How to Utilize Automation to Accelerate the Sales Cycle

On this episode of “Salesforce Simplified,” the topic is “How to Utilize Automation to Accelerate the Sales Cycle,” and our guest is Conga’s Director of Digital Transformation for Automation, Brad Brochocki.

Episode Resources:

Do You Really Need Sales Automation?: https://sforce.co/3s5Ajm3

Conga: https://conga.com/

Transcription:

Mike Boyle:

Hello everyone. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions and on this episode of Salesforce Simplified, the topic is how to utilize automation to accelerate the sales cycle.

And our guest today is Conga’s Director Of Digital Transformation For Automation, Brad Brochocki. Brad, welcome. It is a pleasure to have you with us today. How’s everything in your world?

Brad Brochocki:

Things are great Mike. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

Mike Boyle:

Brad, could you tell us, before we get into the questions here, a little bit about what you do at Conga?

Brad Brochocki:

So, as the Director Of Visual Transformation For Automation, my job is, almost from a product marketing point of view, is to help identify, in the world of automation, what are the pain points that prospects, customers and really anyone in the business world experience. I analyze lots of the competition, understand where gaps exist and provide best practices, recommendations for Conga to create the best products and solutions possible to make sure that we’re automating that sales and revenue cycle for our customers.

Mike Boyle:

You know Brad, I never want to assume folks know exactly what the topic is about. So since we’re centered here on sales automation, could you tell us what sales automation is?

Brad Brochocki:

Absolutely. So, when you’re looking at the sales process, there’s really several steps that take place whether that be top of funnel marketing techniques, of social media, messaging, emailing customers, and then as they work their way down the funnel, there’s so many steps that can be taken by different individuals within your company to really close a deal and then maximize that deal value and ideally renew that deal at the end of that sales cycle.

So, with all those steps, that can take a lot of time, money, and effort. So sales automation, it’s really all about what you can do to automate any of those sales steps to make them faster, easier, and more efficient.

Mike Boyle:

So, tell us why automating the sales and revenue process is so important for a company.

Brad Brochocki:

You know, I’d like to really split that into three different sections.

Automation, first, is it increases productivity because if you work in sales, you know that so much of your time, frankly, is not done making sales. CSO insights actually has a stat that 62% of a typical salesperson’s time is spent on responsibilities that don’t produce revenue. So, you’re investing all this money in a sales team but they’re busy arguably with prospect management, scheduling, organizing, planning, and getting the right information to the right people to close a deal. Now that, frankly, is a big waste of time and money for your sales team and what sales automation does is it helps make your sales team more productive so they’re spending time making sales.

Number two, it accelerates the sales cycle because when each progressive task in that sales cycle can be automated or kicked off, is that you’re shortening that time to revenue. So, all of a sudden, a process, maybe it used to take you three weeks to close a deal. There’s quantitative evidence that a lot of people who then implement sales automation software can cut that time from weeks into even hours of getting all the right information to that prospect at the right time.

And then finally, it grows revenue because now, not only with our automation software, but frankly there’s artificial intelligence that can help identify what are common characteristics among a prospect, among a customer. How can we maximize deal opportunities to make sure that you’re giving that right information at the right time to a prospect to help maximize your chance of closing a deal and making really as much money as you can in that deal.

Mike Boyle:

Can you talk to us a little bit about the processes that you can implement sales automation?

Brad Brochocki:

Absolutely. There’s a lot. I touched on it at the beginning of the call but really, if you’re looking at top of funnel, you’re looking at typically prospecting tools. So obviously a big giant out there is Zoom Info and the ability to see a common customer database, understand titles, personas, company, revenue size.

But then what makes that really interesting is that you’re able to build up automated prospecting campaigns. So, really with a click of a button, and if it’s set up correctly without the click of a button, when a prospect enters your pipeline, a sequence of automated emails and calls can be kicked off.

So, a salesperson may be on day one, an automated email gets sent to you introducing themselves. On day three, they send out a second email that might include a case study or a data sheet to a customer. On day four, the salesperson gets a notification that they should connect with them on LinkedIn and send a message. On day seven, it’s a phone call and whatever it is is that some of these can be two or three weeks long in which these automated steps are kicking off to keep the salesperson top of mind with that customer, where that customer’s hearing from you arguably every day, every other day, because data shows that really it sometimes takes between 12 and 21 on steps of communication to close a deal nowadays.

So, all this automation software now gives that time where the salesperson can pre-build messages and it’s being sent out to arguably hundreds of different prospects throughout the day. And then meanwhile, your salesperson’s actually spending their time doing demos, sending out quotes and proposals and closing deals.

Another great solution, actually, is CRM data entry management. So, when you’re looking at HubSpot, Salesforce, things like that of how is your data being managed? How is it being updated appropriately as you change things? Prospect communications. How are you scheduling emails? How are you scheduling meetings to go out? How are you getting the right collateral to the right customer at that right time?

And then deal management. So how are you sending out proposals and quotes, renewals, contracts? Is that right data being pulled and at the right time? How is it being sent? Are you getting E-signatures to close a deal? All those steps with deal management and contract management can take weeks to months so this automation software really shortens that time to close a deal.

Ad Victoriam Solutions
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