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Best Automation Software for Sales in Salesforce CRM
Date: March 2023
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Best Automation Software for Sales in Salesforce CRM — OnePager + Checklist
Download OnePager + Checklist to find out how to select software for sales automation on AppExchange or other platforms
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What is Sales Automation?
A recent Salesforce report says that sales reps spend only 28% of their working hours actually selling.
That means that two-thirds of their time is wasted on manual tasks and inefficient processes and management.
Sales automation in Salesforce enables sales teams to save their time and perform a wide range of manual tasks automatically by pre-setting up algorithms or implementing native Salesforce software solutions.
- Dmitri LeichikCEO at TwistellarThe thought that Salesforce is a panacea that you can just bring in and it'll do everything for you itself… is a great prejudice that has to be avoided. Indeed, it's a great platform and a scalable tool, but it has to be tailored to your business.
Sales automation can be applied to cost-price-quote operations (CPQ) when sales reps struggle to provide the best and most attractive sales proposals for clients.
By automating pricing and discount calculation, product configuration, editing opportunities, quote approvals sales teams can set up smooth sales flows and provide accurate sales proposals for clients.
Sales Automation Benefits
The most typical outcomes of efficient sales automation are:
✦ Shorter sales cycles
✦ Larger average deal size
✦ Faster deals closure
✦ Decrease in time-to-quote
✦ Increased lead conversion rate
✦ Revenue forecasting opportunities
✦ Transparency of lead account and opportunity history
✦ Increased sales reps productivity
✦ Improved customer experience
The client enjoys a well-balanced buyer journey, can receive and edit the proposal in a favorable and convenient way, can respond to a sales representative, and can interact effectively on a deal.
- Roman KuzichevCertified Salesforce CPQ SpecialistCPQ software solutions provide a range of significant benefits by automating tasks such as the configuration, pricing, and quoting processes in your CRM.
It significantly improves the customer experience by simplifying the buying process, allows for better product configuration, pricing management and speed, so your sales team has more time to be creative in selling instead of wasting time on creating spreadsheets.
Overall, CPQ helps optimize business processes, close deals faster and maximize revenue!
Analysis of the Current Sales Processes
Every day, sales reps deal with tons of complicated products and services, generate complex quotes, and communicate with customers in a highly competitive environment. Company growth typically depends on closing more deals and closing them faster. Old sales tools like spreadsheets and manual procedures are no longer effective at providing deal velocity without errors and recalculations.
Sales reps want to be sure that they offer the right products and the right deals for their customers just in time.
Find the weak points of your current sales operations by answering the following questions:
✦ What manual administrative tasks take the most time from your sales reps?
✦ What processes can be optimized or automated?
✦ What sales software does not integrate with your CRM and needs an alternative to operate effectively?
✦ Does the use of the current software provide the ROI you expected?
✦ How do speed and accuracy improve the customer experience throughout the sales process?
✦ Where are the bottlenecks in your current sales cycle?
✦ What weak points do your sales reps enumerate in the current sales flow?
These questions will help to formulate the current weak point of your sales flows and provide insights into what steps can be undertaken to automate your business and make all the processes managerial and estimated in time.
Selecting the Right Automation Software for Salesforce CRM
Here is our roadmap of the most crucial points to follow during the decision-making process:
✦ Identify your current business needs and flow priorities
✦ Create a checklist of the most needed features for your business
✦ Select ''5-star'' and ''native'' for Salesforce apps first matching the checklist
Select "5-star" reviews and "native" filters to create a short list of the best apps.
✦ Try-before-buy an app via Test Drive or Trial Installation
AppExchange is a great platform because it provides excellent ways for your sales team to estimate products via a trial install or test drive.
✦ Check the software logic, integration, and navigation capabilities
Ensure, you and your sales team will be able to adopt and navigate the software without difficulties. The chosen solution should be easy to set up, use, and even customize for the sales rep's needs. Don’t hesitate to consult experienced Salesforce consultants.
✦ Keep in mind security issues regarding data storage and safety risks
The solution should guarantee all possible security measures are applied to a potential data loss or cyber attacks.
✦ Estimate the ROI with regard to the sales reps' time savings and the app's pricing policy
If the solution is provided on a paid basis, you should definitely think of the overall annual cost for licenses and possible complex customization costs. Time is everything, so try to forecast the sales growth powered by automation tools using sales KPIs over a period of time and compare it to the corresponding costs. That will provide you with the big picture.
✦ Check that the app supports multi-currency and third-party e-sign solution inegration
✦ Consider future updates, customization needs, and costs
Make sure that the vendor will offer you qualitative ongoing service options available via the most convenient methods for you. So when looking for the company that will provide you with business automation software solutions, search among those that can support it properly.
✦ Estimate the support policy and response time to issues that arise
To sum up, select apps that coincide the most with your check-list, business needs, budget, and implementation resources, and start implementation to automate your sales.
