Table of contents

1

1 1 1

What is sales automation?

2

2 2 2

What are the advantages of sales automation?

3

3 3 3

How to do sales automation right?

4

4 4 4

Which software and tools are best for sales automation?

5

5 5 5

LaGrowthMachine: The best sales automation solution

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 1

What is sales automation?

In this part, we are going to lay the foundations of what sales automation actually is and understand its scope of action.

Who hasn’t dreamed of getting rid of time-consuming tasks to focus on the most exciting part of the job?

This is exactly what sales automation offers. Sales automation (or automated sales prospecting) refers to all the techniques and methods used to eliminate repetitive and manual tasks related to prospecting activities.

If you are the head of a sales team or a member of a sales team, you know how much time and money is wasted on certain parts of the job like:

• Managing follow-up emails
• Sending quotes
• Updating information in your CRM
• Signing documents
• Sending prospecting messages on LinkedIn
• Making appointments
• etc.

After reading this article and incorporating our recommendations, you will hardly have to worry about it. Technology will take care of it for you.

Spoiler alert: LaGrowthMachine is the perfect tool to automate all the tasks we mentioned above. Here’s an example of a sequence you could envision:

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Chapter 2

What are the advantages of sales automation?

In this second chapter, we will see together how sales automation can be a real game changer for your business: time saving, money saving, better scalability, etc. We tell you everything!

Without an effective sales automation strategy, you may miss out on many business opportunities.

Here are the two main benefits of sales automation:

• An efficiency gain: 3.5X more leads recorded on average thanks to automated multi-channel prospecting (LinkedIn, Email, Twitter, …) with LaGrowthMachine.
• Save time: apart from the time needed to set up your campaign, you don’t have to do anything!

Gain efficiency

Getting your hands on a huge database and trying to approach your leads by cold calling or cold emailing does not work anymore. Only 1 call out of 18 will result in a potential presentation of your products.

It is known that the average opening rate of a non-personalized email is 24%.

By automating your sales process, you can easily:

• Increase your customers’ satisfaction thanks to a high response rate.
• Easily prioritize your leads, depending on whether they are hot or cold.
• Analyze your results.
• Forecast your revenues.
• Focus on the essential: your potential customers.

At LaGrowthMachine, we believe that the cliché saying “time is money” may not be as worn out as it seems.

Save time

No one has ever enjoyed tidying up their room, doing the dishes, or taking out the garbage. Yet, these redundant and unrewarding tasks contribute to the good balance of your home.

With sales, it’s the same thing. Much of the sales team’s day consists of unpleasant -but essential, tasks.

When you consider that 64% of sales team time is spent on non-sales-related tasks, it’s cause for alarm.

Imagine what that time could be spent on instead:

• Process optimization
• Deep segmentation of your deals
• Improvement of your sales techniques
• Implementation of effective sales scenarios
• Closing deals
• Synchronization with your CRM software

As far as the last point is concerned, with LaGrowthMachine, you can synchronize your CRM and prioritize leads according to their interactions with your prospecting campaigns.

Now that you know the main benefits of sales automation, it’s time to take action.

Discover below our detailed tips to implement your sales automation plan.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Chapter 3

How to do sales automation right?

In this third part, we offer you a simple methodology to understand how sales automation works and we will show you how to apply it to your lead generation processes.

Not all sales automation software offers the same options. Each strategy has its own functionality as we will detail below.

Enrich your leads

Enriching your leads is an absolutely essential step in any inbound marketing strategy. It is also the most effective way to make sure you send the right message to the right person.

You can start with building lists of contacts from scrapped data. Then add the missing information (profession, hierarchical level, interests, keywords…) in one click.

Work on your approach

Having taken the time to learn a little more about your leads allows you to define an appropriate sales approach. In short, the goal is to offer the best message to your prospect.

There are many different approaches you can choose from. Here are just a few:

• A basic introduction email
• Offer to download a white paper
• A link to a blog post
• A demo video
• A scheduled call

In the same way, define the sales channel(s) that seem to be the most efficient to reach your target. A B2B prospect will not go looking in the same place as a B2C prospect, so even sales processes in B2B change the equation. Will you choose:

• LinkedIn?
• SEA?
• Cold emailing?
• Display?

Depending on the number of channels you employ, you can expect more responses. Here are the statistics we have observed internally:

If sales prospecting is generally initiated by a salesperson (via all the outreach methods mentioned above), it can also occur after an initial qualification of a lead list. This is why we often speak of a combination of sales and marketing.

