How to Systemise & Automate Sales Processes to Double Your Sales Revenue

If you could spend $10,000 to double your sales revenue would you do that?

A lot of businesses focus on lead generation but sometimes tightening up your sales process is all you need to do to double your business. By introducing systems and automation into your sales process it’s possible you could even see your salespeople having more time to close more sales, i.e. more sales closed without needing more closers.

So how does this happen? How do we get marketing and sales working better together?

Accept that 90% of online leads will probably not be the same quality as a referral

Too often we hear businesses that buy leads saying the quality is not very good, and at the same time from an agency perspective history has taught us that often businesses are not necessarily great on the sales followup.

But it is true. Online leads are nothing like a referral.

When you receive a good referral, you’ve been talked up by the person that has referred you, so the respect for the quality of service you provide and the trust in the relationship has been transferred.

An online lead is completely different.

They don’t know you, and they don’t know if they should trust you. There’s even a good chance that they have left their details for a number of businesses to follow them up, so when you’re calling them:

1. They don’t recognise your number
2. They’re probably shopping you around and expecting you to prove yourself, and maybe even bend over backwards to get their business.

Sounds like online leads are more trouble than they’re worth, right?

Well if you can grow your business through referrals, and consistently receive them month in, and month out…then more power to you.

But here’s the reality:

1. People are online to varying degrees every hour of the day
2. People almost always research their options online
3. Online marketing is generally the best option for scaling your lead generation, and by extension your business.
4. Consistent referrals are not guaranteed.

You just need to know how to play the game with online leads, and an optimised sales process that includes systemised and automated processes is the best way to do it.

You Need a Contact Followup Strategy

There are a number of factors that will affect your ability to convert a lead.

Take for instance a recent study that identified the impact of speed-to-call on conversions. The quicker you follow up the lead the greater the chance of converting.

Realistically a lot, if not most, businesses are not following up a lead within 30 minutes so right there you are already at a disadvantage compared to others that are calling a lead back quicker.

Furthermore, how often do you let an unknown caller go to voicemail yourself? Only 48% of leads will pick up your call on the first attempt so you need to expect to make multiple calls to get on the phone with a lead.

The study went further to investigate the impact of including emails in the followup, and found that prospects who receive emails have a 16% higher chance of being contacted by phone.

The end result was that the following was determined to be the most effective followup strategy with just the right amount of persistence while maintaining the professional image an organisation probably wants to portray.

This sequence resulted in 49% increase in conversions when using only the call strategy, but lifted to a 128% increase in conversions when emails were added in to the sequence, i.e. by implementing this strategy you could double your revenue from the existing leads you already receive.

Implementing a Lead Contact & Nurture System to Double Your Conversions

So how do you implement this? Of course you could do this manually – good luck if you’re using spreadsheets, and even if you are using a CRM most won’t do this automatically for you.

Our system, after capturing a lead, integrates 2 way text and phone calls, emails and appointment scheduling, and all of the communication follows a flow with triggers determining the next action to be taken – the same automation runs for all of your leads.

So imagine a system that:

1. Captures a lead via form, web chat, phone, Messenger or Facebook Lead form.
2. Then dials one of your sales people and asks them to click if they are ready for a call to be made to the lead.
3. If the lead does not answer the call then a text is sent with the option to book an appointment in the sales person’s calendar.
4. If the lead books an appointment then a nurture sequence is put in place
5. If the lead does not book a call then a sequence of emails, texts and calls can be set to trigger at the times set.

This same system can even text back a lead if you miss their call, and run a retargeting ad campaign to the lead to build your authority and increase the chance that the lead will reconnect.

So if a contact strategy that includes just calls and emails could double your revenue, imagine how much more powerful an automated system would be that layers in texts and retargeting ads to create a full multichannel experience.

The system will look different for different businesses, but here is a sample process/automation that might be implemented incorporating appointment booking into the flow

You know marketing is an investment, but how much more comfortable would you be with your marketing spend if you could double the return on investment without increasing your ad spend? If you would like a system like this implemented into your business, get in touch via our web chat to book a 30 minute discovery call.