How to Automate Client Onboarding

How to Automate Client Onboarding Within Your Business

Providing an outstanding user experience to clients is essential, especially new clients.

Not only will this set you apart from your competitors it will also help turn new clients into lifelong clients that rant and rave about your company to friends and colleagues.

But what are some of the best ways to optimise your clients user experience to ensure that every stage is hassle free for them and your team?

Well, we’ve put together a guide on how to automate your client onboarding experience internally and externally to provide you and your clients with industry leading experience including answers to common questions about client onboarding automation as well as some of the leading platforms and workflows we recommend exploring.

Ready to take your client onboarding experience to the next level?

Let’s dive in!

Automating Client Onboarding

  • What is automated client onboarding?
  • When should I use automated client onboarding?
  • How much do automated qualification platforms cost?
  • Automated client onboarding benefits
  • Best automated client onboarding platforms
  • Automated client onboarding workflow examples

Common Questions About Automated Client Onboarding

What is Automated Client Onboarding?

  • Automated client onboarding is the process of streamlining your client onboarding process through use of SaaS platforms and automated workflows.

When Should I Use Automated Client Onboarding?

  • Automated client onboarding can be used across multiple stages within your business to avoid manual data entry across multiple and to trigger certain steps within the process.

How Much Do Automated Client Onboarding Platforms Cost?

  • Platform costs can vary depending on which processes you are looking to automate and the features you require with most platforms costing between $0 and $50 per month.

Benefits of Automated Lead Qualification

  1. Reducing manual data entry across multiple platforms.
  2. Decrease the time taken to request and receive payments
  3. Streamline meeting scheduling for your and your clients
  4. Avoid having to follow up for client assets essential to the project.
  5. Optimise service delivery times and client communications.

Best Automated Lead Qualification Platforms

Automated Client Onboarding Workflow Examples

Automate Client Invoicing and Payment Processing

Making client invoicing and payment processing easy not only ensures a hassle free experience for your clients, it also ensures you get paid on time.

By using platforms like Bonsai you can streamline your invoicing and payment processing experience so that invoices are automatically created and sent based upon predefined dates while Stripe allows your client to pay via credit upfront or via subscription.

Once payment has been processed, you can then trigger follow up actions using Zapier to keep your client moving through your client journey.

Streamline Client Asset Collection

One of the most time consuming tasks of service delivery is the initial collection of client assets.

Depending upon your line of business, most industries can often involve the collection of multiple documents and assets so that you can deliver your service.

With platforms such as Content Snare, you can create, send, track and manage asset collection requests with your clients including providing clients with the ability for them to see which files they still need to submit making the process easy for everyone.

Make Meeting Scheduling a Hassle Free Experience

Depending upon where you and your clients are based, time zones, public holidays and conflicting schedules can often cause headaches for meeting scheduling.

Thanks to platforms like Acuity and Calendly, you can streamline your appointment scheduling process for you and your clients with tailored event booking pages that can be customised to suit your needs.

From automated follow up, to custom schedules based upon event types and redirection after an event is scheduled the sky’s the limit with your new scheduling sidekick.

Optimise Service Delivery Through Better Project Management

Depending upon the complexity of your business and services you provide, you may often have services that need to be managed through a project management platform to increase clarity across your team and also ensure each and every step of the project is completed.

Platforms Like Asana and ClickUp allow you to streamline your service delivery by creating project templates that can be used each and every time you sign a client.
You can then use platforms such as Make to trigger follow up actions once a task is completed to ensure your project keeps moving forward in a timely manner.

And there you go, an overview of how to streamline your client onboarding experience using automation as well as some of the leading platforms and workflows you can try out for yourself.

Ready to Automate Your Client Onboarding Process?

Feel free to explore the platforms mentioned above to see how they can assist you in automating your client onboarding process so that you can stand out from your competitors.

5 Ways to Grow Your Education Business Using Automation

5 Ways to Grow Your Education Business Using Automation

Education is without a doubt one of the fastest growing industries within the world.

While in person learning still plays an essential part within the education space, revenue in Online Education is projected to reach US$166.60bn in 2023 meaning traditional businesses will either have to innovate to stay competitive or look to expand to new markets to compete.

One of the most up and coming ways to do this is through use of automation.

So how can education businesses make use of automation to deliver an industry leading service to their students while keeping them ahead of their competition.

We’ve put together a detailed article on some of the leading ways to optimise your education business using automation so that you can spend more time on what matters most.

Ready to take your education business to the next level? Let’s dive in!

Ways to Automate Your Education Business

  • Appointment Scheduling
  • Student Enrollment
  • Payment Processing
  • Review Collection
  • Referral Programs

Appointment Scheduling

Whether you’re delivering in-person or online education services, providing your potential and current students with a hassle free scheduling process can make or break your business.

By using platforms such as Calendly and Acuity you can create a streamlined appointment scheduling system that allows them to schedule, reschedule and cancel appointments with ease while also sending them automated reminders to reduce the risk of missed appointments.

Once they schedule an appointment, their data can then be automatically added to your preferred CRM platform so that you can keep track of throughout your entire sales journey.

