Verkoopautomatisering 101: Hoogtepunten uit ons gesprek met Andrei Zinkevich

What sales tasks should be automated and in what way?

Simpel gezegd: alles waarbij niet jouw unieke menselijke capaciteiten betrokken zijn, moet worden geautomatiseerd.

Er zijn veel dingen waar robots beter in zijn dan wij, zoals:

• Gegevens samenvoegen uit e-mail, agenda's, telefoon, enz.
• Volledige gesprekken bijhouden
• Keeping track of all files you’ve exchanged
• Zichtbaarheid creëren tussen teamgenoten in gesprekken met klanten
• Mensen en bedrijven verrijken met openbare gegevens
• E-mailhandtekeningen importeren
• Controleren bij klanten die stil zijn
• Seeing that you didn’t respond yet to an important email
• Detecteren dat een klant veel interactie met je heeft
• Snijden door gegevens
• Gegevens verplaatsen tussen apps
• En vele, vele andere taken die verkopers regelmatig uitvoeren!

All of these things can take up a lot of salespeople’s time, and the question is, “why?”

It’s not that these things don’t need to happen. They’re important as well, just for different reasons.

En in sommige gevallen kunnen activiteiten die geen inkomsten genereren indirect wel inkomsten genereren.

It’s just that these are not tasks you need your unique human capabilities for. Your empathy, creativity, etc.

What tasks shouldn’t be automated?

After exploring the possibilities of sales automation, this begs the question: what shouldn’t you automate?

One way to explore this is to ask, “what is the unique skillset of a salesperson? Of a human?”

It’s certainly not managing data — or working with computers.

Waar mensen uniek goed in zijn, is omgaan met andere mensen. Hen begrijpen. Met hen communiceren. Hen helpen.

When automation goes too far and fails, it’s almost always when this principle is violated.

A few modern examples –

Chatbots: De technologie voor chatbots and its future applications and potential are really interesting, but the hype around them makes that people ascribe these chatbots capabilities they don’t have yet. 💬

En dat zorgt voor echt gebroken ervaringen.

Sure, chatbots can replace simple forms, but they can’t rise to the level yet of real human-to-human interaction.

Grootschalige e-mails, geautomatiseerde posts op sociale media, enzovoort: It’s much less effort to send the same undifferentiated message to hundreds or thousands using software automation, but if you’re trying to sell something, the rule still is: seek first to understand, then to be understood.

If you’re still thinking of spreading something like an email or another type of message to a large group of people at once, make sure you’re not sales-y. Instead be funny, vulnerable, remarkable — and make a good first impression. 💌

Volledig geautomatiseerde CRM: Toen Salesflare begon in 2014, ontdekten we dat sommige bedrijven probeerden om CRM-gegevens volledig te automatiseren, zonder tussenkomst van de gebruiker. We kwamen er al snel achter dat dit niet mogelijk was.

You cannot automate everything. Some decisions such as, “Is this a customer? Is there a sales opportunity here? Should this contact really be linked to the account?” are best made by a human.

People like automation, but as soon as it starts making mistakes, it loses its value. 👎

People don’t want to lose that last level of control.

That’s why Salesflare works with suggestions in places where people still want control, and fully automates in other places.

Automation is here to make our lives easier. It’s here to automate robotic tasks. To make us more human. It’s not here to make humans totally unnecessary — at least, not anywhere in the near future.

Hoe kun je prospectie en verrijking automatiseren?

Naast administratief werk zijn de twee meest tijdrovende taken prospectie en verrijking.

Hoe kun je deze processen automatiseren?

Prospectie is inderdaad een tijdrovende bezigheid, dus probeer de taken te automatiseren die je routinematig uitvoert.

The parts of your job where you feel like a robot, would maybe better be done by a robot. 🤖

Enkele voorbeelden:

Lijsten samenstellen: if you find yourself manually filling an Excel sheet, you’re probably doing something wrong.

There are so many ways to build lists nowadays, based on all kinds of parameters. Size of company, geography, growth signals, technology used on their site, etc. That should definitely be done with a good software tool. For instance, there’s a ton of possibilities for lead generation using tools on top of LinkedIn.

Een eerste aanraking hebben: That’s not to say you should start to randomly spam people with undifferentiated emails. As mentioned before, that’s the wrong way to go about automation.

