When it comes to breaking down the amount of hours spent by each salesperson, how much is actually spent selling? This is the question to ask yourself if your sales team are underperforming or lacking in efficiency. In reality, the disappointing answer for most salespeople is that they spend less time ‘selling’ than you think. The productivity drain of non-sales activities is real.
Research suggests salespeople only spend a third of their day selling. The rest of the day is spent on doing manual tasks – entering data, recording notes, finding prospects, writing emails, and so on. The good news is most of these are all really easy to automate in the digital age. Sales automation can result in your teams spending less time on admin and more time on creating opportunities for the pipeline.
Sales automation essentially aims to reduce the time spent on lengthy, manual sales tasks. As well as improving efficiency, automation can help employees work better on the go and remotely. Processes can remain running smoothly even when your salesperson isn’t sitting at their desk. It’s all about streamlining activities to empower more selling. Below are 5 top automation tools for creating, closing and finding new leads.
1. Leadiro
Pricing: Freemium model with paid plans starting at $99 per month
Suitable for: Lead generation
Leadiro is an Account Based Marketing (ABM) and lead generation tool, providing access to millions of live & updated B2B contacts with validated emails. Contact details for companies in over 90 countries can be found and Leadiro allows you to filter target accounts based on demographic, technology, at a fairly affordable price. Given the amount of data available, Leadiro is a good choice for generating new leads in emerging markets.
Pricing: Plans starting at $64.99 per month
Suitable for: Advanced prospect searching
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a really popular sales tool that makes social selling easy, focusing on finding the right prospects to build better relationships. The tool provides access to loads of data and leads, with really specific search filters so you can match job roles, companies and so on really effectively. The advanced search box allows you to filter LinkedIn users by job title, company, industry, experience level, education, location and a lot more. Additionally, you can get notification alerts when certain leads take specific actions (such as a promotion or move to a new company) so you know when to open up a conversation.
3. Leadfeeder
Pricing: Freemium model with premium plans starting at $55 per month
Suitable for: Converting web traffic
Leadfeeder is a website visitor tracking software which allows you to see the companies already visiting your site. With the majority of visitors leaving your site without providing you their details, it’s a really useful tool to solve this problem. It helps automate sales by revealing which leads are visiting your site, how engaged they are, and their company and contact data. You can integrate Leadfeeder into your CRM to quickly distribute leads to your team for quicker and more personalised outreach.
4. Clearbit
Pricing: Clearbit require contacting for pricing information
Suitable for: Researching and creating more tailored sales messages
Tailoring and personalising sales messaging results in much better cut through. However, to do so, you need to know about your prospects. Clearbit is a tool that finds and provides real-time prospect data to empower your outreach. Essentially, Clearbit fills in the blanks when you find a company domain or email address. It sources data on over 85 unique attributes, such as industry, company size, job title, and more. From a research point of view, this tool quickly lets you see key information on prospects.
5. Clari
Price: Clari require contacting for pricing information
Suitable for: Sales forecasting
Clari is a really useful sales tool for forecasting, activity intelligence and pipeline management. When it comes to forecasting, it can be tedious. Especially if you’ve got loads of data in a spreadsheet. Clari helps streamline the forecasting process with advanced predictive forecasting tools, providing quick and more accurate reporting.
With today demanding more for less, automating certain sales activities can be a lifesaver in improving efficiency and productivity and your bottom line. These tools mean your salespeople don’t have to spend time finding leads and so on, and more time trying to close deals. Less tedious admin, more time freed to earn money.
