Finding sales tasks to automate can be addictive. That spark of satisfaction you get when you see measurable increases in productivity, sharp improvements in accuracy, and happier employees is great for morale and your bottom line.
Whether you’re a small business looking to compete with the big guns on a budget or an established enterprise that wants to simplify complex workflows, automated sales processes help you work smarter, not harder.
That is if you know how to use them, of course.
This article is going to look at 10 important sales tasks to automate, from lead scoring and nurturing to invoicing and contract management, revealing how to maximize the potential of automation.
1. Lead scoring to automatically rank leads based on their likelihood to convert
Many companies see manual lead scoring as a valuable outcome, but unfortunately, it isn’t worth the time and effort to get there. However, automated lead scoring can maximize business sales efficiency by skipping the hard work and reaching the end result quicker: A clear picture of which individuals to target for the best returns.
Lead scoring is the first of your sales tasks to automate as it comes right at the beginning of your sales journey. The technical work starts in your customer relationship management (CRM) software, where you analyze different data points and select the criteria that are the highest predictor of a successful sale. Typical signifiers are website interactions, email engagement, demographics, or budget.
Use these criteria as a framework for new leads to pass through. The more boxes they check, the higher their lead scoring, and the more urgently they need to be nurtured. CRM task automation will also update in real time, so a contact who initially scores low could visit your site, click on your emails, and rise through the ranks until they get immediate attention.
Automated lead scoring means you can prioritize your efforts on those who are most likely to convert. This reduces time wasted on contacts who lack interest and maximizes your return on investment (ROI) for each lead.
2. Email follow-ups that automatically schedule and send personalized emails
Following up with leads is crucial to keeping them interested, but it can be a messy, time-consuming process if you do it manually. Luckily, a series of email follow-ups is one of the easiest sales tasks to automate.
The legwork is spread between two areas: Choosing what triggers your emails and writing the messages themselves.
Each of your automated emails serves a purpose, such as welcoming a lead to your newsletter, delivering an e-book they’ve requested, or reminding them that a special discount will soon expire. The purpose gives you the trigger, which could be based on time (your discount code expires in three days) or in response to an action (thank you for downloading our e-book). Regarding the content, try to create a sense of urgency and leave a clear call to action for your lead to move onto the next step of your sales funnel.
Combining these two elements maintains lead engagement and keeps them moving through the funnel without any unnecessary delays. On an internal level, it saves you the time and stress of manually checking each prospect’s actions and rushing a response.
3. CRM data entry automates the updating and management of customer information
Keeping your CRM clean and tidy is tedious, boring, and invariably low down the list of sales tasks priorities. But luckily, you don’t have to do it anymore. CRM task automation simplifies every step of the process from initial data entry to updating information, changing a lead’s score, and segmentation.
Lead capture forms on landing pages or social media feed directly into your CRM to populate whichever fields you include (and a few bonus fields such as IP address and location). This cuts out a huge chunk of error-prone work for your sales agents who can skip data entry and focus on building relationships and closing deals.
CRMs will do a lot of housework themselves, such as identifying duplicates or missing information so you can track leads accurately and produce reliable reports and analytics. Data entry and management is one of the best sales tasks to automate because it is the quintessential background task — something that is necessary, but takes a lot of time and doesn’t provide an immediate reward.
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4. Appointment scheduling to reduce time spent on booking and managing meetings with prospects
The last thing you want to add to a lengthy to-do list is a confusing email back and forth to agree on a meeting time. Setting this sales task to automate is easy with scheduling tools whereby prospects can see your calendar availability and select a time that fits their schedule.
Aside from speeding up the entire process, using sales task automation means you never miss meetings, double book them, or delay them. Most calendar software comes with automated reminders for both parties to reduce no-shows and progress those leads through your sales funnel efficiently.
Like so many other sales productivity tools, automated appointment scheduling frees up a considerable amount of time in your team’s week that can be better spent on strategic tasks or meeting preparation. On the client side, small business sales efficiency creates trust and confidence that you’re organized behind the scenes.
5. Personalized lead nurturing and email sequences to guide leads through the sales funnel
Although automated sales processes are designed to get from A to B as quickly as possible, you can’t expect to make a sale from your first interaction with a lead — you need to nurture them properly.
Nurturing familiarizes leads with your brand, building trust as you guide them toward a sale. Go too hard and they’ll be put off; go too soft and they’ll lose interest.
Automated lead nurturing usually takes the form of trigger-based email sequences that educate prospects, answer common questions, and give additional information to increase their likelihood of converting. By automating these email flows, you keep contacts engaged even if your sales team is focused elsewhere. This doesn’t just boost productivity, but it allows you to give high-priority tasks the attention they deserve, knowing that your leads are continuously engaged.
6. Customized proposal generation at the click of a button
Anybody who has had to create proposals manually will tell you that it was always one of the top sales tasks to automate. When many proposals are similar, but not quite identical, you waste a lot of time tailoring an offer to meet the needs of each prospect. With sales task automation, you can generate accurate, professional proposals in minutes without all the manual formatting and content editing.