Student Enrollment

Providing new customers with an industry leading experience at every stage is critical when it comes to helping you stand out from the competition no matter how many years you have been in business.

With the help of platforms such as Paperform and Typeform you can create tailored student enrollment processes that conditionally show questions based upon each type of student.

You can then push their registration data through to multiple platforms including payment processing platforms saving the need to manually enter their details across multiple platforms.

Payment Processing

When it comes to running a profitable business, cash flow is king.

Therefore, the last thing you want to be losing your time on is manual payment processing.

Thanks to platforms like Stripe you can trigger automated subscription renewals and issue receipts once payment has been processed ensuring no payments slip through the cracks.

Best of all, Stripe connects with most leading accounting platforms and CRM solutions on the market ensuring your data remains syncronised across all platforms.

Review Collection

Being able to share your students’ experiences easily online not only helps in growing your brand, it provides social proof for new potential students of your brand’s reputation.

With platforms like Reviews.IO you can easily request and publish reviews across the leading social media platforms in minutes creating a hassle free method for your students to provide insight into what they love most about your program.  

Referral Programs

One of the easiest methods for attracting new customers is by asking for referrals from your existing customers.

Not only does this allow you to break the ice by referring you to new potential customers, it also allows your existing customers to benefit from being a loyal customer.

With platforms like ReferralCandy and Viral Loops you can create tailored referral programs that automatically incentivize and reward customers the more they promote your brand with their fiends making it win win for everybody.

And there you have it, 5 ways to grow your education business using automation allowing you to focus on delivering an industry leading experience to your students.

Ready to Grow Your Education Business Using Automation?

Feel free to explore some of the tools outlined within this article to see how each tool can be used to automate common workflows within your education business or Schedule a Free Automation Consultation with our team today about growing your business using automation today.

How to Automate Invoicing

How to Easily Automate Invoicing WIthin Your Business

Whether your business operates on a project based fee, retainer or subscription basis the last thing you want to be doing is chasing unpaid invoices.

Fortunately, with online payment solutions now becoming the industry standard you can save countless hours on unpaid or missed invoices hurting your cash flow.

With this in mind,here’s our detailed guide on how to automate invoicing within your business including answers to common questions as well platform recommendations and workflow examples you can deploy within your business easily.

Let’s dive in!

Automate Invoicing

  • What is automated invoicing?
  • When should I use automated invoicing?
  • How much do automated invoicing platforms cost?
  • Automated invoice benefits
  • Best automated invoicing platforms
  • Automated invoicing workflow examples

What is Automated Invoicing?

  • Automated invoicing is the process of streamlining your invoice creation process through use of a SaaS invoicing platform.

When Should I Use Automated Invoicing?

  • Automated invoicing can be used across your entire business including sending once-off, monthly and milestone based invoices.

How Much Do Automated Invoicing Platforms Cost?

  • The price of automated invoicing platforms can vary depending upon the features and users you require with most costing less than $30 per month.

Benefits of Automated Invoicing

  1. Save countless hours drafting, reviewing and sending invoices.
  2. Reduce the risk of data entry errors or incorrect invoices.
  3. Create and send automated invoices and payment reminders.
  4. Trigger follow up processes automatically once an invoice has been paid.
  5. Streamline your invoicing experience for your team and clients.

Best Automated Invoicing Platforms

Automated Invoicing Workflow Examples

Automatically Create Invoices Based Upon Deal Information Within Your CRM

One of the biggest time killers when it comes to productivity is manual data entry.

Fortunately, with the help of platforms such as Zapier and Make you can automatically create contacts and invoices in your accounting platform using the data from your CRM saving you the need to manually enter their contact information and products or services every time.

Send New Invoices Automatically Upon a Service Renewal Date

Keeping tabs on recurring invoices or subscription based payments shouldn’t be a full time job.

With platforms such as Bonsai and Stripe you can automatically create and trigger invoices to be sent or subscription based payments to be charged based upon a specific payment date ensuring now client payment ever slips through the cracks again.

Effortlessly Synchronise Accounting Data Across Multiple Platforms

Ensuring your accounting data is securely shared, stored and managed is critical to the financial health of your company and with payments often coming from multiple sources, keeping tabs of this can often be easier said than done.

With platforms like QuickBooks and Xero, you can finally say goodbye to accounting irregularities for good thanks to their host of integration options including Stripe, PayPal and more ensuring you have a birds eye view of your cash flow regardless of their source.

Trigger Additional Processes Once An Invoice Is Paid

With your invoice processes now streamlined, is it time to think about what happens after an invoice is paid?

Thanks to platforms like Make or Zapier, you can connect your invoicing platforms with 1000s of other SaaS platforms allowing you to trigger additional processes once payment has been received by your client or customer.

From notifying your sales team so that they can complete the next steps or inviting the client to schedule their onboarding meeting, the sky’s the limit.

And there you go, our detailed guide on how to automate invoicing with your business as well as some of our preferred platforms and workflows to get you started.

Ready to Say Goodbye to Manual Invoicing Once And For All?

Feel free to explore the platforms mentioned above to see how they can assist you in automating your invoicing process to win back your time once and for all.

