“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.” – Bill Gates
This old quote by Bill Gates still makes sense in the present context. To survive in an ever-changing and volatile market, small and enterprise-level businesses need automation to reduce costs, save time, increase efficiency and help them operate at scale.
Companies across the globe have ramped up their IT budgets by 6-7% to maximize their available resources and introduce efficiency into the ecosystem. To reduce the time and effort on the sales processes and close deals faster, companies, both big and small, are relying on Sales CRMs.
But let us tell you a secret, the failure rate for CRM adoption is 30%. This means that not every CRM in the market is the right fit for your business, and in an environment where investing in Sales CRM software is the norm, the odds of falling for gimmicks are very high.
What businesses must realize is that to stand out, they must invest in a CRM that not only aligns with their business goals but also offer automation to cut down all manual tasks. Such sales CRM software not only simplifies operations but can increase productivity by a great deal.
So, what exactly CRM workflow automation can do for your business? Let’s find out.
What do you mean by Workflow Automation in a Sales CRM?
Workflow Automation helps businesses to automate manual tasks, activities, and processes through a centralized system with minimal human intervention.
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Businesses implementing sales automation have reported improving their sales efficiency by 10-15%. That’s because taking your leads through to conversion is much easier when manual tasks like filling in lead details, reassigning leads, and sending emails are all taken care of.
Benefits of CRM Workflow Automation
McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) indicates that approximately 30% of all sales-related activities can be automated. All organizations need to do is put in a conscious effort to streamline workflows for optimal results.
Let us dig deeper into some benefits of workflow automation-
1. Reduces Human Errors and Mitigates Risk
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IT professionals blame human error for 30% of data loss incidents.
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No matter how efficient you are, there will always be room for errors, especially when doing a repetitive task.
Workflow automation can help eliminate such errors so that tasks like data entry, escalations, notifications, assigning jobs to teams, and keeping track of the leads become flawless.
2. Increases Productivity
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Workflow automation in sales CRM software can help streamline complex events by setting rules and triggers that keep the sales process running smoothly.
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In a study on workflow automation, 50% of business owners said CRM increased productivity and sales by 29% on average. By eliminating redundant and grunt work from their daily task list, you can enable your sales team to focus on the things that matter, like identifying prospective clients and partnerships and closing deals.
3. Creates Accountability
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Notifications, reminders, and automatic triggers in a Sales CRM help managers update sales reps on their tasks, meetings, and activities in real-time.
In addition, reports and dashboards ensure that you have insight into your sales rep’s daily, weekly and monthly performance.
4. Improves Customer Retention Rate
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Using Workflow Automation in a CRM system helps companies engage customers without batting an eye at every step of their buying journey.
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With a robust CRM system, businesses can automate their communication and provide a personalized experience to their clients. Hence, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
5. Improves Work Satisfaction & Reduces Costs
Automated Workflow saves a lot of your sales rep’s time. As your sales reps get more flexibility, they are more satisfied and have more bandwidth to focus on things that matter the most- selling.
With an organized series of planned events and no mundane tasks to handle, your reps can become more productive.
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Moreover, workflow automation can help reduce sales and marketing costs by delivering quality output consistently at a considerably lower price.
Workforce Automation in a Sales CRM Software
On a daily basis, salespeople need to analyze large volumes of data, spend substantial time tracking possible leads, and follow up on them on time. This makes it challenging for them to maintain quality results. By freeing up your sales team’s time using CRM automation, you will give your salespeople more time to close more deals and nurture relationships.
Automated workflows help create a standardized process that triggers specific actions based on predefined conditions and rules.
Here are some ways you can automate your sales workflow to boost productivity using Kylas-
- Automate Task Assignment
To complete specific tasks, you can set triggers and reminders for sales and marketing teams. You can create various workflows to
- If a lead’s status changes, it can automatically update the databases
- Reassign leads to a user when a lead is in a particular pipeline stage
- Send a welcome email to every lead created in the system
- Update any record property automatically
- Create a webhook by sending select data of the record to an external API
For more details, please read this resource.
2. Send Personalized Emails
You can send automated emails to the selected email ids through workflow upon successful workflow trigger and condition validation.
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Kylas CRM helps you to choose ‘Send Email’ as an action from the pre-designed email templates.
However, the emails will be sent only when the user has connected the email account in Kylas from where the emails need to be sent.
3. Lead Capturing
Salespeople can derive maximum benefit from automation with different processes, such as Lead capturing that automatically captures & assigns leads from website form submissions.
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The Lead Capture Forms feature offered by Kylas CRM, allows its users to create forms that can be embedded into their company websites. When a visitor fills out this form on the website and submits it, a lead is automatically created in Kylas.
How Workflow Automation Can Help You Reduce Costs
Because a CRM workflow is designed to reflect your pre-existing business processes, it brings in more efficiency.
Here are a few ways in which a sales CRM will help you reduce costs-
1. Freeing up the Sales Team’s Time
A sales CRM’s automated workflow feature streamlines a lot of manual tasks. It includes handling data, updating lead statuses or leads management in general, and even communication.
Why is workflow automation critical?
