT and marketing teams on the production of collateral, and the generation of cross-functional strategies to elevate the entire business’ growth.
9 - Executives and IT departments continue to look for automation opportunities
With tremendous competition in many markets and among industry leaders, profit margins have become razor thin for many. In response, executives and IT departments have looked for cost-savings through operational efficiencies, which inevitably leads to an automation discussion.
Research from Gartner suggests one in three jobs will be converted to software, robots and smart machines by 2025. Even if your sales leaders are not considering automation, it’s likely that your executives and IT departments will be.
10 - AI will empower new levels of social selling
Part of the sales process automation is some sort of “brain” that ingests data sources from a variety of inputs, applies an algorithm with custom data points, and outputs recommendations, insights, and data. Instead of thinking only about automation as eliminating the work of a sales rep, consider the ability for reps to “ask questions” to the sales system and have it respond with customized answers.