How to Automate Contract Management

How to Automate Contract Management In Your Business

One of the most critical parts to ensuring everyone is on the same page when it comes to doing business is ensuring that you have a straightforward yet legally binding contract.

Whether it’s signing a new client, drawing up a non disclosure statement or onboarding a new employee this process often seems more daunting than it should be.

Thankfully, with the help of automation you can streamline your contract management process and say goodbye to manual contract creation once and for all.

To help make it easier for you, we’ve put together a detailed guide including answers for questions about automated contract management as well as platform recommendations and workflow examples you can implement within your business easily saving you countless hours.

Let’s dive in!

Automate Contract Management

  • What is automated contract management?
  • When should I use automated contract management?
  • How much do automated contract management platforms cost?
  • Automated contract management benefits
  • Best automated contract management platforms
  • Automated contract management workflow examples

What is Automated Contract Management?

  • Automated contract management management is the process of streamlining your contract management process through use of a SaaS contract management platform.

When Should I Use Automated Contract Management?

  • Automated contract management can be used across your entire organisation including hiring, service delivery, partnership agreements and more.

How Much Do Automated Contract Management Platforms Cost?

  • Depending upon which platforms and features you use, automated contract management platforms can cost anywhere between $0 and $60+ per month.

Benefits of Automated Contract Management

  1. Reduce time spent on manually drafting, editing and sending contracts.
  2. Avoid potential data entry and formatting errors.
  3. Create a simplified signing experience for you and your signees.
  4. Send professional legally binding documents fast and securely.
  5. Trigger follow up actions automatically once the contract has been signed.

Best Automated Automated Contract Management

Automated Contract Management Workflow Examples

Create Templated Contracts Based Upon Specific Use Cases

Whether it’s hiring a new team member, signing a client or entering into a non disclosure agreement with an external party the majority of the time the same contract is used.

With the help of platforms such as PandaDoc and Juro you can create templated contacts for each use case and map any required fields from your CRM directly into the platform saving you time and resources of manual data entry across multiple platforms.

Create Pre Approval Workflows to Decrease Signing Delays

When it comes to signing a new client, first impressions count and there is nothing worse than having the client wait for your legal team or manager to sign off on a contract.

Thanks to platforms like DocuSign and PandaDoc you can create pre-defined signee roles so that all parties get notified as soon as a new contract is drafted or marked for approval.

Streamline Project Approval and Payment Process

Having a refined onboarding process that reduces any potential friction can not only reduce the risk of a new client getting lost or missing critical steps when onboarding as a client, it also decreases the time they sign and make the first payment.

With platforms such as BetterProposals and Proposify you can create a hassle free process with the help of pre-designed proposals and contracts while also allowing them to complete payment directly via credit card using Stripe or other popular payment gateways.

Trigger Follow Up Workflows Upon Completion Of the Contract 

Now that your new client is signed it’s time to kick into action and complete the next steps to ensure the first impression of your company is one that blows them away.

With the help of platforms such as Zapier and Integromat, you can connect your contact management platform with 1000s of other applications and have it trigger a follow up action as soon as the contract is signed.

From inviting them to book their onboarding call, notifying relevant team members of the new client  or sending them a gift card the possibilities are endless.

And there you have it, a comprehensive guide on how to streamline your contracting process through the use of an automated contract management platform as well as some proven examples you can implement within your business easily.

Ready to Say Goodbye to Manual Contracting Once And For All?

Feel free to explore the platforms mentioned above to see how they can assist you in streamlining your contract management process to win back your time and your customers.

Streamline Your IT Services Business Using Automation

5 Ways to Streamline Your IT Services Business With Automation

With businesses relying on technology on a daily basis, being able to resolve technical support issues quickly when they occur can result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

Therefore, as an IT services business, having processes in systems in place that can streamline your business and how quickly you can deliver your services to clients in need is critical.

So how can you make use of automation to help deliver a top quality service to your clients?

Well, we’ve put together a guide on some of the leading ways to streamline your IT services business using automation that you can apply within your business to help save you and your clients time and revenue as a result of technical downtime.

Ready to turn your IT services business into a well oiled machine? Let’s dive in.

Ways to Automate Your IT Services Business

  • Support Requests
  • Client Billing
  • Remote Support
  • Service Monitoring
  • Client Onboarding

Support Requests

Being able to address your clients’ support inquiries in a timely manner can make or bake your business’s reputation.

By using platforms like Zendesk and Help Scout you can create a centralized place for all support inquiries received by your clients and set up tailored rules based upon the type of the request, the urgency of the request and more to ensure all support requests are dealt with accordingly so that nothing slips through the cracks.

Once the support request is completed, you can then trigger follow up actions within your other software platforms using Zapier saving your countless hours of manual data entry.

Client Billing

Research indicates that small businesses can spend up to 15 hours per week on billing.

This is critical time that can be spent on more important tasks such as finding new business opportunities or training your team members.

Thankfully, with solutions like Stripe and Xero you can automatically generate client invoices as soon as a support request has been resolved or a service has been delivered by one of your support staff ensuring your invoices are paid on time.

Remote Support

Delivering your services online not only allows you to increase your service delivery capabilities on a national scale it also saves you added expenses in fees including petrol and vehicle maintenance.

