Table of contents:
- A Built-In Calendar To Track Your Sales Pipeline
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Build and Manage Your Existing Customer Relationships
- Team Collaboration
- Advanced Reporting Capabilities
- Robust Real-Time Communication
- Detailed Records of Past Conversations
- Video Calling
- Tracking for Meeting Logistics
- Auto-Responder With Templates
- Sync With Your Company’s Existing Tools
- Outreachly for B2B Sales & Marketing Automation
Sales automation software is a must-have tool for any business that aims to cut out the time-consuming administrative tasks of sales today. The automation software helps sales representatives with the following processes:
- finding new leads
- following up with customers
- recording customer transaction history
- lead scoring
- collecting contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses.
Whether you work alone or your team is packed with sales reps, it’s nearly impossible to sell manually without sales automation software. That’s why 56% of companies currently use marketing automation, and more than 40% of B2B companies plan to adopt it in the future. Additionally, automation has been shown to increase sales productivity by 14.5% and reduce marketing overheads by 12.2%.
But with so many options available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when choosing the right software for your team, especially if you’re planning outreach via multiple channels, including email, LinkedIn, and more. That’s why we’ve put together this list of 10 must-have features every sales automation software should have:
1. A Built-In Calendar To Track Your Sales Pipeline
You’ll want to know where you stand with your sales pipeline at all times. If you know what stage each of your prospects is in, you can better manage your resources and forecast your income more accurately. This way, your sales team can stay on top of their game by knowing at all times what stage each deal is in.
A built-in calendar showing when each deal was first established, when each qualified lead was last contacted, and when each deal is set to close will take a ton of stress off your sales team. This is especially important when you’re closing deals that span multiple weeks or even months where it’s easy to forget about crucial lead information.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Build and Manage Your Existing Customer Relationships
Customer relationship management (CRM) is an organized approach to tracking and managing customer interactions with your business. CRM software works by combining multiple streams of information from various sources into a single system where data is organized, stored, and retrieved efficiently.
Your sales funnel consists of all of your leads, active customers, and how each of them is progressing through the sales process. Not only does this let you know the number of customers at each stage, but it also gives you an idea of where you’re losing sales and how you can close more deals.
When it comes to managing your customer relationships, you should also look for ways to streamline your sales process. This includes:
- setting up sales activities like setting up meetings with prospects
- sending emails
- and scheduling demos.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software takes the headache out of managing your sales funnel. It includes features like built-in email templates, scheduling, and contact management. Your ideal sales automation software should include these functions, as well as the ability to integrate with other existing tools in your business.
3. Team Collaboration
Team collaboration features help users work together more effectively by enabling them to share documents, discuss ideas, and remain connected with team members throughout their workday. While your salespeople will be responsible for bringing in the deals, they won’t always be able to close them and answer customer questions on their own.
You may have a support team for product sales and customer service reps who can help close deals too. You’ll want to make sure your sales automation software allows you to collaborate with other departments seamlessly.
For example, customer support representatives should be able to use your CRM to see what’s been sold and when. This way, they can help customers who are having trouble with your products while they’re still under warranty. Sales reps should be able to add team members to deals on the sales software so that everyone stays in the know. They should also have the ability to assign tasks to members who are experts in certain deals.
4. Advanced Reporting Capabilities
Sales reps and managers alike need to know how each of their deals is progressing and how each of their customers is interacting with your products. To do this, you’ll want sales automation software that allows you to create different types of reports.
For example, you might want to generate a report that highlights:
- how many of your deals are closing each month
- how many of your customers are renewing their contracts
- how many customers are interacting with your email campaign
- how many of your customers are contacting you for assistance.
These reports can help you spot trends that may otherwise go unnoticed. They can also let you know if you need to make any adjustments to your sales process. Your sales automation software should also let you create custom reports that can be emailed to your sales reps. This gives them deeper insights into their sales pipeline so they can close more deals.
5. Robust Real-Time Communication
While your sales automation software is great for managing your sales funnel, you also need a way to communicate with your customers. For example, if you’re selling to B2B customers, you may need to talk to your customers’ IT departments.
This is something that your sales automation software can help with. In this case, you’ll want a robust real-time email, call, or messaging feature that can help you communicate with your customer’s departments. It should enable you to personalize emails by department and schedule automatic calls and messages for later.
Built-in communication tools can also help you save time and stay organized by enabling you to communicate with customers from one central place. They can help you save time by assigning specific sales reps to customers at scheduled times, eliminating the guesswork on random calls and messaging.