Prospecting, as a pre-sales step, is essential to the development of a company. However, some parts of the process are redundant and time-consuming. To focus time and effort on closing sales rather than on low value-added tasks, it's possible to automate prospecting. Here's a closer look at 5 key sales automation tools.
Why automate certain aspects of your sales prospecting?
Get in touch with prospects, arouse interest, qualify leads, conduct sales meetings, understand customer needs, define the right solution in relation to the available offer, respond to objections, follow up, maintain contact...
Sales prospecting involves a number of essential steps to acquire new customers and target new market shares. All these tasks require organization and time. And according to the well-known adage, "time is money". And the time that sales teams spend repeating the same processes could be used in other ways, in particular to strengthen customer relations and sales follow-up.
The evolution of digital practices is boosting sales performance. In an environment where getting an appointment with a potential customer is proving increasingly complex, it's imperative to be able to multiply contacts and carry out bulk mailings.
However, personalization is still essential to capture the recipient's attention. However, some information relevant to the prospect remains common to several people and/or companies. This is where automation processes come into play to resolve this dilemma by eliminating repetitive tasks.
Data is centralized, the sales cycle is shortened and sales staff can spend more time closing deals.
How can you automate your sales prospecting?
Sales automation solutions come into play to automate certain parts of the sales process: contact list generation, lead management, follow-up and analysis of actions implemented... These software programs establish procedures that are faster and therefore more efficient and profitable than manual data entry.
1. Web scrapping tools
Scraping makes it possible toobtain a large number of leads from onlinedirectories, without having to enter data one by one. Sales teams then quickly acquire the essential information on prospects to enrich the CRM.
2. Lead generation tools for creating prospecting lists
By installing a browser extension, lead generation tools enable you to list profiles found on social networks with a single click. The resulting list can then be exported as a .csv file.
3. Automatic relaunch and email sequence tools
These sales automation solutions enable you to create scenarios of 6 to 7 follow-up e-mails, spaced out by a pre-defined pause time. The advantage of e-mail campaigns is that they automate part of the customer communication process, right up to the telephone call. Results are also analyzed, such as open and click rates, enabling conclusions to be drawn about the strategy implemented, and readjustments to be made if necessary.
4. Tools for monitoring transactions in progress
Sales engagement software centralizes exchanges between sales reps and customers, reporting and performance analysis, ensuring that prospects are followed up and reminded of the right offer at the right time.
5. LinkedIn automation tools
The LinkedIn professional social network allows you to target your searches by selecting numerous criteria, as well as keywords. The company's LinkedIn profile must be carefully drafted, constantly updated and populated with content, just like the website.
Software solutions are available toautomate the sending of invitations, personalized messages, reminders and even profile visits. These actions ensure the simplified creation of contact lists.
Automation tools are powerful time-saving tools for prospecting. However, they do not replace human contact, which remains the ultimate goal of the process for many people. So it's a question of determining which phases of prospecting are most in need of improvement, and using the appropriate sales automation solutions, integrating them in a complementary way with the rest of the sales strategy.