With solutions like Calendly and Zoom, clients can schedule a remote support session with one of your team members allowing your team to diagnose and resolve issues without having to visit the client in person, freeing up their schedule to work with more clients.

Calendly also integrates with popular payment processing platforms like Stripe allowing you to automatically bill the support session in advance.

Service Delivery

Ensuring your services are delivered at a high standard not only results in a client remaining with you long term, it can also lead to additional business through referrals and partnerships.

With the help of platforms like Asana and Monday.com you can develop systemised checklists that are automatically assigned to new client projects so that all responsible parties can see the status of each project and what needs to be done.

Once a specific step within a project has been completed, you can then trigger follow up actions notifying the client or other team members of the progress.

Client Onboarding

When it comes to providing a high quality service, first impressions count.

Ensuring that clients are onboarded correctly when registering for your services not only provides a professional image from the start, it saves the need to follow up with clients for missing login credentials or other assets critical to you delivering your services.

By using solutions like Paperform and Typeform you can create tailored client onboarding surveys that allow you to collect any critical information from the moment they sign up.

And there you have it, 5 ways to streamline your IT services business using automation giving you more time to focus on delivering technical assistance to your clients.

Ready to Grow Your IT Services Business Using Automation?

Feel free to explore some of the tools outlined within this article to see how each tool can be used to automate common workflows within your recruitment agency or Schedule a Free Automation Consultation with our team today about growing your IT services business using automation today.

How to Automate Appointment Scheduling

How to Automate Appointment Scheduling

When it comes to scheduling appointments with leads, clients or other potential partners, finding a time that works for everyone can be a challenge.

From international time zones, to public holidays and flexible working hours this can often present a major headache for all parties.

Thankfully, with the help of an automated Appointment scheduling system you can streamline your scheduling process once and for all for you and your attendees.

To help make it easier for you, we’ve put together a detailed guide including answers for questions about automated Appointment scheduling as well as platform recommendations and workflow examples you can implement within your business easily saving you countless hours.

Let’s dive in!

Automate Appointment Scheduling

  • What is automated Appointment scheduling?
  • When should I use automated Appointment scheduling?
  • How much do automated Appointment scheduling platforms cost?
  • Can automated Appointment scheduling damage my reputation?
  • Automated Appointment scheduling benefits
  • Best automated Appointment scheduling platforms
  • Automated Appointment scheduling workflow examples

Common Questions About Automated Appointment Scheduling

What is Automated Appointment Scheduling?

  • Automated appointment scheduling is the process of streamlining your Appointment scheduling process through use of a SaaS Appointment scheduling platform.

When Should I Use Automated Appointment Qualification?

  • Automated Appointment scheduling can be used across your entire organisation including initial consultations with potential clients, regular meetings with current clients and more.

How Much Do Automated Appointment Scheduling Platforms Cost?

  • Depending upon which platforms you use and the feature you wish to make use of automated lead platforms can cost anywhere between $0 and $70 per month.

Can Automated Appointment Scheduling Damage My Reputation?

  • While automated appointment scheduling can streamline your scheduling process, providing your customers with the option to still freely contact you is essential for certain businesses, however, we recommend using a call routing or hiring a receptionist to manage this so that you and your team can focus on deep work.

Benefits of Automated Appointment Scheduling

  1. Provide your appointment attendees with a streamlined scheduling experience.
  2. Allow them to schedule a time that aligns with their schedule.
  3. Avoid confusion of public holidays and time zones with calendar synchronisation. 
  4. Reduce time of manual back and forth communication to find a time that works.
  5. Automate follow up communication and reminders upon scheduled appointments.

Best Automated Appointment Scheduling Platforms

Automated Appointment Scheduling Workflow Examples

Direct people to tailored event type pages for streamlined booking.

Depending upon the size and complexity of your business, you may have multiple appointment types that can be across different times, days or with limited availability.

With the help of an automated scheduling platform you can create tailored event type pages and then customise each event type based upon its specific requirements including questions for information required before the meeting, options on how they can schedule the meeting (location, time and dates) and even redirect them to tailored confirmation pages.

Schedule meetings with specific teams or individuals.

As your team grows and business changes, you may need to schedule appointments with different team members or as a group.

Automated scheduling platforms make this hassle free by allowing you to configure each event type’s allocation based on a number of criterias including a person’s availability, appointments with multiple team members or by making use of a round robin based option.

Streamlining event rescheduling and event cancellation.

With distributed teams and business done at a global scale, scheduled appointments can change at short notice.

However, being able to manage this via traditional methods can be a nightmare. Thankfully, with the help of an automated appointment scheduling platform you can make this process a breeze with all scheduled appointments including a link to reschedule or cancel if required.

Automate event reminders and post appointment follow ups.

With people leading busy lives than previous generations and digital distractions playing a constant challenge in our work and professional lives, appointments can slip people’s minds.

With an automated appointment scheduling platform you can create tailored reminders to be triggered at specific times and via specific channels (email, SMS etc) to reduce the risk of them missing the scheduled appointment.

Get a detailed overview of your appointment performance. 

