Blog

marketing automation

Viewing posts tagged marketing automation

Are salespeople obsolete?

Technology is moving at such a clip that the traditional role of a sales person is in question. But can a robot ever replace the human touch?

This is a follow up to an excellent article written by Geoffrey James on inc.com titled Robot salespeople? Don’t hold your breath. It’s not that I disagree with Geoffrey; there will always need to be a human element in sales, but I think that there are parts of the sales person’s job that will be replaced by robots.

But here’s the thing, this will be to the sales persons benefit.

Allow me to explain.

By some estimates, sales people only spend about 25% of their time talking to clients, with the rest dedicated to admin work. To make matters worse, sales people are often the highest paid people in most organizations.

The most expensive labour is being used poorly because sales people are being tasked with too many tedious tasks. It doesn’t take an economics degree to see the problem.

The auto industry had this problem as well, and they solved it with a factory floor full of these.

Is this what your next sales team will look like?

 

Salespeople right now are in the same position as auto workers before robotics came along; they’ll still be needed, but robots will do much more heavy lifting and the sales people that survive will be highly qualified technicians who oversee the robots.

It’s already happening

Marketing automation is already edging out sales people because, for many things, they simply do a better job. Things like follow ups, qualification, and prospect research are handled better by robots than by humans. For example, a few days ago I received this email from a Marketo sales rep:

This email was not sent by a sales rep. He probably got an alert that the email went out to me, but he almost certainly didn’t send it. It went completely automatically.

And it was extremely timely.

The reason I was contacted was because I attended some webinars and visited their website a few times over the last few days and months. All of this activity was tracked and through a process called “lead scoring.” Lead scoring tracks prospect behavior, website visits, email opens, webinar attendance etc, and uses this information to assess which leads are most likely open to talking to a sales person or being made a specific offer.

In short, lead scoring helps companies contact the right person, at the right time, with the right offer.

Good luck being that on the ball as a salesperson

Now, it’s worth noting that Marketo actually had me tagged as a hot prospect when I was in fact, a tire kicker. But the alternative would be for sales to contact (and annoy) every single prospect that shows even an inkling of interest rather than using analytics to determine if it is the right time to get sales involved. However, over time this can be tested and improved which isn’t as easy to do with sales people.

I rejected his offer, but he hasn’t stopped. Getting rejected in sales hurts and despite me telling him “not right now” he continues to send me regular emails announcing things like webinars, white papers, and other educational material; 100% automatically. Importantly, none of this material screams SELL SELL SELL, and the emails I receive are highly targeted and relevant. For that reason, it doesn’t annoy me when I receive them, and if I were in the market down the line, Marketo would be on the short list of vendors.

A salesperson, on their own, simply doesn’t have the time or analytics to maintain this kind of nurturing strategy. Robo marketers do.

But it’s still about people.

Like sales people, nothing will ever be perfect, but it’s better to execute consistently on imperfect information than to not execute at all. After all, it’s exactly what salespeople do already.

But with automation it’s possible to measure failure of execution,
rather than the more common failure to execute of sales people, who don’t contact up to 35% of inbound leads provided to them by marketing.

We’re a long way off from fully automating sales, but a lot of the tedious stuff is already being done by machines, and it is accelerating at a dramatic clip.

And for the stuff that will still need to be done by sales people?

Semi-automation is deadly.

A lot of things salespeople do is repetitive, and a lot of it should be semi-automated. The sales person’s role is to pull the trigger on an action, but the behind the scenes stuff is handled by automated processes.

Proposals? Proposal software like QuoteRoller or BidSketch can do most of the work.

Cold outreach emails? Email template systems like Yesware, which can track opens and response rates across an entire team.

Cold calls? Power diallers

CRM record keeping? PBX and email server integration making it mostly automatic.

As a case in point, a client I helped implement these technologies for got their proposal preparation times down to <20 minutes, their cold email response rates to >10%, their dials per hour >45 and their inbound lead response rate to <2 minutes.

Their sales pipeline tripled in less than 2 months.