3 TOP Salesforce Tools to Automate Your Sales
Sales teams use an average of 10 tools to close deals.
We can recommend three of them to make your everyday sales smooth and automated.
We can recommend three of them to make your everyday sales smooth and automated.
1. SCULPTOR CPQ
If you frequently generate sales quotes and proposals, Sculptor is an excellent choice for speeding up and automating your sales processes:
Benefits of Sculptor CPQ implementation:
- Intuitive product and bundle configurator
- Automated pricing and discount calculations
- Upsells and cross-sells functionality
- Smart quote approval algorithms
- Automated generation of sales proposal templates
- Automated tracking of customer interactions with proposals
This app is Salesforce native and includes the following features:
- provides seamless integration with Salesforce CRM
- uses standard Salesforce data model and objects
- doesn't ruin or damage your existing data, sales flows, and system architecture
- provides well-balanced technical support, learning materials, and quick adoption by Salesforce users
The app is available as a free non-expiring trial on the AppExchange
2. SQUARETALK
Squaretalk is a cutting-edge call center platform designed to help Salesforce users streamline their sales operations, enabling their reps to focus on what they do best - closing deals.
With Squaretalk, you can take advantage of a range of top-tier features that can transform the way you do business:
- Native integration with Salesforce
With just a click, you can make and receive client calls and access call history and data directly from within your favorite CRM. Oversee all of your sales reps' actions in real-time or join calls-in-progress to converse directly with the client and sales reps.
- Intelligent skill-based routing
Forward your clients to the sales team with the right skills, including language, and technical expertise. You can also connect them directly to the most appropriate sales rep based on their Salesforce CRM profile, skipping the IVR and ensuring a more personalized customer experience.
- Customizable modular features
These include high-fidelity voice, local, mobile, national, and toll-free virtual phone numbers in over 100 countries and 3762 area codes worldwide, and instant website interaction that connects potential customers with sales agents within 30 seconds.
- Security standards
Enjoy one of the strongest VoIP security infrastructures, which reduces exposure to non-trusted networks, blocks threats at the highest level, and allows for secure communications and business collaboration in remote work environments.
The app is available on the AppExchange.
3. 123FORMBUILDER
123FormBuilder is a drag & drop tool for building online forms and surveys. Digitize and automate your workflows by pushing collected data to Salesforce and using existing
Salesforce data to prefill forms.
Salesforce data to prefill forms.
123FormBuilder example use cases:
- Lead generation forms
- Order forms and payment forms
- Applications and registration forms
- Quote requests
- Customer feedback surveys
- Timesheets and field reports
- Any other type of form or survey you can think of
123FormBuilder top features:
- Highly intuitive drag & drop form editor, with 30+ types of form fields
- Bi-directional integration with Salesforce (push and pull data)
- 5 ways of prefilling forms and surveys with existing Salesforce data
- Document generation, file uploads and e-signatures
- Integration with 3rd parties: payment processors, CRMs, email marketing tools etc.
- Email notifications, autoresponders, approval requests
- GDPR readiness and HIPAA compliance
The app is available with a 15-day trial in the AppExchange.
TOP 3 Mistakes of Sales Automation Process
High Expectations
It is important to understand that no matter how universal and high-tech potential software is, its purchase may exceed the cost of manual labor by sellers, and all of the program's functionality will be used, for example, by only 10% of the team, leaving the rest redundant. Make sure to calculate the ROI in advance, and be flexible to changes.
Lack of Internal qualified resources
If the enterprise is large, it is wiser to entrust the implementation and optimization process to third-party experts or an organization with professional expertise in this field than to spend the time of employees trying to independently integrate and configure software for business needs internally.
What does a professional IT consultancy really do? Not focusing on the features and the solution itself, but on the business and the processes of a customer who's interested in investing. And sometimes their role is to convince, that the company first needs to solve some specific organizational issues and only after that is it the best time to start automation and all relevant processes.
Neglecting the Human Factor
All IT projects and investments are not about technology; they are about people. You need to clearly understand how people interact, how people communicate, and how your salespeople work every day to make their customers happy.
It is necessary to conduct research and surveys of personnel to identify which processes, from their point of view, interfere with the growth of sales efficiency. Perhaps the data obtained will optimize current processes without the need to introduce new technologies or will allow your sales team to learn and adopt new tools in a short time, providing additional motivation to sell more effectively.
Twistellar's CEO Shares His Top Secret Ingedient Hack for Sales Success
"You have to remember that you really need to take responsibility for what you are selling because the sales process should not be considered a process that ends when the deal is closed. Actually, it ends when the work is done and the customer is happy. And if you're not prepared to track all of the steps of the customer's long journey, especially if we're talking about a long-term project, if your sales don't take care of what the customer actually thinks about the sales a year after they've completed the project with you, they won't be able to really build this trust and really understand the value that they're bringing."
Considering CPQ implementation?
Let's discuss how Sculptor CPQ can help your business!
Let's discuss how Sculptor CPQ can help your business!
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