In the highly competitive world of business today, we ask sales teams to submit more results with less, all while adjusting to more complex buyer’s journeys (plural). Sales process automation is the method of removing manual tasks throughout the sales process and replacing them with the use of technology-driven services that achieves consistent results without the need of performing recurring manual tasks. With ever-trending longer and more touchpoint-laden sales cycles (the average B2B sale now takes 8+ interactions across X-many channels), salespeople are simply carrying too much administrative burden. This radical change in technology is changing the way sales teams work altogether: it’s removing friction from the deals, allowing salespeople all over the world to scale the process, and hand back precious hours to a salesperson’s day to do the high-impact activities which really matter, like building faces, closing deals an much more.

The Productivity Problem for Sales

The sales productivity crisis occurs because there is a misalignment between how salespeople spend their time and what moves the needle on revenue. Per research from Salesforce, the typical sales rep dedicates a mere 28% of his or her workweek to selling, with the rest (no less than 72%) gobbled up by administrative red tape that includes – among other annoyances – manual data entry (which drains upwards of 19% of a rep’s time), scheduling meetings, developing proposals, and updating CRM. This administrative burden is costly—reducing job satisfaction, cognitive load associated with task-switching and an unacceptable error rate as part of the manual process. And the financial consequences are equally grim – companies that rely heavily on manual sales processes spend 30% more time closing deals, have a 27% lower win rate, and bring in 17% less revenue per sales rep than companies with more automated processes.

What is sales workflow automation?

Sales workflow automation includes the technologies and techniques that turn manual sales processes into programs, or workflows, which are programmed into automating once those workflows are met with the specified trigger, condition, or rule. At its core, workflow automation solutions plug right into your tech stack and form seamless connections to the rest of the applications on it—CRMs, email clients, calendar apps, document management platforms, you name it—Fostering a single environment where data moves freely between systems without the interruption of human touch. The following are the three main types of automations: Rule-based automations are automations which use a series of if-then-else logical operations to facilitate an action or decision, a time-based automation follows a series of triggers at defined intervals to execute a specific action, and a behavior-based automation, which enacts an action based on prospect behaviors. Some examples include basic automations such as auto-creating meeting notes from call recordings, all the way to complex workflows like lead routing systems that take into account dozens of data points (territory, past performance, expertise, etc.) to assign an opportunity to the right sales rep; and all happening in a few seconds without the need for a human touch.

Lead Management And Prioritization

An automated lead scoring process turns that subjective exercise into a data-driven system that ensures you always know which leads are your very best opportunities. Sophisticated systems like ours are capable of processing dozens of signals – demographics, firmographics, online behavior, content engagement – to compute dynamic lead scores that are updated on the fly. Smart lead routing automatically sends leads to the right sales person as they come in based on territory, expertise, and workloads -tackling lag time between when a hot lead arrives when it goes cold. Get real time alerts when valuable triggers happen (a prospects comes back to your site, views pricing pages multiple times, or engages with bottom of funnel content). These systems remove the need for manual review, and allow prompt response to key prospects.

Communicating and Follow Ups

By automating scheduling for email and calls, sales teams no longer have to spend half their day manually planning time for outreach. Multitouch sequence automation has arguably been the most transformational development, allowing for full-funnel outreach campaigns that orchestrate emails, calls, social touches and video messages across several days or weeks — and adjusts it automatically based on prospects’ responses. These automated sequences guarantee that such crucial follow-ups never slip between the cracks.Recall that 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first, but 48% of sales people never even make a single follow-up attempt after the first contact. The most advanced platform now includes, but is not limited to, systems for analyzing sentiment, language processing that detects a buying signal, and seamless interface with conversation intelligence tools that transcribe call recordings and can produce automated recommended action items.

Data Entry & CRM Updates

This is where a good automated data capture system or tool, which are available in the market, can help—just set it up and it automatically keeps complete record of all sales activities—calls, email, meetings, interactions on social media—and logs the information into the CRM without the user having to enter data manually. They help create a complete and accurate history of your activity, while reclaiming productivity hours each week. The technology has since matured, and now also includes smart automated transcription and analysis of sales calls, extracting the important information (customer needs, objections, next steps) and entering it into structured CRM fields. With mobile and voice-activated tools, friction is also lowered by being able to perform hands -free updates during the visit or after leaving the customer. For businesses, this means that those with a robust CRM software receive the most benefit — bottom line, up to a 25-30% reduction in administrative time, 40-65% increase in CRM adoption rates, and real results in maintaining the quality of data at significantly higher rates—automatic data entry reduces critical error rates by 37% compared to manual entry.