Being able to get a better understanding of where you and your team’s time is going when it comes to meetings is critical to optimising your team’s productivity while also providing you with a better understanding of your customers needs.

Thankfully, most of the leading appointment scheduling platforms on the market offer detailed reporting features including an overview of total events scheduled, attended, cancelled while also providing you with insight into popular days and times so that you can make informed decisions about how to manage your time and resources.

And there you have it, a comprehensive guide on how to streamline appointment scheduling through the use of an automated appointment scheduling platform as well as some proven examples you can implement within your business easily.

Ready to Automate Your Appointment Scheduling Process?

Feel free to explore the platforms mentioned above to see how they can assist you in streamlining your appointment scheduling to win back your time and your customers.

How to Automate Lead Qualification

How to Automate Lead Qualification Within Your Business

Having a consistent pool of qualified leads can make or break a business.

Even once you have a stream of leads coming in, being able to quickly identify, engage and convert those leads into paying customers is no easy feat.

However, with the help of automation you can streamline your workflows and increase efficiency across your entire sales team ensuring that no potential customer ever slips through the cracks.

So with this in mind, we’ve put together a detailed guide including answers to some of the most common questions relating to automated lead qualification as well as the benefits and leading platforms available on the market.

We’ll also walk you through some real life examples you can use within your business that are easy to deploy and can save you hours every week.

Let’s dive in.

Automate Lead Qualification

  • What is automated lead qualification?
  • When should I use automated lead qualification?
  • How much do automated qualification platforms cost?
  • Can automated lead qualification damage my reputation?
  • Automated lead qualification benefits
  • Best automated lead qualification platforms
  • Automated lead qualification workflow examples

Common Questions About Automated Lead Qualification

What is Automated Lead Qualification?

  • Automated lead generation is the process of automatically qualifying leads generated through your marketing campaigns with the assistance of SaaS platforms.

When Should I Use Automated Lead Qualification?

  • Automated lead qualification can be used at every stage of your lead qualification process to assist your team in ensuring no leads slip through the cracks.

How Much Do Automated Lead Qualification Platforms Cost?

  • Depending upon which platforms you use and the feature you wish to make use of automated lead platforms can cost anywhere between $0 and $100 per month.

Can Automated Lead Qualification Damage My Reputation?

  • The most important thing to take into consideration when automating lead qualification is to ensure that it is done in a way that benefits your potential customers.

Benefits of Automated Lead Qualification

  1. Easily identify and engage with your most qualified leads easily.
  2. Reduce time on manual follow up at critical moments.
  3. Prevent missed opportunities with potential customers.
  4. Increase your lead to customer conversion rate.
  5. Win back more time to focus on other areas of your business.

Best automated lead qualification platforms

Automated lead qualification workflow examples

Adding new landing page leads to your CRM.

Keeping track of new leads is critical not only to your conversion rate but also saves you countless hours of manual data entry across multiple platforms.

With the help of Zapier or Make you can automatically add new landing page leads within your CRM and also distribute leads amongst team members based upon a specific criteria allowing you to keep track of each and every lead easily. 

Send automated follow up emails to engage with new leads.

Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales leads at 33% less cost.

However, knowing which leads to follow up with and when can be a challenge. Thankfully, with CRM solutions like ActiveCampaign and Hubspot they allow you to build tailored email nurturing campaigns that automatically follow up with leads based upon where they are within your sales cycle or actions they have completed since becoming a lead.

Prequalify new leads using tailored forms and surveys.

Lead quality plays a major role in conversion rates, however, gathering important information from leads can be a painstaking process if not managed properly.

With solutions like Paperform and Typeform you can build tailored lead qualification forms and surveys that allow you to gather critical information from potential customers so that you can determine which leads are most likely to convert.

Streamline appointment scheduling with dedicated scheduling pages.

With business now done on an international scale, appointment scheduling can often become a nightmare with countless emails back and forth to find an ideal time that works for everyone.

Thanks to solutions like Acuity and Calendly, you can now streamline your appointment scheduling process with tailored scheduling pages that allows your leads to view and schedule a meeting adapted to their timezone.

Create automated reminders for you and your team.

When it comes to running a business or managing multiple areas within a business, things can slip through the cracks from time to time even with experience.

With the help of platforms like Pipedrive and Salesmate you can create automated reminders that notify you when it’s time to follow up with a lead. These reminders can be triggered based upon a specific action being completed by a lead or when a certain time period has passed.

And there you have it, an overview of how to automate lead qualification within your business as well as some workflow examples you can implement within your business easily.

Ready to Automate Your Lead Qualification Process?

Feel free to explore the platforms mentioned above to see how they can assist you in streamlining your lead qualification process that not only helps you but your potential customers.

Sales Automation

What Is Sales Automation? Pros, Cons, Best Practices and More

When you mention the idea of automating sales, most business owners may second guess the idea and while there is no doubt selling high ticket products or services often requires you to establish trust and authority with your target audience.

However, if used correctly sales automation can become one of the best investments your company can make.

But what is sales automation? What solutions are available on the market and what are the pros, cons and best practices of implementing sales automation within your business?

In this article, we’re going to brand down each of these points in more detail and provide you with some real-life examples of ways you can streamline your sales process using automation.

