Sales automations 

Automate your outbound sales and lead nurturing. Get more meetings and follow up with leads and opportunities automatically.

Can you automate your sales?

When we talk about automated selling, we don't mean that the salesperson can be replaced. Instead, a system that helps you automate your sales process can make a salesperson more effective by helping in selected areas.

Based on our experience with our customers, two of the hardest parts of the sales process are outbound and nurturing. That is to say:

1. Automated outbound: Is it possible to automate the cold calling process?
2. Automated follow-up: Is it possible to automate follow-up with contacts you have a dialog with or that you will return to later?

The benefits of automating sales in these areas are numerous:

We can help you automate both your outbound sales and keep in touch with existing contacts using FunnelBud's automated CRM system.

1. Automate outbound and cold calling

Inbound marketing isn't the only way to get new customers. Instead, outbound sales work better today than ever before - if you use technology that warms up contacts, helps you stay in touch and come back, and helps you talk about the right things.

Below are the three methods our customers use to make outbound sales more effective.

1.1. Warm up your prospects before you call them

To succeed with a cold call, the person you are calling needs to be in the right mind-space and at the same time have an interest in what you are calling about. If the person knows the company you are calling from, it also helps enormously.

That's why pre-call preparation is hugely important. This is where FunnelBud can help you warm up prospects for you. Here's how to do it:

1. The prospects you will call are tagged for pre-work in the system, the rest of the points below are done automatically.
2. Your prospects start seeing ads on Facebook that are about your brand and the message you intend to send to your prospects once you call them
3. After viewing your ads for a few weeks, your prospects will receive an introductory email from you telling them how you found them and what you want to talk about (the same message as in the ads they saw) - containing a link where they can read more.
4. Already here a lot of people will click. You get a message, can see which pages they have visited and therefore what they are interested in, and can make a call. Your cold call is no longer cold, but lukewarm, and the meeting rate is drastically higher.
5. If they don't click, your prospects get to see your ads for another week or so. Then they get another email (from you) asking if they can talk this week. Alternatively, they may still end up on your call list - not quite lukewarm but not quite cold either.

By automating the cold calling process in this way, you can both focus on prospects who show interest, call when they are in the right mind-space, and get a better call because you have already created a recognition factor (via the Facebook ads and introductory emails).

The conversation is also much more pleasant and less intrusive.

1.2 Automating follow-up after cold calls

It's not often you get a yes to a meeting on the first call! You are often asked to call back at a later date or to send more information first.

Again, FunnelBud's automated CRM can automate your sales.

Prepare your calls with an attractive call-to-action (something valuable that your prospect can download or get - usually a PDF-based guide in your field). Then use this in your call.

After talking to your prospect, you can ask if you can send more information. You then send this call to action through pre-created sequences. Alternatively, the marketing department can approach your prospect with personalized newsletters and invitations to interesting events and webinars.

FunnelBud keeps you top-of-mind, and the CRM system keeps track of your prospects' lead scores. When they show interest, you get a notification and can contact them again. Just when the contact is interested in dialog again.

1.3 Feedback just before the competitor's contract expires

Are you encountering many prospects who have existing contracts with a certain expiry date, or who for other reasons cannot take decisions before a certain date?

As a seller, it is difficult to keep track of all these dates and remember to provide feedback at the right time. 

Imagine having an assistant who follows up with your prospects for you when the time comes, and tells you when the contact wants to talk!

FunnelBud's CRM becomes a digital rolodex that can also do the follow-up work for you.

You just enter the date when the feedback is due or when the contact's existing contract expires and other relevant information.

A few weeks before the date, FunnelBud sends out a marketing email reminding you of your company and services. A week later, you will receive an email from you recalling your last conversation and asking if you should resume the discussion.

The email may even contain a link to a calendar booking, so they can book with you directly online.

You will then receive a notification and can see what happened and follow up with a call.

By letting FunnelBud handle your date-based follow-up automatically, you can focus on other things and have peace of mind that nothing is forgotten. It will give you peace of mind and better follow-up.

2. Automate follow-up of contacts you already have a dialog with

With FunnelBud you can also set up sales automations that help you follow up on existing contacts. For example, contacts in earlier parts of your sales process or contacts that are not responding.

Such automation can be anything from a contact receiving an automatic email from their dedicated salesperson when they visit an important page, to a whole flow of automations that guide the buyer through their buying journey and help the salesperson based on where the buyer is in the sales process.

Below are some examples of how companies we have worked with are using sales automation to give them traction in their existing sales process:

• A Swedish staffing company has a series of guides about their service area. When they have had a dialog with a customer or when they get a new lead, the contact receives these guides in a series of emails. When the contact reads a guide, it rings a bell with the salespeople, who then get in touch again and check whether it is interesting to have a meeting about what the guide is about. The well-written and informative guides create trust that helps the subsequent sales process.
• A Swedish software developer almost always used to give a PowerPoint presentation to new business opportunities. But they realized that it almost always looks the same, so they made an online version of it. Today, new business opportunities receive the presentation automatically via email. This has meant that the first meeting is almost always more qualitative. The video is often shared with other decision-makers. This has halved their average time to close a deal from 18 months.
• A Swedish IT hardware retailer also has an e-commerce site for its business customers. When you buy certain products, it's a clear sign that you might be interested in a more comprehensive solution. The company then contacts the customer and asks if they are interested in a meeting. In this way, they have managed to get several deals that they would otherwise have missed.
• A Swedish telephone service provider used to call existing leads 2-3 times to see if they were interested in a meeting. If the salespeople didn't get an answer after that, they didn't know what else to do without seeming annoying. Today, contacts are added to nurturing campaigns if they have been inactive in the CRM system for 4 weeks. Nurturing campaigns invite them to webinars and send newsletters. As soon as the contact signs up or clicks on a newsletter, they are brought to life in the CRM and the salespeople follow up. This has allowed salespeople to juggle many more balls in the air at the same time. Interesting business opportunities are never lost.

If you want to see more examples of sales automation, see the section 6 things you can do with a proactive CRM system!

Test how our own automated sales process works!