The Inevitability of Sales Automation for Enterprises

In any enterprise, sales is the department that generates revenue, which is the ultimate goal of the organization. A business may have state-of-art manufacturing facilities, latest technological know how, best in class management, but it still needs to have a professional sales mechanism in place to run the show. It is here that the inevitability of a functional Sales Automation System comes into the picture.

In this virtually connected world, opportunities have increased manifold, but the competition has also risen accordingly. To stay ahead of the competitors, the organization has to regularly scout for new opportunities, and leave no stone unturned to encash them. It is here that Sales Automation has become increasingly important.

Effective Sales automation is an integrated application of customizable sales tools that can be used to automate and streamline the sales cycle. Sales automation functionality includes automated sales activities, forecasting, pipeline management, and tracking of customer interactions, besides allowing companies to analyze their entire sales process. It is being increasingly used due to its following utilities and benefits :

Organizing Contacts and Accounts

The sales team can organize all of their contacts, including those of prospects, current customers, vendors etc, for ensuring fast communication with them as and when needed. They can also categorize their contacts under specific accounts for seamless communication.

Maintaining Sales Funnels and Pipelines

As there are a number of stages in completion of a sales cycle, the team members as well as the management can track the process at every level, and the offers and deals can be tweaked wherever needed. This results in better chances of closing the deal, besides forecasting the revenues of the organization in any given period.

Managing Tasks and Activities

The management can assign tasks and activities to the sales team through the online system, and also check about their progress, as the team members need to update their work on a daily basis. This results in effective management of tasks, that too without interacting much with the staff. Fresh leads can also be forwarded to the sales staff automatically or manually.

Allocating and Achieving Targets

Sales targets can be allocated and distributed to individuals and teams. As members of sales team work on their leads, they update their progress on the system, through which progress reports are generated automatically, helping management to track their completion and achievement.

Managing Orders and Deliveries

In response to the queries of customers, the sales persons can generate and submit quotes generated through the system. Upon execution of an order, the invoice can also be generated and submitted through the system. Besides saving a lot of time and work, it provides insights to the accounts and finance departments.

Increased Accessibility

Now a days, most of the software applications are cloud based and are accessible on mobile phones. This makes it convenient for the organization as well as clients and vendors to contact the sales personnel in case of any queries or issues.