What is sales automation? A modern guide for 2024

How sales automation can drive efficiency and success

For many sales teams, outdated, manual processes are tedious, time-consuming, and often frustrating. Sales teams are busy: they must complete and track daily workflows, tasks, and activities in the sales process, all while generating pipeline. In fact, reps only spend 35.2% of their time on true revenue-generating sales activities.

Competitive sales organizations have leveraged automation to help relieve the burden of manual processes and free up time for higher-value initiatives. By pairing their CRM system and sales automation software to automate outreach, sales people can better focus on building relationships with customers and clients and (ultimately) move more deals across the finish line.

Outreach has consistently been at the forefront of sales automation, and we love to share our insights as technologies evolve. As sales automation continues to reshape the way teams operate, we thought it was time for an updated guide to match the current landscape.

In this post, we’ll dive into the evolving role of sales automation, its impact on sales team members, and the barriers to achieving automation success.

What is sales automation?

Sales automation is the use of technology to streamline and automate repetitive tasks throughout the sales process to improve efficiency and productivity. With modern sales automation tools, teams can automate workflows, track sales activities in real time, and gain actionable insights.

How sales process automation works

Sales process automation integrates technology into each stage of the sales funnel, allowing sales teams to focus more on building relationships and closing deals rather than being bogged down by manual tasks. Let’s break down how automation functions across each stage of the sales funnel:

Awareness

Sales teams can set up targeted content distribution at the top of the funnel that drives prospects to engage with your offerings while also tracking key metrics.

Interest

Once potential customers show interest, automation tools help nurture these leads by sending personalized follow-ups and relevant content. Automated workflows can segment leads based on their interactions with marketing materials and initiate targeted drip campaigns that keep prospects engaged.

Consideration

During the consideration stage, sales automation pushes relevant case studies or product information to leads as they compare options — ensuring that your solution stays top of mind.

Decision

When leads are ready to make a decision, automation helps accelerate the deal-closing process by sending out timely proposals, automating contract generation, and setting reminders for follow-up touchpoints.

Action

In the final stage, automated onboarding workflows ensure a smooth transition for new clients, taking over post-sale processes such as onboarding, customer follow-ups, and ongoing relationship management.

What are the benefits of sales automation?

Sales automation makes sales processes more efficient and effective. By automating routine tasks, teams can operate at peak productivity, drive revenue growth, and deliver better customer experiences.

Increase efficiency and productivity

Sales automation takes over repetitive, manual tasks like data entry, follow-up emails, and scheduling, ensuring that salespeople spend more time doing what they do best: selling. This boost in productivity helps streamline workflows, prevent human error, and ensure that no steps are missed in the sales process.

Boost sales and revenue

Sales automation speeds up sales cycles and increases deal close rates. It ensures that leads are nurtured and followed up with at the right time, moving them through the funnel more quickly.

Improve lead generation and management

Automation enhances the way leads are scored, distributed, and followed up. With automated lead scoring systems, sales teams can prioritize high-value prospects based on their behavior and likelihood to convert. Automation can also ensure the most qualified team member handles each opportunity, as leads are routed to the right salesperson based on criteria like geography, industry, or product interest.

Enhance customer experience and retention

By automating post-sale follow-ups, onboarding processes, and customer satisfaction surveys, businesses can provide a seamless and responsive journey for clients — leading to higher customer satisfaction, retention rates, and up-sell opportunities.

Common challenges of sales automation

While sales automation offers significant benefits, implementing it into your sales process can sometimes create barriers that need to be carefully navigated. We’ll explore some common roadblocks that teams might face when incorporating sales automation and how to address them effectively.

Lack of personalization

Buyers value authentic relationships with sellers, and when automation lacks empathy or personalization, it can negatively impact customer perception. To avoid this, it’s essential to strike a balance between automation and human engagement. Automation should support sales teams by handling repetitive tasks, but personalized touchpoints, like tailored emails or custom solutions, should still be human-managed.

Integration difficulties

Many organizations already rely on CRM systems, email platforms, and other technologies to manage their sales operations. Adding sales automation into the mix without considering compatibility can create data silos, making it difficult for teams to access and analyze critical information. Organizations should carefully evaluate how automation tools will work with their current systems to avoid disruptions and inefficiencies.

Initial investment costs

While automation can ultimately save money by improving efficiency, the initial cost of purchasing software, onboarding teams, and integrating systems can be a barrier for many organizations. It’s important to have a clear understanding of your budget, goals, and expected ROI before committing to a sales automation solution.

