5 Ways to Save Work Hours With Sales Automation

Did you know that more than 30% of sales-related activities can be automated?

Although automation has significant potential for sales teams, only one in four companies have automated at least one sales process. To stay ahead of the curve, join the top revenue leaders in adopting sales automation as the key driver of cost efficiency and increased revenue.

The powerhouse of sales automation, HubSpot's Sales Hub offers powerful tools that can help you break through the noise, reach more prospects, and prioritize good-fit leads. With Sales Hub in hand, you’re ready to start automating your sales team’s tasks, streamline cross-functional processes, and boost revenue growth.

Here are the key processes you can start automating now to improve your sales process and boost revenue growth:

1. Align sales and marketing teams
2. Implement a lead scoring system to prioritize working with good-fit leads
3. Automate your follow-up tasks and sequences to maintain the connection with prospects
4. Review and automate your sales process to optimize for efficiency and results
5. Analyze your sales data to identify areas for improvement

Align sales and marketing teams

Sales and marketing working together can be a game-changer for your business. Companies have experienced a 67% improvement in sales and 209% more revenue when sales and marketing are working together. When sales and marketing are in sync, leads get to the right person at the right time — no more finger-pointing or duplicate work. HubSpot's sales and marketing automation features make it easy to keep everyone on the same page, helping teams:

• Establish closed-loop reporting
• Have an agreed-upon qualification of a sales-ready lead
• Define contact lifestyle stages
• Implement a service-level agreement, or SLA
  

Implement a lead-scoring system

Implement a lead scoring system to prioritize working with good-fit leads. With lead scoring, critical attributes generate numerical values, making it easier for you and your team to prioritize working with leads who are most likely to buy from your business. 

You can also use HubSpot's Lead Scoring tool to rate leads based on factors like company size, location, industry, or the aggregate of lead's behavior — opening emails, clicking links, time spent on your website, and more. This saves time and allows you to engage with leads who are more likely to become paying customers.

HubSpot allows you to automatically assign new leads to the rep who is best suited to work with them based on criteria like the lead owner, territory, or product via round-robin Lead Rotation. If you want to get even more out of the CRM, integrate it with tools like Distributely to automate the process of assigning new leads, deals, and companies.

You can also use this tool to route support tickets to the best-suited sales and service representatives to follow up on them.

Automate your follow-up tasks and sequences

Prevent prospects from slipping through the cracks with timely follow-ups and sequences. With HubSpot's automation capabilities, you can queue up a series of automated sales emails and follow-up tasks for each prospect, so you never lose touch. You can also choose from a list of email templates and task options and enroll a contact right from your inbox.

HubSpot's email template library offers the following templates that you can customize and schedule to engage leads in a timely manner:

• Cold Prospecting Email: In cold introductions, it's more important to focus on your value than the product you're selling. 
• Inbound Lead Email: According to Inside Sales, if you contact a web lead within five minutes, there's a 9x higher chance of a conversion. Inbound emails can help you capture web-generated deals.
• Follow-up Email: Follow-up messages can truly make or break a deal. Sales reps always strive to convert leads into opportunities and ultimately, customers. To achieve this outcome, an effective follow-up strategy is crucial.
  

Optimize for process efficiency

Data-driven decision-making is critical for any business looking to improve sales performance. By analyzing CRM data, you can identify patterns, trends, and opportunities for improvement. Review and automate your sales process to optimize for efficiency and results. By closely examining your sales process, you can ensure that each step is essential and adds value. You may also find ways to eliminate steps that aren't providing value or could be automated.

Analyze your sales data

HubSpot's sales reporting software provides extensive pipeline data to accurately forecast performance and coach your team to reach its goals. The reports in HubSpot use the customer interactions and data from your CRM; they streamline your sales process and give visibility into how well your pipeline is performing.

Plus, powerful reporting allows your teams to gain visibility into KPIs, helping you reach your revenue targets more intentionally and effectively. We recommend the following reports in Sales Hub to see how effective your process is and where there may be room for improvement:

• Pipeline Report: This report identifies where your team succeeds and needs improvement within the sales pipeline.
• Typical Conversion Rates Report: By monitoring your conversion rate, you can pin down the points in your sales lifecycle where you're excelling or underperforming.
• Average Deal Size Report: The average deal size report provides the foundation for your reps' quotas and enables you to set expectations and objectives for your sales cycle.
• Won and Lost Deals Analysis Report: If you want to get a true understanding of your business, then you need to pay attention to every deal – not just those still in progress. Keep track of the deals you win and lose, so you can have an accurate idea of where you stand.
• Lead Response Time Report: This report compares the average time it takes your sales rep to follow up with a lead against industry standards.

As a bonus, not only is data quality easily maintained with HubSpot, but it's also automatic. In Operations Hub, the data quality function will declutter date properties, fix phone numbers, and even capitalize names. All with the click of a button, so your sales reps can focus on selling — not data entry.

Takeaway

HubSpot Sales Hub's sales automation features allow you to move deals through your pipeline faster and close more business. You can improve your close rate and increase efficiencies throughout your sales pipeline by automating your sales process. By automating repetitive sales tasks, you free up time for your reps to do what they're good at: selling.