The Covid-19 crisis has upended some of the most dependable business models prevalent before the virus struck the world. The realm of sales has always been a subject of deep interest for evaluating the possibilities of automation and other technologies to improve operations. While technology was considered a luxury in the pre-Covid days, it’s the lifeline of sales now. This is because with the world getting digitized, salespeople have to acclimatize themselves to the change in order to have enough time to focus on value-adding activities rather than tedious admin works like data input and manual follow-ups.
RPA or Robotic Process Automation has always been popular with businesses as the magic wand to enhance productivity, maintain efficiency, and reduce costs. RPA has the potential to transform the typical, tedious sales tasks as you know them. Here’s a glimpse of a few use cases to establish what RPA can do to the daily sales processes at your organization.
The average sales rep spends just over a third of their working hours on selling, while the majority of their time is grabbed by the painstaking administrative tasks.
Maintaining customer database
Relieve your sales warriors of those dull customer database updates by deploying bots to extract data directly from any spreadsheet, server, or other digital sources such as CRM or ERP and update the same to any digital application. Bots deliver amazing accuracy in such tasks; even in that rare instance of failure, the concerned teams are notified for prompt action.
Quote generation
Empower your team to access product details with just a few clicks using bots, expediting the quotation process. For better accuracy, bots allow the team to vary the price-determining variables as per the needs of the prospect. You can allow prospects and customers to access product specifications and view product catalogs from the portal with assistance from bots.
Sales forecast
With RPA at their disposal, the human workforce doesn’t have to execute the uninspiring data gathering, handling, and analysis tasks to project future figures. Bots can identify, arrange, and analyze product information by the product name, quantity sold, price/discount history, etc. to give a distinct picture of the future trends. Bots integrated with machine intelligence can analyze real-time data to predict success rates of sales efforts and deliver data-driven suggestions.
Capturing inquiries
For product inquiries using the customer portal, bots initiate the engagement by asking relevant questions, each determined by the prospect’s response to the previous question. This data is shared with the sales team as a lead. For queries requiring human assistance, bots can determine the correct individual to triage those.
Target setting
RPA can be used to determine team and individual sales targets based on real-time variables. Bots can access historical sales data of individuals and teams to factor in determinants such as order value, region, demography, etc. This data is used by rule-driven bots to set realistic targets for the people.
Customer preferences
Bots can access customer databases to analyze relevant data about customer choices and preferences. They can further be configured to draw insights from such datasets to deliver suggestions to the sales team on product pitching. Likewise, the sales team can verify product plans (with exceptions) using RPA to predict the conversion rate.
Opportunity management
Without automation, the sales team can get rid of the manual handling of voluminous lead details, including data sorting and storage. RPA can be configured to assist sales teams with alerts for follow-ups and meetings with customers/prospects. Rule-based bots can identify hot leads along with their chances of conversion. Bots can also assist in tracking deal status (on the CRM) and get actionable insights, saving on time and efforts.
Sales data security
Uncertainties about the safety of sales data are a cause of nightmare for the sales team and the management alike. This is where the wise one looks for digitization and automation. Bots authenticate access to critical sales data in the ERP. RPA can be used for username-password authentication or multi-tiered evidence-based validation to prevent data misuse.
ERP- CRM integration
A typical sales organization uses a multitude of digital solutions, including ERP, CRM, various portals, etc. that need to be integrated for a seamless exchange of data. Bots can establish a virtual conduit between these systems to facilitate easy access to organizational data by intended teams/individuals, saving substantial time for sales executives.
Contract handling
A sales team has to manage multiple contracts and agreements, which can be tedious if managed manually. Bots integrated with an e-signing feature can be used to simplify contract signing. Bots can access contract templates and personalize those as per deal details. RPA can also validate digitally signed templates with a one-time password and store and retrieve those when needed.
A Look at the Benefits of Implementing RPA
The average sales rep spends just over a third of their working hours on selling, while the majority of their time is grabbed by the painstaking administrative tasks.
Improved productivity
When the above-elucidated tasks are executed by RPA, it grossly cuts down on the need for the team to multitask, which otherwise is a stressful practice for sales specialists. By optimizing their workloads, bots free them from admin tasks, facilitating them to shift their focus to the high value chain work.
Better client relationships
Customer engagement and satisfaction are supreme to the success of the sales team. RPA lays the ideal platform to initiate and nurture rewarding relationships with customers. For instance, bots reduce the wait time of customers to access product information and lead them to the right information/assistance to address their queries at the earliest.
Effortless reporting
Sales reporting is essential, but also resource-hungry. RPA can be used to automate (or at least partially automate) even complex reports and share them with the intended recipients. Bots can be trained to draw hidden insights from report data to equip the team with the right information they need to take on the competitive market.
These are just a few of the multitude of examples of how RPA can be harnessed to inject efficiency into the sales processes. As the world enters the post-Covid era, organizations are increasingly taking to automation to streamline their workflows and boost the productivity of their employees. Connect with our RPA experts to know more about empowering your sales team.