Key features of sales automation software

When it comes to choosing the right sales automation tools, there are several key features businesses should prioritize that help streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive better results for sales teams.

CRM integration

When your sales automation tools work in harmony with your CRM, it ensures that your data is consistently updated and accessible across the entire sales team. This integration allows sales reps to easily view customer history, manage follow-ups, and maintain a single source of truth, ensuring that no lead or opportunity slips through the cracks.

Lead scoring and distribution

Automation tools can assess leads based on specific criteria such as behavior, engagement, and demographic information, assigning a score that reflects their likelihood to convert. Automated lead distribution ensures that the highest-scoring leads are routed to the most appropriate reps, so your team can focus on qualified prospects and close more deals faster.

Email automation and templates

Customizable email templates allow sales reps to send tailored messages with minimal effort, ensuring timely and relevant communication throughout the sales process. This not only saves time but also increases the likelihood of conversions by maintaining a consistent cadence of outreach.

Meeting scheduling

Automated meeting scheduling tools eliminate the back-and-forth of finding the right time for sales calls. This streamlines the booking process, reduces scheduling conflicts, and ensures that valuable time isn’t wasted on coordinating logistics.

Reporting and analytics

Automated reports provide real-time insights into key metrics like pipeline health, conversion rates, and individual sales rep performance.

Proposal and document creation

Sales automation tools can pull data from your CRM to generate customized proposals, contracts, or quotes tailored to the prospect’s needs, so your sales teams can deliver polished, accurate documents in less time.

Sales automation for different roles

Sales automation provides unique advantages to every sales team member — from reps, to managers, all the way up to leadership.

What does sales automation look like for sales reps?

Sales reps are often at the forefront of the sales process and juggle a range of activities. Sales automation helps streamline their tasks, allowing them to focus on the art of the sale.

Boost their productivity

Without automation, researching prospects, scheduling meetings, making sales calls, and sending follow-up emails can become overwhelming. Sales automation tools allow reps to significantly reduce the time spent on manual tasks — keeping deals on track with minimal effort.

Build better customer relationships

Time constraints often prevent reps from fostering meaningful customer relationships, but we know that strong customer engagement leads to 23% higher profitability. When integrated with your CRM, automation enables reps to personalize the buying journey and strengthen relationships with customers.

Close more deals at a faster pace

Sales automation ensures that reps can easily give everyone involved visibility into the deal’s progress. This transparency enables faster decision-making and accelerates the deal-closing process.

What does sales automation look like for sales managers?

Sales managers are responsible for overseeing their teams, setting goals, and ensuring smooth operations. Automation provides them with tools to gain visibility into performance and streamline management tasks.

Boost transparency

Sales managers need real-time insights into their teams' performance to ensure operations run smoothly. Automated tools enable managers to identify issues and opportunities before they escalate — ensuring full transparency across the team.

Reduce turnover

Automation helps reduce sales teams’ turnover by simplifying the rep's daily tasks — reducing manual work, and making their job more rewarding.

Save time

Automation tools take much of the manual work off managers by automatically capturing insights from calls and emails, so they can provide feedback and course-correct quickly without spending hours reviewing every interaction.

What are the benefits of sales automation for sales teams?

Sales automation doesn’t just benefit sales teams, it creates opportunities for cross-departmental cohesion.

A standardized sales process

Automation tools help create standardized dashboards that pull data from multiple sources, allowing managers to set clear goals and track performance in real time.

Increased collaboration

These tools allow for seamless task hand-offs and better communication across departments, ensuring that all teams are aligned and working toward the same goals.

A faster sales process

By automating administrative tasks like follow-ups and scheduling, sales teams can move deals through the pipeline more quickly — speeding up the entire sales cycle.

Impact on sales leadership

Automation provides sales leadership with a holistic view of their pipeline, ensuring sales and marketing are using real-time data to improve strategic decision-making. This level of visibility allows leaders to monitor team performance, predict future outcomes, and align their strategies with the company's long-term goals.

Implementing sales automation in your business

Bringing sales automation into your business can significantly enhance productivity, but proper implementation is key to achieving the desired results. From selecting the right tools to ensuring seamless integration and team adoption, it’s important to take a strategic approach.

Choosing the right sales automation tools

Not all tools are created equal, so begin by identifying the specific areas of your sales process that require automation. Whether you need a CRM with integrated automation, lead scoring capabilities, or automated email outreach, aligning your tool selection with your goals is crucial.

