Sales are the lifeline of any successful business. The health of that lifeline is a crucial cost every owner, manager, and administrator must handle. With automation, Keap Pro customer relationship management (CRM) can keap that cost down. Think of automation software as the project manager for your sales team. While automation software helps your team focus on the most important tasks ahead. It can also keep track of those not yet ready to buy, ensuring progress at every stage of the sales journey. Below are a few strategies that Keap Pro can help provide to streamline sales:
Set a Framework for Your Keap Sales Pipeline
The road from prospect to paying customer includes a few stops. Mapping the route— adding automation to the journey—helps your sales reps guide prospects from one destination to the next. Thus, ensuring no one gets lost along the way.
Automation software organizes the existing process that sales reps follow to close a deal. When the process is clearly defined, sales reps can move leads from one stage to another. This ensures consistency and providing visibility into where each lead needs to head next. While the sales process varies with every company, here’s an example of how automation can augment a sales pipeline.
Define the keap sales process by four basic stages:
- New opportunity: A lead has been identified. When a lead is tagged as a new opportunity, the software assigns a sales rep to contact him.
- Contacting: The lead moves into this stage when a sales rep calls him. If the sales rep reaches him, the lead advances to the next stage. If the call goes to voicemail, an automated email is sent as a follow-up (see item No. 3: “Always win at phone tag”).
- Engaging: The sales rep is talking with the lead to learn about his needs and how your product or services can benefit him.
- Qualified: The lead moves into this stage when the sales rep determines that he’s qualified, meaning that he has the budget and authority to make the purchasing decision. The rest of the sales process plays out from here, with different automated actions set up for wins and losses, as well as leads who aren’t yet ready to make a decision.
Focus on Your Hottest Leads
Having more leads than time to contact them is a problem—a good one, of course, but one that needs a solution nonetheless. If you never seem to catch up with your to-do list, where do you even begin?
Automation software sets your priorities by ranking each lead based on his or her engagement with your marketing efforts. Thanks to lead scoring, you can focus on potential customers who are ready to buy over those who need time.
Keap, for example, shows lead scores in terms of flames. Depending on the lead scoring rules you establish in the software, one flame might mean the prospect filled out a contact form. Consistent clicking, emailing and calling might result in a score of five flames. Once the lead is officially deemed hot, the software tells you to go in for the sale.
Not only does automated lead scoring eliminate wasted time in your sales process, it also informs your marketing strategy. By tagging leads based on their level of interest, Keap Sales you can better anticipate with automation and be there for their needs to target them with messages tailored to their current mindset.
