Automating your sales process can help you bring in more sales without putting in more effort.
Your sales process is how clients book your services or buy your products, and it can be a pain to manually go through them and keep your clients and leads on the right track. On the other hand, it’s a great way to make connections and build a community around your business, and you’ll need that human element to keep your business growing.
However, once you build up your community, you can implement these tips and automate your sales process for maximum efficiency.
Here’s where to start.
Email Funnels
Since email is still the top marketing platform for businesses, it’s not something you should ignore. Now, there are two types of email funnels that you need to know: nurture and sales.
Nurture funnels warm your clients up and get them interested in your business and get to know you better, while sales funnels convert them into loyal customers. Both are useful and should be part of the sales process.
You can automate your email funnels by:
- Creating a sequence to go out when triggered
- Personalizing it with the client’s name
- Make sure you segment it to their interests or lead temperature
- Adding clickable links, buttons, or images that trigger sales
- Issuing follow-up emails with encouragement or discounts if they don’t act within a certain time
- Setting them up for future offers and announcements
By automating your email funnels, you can keep your emails on track, send them out at the right times to the right clients, and make them a jumping-off point for your other sales funnels.
CRM Systems
Your CRM system is where you keep all your client data, including your leads. You can track their progress, temperature, origin, and contact info. You can also keep notes about everything you’ve discussed so you that you can jump back into a conversation right where you left off.
The key is to find a CRM system that allows for automation. That way, you can:
- Set reminders for birthdays or other important dates
- Schedule out emails and check-ins
- Organize them by temperature or origin
- Plan meetings and review contacts
Once your automation is set up, you can leave it to your system. The automatic emails will keep you in their mind, and the reminders will keep them in yours.
Follow-Ups
Believe it or not, only 2% of sales are made on the first contact. Normally, you have to wait until the tenth or twelfth contact before your chances increase, and even then, it’s only by 10%.
That’s why follow-ups are so important.
Follow-ups come in many forms. There’s the follow-up where you entice your client and close on your sale. There’s the follow-up where you gather feedback for a rendered service or product. Or, there’s the follow-up on social media where you bring them into your community.
No matter the type of follow-up, you can automate them. Schedule them through your CRM system, project management tool, or email marketing platform. You can even do it through Google if you don’t have the budget to spend on software. Then, sit back and watch the sales roll in.
Social media is bit different, but you can still automate your follow-ups through chatbots and other tools.
Essentially, if they like or comment on your content, they’ll automatically get a DM that begins a chat funnel. If they don’t respond, they’ll get a follow-up that will (hopefully) bring them into the fold.
Masterclass Funnel
Hosting a masterclass is a great way to get people interested in your sales funnel, and you can automate everything from top to bottom.
You can pre-record the class and set it up so that everyone who signs up will automatically receive the link or file. Once they watch it, you can send them a follow-up with the email funnel and entice them to buy a service or product.
And, if they don’t buy right away, you can keep sending them scheduled follow-ups until they bite or drop off.
Websites / SalesPages
If you have a website or sales page, you can use it to plug your products or services. Use eye-catching graphics and powerful testimonials that will entice them to click the links. The links will then automatically send them into the sales funnel, and the machine will take care of the rest.
You can also use an AI-powered chatbot that will pop up and offer help, and insights, and warm up your leads before they come to you. Then, they can direct your clients to the sales funnel- or anywhere else on the site they want to go.
Another option is to use a recent sales notification pop-up on your site that shows potential clients all the people buying from you in real time.
For example, as they browse your website, they’ll see a little notification in the corner that says “John B. ordered X product/ booked X session 2 minutes ago.”
These automatic notifications prove that other people are using your business and can trust your products or services- which, in turn, can elicit sales.
Final Thoughts
There are a million ways to automate your sales process, and these tips are a great way to get you started. However, I want to reiterate that automation is NOT a substitution for human connection.
If you can’t connect with your clients and build relationships, then it won’t matter how efficient your automation is because no one will see it.
Instead, these automation tips will take the sales funnel portion off your plate so you have more time to put yourself out there, connect, and be visible.
Then the sales will take care of themselves.
