Last Updated on October 30, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Image Credit: revechat
Sales have always been a hit-or-miss activity. Salespeople try everything from spam emails, cold phone calls, and creative sales pitch to convince you to buy their product or service. They do it to find what works and doesn’t and stick with what is effective. Robotic process automation (RPA) might change that or improve the process to find what works a lot faster.
RPA Explained
Robotic process automation is a technology that imitates human tasks using computer systems, also known as bots. Bots are algorithms programmed for specific tasks, primarily repetitive, rule-based, and none complex. Like, feeding acquired data from a form into a database.
Regarding the sales department, it is estimated that 30% of their work is just organizing and sorting out information in their computers so they can input and analyze data. If they become free of this work, they could focus more on the critical activity of salesmen-client interaction. RPA could handle some sales activities: creating quotes, confirming inventory existence, making orders with the warehouse, invoicing, database inputs, analytics, analytics, and performance reports.
RPA can be linked to other automation technologies to improve efficiency. For example, cold email outreach is repetitive. It can use pre-designed HTML email templates for different situations, dripping send-outs (programming emails to ship out a few hours to avoid spam alerts), and auto-filling customizable fields directly from the CRM database. Office workers can focus more on strategy and less on repetitive tasks, as 40 to 60% of these activities can be automated.
Benefits of RPA
There is always fear that RPA will be a job killer in the working class, but nothing further away from the truth. It allows the team to focus on what impacts business and grow strategic skills. There is more time for customer-building relationships. For example, ElectroNeek implements a customer onboarding software that collects customer docs, inputs their data into task management software, and schedules communication appointments.
Reporting with RPA
Reporting is complicated for many individuals that are not data-driven. It can get a bit complex when data needs to take from different software applications like Google Analytics, CRM software, financials, and field data. RPA can gather and input the information when it’s available, saving time for the outbound sales team and evaluating their performance daily.
Sales Have Been Left Behind By Marketing
Thanks to many digital online tools, marketing has been at the forefront of automation. In contrast, sales teams have remained analog and self-reliant for the most part. According to experts, around one-third of sales tasks can be automated. 13% of sales functions are relevant to lead qualification, while 50% are pure task management processes. All of this can make use of an RPA.
Here is a list of activities RPA can handle for sales:
- Strategic planning: Channel strategies, forecasting sales, activity planning, optimal resource allocation.
- Lead qualification: Evaluate customer data, segment, filter, and prioritize.
- Quotes: Creating quotes and contract creation.
- Order management: Requesting orders, updating inventory, and order processing.
- Customer management: Follow up with clients, schedule promos and offers, and handle post-sale orders.
- Support: making reports, analysis, training, and process documentation.
Robotic process automation makes business life cycles easier, more efficient, and cheap. Integrated AI technologies will create a more profound impact as the algorithms can learn by themselves to improve constantly without waiting for significant program updates.
Author Bio
Sara Ferrero is an experienced SEO that works with gaming, technology, and the SAS niche online. She has been ranking websites for over five years with the help of her team at Rank Easy.