Let’s dive in!

Sales Process Automation

What is sales automation?

Sales automation involves using software to automate repetitive tasks and workflows within your sales process with the goal of helping your sales team reduce the amount of time they spend on manual tasks on a daily basis.

This can include automating email follow-up, document creation, appointment scheduling or any one of a number of manual tasks that eat into your sales reps busy schedule.

Not only does this increase your team’s productivity, decrease the need for them to focus time and energy on repetitive administrative tasks but it also improves processes and data accuracy within your business by removing the risk of human error.

How does sales automation work?

Sales automation works by creating pre-determined workflows that complete a pre-defined list of tasks over any desired period of time.

For example, if you wanted to follow up with a qualified lead over a period of two weeks you can create a workflow that sends an automated follow-up email or reminder to your sales rep every 3 to 5 days until the lead schedules a meeting? No worries!

Most modern CRM’s including Salesmate, Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign allow you to create workflows just like and they can be personalised based upon the customer or sales rep.

Or maybe you’re looking to create a contract and invoice for a new client you’ve just signed without having to manually add data in each platform? Don’t stress! With sales automation, you can say goodbye to manual data entry once and for all.

By using Platforms like Zapier and Integromat, you can connect your company’s SaaS platforms and automate workflows within your business saving you time and money.

Some other forms of sales automation include:

  • Lead qualification
  • Appointment setting
  • Customer onboarding
  • Payment automation
  • Support automation
  • Review management
  • Sales reporting

What are the pros and cons of sales automation?

Did you know that lost productivity and poorly managed data cost’s companies a staggering $1 trillion annually?

And let’s face it, with more businesses moving online to capture a larger market share this has resulted in most people having to multi-task leading to the risk of human error no matter how many times you’ve performed even the most mundane tasks.

By automating these tasks you can help reduce the risk of human error while also allowing your team to focus on more important tasks that automation can’t do.

It’s important to remember though, that building trust and authority within your industry still requires the human touch so don’t over automate.

If a lead or customer matches a certain requirement, you can set an internal notification for your sales rep to follow up with the lead personally via phone or email instead of sending an automated email to them.

What are the best practices for sales automation?

Before using sales automation within your business, it’s best to determine what exactly are you looking to achieve out of using it within your business.

Some of the most common reasons include increasing data accuracy, reducing overheads and freeing up time to focus on more important things within your business.

With this in mind, here are some best practices you can follow when looking to implement sales automation within your business.

Assess Current Systems

Conduct an analysis of the current platforms you are using within your business and how well they integrate with other platforms and with other popular automation platforms.

If you’re still using a dated CRM solution that doesn’t work well with other platforms on your market maybe it’s time for an upgrade as more than likely it’s costing you time and money.

Map Out Processes

The next step is to map out your entire sales process from start to finish, most CRM platforms support the ability to create a sales pipeline within your business which you may have already started using or you may prefer to use a mind mapping platform such as Miro so you can collaborate with team members and external contractors.

You want to get crystal clear on the entire process in as much detail as this will allow you to determine which steps can be automated and which ones will need to remain manual.

Compare Software Solutions

In the event that your current software platforms integrate well with each other, great!

If the current platforms you are using aren’t going to work well together, you may need to take some time to review some of the best sales automation tools to determine which platforms will work best for you and your industry.

Leading automation platforms such as Zapier and Integromat currently support 1,000s of leading SaaS platforms so chances are these platforms will support your chosen platform.

In-House vs Hiring a Consultant

You’ll need to complete a review if you and your team implement these platforms yourself or if it’s best to hire an experienced sales automation consultant to assist you with the planning, implementation and ongoing management of your automations.

While automating simple workflows may be able to be managed in-house with the help of some training videos or detailed guides, automation can often become more complex when you are looking to automate dozens of processes or complex workflows.

Testing and Documentation

It’s important to remember that automation may not always work as intended so it’s best to complete a few tests runs internally before launching automations or consider having your sales reps or customer support team test the workflows as they may be able to identify something you have missed that they feel is critical to the process.

Documentation and training are also important when launching new automations as it’s critical that you keep your team up to date on process changes that may impact the way they work.

Is sales automation right for my business?

In all honesty, sales automation can be used in just about any business regardless of size, industry or who your target market is.

Some important things to take into consideration before thinking about using sales automation within your business are not to overdo it straight away, even if it’s automating a handful of small repetitive tasks that save you from having to do these on a daily basis you’re off to a great start.

Another important thing to remember is to find the platforms that work best for your budget, while having the top of the range SaaS solutions may seem nice if you’re still small and won’t make use of half of the platform features yet so invest your resources wisely.

And there you have it, our detailed overview of what is sales automation as well as the pros, cons and best practices on how you can use it within your business.

Ready to Streamline Your Sales Teams Workload?

Feel free to check out some of the platforms recommended within our article or take a minute to conduct an analysis of your current systems and process to determine what can be automated within your team’s daily workload, you may be surprised!

Which sales processes are you looking to automate within your business? Let us know in the comments.

Happy automating!

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business

8 Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business

When it comes to hiring, one of the most important investments you can make within your business is no doubt hiring sales representatives.

