Increase Inside Sales’ Output With Automation

We recently had a member come to us looking to improve the efficiency of their rapidly expanding inside sales force. Specifically, the member was interested in the use of automation tools and applications that would capitalize on the growth they were experiencing.

Automation can be installed at different junctures of the sales machine. From marketing and lead generation and tracking to physically dialing customers, automation can help increase the efficiency of the sales process.

We reached out to other members to find out who was using automation techniques and how it worked. Specifically, we asked about what tool they used, how it worked, how it was implemented, and how they benefitted from the use of automation tools.

All of the companies we profiled used automated lead scoring techniques but only one had fully automated both the marketing and sales sides of the equation. In general, automation systems were used to track contacts through multiple interactions with the company and help them develop into viable leads for the inside sales reps to pursue.

The benefits of automation tools were not exactly what we expected. We wanted to learn about the higher yield, more credible leads and inevitably increased revenue. As in any other complicated process, an increase or decrease in revenue cannot be tied down to one of many contributing factors. The executives we spoke to highlighted the accuracy of metric reporting as one of the most important benefits of automation. The automation systems they installed avoided both the inevitable errors in manual metric recording from lead scoring to marketing. For the company that installed automated dialing, the system helped account for reps’ dial rates.

Ultimately, automation systems cannot grow your inside sales’ revenue, but they can help better identify leads with the highest potential for conversion, allowing inside sales reps to focus on them.

CEB Sales Members, check out the full report: Automating Lead Generation for Inside Sales and use the profiles to compare your organization’s automation potential. Also, visit our Inside Sales topic center for more resources on deploying inside sales, and acquiring and developing inside sales talent.