Automation for Productivity Gains
According to Sales automation: The key to boosting revenue and reducing costs, published by McKinsey & Company, less than 25% of companies have automated Sales processes.
High performing sales representatives typically spend 20-25% more time interacting with their customers as compared to lower performing sales representatives, according the report. By implementing automation, additional time is made available to representatives, giving them more time to interact with their customers.
“Early adopters of sales automation consistently report increases in customer-facing time, higher customer satisfaction, efficiency improvements of 10 to 15 percent, and sales uplift potential of up to 10 percent.”
Tasks that can be automated range from utilizing predictive AI to score leads so that Business Development Representatives can focus on the prospects most likely to convert to an opportunity, utilizing GenAI to craft engaging personalized emails, and managing the configure, price and quote process for complex products offerings.
Where to start
With so much information about AI and the need to innovate now streaming at us on a daily basis, it’s easy to become overwhelmed in trying to determine how and where to start. As a Salesforce Architect, my recommendation is to start by identifying where the low-hanging fruit is. One way to do that is to ask your employees “What is the dumbest thing you do every day”. Understanding how your users are spending their non-productive time will help you identify where to focus initial efforts for the best return on the automation investment.
Quantify and Prioritize
Once the key areas for automation have been identified, quantify the expected result from automatizing. How much time will this save? Will this advance the overall process faster? Determine the priorities and the methods for automation.
Ask Why
Once the key areas for attention have been identified, the first step is eliminating the activities that don’t provide value to the process. Imagine you work for a company that has been in business for over one hundred years and the process for providing a quote to a customer is rooted in a paper-based process that was defined before the advent of computers. While many of the steps are now electronic, filing three copies in three locations doesn’t add any value to the result any longer. Be brutal and ask why each at each step. Why do we need copies in three locations? Who benefits from the copies? Why do they benefit? Why can’t they use one centrally located copy in a shared repository?
Automate
Once you have your target list, automate the time-consuming manual tasks. Back to our example of the company quoting process. A candidate for automation might be producing a configuration and associated quote. Utilizing Gen AI, the proposal could be generated based on prompt inputs as well as structured data associated to the account record, then reviewed by the sales person (human-in-loop), and then submitted with a button click to the appropriate approvers.
Another possible target for automation utilizing AI would be to utilize Prompt Builder. This new feature lets you create prompts that will generated personalized content. Prompt builder utilizes templates such as “Generate a personalized email telling the contact about an upcoming event launching a new product”. The template contains the information about the event and highlights the areas that would be of interest based on the products currently being utilized by that customer. Additionally, the voice such as Professional, Casual, or Enthusiastic can be defined.
Rinse, Repeat
Take a phased approach, start with a few processes and pilot with a small group of users, refine and expand to a wider audience. Repeat the process and iterate across other processes.
Why wouldn’t you automate?
According to the latest Slack State of Work Report, Employees that have access to AI tools are 90% more likely to report higher levels of productivity and that using those automations have saved them approximately 23 days per year (or 3.6 hours per week) to focus on other more productive tasks.
Inetum is ready to help you learn why and how to automate. Join us at Salesforce World Tour Essentials Brussels on 16 May.
Written by JoAnn Culbertson
Senior Salesforce Consultant Inetum Belgium
