What Is Sales Force Automation Software, and Why Do You Need It?

Sales reps spend only 30% of their time selling during an average week, according to the Salesforce State of Sales report. The remaining time is spent on tasks such as prioritizing leads, entering data, and generating quotes. All these heavily manual tasks can be made less time consuming by using sales force automation software.

Read on to learn how sales force automation software can benefit your business and free up more of sellers' time for revenue-generating activities.

• What is sales force automation software?
• How does sales force automation software work?
• Benefits of using sales force automation software
• Key features of sales force automation software
• How to choose the right sales force automation software

Sales force automation software automates a company's sales processes by performing tedious tasks such as lead management, sales forecasting, and performance analysis. It helps reduce sellers' time, effort, and errors.

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Sales force automation software updates data based on activity triggers, such as a seller calling a customer. The software's data is based in a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that centralizes a sales team's data.

Sales force automation software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up areas of the sales process. Predictive AI gives sales teams predictions for the best actions to take to advance their deals in the sales pipeline. Generative AI uses existing data to generate text for emails, proposals, and other messaging.

Here are some of the tasks that sales force automation software helps with:

• Prioritizing leads and opportunities: The software uses AI to scan customer profiles — including leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities data — and analyzes patterns in the data to identify the leads that have a high likelihood of driving the most revenue or closing a deal.
• Entering customer and sales information: Automatically capture customer and prospect data, such as email addresses or phone numbers, from spreadsheets, emails, or calendars and sync it with your CRM platform. Keep the information updated by using AI to sync sales interactions, such as calls and meetings, to customer profiles.
• Generating quotes and proposals and gaining approvals: Configure, price, and quote or create proposals with predefined templates within sales force automation software and quickly send the necessary details to a prospect. Approval workflows have triggers and rules to help move deals along.
• Recording internal meetings and training: Automatically record effective sales calls, create a playlist collection of calls, and share it with your sales team to demonstrate specific skills such as handling objections or negotiating prices. Reps can view the recordings when it's convenient for them.

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One of the top tactics for sales growth is to improve the use of tools and technologies, according to the Salesforce State of Sales report. The main benefit for sales teams using sales force automation technology is it improves their efficiency and productivity. Teams can focus more time on high-value sales activities rather than administrative tasks.

Here are some other benefits of sales force automation software:

• Accuracy: Humans tend to be prone to errors when doing manual data entry, and automating tasks helps to improve accuracy.
• Scalability: The software can evolve with your sales team and your business. For example, if you hire more reps, you can add more software licenses. Or you could upgrade to new tech features such as mobile access.
• Saves time: Information is accessible and up to date in the sales force automation software. The result is a quicker response time to requests and questions from customers and prospects.
• Alignment: By centralizing all company data within the sales force automation software, teams can more easily align on business decision-making.

While the focus of sales force automation software is on how it benefits the sales team, it's important to note that it also offers advantages for sales operations, marketing, and management. This is because the software unites the data and systems across these teams. For example, if managers need to view a real-time sales forecast or marketing requires the latest customer proposal, it's all accessible within the software.

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Since sales force automation software centralizes and connects data within a company, your software's features must be able to integrate with the other systems, tools, and processes from finance, marketing, operations, and other divisions. With this strategic approach, you'll be able to easily sync updates and changes to data, no matter where in the company they come from.

These are some other features to look for in sales force automation software:

• Sales cadences: Guide sellers with step-by-step instructions and best practices to keep leads moving through the sales pipeline. Automatic triggers alert reps and keep them on track.
• Relationship graphs and insights: Uncover customer relationship networks without any manual research. Find new relationships backed by external data or from relevant internet sources that are pulled into your CRM.
• Sales call summaries: Curate important points from calls and transform them into a concise synopsis of takeaways, including action items for next steps.
• Call insights: Use AI to flag key moments across sellers' conversations to learn about competitors, customer objections, attitudes on pricing, and questions asked. Use unique keywords for AI to identify competitor products and features.
• Reports and dashboards: Sales force automation software gathers and analyzes sales data and uses it to create personalized reports and dashboards. Dashboards can be used to manage sales pipelines in a single, consolidated view and track changes over time.
• Pre-built templates: The software should include customizable templates for proposals and sales processes such as account planning or customer briefings. This creates consistency and standardization.
• Incentive compensation management: Streamline complex commission workflows and improve the accuracy of compensation plans by automating commission calculations. Ensure the software integrates with your payroll system.
• Territory planning: Consider software that includes mapping features for territory management. You can automatically assess sales rep coverage to ensure they have equitable territories and you can overlay business and economic data.

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The first step in choosing the right sales force automation software is to determine your sales team's goals and what will best help you achieve them. In my experience, teams may be hoping to integrate different systems, gain more visibility into sales performance, or expand their insights into forecasting.

Here are some items to consider when evaluating sales force automation software:

• Ask for a demo to understand how the software works.
• Try the software with your team to make sure it is easy to use and has customizable features.
• Inquire about the cadence of the software's future updates and upgrades.
• Explore the software's training, learning portal, and resources to continue building your team's knowledge.
• Confirm the types of customer support offered if you have a problem or question.

For example, if your sales team's goal is to do more email prospecting, consider a sales force automation software that integrates with your existing email platform. Look for software that uses opportunity management insights to identify prospective customer profiles that are likely to convert. It should use email templates or generative AI features to help draft personalized emails using your CRM data.

Consider software with a personalized scheduling link so prospects can book a time directly with the seller. Track future emails or other interactions such as calls or social media prospecting by syncing activities in your software's CRM.

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With the right sales force automation software, you can automate tedious tasks and speed up sales processes. The software empowers your sales team to concentrate all their efforts generating more profits, business growth, and sales success.