If fully automated processes are factory robots, semi-automated tools would basically be this, a farm combine

This is basically what semi-automated sales tools are.

This is basically what semi-automated sales tools are.

It is still controlled by a human, but it dramatically increases productivity. Much like how these tools increase productivity even if they are still controlled by a human.

Sales people are not going away…but there will be less of them.

This is where my opinion diverges from Geoffrey. I believe that there will always be a need for sales people to close the deal, but I think that software is going to reduce the number of sales people needed since they will be a lot more effective at their jobs and will close more business per rep.

There is one thing though, that will never change: poorly executive strategies, whether done by sales team or software, will never work.

If you found this article, please SHARE on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use automation and semi-automation to put your sales processes on steroid, please don’t hesitate to book your free automation strategy session.

Are sales people obsolete?

Technology is moving at such a clip that the traditional role of a sales person is in question. But can a robot ever replace the human touch?

This is a follow up to an excellent article written by Geoffrey James on inc.com titled Robot salespeople? Don’t hold your breath. It’s not that I disagree with Geoffrey; there will always need to be a human element in sales, but I think that there are parts of the sales person’s job that will be replaced by robots.

But here’s the thing, this will be to the sales persons benefit.

Allow me to explain.

By some estimates, sales people only spend about 25% of their time talking to clients, with the rest dedicated to admin work. To make matters worse, sales people are often the highest paid people in most organizations.

The most expensive labour is being used poorly because sales people are being tasked with too many tedious tasks. It doesn’t take an economics degree to see the problem.

The auto industry had this problem as well, and they solved it with a factory floor full of these.

Is this what your next sales team will look like?

 

Salespeople right now are in the same position as auto workers before robotics came along; they’ll still be needed, but robots will do much more heavy lifting and the sales people that survive will be highly qualified technicians who oversee the robots.

It’s already happening

Marketing automation is already edging out sales people because, for many things, they simply do a better job. Things like follow ups, qualification, and prospect research are handled better by robots than by humans. For example, a few days ago I received this email from a Marketo sales rep:

This email was not sent by a sales rep. He probably got an alert that the email went out to me, but he almost certainly didn’t send it. It went completely automatically.

And it was extremely timely.

The reason I was contacted was because I attended some webinars and visited their website a few times over the last few days and months. All of this activity was tracked and through a process called “lead scoring.” Lead scoring tracks prospect behavior, website visits, email opens, webinar attendance etc, and uses this information to assess which leads are most likely open to talking to a sales person or being made a specific offer.

In short, lead scoring helps companies contact the right person, at the right time, with the right offer.

Good luck being that on the ball as a salesperson

Now, it’s worth noting that Marketo actually had me tagged as a hot prospect when I was in fact, a tire kicker. But the alternative would be for sales to contact (and annoy) every single prospect that shows even an inkling of interest rather than using analytics to determine if it is the right time to get sales involved. However, over time this can be tested and improved which isn’t as easy to do with sales people.

I rejected his offer, but he hasn’t stopped. Getting rejected in sales hurts and despite me telling him “not right now” he continues to send me regular emails announcing things like webinars, white papers, and other educational material; 100% automatically. Importantly, none of this material screams SELL SELL SELL, and the emails I receive are highly targeted and relevant. For that reason, it doesn’t annoy me when I receive them, and if I were in the market down the line, Marketo would be on the short list of vendors.

A salesperson, on their own, simply doesn’t have the time or analytics to maintain this kind of nurturing strategy. Robo marketers do.

But it’s still about people.

Like sales people, nothing will ever be perfect, but it’s better to execute consistently on imperfect information than to not execute at all. After all, it’s exactly what salespeople do already.

But with automation it’s possible to measure failure of execution,
rather than the more common failure to execute of sales people, who don’t contact up to 35% of inbound leads provided to them by marketing.

We’re a long way off from fully automating sales, but a lot of the tedious stuff is already being done by machines, and it is accelerating at a dramatic clip.

And for the stuff that will still need to be done by sales people?

Semi-automation is deadly.

