Like most business owners, you have conversions on your mind. Why else would you consistently refine your sales processes and track your average customer acquisition cost and related metrics? These actions make sense. However, in your quest to land more deals, you can’t overlook the value of automating more of your in-house tasks. With automation, you can drive up conversions while successfully lowering costs. It’s a win-win for any business, especially with today’s economic unpredictability.
Just last year, Gartner predicted that by 2025, seven out of 10 organizations would engage in significant levels of automation. This finding shows just how relevant automation is in the business world. If 70% of companies in a given industry are leveraging automation, 30% are being left out. And being left out isn’t a good strategy to grow sales.
Of course, you want to make sure that you’re not just automating for automation’s sake. Automating some processes won’t move the needle on conversions. Accordingly, you need to be conscientious and deliberate when determining where to invest in automation software and systems. To help you start your planning process, consider adopting any of the following automations. Each will give you traction in the selling arena and assist your team to woo, welcome, and wow customers or clients.
1. Shorten any verification-focused workflows.
Does your business model include any kind of consumer verification throughout your sales funnel? No matter what type of verification you rely upon, make sure you’re able to verify the information quickly. Otherwise, potential applicants (e.g., customers) may become restless and head to your competitor.
For instance, let’s start with the top of your sales funnel with lead qualification. Software programs exist to help you automatically narrow down leads. A tool like GetLeadForms can enable you to improve the quality of incoming leads. It can also get those leads to your sales team faster. If your business model requires employment verification, partner up with a company such as Truework. The Truework platform can return approvals almost instantly in some cases, allowing your people to secure clients rapidly.
No matter what you need to verify, using outside resources just makes sense. It frees up your internal employees and reduces friction. Those are two solid ways to hear “yes” more often from prospective buyers.
2. Develop customer retention campaigns.
Customer lifetime value is the total amount each customer spends with your organization. Automation tools can be useful in developing customer retention campaigns that encourage customers to return again and again. Every time a customer makes another purchase, the purchase increases your business’s overall average customer lifetime value.
Historically, customer retention campaigns have been challenging to implement for many smaller companies. Now, though, you can automate communications with existing customers to improve engagement without overstretching your staff members. For example, you might want to set up personalized text or email messaging deployments based on buying behaviors. These messages can have an individualized feel — something three-quarters of people want — without requiring any human intervention. The result will be a stronger relationship between you and your customers, which should turn up your repeat sales.
3. Aim for more streamlined self-service experiences.
Consumers are accustomed to being able to self-serve wherever they go. They choose the self-checkout at grocery stores and retailers. They set up accounts with neo-banks from the comfort of their sofas. Also, they have everything from toiletries to home improvement gadgets delivered without talking to another human. Consequently, you may be missing out on opportunities to sell if you’re overlooking self-service automations.
Even if you’re running a B2B rather than a B2C company, you can probably include some self-service elements. Could you allow your clients to pay their invoices online rather than sending in a check? Is it possible for a client to reorder a service after initial onboarding? And is there a way to make onboarding digital-based and self-guided? Automating just a few of the things normally done through person-to-person contact may be attractive to some clients. (Side note: You can use an automated scheduling tool to give customers the ability to set up appointments, too.)
4. Try social listening and social selling software.
It can be very difficult to keep up with your social media presence, but it’s important for conversions. Staying up to date with the latest trends and hashtags takes a lot of effort. Even if you were to devote a staff member to the process, you’d miss chances for engagement without specialized software. Systems that listen and track what’s happening on popular social media platforms enable you to respond and react in real time. That’s critical, particularly if a customer is unhappy and you can save them from leaving.
You can’t automate all your social media responses, although the technology does exist to connect chatbots and social selling efforts. Nonetheless, having social media information automatically fetched for you will save lots of time and effort. And the time you save can be spent nurturing leads and customers.
Take some time over the next week to think about your current manual processes. Are they all necessary? Or are they putting up roadblocks to seeing more conversions? For those that fall into the latter category, look into ways to automate more of what your employees do. That way, you’ll be on a stronger path to improving your numbers.