Manage your sales pipeline

By managing your sales pipeline, you will know exactly where your lead is in the process. It is up to you to define its mapping, according to the stages that are important to you.

The more precise it is, the more you will be able to predict your sales opportunities and eliminate the friction points you encounter.

Tracking methods like this will help you know where each contact is in the process so you can send them the best and most correct information when they need it.

Create prospecting message templates

Now that you have a clearer idea of how to reach your leads, think about automating your email templates. This is where the famous copywriting comes in again. A personalized message is often more effective than a robotic email, but we recommend not to overdo it.

Write several prospecting emails that you would like to send. Then look for the best way to personalize them (by adding the company name, first name, a humorous line, etc.).

Quick Tip: LaGrowthMachine has implemented a {{name}} tagging system that allows you to retrieve data from LinkedIn to better integrate it into your messages. This is part of the copywriting tips that will make your messages personalized!

Don’t miss any more appointments

If you have succeeded in getting an appointment with your lead, you are almost there. It would be a pity to ruin it all with incompatible agendas.

Thanks to sales automation, you can let your prospect choose their own appointment. By having direct access to your agenda, they choose the time and date that suits them best. A reminder is then sent to both parties.

Set up a lead scoring system

Let’s go back in time to 1990. Your business is booming and dozens of prospects have shown interest in your products.

Fortunately, you had thought of recording everything in your sales notebook…which you lost yesterday at a highway rest stop.

You still have your phone book, but no details about your leads or where they are in your funnel.

With the right tools, this kind of scenario will never happen again. If everything is centralized in one place, you can assign each contact a score based on their likelihood to convert within a given time frame.

The hotter it is, the higher the score. This way you can prioritize your approaches and boost your revenues without wasting time.

Synchronize your contacts with your CRM software

To have a global view of your databases, it’s best to have good Customer Relationship Management software.

In addition to being easily linkable with automation solutions, it will allow you to manage your contacts with ease. You will be able to store all the information in one place and enrich it with new data.

At the time of closing the deal, you will be able to consult in a blink all the information that will help you refine your pitch. Many solutions exist today to help you automate your processes.

Let’s take a look at them together.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Which software and tools are best for sales automation?

In this second to last chapter, we provide you with a list of the the best sales automation software. We also explain the criteria for choosing your tool: pricing, use, support, and so on…

If you are on LinkedIn, you probably receive 10 messages per week (day?) from salespeople. Like you, they try to sell their solution to help you manage your business better.

It’s not easy to sort through this jungle of messages. Fortunately, we’re here to help you make sense of it. Here are just a few of the automation solutions available to you:

1. Data collection: Sales Navigator, Phantombuster, Clearbit, Duxsoup, LinkedHelper
2. Creation of sales pipelines: LaGrowthMachine, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Zendesk, Salesmate
3. Appointment management: LaGrowthMachine, Calendly, Arrange
4. Creation of email templates: LaGrowthMachine, SendInBlue, MailChimp, Lemlist, Hubspot
5. CRM: Pipedrive, Zapier, Salesforce, Axonaut, Hubspot, Zendesk, Monday

The best option is to use the services of a complete solution. It will minimize your costs while connecting your other data sources.

This is the case with LaGrowthMachine.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Chapter 5

LaGrowthMachine: The best sales automation solution

In this last chapter, we would like to tell you more about our solution LaGrowthMachine. This tool is an investment that fits perfectly into a Growth Marketing strategy, as it will allow you to generate many leads in much less time!

As a general rule, automating your sales tasks can generate 16% more leads. Payfit, Gymlib, Shapr, and our 500 other clients have trusted us largely because we helped them automate over 40% of their processes for more than 4,000 multi-channel campaigns.

With our solution, you can monitor an unlimited number of:

• Leads
• Verified email addresses
• Social media accounts
• Phone numbers
• Multi-channel automation

The objective behind all this is to ensure that you build the best possible lead generation funnel.

Then, all you have to do is create and optimize the best possible B2B prospecting -or B2C- scenarios alongside our experts.

Our multi-channel tool (for LinkedIn, Twitter, and emails) allows you to save 40% of the time you spend on your usual prospecting routine.

You will have more time to track and analyze the results of your campaigns and be able to improve so parameters, such as sales targeting.

Our method guarantees a response rate higher than 55% on LinkedIn and Email campaigns. This is 3.5x more effective than a classic outreach strategy.