You can only imagine the amount of time this would save for your sales team; otherwise, usually engaged just as much in the handling and organizing of data as they are in active selling.
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With more time in hand, your sales team can make more pitches and work on closing more leads. This way, you’re not only saving costs by saving time, but you’re also actively working on increasing revenue too.
2. Helping You Focus on the Right Leads
Many companies use automated workflows to clean up their lead pipelines and lead qualification processes. E.g., without a CRM, your sales team will spend more time converting leads that aren’t qualified for purchase in the first place.
Improved efficiency
With a workflow that optimizes the sales pipeline and includes lead qualification as a pre-requisite step, each lead gets marked as qualified before it goes to a salesperson. Statistics show that 57% of organizations are willing to use automation to boost employee productivity and performance.
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This saves you time and helps your team focus on qualified leads that are likely to close.
3. Optimize Your Managerial Time
In day-to-day sales operations, the generalized role of the sales manager and sales head is to overlook all sales operations. They also need to ensure minimum lead loss and efficient execution of sales strategies. You’re responsible for the sales being made and overlooking the team and every sales team member.
Your time is valuable to your role and the management. Besides, it shouldn’t be spent on monitoring your team members and putting out fires but on boosting sales.
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A sales CRM’s automated workflow helps you keep an eye on your team’s performance, lead pipeline, and overall sales performance at a glance – saving you time and costs in the long run.
4. Streamlining Resource Management
Often, when the sales team’s or sales head’s time is spent on redundant tasks, it leads to an incorrect projection or resource requirement.
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However, the problem lies with time management. Why spend all that extra budget on resources when you could streamline your team’s time and cut down on unnecessary time-heavy tasks instead?
With all the efficiency that workflow automation brings in, time optimization becomes the solution to resource optimization. It not only saves time but thousands of dollars in hiring.
5. Reducing Errors Daily
When you aren’t using a sales CRM, you see several common mistakes that can easily be avoided.
Some common mistakes occur when leads go cold only because a salesperson forgets to make a call. Additionally, they use multiple Excel sheets or redundant tools that create ambiguity. But, when you have automated workflows, these procedures get automated along the way.
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That means lesser errors, lesser lead loss, and lesser data loss. This ultimately saves you plenty of lead sourcing, qualification, and conversion costs.
6. Manages Your Sales Communication
A rookie mistake sales teams make is not getting in touch with a fresh lead immediately. Reaching out to a lead within 5 minutes of the initial inquiry or sign-up on a sales channel can improve your lead conversion rate.
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The idea is to strike while the iron is hot!
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However, without a CRM, salespeople tend to get caught up with tons of tasks. This, in turn, leads to missing out on several essential and convertible leads.
Achieve high-quality work
With a CRM, you can automate communication and send reminders to salespersons. This will ensure that no lead goes cold, saving you the wasted lead cost and opportunity cost.
7. Shorten the Time to Closure
Besides many hiccups that can occur during the sales process, there are other delays too.
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In B2B industries, especially, for example, the negotiation and approval process can be lengthy. These delays cost time that could otherwise be spent closing more leads.
However, they can be avoided with simple sales CRM workflows, with an automated approval process built into the platform based on your specific business processes.
This will reduce all the turnaround time and expedite your ‘point-of-sales’ processes!
The Key to Reducing Costs with Sales CRM‘s Automated Workflows
Automated workflows aren’t a magical solution to reducing costs for growing businesses. Although they may seem that way when implemented well. The effectiveness depends on you, and not just the sales CRM.
Here’s how to make automated workflows work for you-
1. For an automated workflow to optimize your processes and time, they need to be in-built into your existing business processes. This will make it a seamless experience for your sales team and prospective customers.
2. They must be used thoroughly, which means you must train your team to understand the ins and outs of each automated workflow well.
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The better your team uses the system, the better the output. Team members not acquainted adequately with using each workflow may cut corners, get impatient, and give up completely, ultimately taking that particular process offline and making the automation redundant.
3. Regular monitoring is another way to ensure your automated workflows are working for you. Observe the time being saved and the efficiency of your team. Also, consider their opinion: Do they find that they have become more productive? Or Are they spending more time on what matters?
You can then use your observations to make adjustments to the required workflows and better optimize the automated process.
How Can You Create Your Automated Workflow Using Kylas Sales CRM Software
Now that you have decided to implement workflow automation in your business process, the next step is choosing the best sales CRM software.
Kylas is a sales CRM software that can help you save time and make more sales by automating your sales tasks.
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With Kylas Sales CRM software’s Workflow Automation feature, you can write some Rules based on certain Triggers and Conditions. Actions can be performed by the system when the selected Trigger and Conditions match.
An active workflow will validate the trigger, and conditions, and perform the set actions. Basically, with an easy-to-use CRM, you can add multiple activities to a workflow to help you streamline your sales process.
To sum up, from customers getting a faster turnaround to businesses working efficiently with better sales productivity, to sales reps delivering more value to customers, automated workflows benefit all.
Going back to the quote from Gates – if you’ve got an efficient process, you will experience seismic shifts in how your business performs. If you don’t have a Kylas account, you can try Kylas Sales CRM for 30 days and start using Workflow Automation immediately. Click here for more details.