Bedenk in plaats daarvan vriendelijkere manieren om het eerste contact te leggen. Probeer contact te maken met het publiek.

A LinkedIn post, a cool blog article, a funny story…get it out there. See whether people like it. Interact with it.

If you’re going to email people, fine, but make sure it’s not like any other email you’ve ever seen in your inbox. And that you set out to start a relationship, not to sell something. 🤝

Aanraakpunten creëren: Er zijn nu zoveel manieren om in contact te blijven voordat iemand in je publiek een goede lead wordt.

Keep building that relationship through Facebook ads, engagement on social, in groups — find out what works best for your audience, and where they want to engage. Then head there. 🏃‍

Verrijking moet vrij eenvoudig te automatiseren zijn. Haal wat gegevens op uit de FullContact of Clearbit API. Praat met enkele andere API's.

On the CRM level, many CRMs say, “you can integrate with Clearbit if you like.”

You go to the Clearbit site, enter your credit card details, set up the integration. Why make it so complicated? 🙅‍

We’ve built it all into Salesflare and included it into the plan, because we believe it’s so basic and you shouldn’t waste time on setting up these things yourself. Users then also benefit from a tighter and more intelligent integration.

Lead scoring best practices

Lead scoring wordt traditioneel in twee richtingen gedaan:

• Hoe interessant is de aanwijzing voor ons?
• Hoe geïnteresseerd is de leiding in ons?

Uiteraard kun je een algemeen systeem opzetten dat de interesses in de twee verschillende richtingen scoort:

• Hoe interessant is de aanwijzing voor ons?: Hoe groot is het bedrijf? Praat ik met de persoon in de juiste functie? Groeien ze?
• Hoe geïnteresseerd is de leiding in ons?: Are they opening our emails? Clicking on things? Visiting our site? This second part is called “hotness” in Salesflare, and it even alerts you about your hottest leads.

But if you’re looking at what really will turn your lead into a deal, for SaaS companies it’s most often on a whole other level. There are other parameters that can much better predict whether it’s going to be a sale and whether it’s worth spending your time on it or not. ⏳

It’s this North Star metric that’s so popular nowadays. For Slack, it’s how many messages are exchanged in a team. For us, at Salesflare, it’s about the amount of customers created. Its predictive value is obviously way higher than whether people open your emails. 📬

That doesn’t necessarily mean that one metric can capture all. But it’s good to think about what it means to engage a lead enough to turn it into a deal. Measuring it. Improving it.

That’s what real lead scoring is about. 👍

En natuurlijk moet je het synchroniseren met je CRM. Filter je klanten op basis hiervan. Richt je inspanningen op de juiste leads.

It’s a new way of qualifying leads.

It doesn’t fully replace the old way of qualification, of deciding what leads have a good chance to turn into deals, based on the presence of a budget, whether you’re talking with the right authority, whether they are in need and have definite timelines or not (otherwise known as good old BANT qualification).

But it is a more thoughtful way of thinking about it related to your product or service and more often focuses on a customer’s success than on generalized sales criteria.

Uw toolkit voor verkoopautomatisering

When it comes to finding the right tools for your company, there are a lot of cool tools out there, but it’s more about what you’re trying to do and why.

It’s important to not lose track of the human factor. And to always “do things that don’t scale” first. Be fully human first, and only then hand part of that job to robots.

Als je erachter komt dat je publiek op Facebook zit, of op LinkedIn, of dat ze het beste te bereiken zijn via e-mail, dan hebben we daar playbooks voor op de Salesflare blog.

These guides go into how you can leverage data and tools to connect with your audience more efficiently and maybe even more effectively. 💪

But first, really talk to your audience. Connect with them. Understand them. Don’t jump into automation or into tools. Do it all first, until you get tired of it.

Then you can stop and think, “what if I automate this part?” 🤔

And you’ll know exactly how to do it in a way that doesn’t break the real human experience.

Let’s not use automation to create more robot communication and end up drowning in it. Let’s work towards a more human world, in which we can focus and spend more time on our humanity. 👫

Thank you to Andrei Zinkevich for having us for the Facebook Live session! It was an insightful and fun hour packed with great discussion. 😎