Integration with existing systems

When choosing your sales automation tools, ensure they can integrate with your CRM, email marketing, and other sales platforms. This will allow for real-time data flow, avoiding data silos and ensuring consistency across your sales and marketing efforts.

Training and adoption strategies

Without proper training and adoption, even the best automation tools can fail to deliver value. By providing adequate training and support, you can foster a higher level of comfort and trust in the automation tools, ensuring successful integration into the everyday sales process.

The role of AI in sales automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a supporting tool — it’s shaping the future of sales automation by enabling smarter processes, hyper-personalization, and predictive insights. It’s important to understand how these trends are setting the stage for more agile, data-driven sales processes so you can take advantage of them before the competition does. 

Emerging trends in sales technology

The sales automation landscape is advancing rapidly, driven by trends that focus on delivering more precise and relevant customer interactions. Hyper-personalization allows sales teams to create tailored experiences at scale by leveraging AI and machine learning to personalize outreach based on customer behavior. Real-time data insights enable sales reps to act immediately on collected data, seizing opportunities as they arise. And predictive analytics enhance sales forecasting, lead scoring, and deal probability by identifying patterns in historical data and customer behavior. 

AI in sales automation

AI is revolutionizing sales automation by optimizing workflows, delivering actionable insights, and reducing manual effort. AI-driven recommendations analyze customer behavior and preferences to suggest next steps for sales reps. Intelligent sales assistants automate tasks like scheduling and proposal generation, while conversation intelligence software analyzes sales calls to guide reps on handling objections and closing deals. As AI continues to advance, its role in sales automation will expand even further, enabling more efficient and personalized sales strategies.

Automate your sales process with a human touch for greater efficiency and revenue

While sales automation streamlines repetitive tasks and accelerates deal cycles, the human touch remains essential for building authentic customer relationships and delivering personalized experiences. By integrating automation with thoughtful, human-centered interactions, your team can achieve higher productivity and sustainable growth.

Outreach, the leading sales engagement platform, empowers market-facing teams to efficiently build pipelines and close deals with precision. From prospecting, to deal management, and forecasting, Outreach combines automation and AI to enhance every stage of the sales process. 

Ready to see the results for yourself? Try our Sales ROI calculator and discover the potential impact Outreach can have on your business.

FAQs about sales automation

What types of businesses benefit most from sales automation?

Sales automation is highly beneficial for a wide range of businesses (B2B sales, SaaS companies, e-commerce businesses, etc.). If you have large sales teams, complex sales cycles, repetitive sales processes, or high lead volumes, consider using sales automation.

How much does sales automation software typically cost?

The cost of sales automation software can vary widely depending on the provider, the features you need, and the size of your business. Some platforms also offer pricing based on features like CRM integration, lead scoring, and analytics, so it’s important to evaluate your specific business needs when selecting a tool.

What are the security concerns related to sales automation?

Most platforms ensure data protection by incorporating advanced encryption, multi-factor authentication, and compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Businesses should always verify that their chosen tool has robust security measures to protect customer information and maintain compliance with industry standards.

Can sales automation be customized to fit my sales process?

Most modern sales automation platforms are highly customizable to fit specific sales processes. At Outreach, we provide customization based on your unique workflows, business objectives, and team structures. This flexibility ensures that sales automation can adapt to your exact sales process, helping you maximize efficiency without losing your personal touch.

How long does it take to see results from sales automation?

The timeline for seeing results from sales automation varies based on your existing processes, the complexity of your sales cycle, and how quickly your team adopts the tools. In general, businesses can start seeing improvements in efficiency within weeks of implementation, with more significant boosts in sales and revenue typically occurring within a few months. But remember, effective onboarding and consistent use are key to accelerating these results.

How does sales automation affect the customer experience?

When used effectively, sales automation enhances the customer experience by ensuring timely follow-ups, personalized communication, and streamlined interactions. Automation tools help sales teams stay organized and responsive, which can lead to quicker responses and more thoughtful engagement. 

How can I measure the ROI of sales automation?

Outreach provides built-in analytics and reporting features that allow sales leaders to monitor performance, identify areas of improvement, and calculate the direct impact of automation on the bottom line.

Is sales automation suitable for outbound vs. inbound sales?

Sales automation is effective for both outbound and inbound sales processes but in different ways. For outbound sales, automation helps with lead generation, cold outreach, and follow-ups, enabling reps to efficiently manage large prospect lists. In inbound sales, automation supports lead nurturing, scoring, and personalized outreach.