A lot of things salespeople do is repetitive, and a lot of it should be semi-automated. The sales person’s role is to pull the trigger on an action, but the behind the scenes stuff is handled by automated processes.

Proposals? Proposal software like QuoteRoller or BidSketch can do most of the work.

Cold outreach emails? Email template systems like Yesware, which can track opens and response rates across an entire team.

Cold calls? Power diallers

CRM record keeping? PBX and email server integration making it mostly automatic.

As a case in point, a client I helped implement these technologies for got their proposal preparation times down to <20 minutes, their cold email response rates to >10%, their dials per hour >45 and their inbound lead response rate to <2 minutes.

Their sales pipeline tripled in less than 2 months.

If fully automated processes are factory robots, semi-automated tools would basically be this, a farm combine

This is basically what semi-automated sales tools are.

This is basically what semi-automated sales tools are.

It is still controlled by a human, but it dramatically increases productivity. Much like how these tools increase productivity even if they are still controlled by a human.

Sales people are not going away…but there will be less of them.

This is where my opinion diverges from Geoffrey. I believe that there will always be a need for sales people to close the deal, but I think that software is going to reduce the number of sales people needed since they will be a lot more effective at their jobs and will close more business per rep.

There is one thing though, that will never change: poorly executive strategies, whether done by sales team or software, will never work.

Why blogging and content marketing are a waste of time.

For most businesses.

Blogging is praised as the way to build your following, build a list, and gain “authority.” I’m not disputing that these things can’t or don’t happen but instead I question the ROTI (return on time invested) is worth it for most businesses.

I don’t believe it is for many businesses.

If you’re in a sexy industry writing about a subject that’s hot, or that thrives on constant updates (think technology blogs like Techcrunch) then yes, it’s worth the effort. But even then, there is so much competition that it’s going to be hard to get the attention of readers.

But what if you’re a dentist? Or a trucking company? Or…the list is endless. There simply are a lot of businesses that don’t have an interesting story to tell.

If you’re thinking of writing a blog the questions that needs to be asked are basically:

  1. Does anyone really care about what I will write?
  2. Will this actually attract paying customers? Or will it result in vanity metrics (hits, subscribes, bounces etc)?
  3. Can I put out decent, interesting and unique content on a regular basis, while still working on the rest of the business?

If you answer no to any of these questions, it’s probably not worth the effort and you should probably find better ways to market.

But…

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a web presence of some sort simply because people your potential customers will Google you. Likely all they’ll want to do is find a little bit about what you actually do, and this is something that applies to even the most traditional and unexciting business.

And for people that argue that this is bad for SEO I have to ask: does it even matter? Most likely the people who are Googling you already know you in some way shape or form and are simply doing a search for your business name. Hopefully when you started your business you did research to make sure that it was somewhat unique right?

Online marketing for a site without a blog

Yes, I recommend that you start doing online promotion without a blog.

“But Andrew, how will I get people to sign up for my email list if I don’t have a blog to attract them?”

Ask them.

At a networking event? Ask them if they want to go on a list.

Working with a client? Ask them.

In line at the supermarket? Ditto.

Forget about a business card, try this instead.

The most powerful tool in my arsenal is my smartphone. I have web forms bookmarked on my phone for different circumstances and after I meet anyone I always ask them if they want to join my list. It’s extremely important that you tell them that there is no problem if they unsubscribe; we’re all busy and at times we

Offline marketing meets online marketing

Surprisingly, no one seems to do this, which is a shame, because many business people spend hours networking with a very poor return on their time. By taking a more systematic approach to networking, and combining it with the strategies that online marketers use, there are plenty of opportunities to strengthen your relationship with your contacts.

But remember, it’s all about a relationship

If you’re doing this to SELL, SELL, SELL you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s important to make sure that you’ve put a lot of thought into what outcomes you want to achieve.

In fact, the best results that my clients have had is by not selling at all, but by entertaining or educating.

Want to learn how to combine online and offline marketing to create a powerful strategy. Then book your free marketing and sale automation consultation.

