Automate to Sell More

How about we're straight to approach the "elephant in the room"?

You're used to seeing horrible examples of #marketingautomation where you can almost feel that you're being "handled" by automation.

Well, automation done right is quite different. You may have been treated by automation a number of times, but you didn't even notice. That's what I'm talking about.

What's Marketing Automation?

"Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organisations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks."—Wikipedia extract.

We all use some sort of marketing automation every day. You can program and schedule posts, trigger channels based on what people do in other channels, and so on.

Yet, the part I'm referring to with this post is the less sexy yet the most valuable and underrated form of marketing automation. I'm talking about automating your repetitive tasks.

Answering a comment yesterday on LinkedIn on how to use segmentation to help the sales team achieve more sales triggered a series of ideas we've implemented before in multinational brands that you can use today in your business as well.

Unfortunately, no Formula will fit every case, yet it can inspire you to adapt to your particular scenario.

Understand your Customer Journey

First, you need to understand your customer deeply. There's no going around it. Research it, do interviews, surveys, market analysis, watch their behaviour, everything you can to deeply understand them.

Then, it's time to plan and draw your customer journey.

It's essential to identify where and how your brand can interact with your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) in each step of their journey to identify a solution for their problem.

For them to consider your brand as the winner of their selective process, it's important to know where those touchpoints happen and how your brand can help them.

I'm using a B2B example since it will match with the purpose of this automation example I'm referring to.

Again, you can map it out through interviews, surveys and other means at your disposal.

"Live" with your Sales Team

Before you get creepy, I mean that the idea is for you to live and breathe your sales team environment and processes.

Spend a lot of time with them and understand where their processes get repetitive and where they spend most of their time.

This is the easiest part.

Usual Repetitive Tasks that consume much time

1?? Welcome email - 1st touch out of a warm lead.

2?? Follow-up - between the first prospecting call or email.

3?? Follow-up - after the 1st quote or business proposal.

4?? Follow-ups after that...

5?? Procedures after winning or losing a business proposal.

6?? Touch base and onboarding.

7?? Retention, regular touch points and "being present".

8?? Special occasion messages (birthday, winning a prize, commemorations).

9?? Up-sell/Cross-Sell messages.

?? Renewals.

The list keeps going, but these are the most usual ones we've found at several companies worldwide in a B2B sales team.

Crossing the Customer Journey with Repetitive Tasks

It's time to cross all your knowledge of the customer journey process, and how your brand was present within those touch points with the messages and interactions you will activate for these repetitive tasks.

?? How is my client feeling after the first "more information" request?

?? How will you make their onboarding process a breeze and eliminate their fear of making a wrong decision?

?? Is there a support ticket unanswered satisfactory before you send that catch-up email? Maybe you should postpone that email until there's a positive closing of that ticket.

?? How can you help your sales executive be considered the go-to person for that "thing" related to your business through your regular messages?

Marketing Helping Sales

Remember that all of these tactics and actions you're doing are not coming out of your brand. The sender is always your sales colleague.

This approach aims to help your salesperson reach more clients meaningfully without spending too much time on mundane and repetitive tasks.

A few months ago, I conducted training on #emailmarketing and marketing automation for several sales teams in the insurance market. The point where I knew I'd "sold" this approach was around half the time of the full training.

First, they thought they wouldn't need any of this because they had always worked that way for ages.

Then, when they found out that instead of 100 or 150 clients, they managed, they could grow their client list to double or triple; it was a game-changer for all of them.

Obviously, for most of them, it was still hard to learn how to do it effectively, but the "spark was set", ?? and now they knew they would need to revamp their game if they wanted to get more business.

What's the perfect match for this strategy?

Using your skills and know-how in marketing and these tools to help them sell more to more people.

Each of you is good at something—team up to succeed with more for less.

Funny enough, that's the motto and claim of sendXmail . —X More. For Less. ??

I hope this inspired you to build this within your organisation.

If you encounter any roadblocks or are unsure how to make this work, you can always get in touch with me or my team at sendXmail. We're basically doing this for a living. ??

What are your thoughts on this? Are you applying any of this automation in your business currently?

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