Workflow of the Week: Super-charging Salesforce to get More Done, Faster
How manual data entry and external form requests can slow down your sales reps— and how to avoid it with workflow automation.
One of the biggest concerns facing salespeople— and their managers— today is that they are unable to focus on the most important part of their job: selling. A recent Forbes article revealed that sales reps could only focus on selling 35.2% of the time, whereas the other 65% (most of the day) was dedicated to other work.
Forbes also revealed that 53% of salespeople “have a love/hate relationship with their Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).” They love the CRM, but hate the amount of time they spend with manual data entry or tasks that take them outside of the system. Sales should be dedicated to their prospects, but in order to pull together the key aspects of an opportunity and ensure all team members are on the same page, they need to work interdepartmentally. This includes:
- Pulling in solution consultants for demos
- Handing off opportunities or splitting them with relevant parties
- Working with legal for NDAs and more.
Each of these tasks often requires manual data entry, not only within Salesforce, but more than likely outside of Salesforce as well. And if there’s one thing that sales reps hate more than manual data entry, it’s manual data entry across multiple systems.
The Salesforce Consolidation Story
Fortunately, many of these requests that otherwise involve manual data entry or multiple systems can be consolidated and leveraged within Salesforce. The key is to use a workflow automation tool that has a robust Salesforce integration, allowing it to plug directly into Salesforce to give your reps the impression that they are never leaving their single-source-of-truth. An added benefit to a robust workflow automation tool with a finely-tuned Salesforce integration is that it can eliminate manual data entry by pulling in Salesforce data across opportunities and automatically populating form fields from its bank of data.
Imagine a workflow system that doesn’t feel like an appendage or addendum to your CRM, but feels like part of it. A button on the opportunity page allows reps to request NDAs and demo support, and with the click of the button opens up requests with auto-populated information. Submitting a request for a demo notifies the Solutions Consultant Manager or, based on the request, pings someone with the right expertise directly.
Even the complications around compensation can be managed more effectively than by passing around spreadsheets and following up on the company chat. Within Salesforce, a workflow automation platform should give reps the opportunity to request SPIFs and hand off or split opportunities as needed, without the headache of managing these things manually. One reason this is a big hit with reps? They get paid faster.
Workflow automation is often built within a dedicated automation platform, but the workflows themselves do not need to live on a separate system: they can be embedded on web pages, turned into buttons on Salesforce, or linked in emails. With a robust platform that enables these access points, sales teams can aggregate multiple forms and requests onto one portal or link different access points at user-friendly points within a CRM tool. Workflow automation can make your CRM your one-stop shop for sales and in doing so give them back time to do what they do best: sell.