 

5 awful, mundane, and tedious tasks I’ve completely automated.

Systemizing and automating the tedious has changed the course of my business while letting me focus on the important stuff.

There are so many mundane, but really important, tasks that I have to do with my business…and even life. The problem is that although I know they’re important, I hate doing them. And often, I don’t them as a result.

Thank god for software automation.

So without further ado, here are some things that I have automated:

  1. Adding inspirational quotes to Linkedin.

    I’ve linked together 2 wicked services. Quotationspage.com has a quote of the day, and best of all, they have an RSS feed. I then use a service called ifttt.com to tie the RSS feed to Buffer which then eventually feeds it to Linkedin. Sounds complicated, but it’s not.

  2. Managing my intake on appointments.

    On my appointment page, the process is extremely automated. It’s a 3 part form: 1st it asks for an email, secondly it asks some more in-depth questions, and thirdly it directs to a calendar that is linked to my Google calendar. But if at any stage someone doesn’t complete it, then it will automatically send an email asking if there is a reason why they didn’t complete the form.

  3. Billing, billing, billing

    On projects that allow it, my clients are billed automatically. Best of all, my clients enter their payment information directly to my payment processor so I don’t have to worry about onerous things like PCI compliance. I personally use Freshbooks for this task, but there are many options

  4. Educating people in my network

    I do a lot of networking, but I only have so much time to tell people what I do. The solution is that I invite people to join my mailing list right on the spot using a web form that is loaded on my phone. Because it is tailored for that exact purpose it is an extremely effective way of building a relationship with someone and it is a very effective way to keep “top of mind.”

  5. Long term follow ups.

    For my telecom side of the business, my sales cycle is 6-9 months. As a small business, managing that cycle is simply not possible to do without some help. The solution is to automate this cycle and slowly educate the customer on the benefits of hiring me. A lot of people end up unsubscribing over the months, but that mostly says that they were likely never going to become a client anyway and saves me some a lot of work.

None of this stuff was easy to do, and it took a lot of trial and error, but the benefits are huge. I spend a lot more time on the meaningful customer interactions and less time on the mundane (but still important) stuff.

If you want help mapping out what can be automated in your business. Please Apply here for your sales automation plan; space fills up quickly, so act now to reserve your spot.

5 big mistakes most businesses make when trying to automate their marketing

Marketing automation is awesome, but often goes awry. In my experience, here’s where most projects go wrong

  1. No plan.

    If you don’t have a strategy, a plan and something mapped out using a mind map or flow chart, you’re wasting your time…and money.

  2. Analysis paralysis.

    Plan, but don’t over plan. Start with easy stuff like automating new posts when a blog post goes out, or just do simple stuff like sending out simple campaigns. Don’t get into the complex stuff like lead scoring until you’ve learned the ropes a bit.

  3. Buy a Ferrari when they need a Toyota.

    I see this all the time. Someone rushes out to buy software like Infusionsoft before they’ve even made a plan. In reality, these tools are so complicated (and expensive) they hurt rather than help a lot of companies. I can’t blame them, the sales people for these companies are very persuasive, but often in the excitement of buying a lot of entrepreneurs….

  4. Forget that they need to have a business.

    Automating things without a solid business model doesn’t work. And a website isn’t a business. Before you automate things you need to have a solid grasp of your unique selling proposition.

  5. Forget the offline world.

    Did you know that more than 50% of my list consist of people who I’ve met in person? Guess who my most engaged readers are. It’s not that difficult either, most of mine are added by snapping a picture of my business card.

Look, the power of marketing and sales automation is amazing, but it has an extremely bad rap because many companies simply don’t take the right steps before jumping in.

Want to build your own marketing automation plan?

To qualified businesses I offer a free strategy session to map out sales strategy, and find the processes that can be immediately automation. Want to give it a shot APPLY HERE to learn more.

In this call we’ll go over what strategies you can use to build a powerful strategy and dominate your market all on autopilot.

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!
Subscribe to newsletters and view the content.
  We hate spam and never share your details.