Not only can they help scale your revenue quickly giving your access to additional cash flow which allows you to hire across other areas but it frees up your time to focus on other areas within your business.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest time killers even the most experienced sales representatives faced is time lost on repetitive tasks like scheduling meetings, lead follow up and more.

Thankfully, with the help of technology, you can streamline repetitive workflows within your sales process saving your team countless hours in lost time while allowing you to improve efficiency within your business and hire faster

So, with this in mind, we wanted to share some of the best ways to use sales automation within your business and win back your time once and for all.

Let’s dive in!

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Lead Qualification

Lead Qualification

Being able to generate high-quality leads that are the right fit for your product or service can be challenging and time-consuming.

Matched with having to manually qualify or search for additional data on leads can cost you countless hours of follow-up for little to no return on investment.

With platforms such as Typeform and Lusha you can pre-qualify leads by having them complete condition-based surveys that automatically segment leads based upon their feedback while Lusha can help you enrich existing lead data ensuring your lead data is always accurate.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing

Remembering to follow up with every lead can be difficult when you have dozens of new leads arriving each day.

And while selling no doubt requires the human touch when it comes to closing a deal, being able to create automated workflows that take the guesswork out of it for you can save you countless hours in time and resources.

With the help of platforms like Salesmate and Pipedrive, you can build automated workflows that either engage with your leads on a time-based or event-based schedule or trigger notifications to be sent to your sales reps to follow up personally if a lead meets specific criteria.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Appointment Setting

Appointment Setting

Finding a suitable time for meetings that works for everyone can be a nightmare.

With different timezones, conflicting schedules and more coming into the play it’s easy to get caught up in back and forth email threads leaving you frustrated.

Thanks to platforms like Calendly and tymeshift you can view, plan, and schedule meetings without having to worry about timezones or conflicting schedules ever again. Calendly even automatically adjusts meeting availability to the person’s local timezone and allows you to trigger email and text-based reminders ensuring an important meeting is never missed.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Customer Onboarding

Customer Onboarding

Proving an easy, hassle-free onboarding process is critical to providing your new customers with a great first impression of working with you.

With the help of platforms like Paperform and Userflow you can create tailored customer onboarding experiences that make the process hassle-free for you and your clients.

Whether it’s getting them to provide brand assets for a marketing campaign, completing an onboarding checklist for your software platform or more you can personalise the experience at every step based upon their unique requirements.

You can then also trigger follow up processes once your customer completes the onboarding process using Zapier or Integromat saving you and your clients time.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Payment Automation

Payment Automation

Ensuring a streamlined payment processing experience for your customers not only provides you with a healthy cash flow, but it also reduces any friction or doubts a new customer may have when purchasing from you for the first time.

By using platforms such as Stripe and Zipbooks you can streamline your payment processing and invoice creation by creating recurring invoices and offering subscription-based payment engagements so that you or your customer never miss a beat.

You can then also send this data between any one of your platforms to ensure your customer data is always up to date and accurate using Zapier or Integromat.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Support Automation

Support Automation

Providing top-rated customer support is critical to ensuring a high-level customer experience even after your product or service has been delivered.

However, with so many communication channels and varying customer support demands making it difficult to ensure every enquiry query is dealt with on time you can soon have your work cut out for you.

Thanks to platforms such as Front and HelpScout you can consolidate support enquiries across all platforms into one centralised place while also creating a curated collection of support articles that help answer your customer’s queries avoiding the need to have to reach out to you for common support queries.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Review Management

Review Management

One of the most powerful sales assets you can have is none other than social proof.

But remembering to follow up with each customer for reviews can be time-consuming, what’s more, how can you be sure you’re reaching out to your most loyal customers to collect a review from?

With the help of platforms like Reviews.IO, you can streamline your reviews collection and publishing process allowing your most loyal customers to share their experience with your brand so that others can discover your brand.

Ways to Use Sales Automation Within Your Business - Sales Reporting

Sales Reporting

Being able to get a birds-eye overview of your most important sales metrics in one central place not only lets you know when you need to focus your attention most, but it also saves you countless time wasted switching between multiple reporting platforms.

By using platforms such as Databox and DashThis, you can build centralised sales reporting dashboards with all of your most important metrics in one place.

You can then also trigger time-based, event-based or goal-based reminders and notifications to be sent to relevant team members for each metric using Zapier or Integromat.

And there you have it, 8 savvy ways to use sales automation within your business to help you increase your team’s productivity giving them more time to focus on what matters most, selling.

Ready to Win Back Your Sales Reps Time?

Feel explore some of the tools mentioned in our list in more detail by signing up for a free trial or schedule a free automation consultation with us today to learn more about how we can help streamline your sales process using automation.

Happy automating!

Pipedrive Review 2021

Pipedrive Review 2023 – Compare Features, Pricing & More

When it comes to choosing the right CRM platform for your business, it can seem like a long and tedious process.

Most of them are stacked with features you may never use or can’t be customised to suit your industry and business needs.

However, one CRM that bucks this trend and does it well is none other than Pipedrive.

