This is the blog transcript of our video “How to Build a Sales Automation Plan”. If you’d like to see more of our videos, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
Ok so if sales automation is a “simple” way to help me find new leads, close new deals, etc, etc, etc…how is it supposed to work?
Hey everyone, I’m Ian Campbell, CEO of Mission Suite. Before we jump into today’s video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so that you’re notified whenever we post new videos.
It’s easy to talk about sales automation. Implementing it is something different entirely.
Like anything in business, you know that it’s important to plan for it, but where do you start?
What should you do to create a sales automation plan that’s going to work for your business?
Step 1: Have a Clear Sales Process
To put it bluntly, if you don’t have a sales process you have nothing to automate.
If you’re at the point where you’re automating your sales, chances are you’ve figured out – at least to some extent – the way that your sales should go. It’s time to get that out of your head and onto a whiteboard.
In order to automate anything, it needs to be planned out. And it needs to be well planned out. Step by step, call by call, email by email.
I’ve said it time and time again that all good automation starts on a whiteboard, not on a computer, and this is why.
So get your plan together and make sure you have a clear sense of what you’re actually automating. That’s the only way that you’ll be able to ultimately get it put together, identify the next steps and implement it into your automation system.
If you don’t have the plan, you don’t have anything to automate, so make sure you have it written out so you can keep moving through these steps!
Step 2: Identify the steps of the process that CANNOT be automated
As much as I hate to admit it, not everything in an automated sales process can be automated. More often than not, someone’s eventually going to have to pick up the phone and make a call.
And that’s not something that can be automated. There are voicemail drop tools out there that can automate voicemails but those are rarely as effective as an actual call.
In your sales process, where do you want calls to be made?
Are you sending out emails about current events? That’s tough to automate unless you’re consistently using the blog on your website to talk about them.
Some of those steps in your sales process just can’t be automated, and that’s ok. You can still send automatic reminders to yourself or your sales team to remind them that they have to do something.
You just need to know when those are going to be sent.
Step 3: Collect or Create the Templates for the Automation Steps
Now that you have your plan written out and you know where your manual steps are going to be, it’s time to start collecting or creating the templates that you’re going to use for your automation steps.
Most of your automation steps are going to be some sort of email or text message, so it’s important to have those templates written out so that you can start cutting them up to add your placeholders.
That personalization is REALLY important with automated selling, so you want to make sure that you’re giving this enough time to make it work.
If those automated messages feel automated, your credibility will go right out the window.
So take some time to get those templates together for each stage of the process.
Are you with me so far? Have you ever tried to automate your sales process? If you have any thoughts, let me know down in the comments and give this video a quick like to let us know you’re getting something out of it!
Step 4: Plan Your Check Points
Again, it’d be great if an automated sales plan could just be a set it and forget it type of process but, it’s just not.
You’re going to need to check in on the process and the system from time to time to make sure that things are going as planned.
There are going to be times that you realize that the path that you laid out for people to travel to ultimately become a client isn’t necessarily right for everyone that starts the journey.
There are going to be times that you realize that you forgot to connect a trigger to an email campaign.
There are going to be times that you realize that someone clicked on something weird and got themselves stuck in a message loop.
There are plenty of things that can send your sales automation plan off track. None of them are big issues as long as they’re caught early.
But you’re not going to catch any of them unless you’re checking in on the automation from time to time. So make sure that you take a look every now and then to make sure that everything is running smoothly.
Step 5: Implement and Test The Plan
Now’s the fun part when you get to see all of your efforts come to fruition!
I’m assuming that you have your automation system already set up and ready to implement. If you don’t, hopefully it’s obvious to you that you need to do that before you can do this.
But now you get to implement all of this into your system and ultimately test it out to make sure that it’s working the way that you want it to work.
Don’t be afraid to ask for training or support from your support team with your automation system if you need it. They’re there to help make sure you know how to implement this and get it tested (at least, they should be).
Once you have everything built into your system, you’ll be able to test it all. You can either test everything individually or test the entire campaign by shortening any delays and triggers to fire in rapid succession so that you know that the “if this, then that” logic is working correctly.
Again, if you have questions about how to do this, reach out to the support team of your automation system.
And then once it’s tested, it’s ready to launch so kick it off!
If you want to see a demo of Mission Suite to see how we can help you automate your sales process, drop down to the description of this video and you’ll see a link to sign up for our next demo!
Hey I hope you got something out of this video. And if you did, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and maybe a share so that others can see it too. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so that you’re notified whenever we post new videos and while you’re at it, check out these videos too!
We’ll see you next time around!