Templates do a lot of the heavy lifting here, giving you the layout and key details that all proposals need. However, the best sales productivity tools for generating proposals are in the algorithms that connect documents to your CRM. They pull in relevant details like pricing, customer information, and product descriptions directly so your humans can focus on negotiation rather than paperwork.
Automated proposals are especially helpful for small business sales efficiency as they allow you to capitalize on opportunities while they’re fresh instead of delaying and possibly losing deals.
7. Real-time sales reporting that generates actionable analytics automatically
Reports used to strike fear into sales teams at the end of every month. They’re crucial to tracking and improving performance, but do nothing to boost numbers and get agents closer to their targets.
Automating sales reporting is the norm nowadays as it gives you access to performance metrics in real time instead of periodic insights that require a lot of time and hard work. With data easy to collect, it’s more about how you use it.
For example, you might identify a major drop-off at a certain point in your email follow-ups. Your reports will flag the issue, allowing you to test different wordings, calls to action, or timings and measure the change in performance. Companies that back their sales tasks with precise data analytics put themselves in a much better position to eliminate inefficient processes and take advantage of new opportunities.
8. Strategic social media outreach to run selling efforts across platforms
We all know how powerful social media is for connecting with prospects, but how do you get the most out of it without dedicating every minute of the day to posting, chatting with leads, and tracking your performance?
Social media strategy is one of the most effective sales tasks to automate and can give the impression that you’ve got an entire team dedicated to your activity — even if it’s just one person. Controlling all your social channels through your CRM, allows you to schedule posts at optimal times to get your name out there and attract attention to your campaigns. However, the real secret is that while these campaigns are running automatically, you can engage with leads and respond to inquiries in real time, all from one dashboard.
Strategic social media automation is indispensable to capturing leads and nurturing them on the platforms they most enjoy. Their details will be soaked up by your CRM just like any other potential customer.
9. Invoice and payment reminders that secure your cash flow and compliance
In a perfect world, you’d get your invoices out and receive payment exactly according to plan. Unfortunately, we’re not in that utopia, and chasing up clients for payment can be a hugely time-consuming and disruptive process.
To increase the chances of prompt invoicing and payment, you can automatically layer details of a deal over pre-made invoice templates and send them to clients directly from a CRM deal. This keeps all the details correct and saves you a heap of time in writing up invoices manually.
Other sales tasks to automate include payment tracking and sending out reminders when you’re approaching or beyond payday. The result is a drop in overdue invoices and a healthy cash flow to make for more predictable, sustainable operations.
10. Contract management to create, track, and sign sales agreements
The last of our sales tasks to automate is contract management — an area where delays and mistakes can be incredibly costly. With advances in automation and AI, you can streamline the entire contract management workflow and turn your attention to attracting more clients.
Start with an artificial intelligence (AI) content generator
that will write up an industry-standard document. Tell the AI how to customize it for your specific business and needs and it will enact the changes in an instant.
Once you’re happy, turn it into a customizable template to serve as the basis for all your future contracts. Like your invoices, these templates will lift data from your CRM to personalize the contract, while using e-signatures rather than physical ones smoothens the process for your client.
Next, an automated workflow gets things signed, sealed, and delivered to finalize the deal. A simple workflow might include document creation, sending the document, following up if necessary, and countersigning. Once each of these tasks is completed, the next dependent task will be assigned automatically.
Combining all of these sales automation tools means your contracts will reliably have all the right information and you won’t miss any important steps along the way.
Bitrix24: A fully loaded package to automate all your sales tasks
As we’ve seen, there are plenty of sales tasks to automate, with all of them relying on distinct technology to work.
At Bitrix24, we know the value of simplicity, which is why we’ve brought all of these tools and automations together in one place.
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A CRM that covers automated lead scoring, deal monitoring, and invoice and contract generation
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A marketing suite with email automation, social campaigns, and customizable lead-capture forms
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Appointment scheduling tools through sharable calendars
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Reporting and analytics to assess and improve your automated sales processes
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Automated task management tools with dependencies, workflow templates, and much more
Sign up for Bitrix24 today to cut out the busy work and focus on making deals.
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FAQ
What sales tasks should small businesses automate to increase efficiency?
To increase efficiency, small businesses should automate sales tasks such as:
Automating these tasks reduces manual effort, maintains accuracy, and helps sales teams focus on high-value activities like closing deals and nurturing customer relationships.
How does automating sales tasks improve business operations?
Automating sales tasks improves business operations by eliminating manual errors, accelerating processes, and guaranteeing consistency in communications. It frees up time for sales teams to focus on strategic efforts like building customer relationships and closing deals, resulting in better productivity, faster sales cycles, and operational efficiency.
What tools are best for automating sales tasks?
The best tools for automating sales tasks are purpose-built business platforms with automations built into them. Software like Bitrix24 offers everything from contact management and lead scoring to workflow automation and performance analytics, giving you a wide range of capabilities from a single subscription.