Founded in 2010, CRM dubs itself as the first CRM built by salespeople, for salespeople and with over 95,000 customers spanning 175 countries and a team of over 800 there’s no second-guessing it definitely a leader within its space. 

But how does it compare to other CRM platforms on the market?

In this Pipedrive review article, we’re going to unpack Pipedrive’s features, pricing and more to help make it easier when it comes to choosing the right CRM platform for your business.

Let’s dive in!

Pipedrive Review 2022

Overview

Having been founded only in 2016, Salesmate can often be considered as one of the newcomers within the CRM space, however, this hasn’t stopped it from disrupting an already crowded market and marking its name as one of the top-rated contenders within the industry.

With a focus on helping sales teams become more productive, Salesmate offers a diverse range of features in a well designed, easy to use platform that doesn’t break the bank.

This unique approach has led to them win multiple awards within their space and is rated one of the top-ranking CRM’s on the market in terms of price, quality and customer service and they have no signs of slowing down in disrupting the market.

Features

Lead and Deal Management

With Pipedrive’s advanced lead and deal management, you can be sure to get the most out of every lead opportunity and save you countless hours of time.

Pipedrive’s visual sales pipeline feature allows you to get a birds-eye view of where each deal is at within your pipeline while also being able to collect, import and add leads directly into their leads inbox making it easier to manage each and every lead.

Pipedrive also includes a built-in web form builder and live chat platform allowing you to generate new leads without the need for multiple platforms.

Communications Tracking

Whether it’s tracking when a lead opens and responds to your email, logging a recent call completed by sales reps, creating a centralised place to store documents and templates Pipedrive has you covered with a host of built-in communication tracking features.

You can also log recently completed activities, schedule meetings and share your availability on the fly with built-in scheduling functionality tailored to your needs.

Workflow Automation

The last thing a business sales rep needs is to be slowed down by repetitive admin tasks that can be automated.

Whether it sending follow up emails, creating follow up task reminders or enriching contact data, when it’s performed 100s of times a day this can eat into precious time and energy that can be used to close new deals and reach out to existing customers.

With Pipedrive’s built-in workflow automation feature, you can build tailored automation workflows that help automate repetitive admin tasks so your team can focus on what matters most.

Insights and Reporting

Being able to get a clear understanding of key metrics is critical to increasing your sales teams productivity and business revenue, traditionally this would require hours of data analysis only to be presented in dreary spreadsheets that don’t tell the whole story.

Thanks to Pipedrive’s advanced reporting capabilities you can get up to date, accurate insights into your most important sales metrics and also set goals for each one so that you can see where you are in terms of each goal and which areas need the most attention.

Privacy and Security

Ensuring your company data is critical is essential and Pipedrive has got you covered with the ability to manage and review your contact, lead and sales data with ease.

From being able to create custom access and device rules to automated notifications when a data security issue occurs and add two-factor login requirements for accounts you can rest assured that your data is secure 24/7

Mobile App and Integrations

Being able to have your sales data accessible on the go is critical to ensuring a streamlined sales process no matter where you are.

With Pipedrive’s native mobile app for iOS and Android, you have access to your sales data whether you’re travelling, at a conference or even on vacation and with direct integration with leading Calendar and Email providers and support for over 275+ leading SaaS apps you can rest assured that Pipedrive works with just about any platform you use.

Pricing

Pipedrive has pricing plans to suit big and small businesses with plans from as low as $18 per month for their essential plan making it one of the most affordable solutions on the market.

  • Essential – $18 month/$12.50 per month (billed annually)
  • Advanced – $33 month/$24.90 per month (billed annually)
  • Professional – $59 month/$49.90 per month (billed annually)
  • Enterprise – $119 month/$99 per month (billed annually)

FAQs

How much does Pipedrive cost?

  • Pipedrive pricing varies depending upon the features you are looking for with plans starting from $18 per month.

Does Pipedrive offer a free trial?

  • Yes, Pipedrive offers a free 14-day free trial to get started.

Can I migrate my existing contacts to Pipedrive?

  • Yes, Pipedrive allows you to import your existing contacts and also has qualified Pipedrive experts who can assist you with migration.

What customer service options do Pipedrive offer?

  • Pipedrive provides support via live chat and telephone for enterprise plans.

Alternatives

Unsure if Pipedrive is the right solution for your business? Here are some other platforms we recommend checking out when choosing the right CRM solution for your business.

Summary

Overall Pipedrive comes out as a clear contender when it comes to providing an affordable yet feature-packed CRM solution that helps increase your sales.

One of the areas that Pipedrive excels in is its continuously growing marketplace which offers direct integration with a diverse range of leading SaaS platforms on the market.

If you’re looking for a low cost yet powerful CRM that is guaranteed to increase your sales teams productivity we highly recommend taking Pipedrive for a test yourself.

And there you have it! Our in-depth Pipedrive review article provides you with an overview of its features, pricing and more to help you make the right decision when it comes to choosing a CRM solution for your business.

Ready to see if Pipedrive is right for your business??

Get started today with a free 14-day trial which provides you with access to all features so that you can explore the platform in detail or let us take care of it for you with our Pipedrive consulting services including account setup, contract migration and more to ensure you get the most out of your sales team.

Happy automating!