Automation is poised to transform the way things are done. In today’s fast paced and digital era, the sales landscape is much more competitive than it was a decade ago. Potential customers have brand recognition and awareness and have more than twice as many brands to select from. These well-informed customers are less inclined to be ‘sold to.’ Sales automation is a smart move for VAR businesses to grow rapidly and consistently. This is the high time to tap into this profitable market.
-
Contents
- What is sales automation?
- Sales automation software
- Why choose sales automation?
- Maximize the benefit
- Prioritizing sales tasks
- Precise forecasting
- Enhanced up-selling and cross-selling
- Up-to-date sales coaching
- Following are some of the sales processes that every VAR should automate
- Automate multi distributor product catalog
- Automate product pricing & availability update
- Automate sales quote & proposal creation
- Automate lead distribution
- Automate sales collateral repository
- Automate sourcing & procurement
- Automate low margin product sale
What is sales automation?
‘Sales’ means the communication between a business and its customers or leads in a ‘one-to-one’ manner. Sales automation enables a business to communicate with several leads at the same time. In this way, each prospect gets to enjoy a personalized communication channel, which is wisely crafted using the data gathered by the system.
Sales automation software
Sales automation software is an integrated application of customization sales tools. This can be used to automate and streamline the entire sales cycle. Effective sales automation software for VAR facilitates VARs to analyze the complete sales cycle. In today’s competitive business world, sales automation has become even more imperative. Sales automation tools can eliminate several time-consuming manual tasks for which you need to spend valuable selling time.
-
Why choose sales automation?
Let us have a look at Sales process automation benefits
-
Maximize the benefit
Sales automation systems manage follow-ups as well as reminders all the way through the entire sales process to ensure a VAR business does not miss out on any potential opportunities. Your sales can focus on furthering the quality of their customer interaction rather than managing follow-up procedures.
-
Prioritizing sales tasks
when you automate the lead rank assignment, the sales team can spend their time with the highest quality leads. It becomes easy to sift opportunities and cold leads.
-
Precise forecasting
Sales automation provides value added resellers with the tools to precisely calculate forecasts depending on opportunities, quotes, and orders.
-
Enhanced up-selling and cross-selling
With the best sales automation system, a VAR business can have a greater understanding of their customers. The availability and access to valuable information like customer demographics, order history, and other vital customer metrics, sales team are more likely to up-sell or cross-sell.
-
Up-to-date sales coaching
Sales automation helps keep the sales managers up to date with each sales reps’ activities including opportunities, sales figures, and customer contact histories. Well-versed managers can then identify the areas that underachieving reps should progress their time around.
Automating processes that are ‘busy work’ for sales representatives can prove to be a smart move to enhance productivity and increase sales in turn.
-
Following are some of the sales processes that every VAR should automate
-
Automate multi distributor product catalog
When VAR work with multiple distributor (ex. Ingram, D&H, Bluestar etc.), he should automate catalog creation process to transform the existing manual processes. By automating this you can have better, more engaging catalogues, price lists and brochures. Your catalogues will be produced faster and have fewer errors and cost less. This will also help boost customer engagement and increase revenue.
-
Automate product pricing & availability update
Fixed pricing is dead. Continuous update on pricing and availability is essential to keep a VAR business relevant. VARs work with distributors and at distributor end, pricing and availability gets updated in real time. Automation keeps VARs optimized round the clock. The market changes swiftly and pricing and availability update of a VAR should be able to keep up with it. So automate pricing and availability update in real time.
-
Automate sales quote & proposal creation
In a VAR business, VAR sales people need to be always present on the field to get more deals. Automated sales quote creation process helps sales people to create more sales quote anywhere, anytime quickly. With CRM quote management software, the user can generate multiple quotes per lead and can thus have more efficient sales proposals effortlessly. As proposal creation software is straightforward to use, sales people can generate quotes and create proposals on the fly through an intuitive user interface. Just select the products from the database and within minutes the professional sales quotes will be generated. Select the best online quoting system that fits your VAR business. CRM quote and proposal management software solutions automate all of the quote generation process, enabling a VAR business to create and send inclusive quotes with just a few clicks.
-
Automate lead distribution
Your marketing team will generate lots of leads for sales team and your sales manager will spend his valuable time for manually rotating leads. You need to automate the lead distribution process so that every sales person will get good quality and quantity leads.
-
Automate sales collateral repository
Did you know that when sales person create quotes, proposal they place it on some place. Sometime quote need to create various versions. When you automate sales quote creation process it will also automate quote repository. The sales team of VAR business must have access and be able to utilize content easily at the touch of a button. Your content library is going to grow and hence there is a need of more robust solution to track your documents. Automating this process will make it easier for sales team to find info when they need and share with prospects.
-
Automate sourcing & procurement
Though your teams have been effective in this process, the complexities facing sourcing and procurement nowadays need a more sophisticated approach to crossing the hurdles to viable value creation. By automating source and procurement a VAR business can always have confidence to acquire products at the best possible price, and that everything is in stock.
-
Automate low margin product sale
when you create eCommerce store. You can automate some of lower margin product sales. Divert all such low margin product sales on eCommerce. This will save your sales person time as well as gives you extra value and income also.
After all reducing turnaround time, providing prompt service and tailoring products as per requirement is what spells the customer satisfaction. Automating the processes is essential the new wave every VAR business needs to embrace to make the difference in today’s competitive space. Get started now!