Reporting & Forecasting

Automatic reporting turns labor-intensive manual creation of reports into real-time visibility systems and allows instant visibility into sales performance, pipeline health, and forecast accuracy. Today’s reporting automation includes AI-driven anomaly detection that automatically surfaces for management attention to major deviations—deals that are stuck, pipelines that drop below historical coverage ratios, or win rates that are falling—allowing leaders to take action before company performance in the quarter is affected. Automation of predicting The bottom line is that predictive modeling generates far better real–time forecast models than most traditional hunch–based forecast methods. Companies with sophisticated sales analytics automation can experience 3-15% higher sales growth than their competitors who report using simple, traditional means, as they can intercept both opportunities and trouble systematically earlier in the sales process.

Advantages of Automating Sales Workflow

Sales teams that are top performers can save 5-7 hours per week per rep using sales automation which is equivalent to almost regaining an entire work day worth of time that can be focused on high value selling. Such automation however correlates to better metric conversion rates, such as 18% higher lead-to- opportunities and 14.5% faster op to close rates than in their manual counterparts. Automated processes perform these tasks equally flawlessly in light of other task demands competing for attention without such variability that is often introduced with a manual process and would otherwise leave customers with inconsistent experiences. It’s not just visibility for visibility’s sake—automation leaves a digital trail of each interaction that is easily tracked and queried, providing a more robust data set that makes it easier to forecast, recognize pipeline problems earlier, and identify coaching opportunities through the data.

Selecting the Best Tools for Your Sales Team

Choosing the r ight sales automation platform involves considering a number of key factors. You should be looking for integration, with the best tool is also the one that isn’t going to create silos of data or require double entry. The user experience is just as important—automation tooling that is clumsy to use will not be adopted­­, no matter how great the idea is in theory. Customizability You want to see how much this tool will be able to fit the sales process that works best for you, not the other way around. Practical considerations such as the complexity of setup, the level of resource investment required, and the amount of time that will be needed to start experiencing the benefits are essential to consider as well — and some platforms take months of complex setup and a full-time administrator, while others come ready out of the box with a guided setup experience and pre-built templates to help get you to value quicker.

Best Practices for Implementing Sales Automation

Successfully implementing it starts with detailed process mapping—mapping out how you currently run your company so you can identify any inefficiencies and friction points that are better solved before turning on the robots. Begin with point solutions that address key pain points, as opposed to trying to mandate widespread transformation all at once—the latter approach will chip away at the organization’s confidence with each failed initiative, whereas small wins gain momentum over time. Strike a balance between automation efficiency and the leverage of personalized human touch by separating admin that should fully automated from customer touch points which deserve semi-automation. Spend as much as you can afford on change management rather than just technical implementation-even the best automation will bomb without decent training, good communication on the benefits, and visible executive backing. Define success metrics upfront and measure efficiency and effect measurements effectively to make sure automation drives real business value not only reduce administrative work.

Real-World Example

Segment a customer data platform provider achieved such transformation when they efficiently implemented end-to-end sales workflow automation after realizing that their sale team was dedicating almost 40% of their time in administrative work. Segment automated lead routing, scoring, initial outreach, meeting scheduling, and post-call follow-up, cutting down on administrative time by 78% and increasing sales productivity by 52% in the process, with lead response time dropping from 12 hours to under 5 minutes. Results were impressive: 37% higher conversion of leads to opportunities, 28% faster sales cycle, 41% faster time to ramp for new sales rep as the automation of clear process guidance and faster onboarding had been accomplished.

How Sales Workflow Automation Has Evolved To Be More Than Just Efficiency Selling early sales workflow automation was thought of as an efficiency tool. By doing this well, you can remove the administrative overhead that prohibits your salespeople from doing what they do best, above all else—selling, establish an executional consistency that delights customers, and collect the data needed to refine your sales process for the long run. The more successful companies take an inclusive approach to automation—understanding that it should be in service of human interactions rather than in lieu of, beginning with goals before tools, and staged implementation to gain support. No matter where you are on the curve of adoption for sales automation, whether you’re just getting started to improve operations or looking for a way to get more from systems that are already in place, the basic question is the same: Are sales people investing time in activities that drive revenue or are administrative chores impeding their ability to maximize customer-facing time? Workflow automation provides an established summation to increased productivity, a better customer experience, and faster revenue growth amidst a crowded market.