What's the definition of boring for you?

Doing dishes. Doing laundry. Or maybe getting groceries.

For many of us doing chores is a dead boring task. A few enjoy it, while others loath it.

I find manual processes quite boring, blame it on the technologist in me that is always seeking a way to automate tasks.

So, when I hear from sales leaders or SDRs still struggling to fix parts of their sales processes because of a lack of technical know-how I know I have got to do something.

The good thing about such teams is they have a tech-first mindset in a non-tech role. They understand that leveraging technology can help multiply their productivity and they are willing to go that extra mile in understanding how things work.

That is dedication.

Oh, and if you aren't a big believer of technology aiding sales processes, then hear this: According to the Salesforce State of Sales report, sales teams that leveraged tech was 2.2x more likely to be high-performing than the ones that don't.

Also, don't just assume that you are a tech-first team, look at your processes and make an objective assessment. Chances are high that you will find that maybe a couple of operations need more tech assistance.

According to the 2019 TOPO Sales Development Benchmark, 33 percent of sales development leaders struggle to implement technology to enhance seller performance. That's 1 SDR leader in every three struggling to implement tech.

In this article, I want to share five strategies for forward-looking, tech-first sales teams that are big on leveraging the latest tech in sales.

So, let's dive into five strategies that you can get started with immediately.

Automate repetitive tasks in prospecting.

Did you know that 66% of a rep's time is spent on manual activities like research, reporting, and administrative tasks? With so much time spent on manual processes, your first duty as a sales leader with a tech-first mindset has to be to automate your processes as much as you can.

There are multiple tools available for automation like Lead scoring (YourCRM), automation with AI-powered prospecting (Truebase, 6Sense), and automation of repetitive actions (Zapier).

Reps with automation capabilities report feeling more in control of their activities and making more productive use of their time.

Automation also frees up the sales rep's time to focus on coaching and learning from leaders who otherwise would be drowning in administrative tasks.

You can implement smart automation using AI-enabled software products. According to Gartner, 30% of all B2B companies will employ some kind of AI to enhance at least one of their primary sales processes.

AI can automate numerous manual tasks that B2B sales reps are responsible for and improve the overall efficiency of sales processes.

For example, The average sales rep who is using CRM spends 5.5 hours per week entering data on activities and contacts. All these activities cost companies an average of $13,200 per CRM user, per year.

Businesses can automate the process of inputting lead data into lead generation CRM systems and shift sales reps’ focus into more value-added processes.

Truebase itself is built keeping in mind these stats and it integrates with all major CRMs. All a rep needs to do is accept a lead and it automatically flows into your CRM, no import, no export, just seamless prospecting.

If you are serious about tech in sales, start with the beast - automate sales prospecting.

Accelerate sales cycle using live chat

One of the major challenges in B2B sales is the sales cycle or the duration it takes for a deal to transition from an opportunity to a won contract.

Typically, B2B researchers do 12 searches prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site. Therefore B2B sales tend to be more logical and slow. 

Sales leaders often want to reduce their sales cycle and one of the ways can be leveraging live chat for providing information to researchers.

If live chat and website chat seems like a 'new' buzzword to you, I am sorry to burst your bubble: According to Gartner, by 2022, 85% of all customer service interactions will be done without a live agent. And we already know that more than 66 percent of contact centers use some form of AI for live chat as per the TOPO Benchmark 2019.

So, if live chat is getting more widely adopted by business everywhere then it just makes sense that sales teams who want their reps to differentiate themselves from competitors should leverage live chats too.

Live chats are also ideal for those prospects who don't pick up calls, respond slowly (email), or prefer communicating through live chat.

You can take live chats one step further to engage with prospects by equipping your reps with personalization points from a lead generation software like Truebase.

For example, you have an account X in your lead generation funnel as a prospect. From Truebase, you got research points like their pains and competitors. In your live chat, armed with this knowledge your sales rep can guide the prospect and provide the appropriate solutions with the fastest turnaround.

In short, the time that would have been spent on understanding and then finding a solution is won back because the rep already has a detailed picture of the account and its challenges.

Use intent data and enrichment tools to assist sales reps. 

Using intent signals and enrichment tools can give sales leaders insight into their reps’ activities as well as help the reps focus on more important tasks.

Intent signals are data points that answer the question, "What does this prospect intent signal say about them?" Intent signals may include: what type of articles is a prospect reading, which job titles do they have?, what companies do they work for? etc.

Gartner says that organizations using intent data and enrichment capabilities report having stronger trusting relationships with customers.

This allows leadership to better understand prospects' intent so they can provide relevant information without being pushy and sales reps to focus on activities and accounts that will lead to sales success.

Sales intent data can also help sales reps prioritize which prospects they should contact first while the enrichment tools, such as web crawlers and APIs, provides them with detailed information about these prospects. The more a rep knows about an account the more effective their outreach will be resulting in higher close rates .

AI lead generation software like Truebase helps drive successful prospecting by suggesting accounts to your sales team using intent signals that are found using web activity of prospects from such accounts. Truebase also enriches data for prospects from multiple data sources and provides a complete picture of each account and lead.

Hyper-personalize emails at scale.

The personalization of sales emails sometimes seem to be a time-consuming task that can significantly affect a sales rep's productivity.

Instead of personalizing cold email, reps can get personalization points from lead generation software like Truebase and include those in their email copy to hyper-personalize cold emails at scale.

While personalizing an email may take hours or even days depending on the number of accounts, personalization points make it easier for sales reps to stand out from other sales messages quickly.

Using web data AI lead generation software also makes personalization possible because it provides access to personalization points that are known about prospects and leads — such as their pains, the content they have shared, their competitors and more — and matches those with data already stored in your CRM.

Since personalization of cold emails is the norm and B2B buyers expect that from reps, there is no escaping this prospecting activity. Instead think of how you can leverage tech to speed up the research process.

Ensure you aren’t using “bad/unusable” data.

I have kept the most obvious strategy at the end. And there's a reason: housekeeping can be boring for many of us and we tend to procrastinate.

And we can't blame ourselves, with exciting stuff to do we rarely focus on the boring parts. One such boring sales activity is cleaning CRM of bad data.

So, what is bad data?

Bad data is any data that doesn't have the potential to be used or actionable.

It may not be accurate, up-to-date, relevant to your target accounts or even non-existent. It's data that CRM managers and sales reps ignore but bad data can result in poor sales effectiveness. 

Bad data leads to slow sales processes, decreased productivity and lower close rates.

If you want data to be helpful it needs to be fresh data based on real accounts and contacts, not old data that's been sitting in your CRM for years.

Old data is data that hasn't changed for more than six months or one year depending on the industry standard. Old data may include phone numbers of people who have either retired or moved companies.

It also includes email addresses of contacts that are no longer accessible because they've changed jobs, company names that haven't been updated after acquisitions or mergers and so on.

You can prevent bad data by changing your lead generation source to an AI powered one. With the help of AI/ML algorithms such lead generation software like Truebase always provide you with the latest lead information.

Since AI software rely on multiple data sources and validation, old data or unusable data doesn't creep into your CRMs. Also with native integrations any old data can be refreshed within seconds and voila, you are ready to run campaigns again.

I hope you found some of the strategies usable in your lead generation process. Want to get started with AI led prospecting? Start by signing up for 14 day free trial of Truebase. Happy prospecting!