The human body is incredibly complex. Multiple systems work together to produce a fully functioning human capable of tremendous things. One of those systems is the autonomic nervous system. This system regulates heart rate, respiration, and digestion, among other things. These are critical functions that the human body runs on autopilot, guaranteeing their success and allowing people to accomplish much higher levels of accomplishment than concentrating on digesting their lunch.

Businesses are not much different. They need to accomplish critical functions. However, many business leaders do not try to automate much of this critical activity, leaving their businesses capped at growth and focusing on lower-level activities just to get by. As time goes on, there are more and more that businesses must do to be successful, which puts more pressure on the employees to accomplish these tasks without the help of automation that could make them more effective with their time, as well as efficient.

Below is a list of 5 things your small business should automate. While it’s not a complete list, it highlights critical functions and provides guidance on how to begin automating them. A platform like Salesforce or HubSpot can serve as the foundation for these processes. Let’s take a look at the list.

1. Automating Lead Management

Leads are a critical lifeblood for growing businesses. New logo business can continue to grow your company on top of existing customer retention efforts. Due to the critical nature of this process, it’s beneficial to automate and optimize your team’s time. This allows them to make the most they can out of the time they have to devote.

The first method of automating your lead management involves the lead intake process. Many businesses rely on their email inbox to capture leads. This approach is not scalable and is not built on a system that can provide visibility and status into each lead. Automate your lead capture by connecting a web form on a landing page directly to a CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot. This removes the requirement of manual entry and places the lead into a system where it can be truly managed.

Once the lead is in the system, it’s important to focus the team’s time. This is where another form of automation, lead scoring, can come into play. By identifying specific qualities and interactions that make the prospect more valuable to your business, you can utilize automation to produce a score for each lead based on their data and the interactions they’ve had with your company’s marketing assets. This allows your team to cut right to the most valuable leads and work from there.

Lastly, as your lead volume grows, your team will not be able to maintain consistent communication with each lead manually. This is where you can lean on automated email and communication workflows. Depending on the source of the lead, you can customize a series of interactions through email, LinkedIn, and even phone calls (with a call script). This keeps the communication high and lets you identify which leads are warm and which need to be nurtured a little longer.

Example: A digital marketing agency uses HubSpot to automatically capture leads from their website forms, score them based on engagement with their content, and send personalized follow-up emails to keep the leads warm.

2. Automating Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to be a powerful marketing tool. It’s a standard that many customers expect and consider when making a buying decision. If you are manually crafting “email blasts” and not taking advantage of tools like HubSpot Marketing Hub or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, this could be a major catalyst to growth through automation.

First, a company should begin by segmenting their customers. Grouping customers allows you to tailor content and messaging to that group, which increases the effectiveness of the marketing efforts. This process can become automated through the use of dynamic lists. Develop a series of preferences or characteristics that define a segmentation strategy. Then set up a dynamic list that automatically groups existing contacts and new contacts into lists. This will allow you to develop content and target the appropriate segment.

In addition to preferences and characteristics, marketers can use user actions to determine lists. One example would be an abandoned cart list or a welcome list for first-time customers. Automating list membership based on user actions is another way to group and develop tailored content for that audience.

Once the segments are established, marketing teams can develop a cadence of interactions and messages. These plans can be built as email templates with messaging and creative content in a tool like Salesforce or HubSpot. This cadence can be established and tied directly to a segmented audience. Once prospects qualify for the segment, they are taken into the marketing automation and given tailored content to nurture them for future sales. Marketing automation like this can be connected so that the completion of one task triggers the next, ensuring marketing teams have a long-term, consistent plan to reach potential buyers.

Example: An e-commerce store uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud to automate welcome emails for new customers and follow-up emails for abandoned carts, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

3. Automating Sales Outreach

In addition to inbound lead management and marketing, automating outreach for outbound sales can elevate productivity. Rather than relying on each salesperson to find the best path to achieve their quota, you can support them by implementing simple automation.

First, use a CRM to capture sales activity. You miss a tremendous opportunity if you use a CRM and then only store interactions in a notes field. The best way to capture this is to give the team a platform like Salesforce or Hubspot to accomplish all their outbound activity directly in the tool. These systems allow email and phone interactions directly from the interface or through integrations. This captures the interaction and results and relates them directly to the record. Once the data is there, it measures interaction frequency, which can help drive additional automation.

One example of this additional automation is follow-up reminders. The team should determine a standard acceptable window for follow-up. For example, a sales team may decide that three business days is the longest window acceptable between lead interactions. Once the outreach activity is captured, it can be measured using automation against the three-business-day benchmark. This can expose leads that live outside the benchmark, and automation can create reminders for the team to follow up on those specific leads.

Example: A B2B software company uses Salesforce to automate follow-up reminders, ensuring sales reps contact leads within three business days of the last interaction. This consistent follow-up increases the chances of conversion.

4. Quote and Proposal Automation

Generating quote and proposal documentation is a time-consuming activity. Much of this activity is repetitive between deals, making it a prime target for using automation to increase team effectiveness.

Tools like Salesforce and HubSpot have a wealth of integrations with third-party tools that can be tremendously useful. Both platforms have their document generation capabilities and support third-party tools. Whether through the platform’s native tools or a third-party solution, automating document generation is a powerful way to boost team performance. Through automation, you reduce the time needed to generate a quote or proposal. Additionally, you can guarantee accuracy in a way you cannot through manually created documents.

Automating document creation is tremendously helpful. Another advantage of using a platform like HubSpot or Salesforce is the ability to integrate signature management. This automation allows the signature process to occur seamlessly with the sales process. Teams can even build automation to update records in their CRM based on signature status. E-signature tools enable you to track the status of signatures, giving your team visibility into where the document stands in the process.

Example: A consulting firm uses HubSpot to automate the generation of proposals, pulling client data and project details directly from the CRM. This automation reduces the time spent on proposal creation and increases the speed of client onboarding.

5. Financial Process Automation

Financial processes are the last area on our list of areas where automation can have a transformative impact. It’s difficult to identify a more critical portion of a business process than the ability to request and receive payment. Building automation in this area can ensure accuracy, timeliness, and consistency in cash flow, which is something that successful scaling businesses seek to implement.

The advantage of using a platform like HubSpot or Salesforce is that it creates the ability to manage the revenue schedule. Businesses can use these tools to build a revenue schedule for a product or service. These records contain detailed information about what is offered, the invoice amount, the date and due date, among other items. They can be automatically created based on data within the system. This automated revenue record creation process enables teams to forecast and manage unearned revenue accurately. Additionally, an integration with additional tools can help manage payment receipts.

Another area of the financial process that can be automated is maintaining an invoice status. Once an invoice is issued, a platform can maintain the status of that invoice based on a combination of the due date and the payment status. If an invoice is unpaid and the date is past the due date, the invoice can automatically be marked as “Past-Due.” Reports can be built to monitor this and the total DSO on the CRM platform, providing tremendous insight. In addition, automation can be utilized to create follow-up reminders on these past-due invoices to ensure the team is in contact with the client and is ironing out the payment schedule.

Example: An online subscription service uses Salesforce to automate invoicing and payment tracking. When an invoice becomes past due, the system automatically marks it as such and triggers a follow-up reminder to the billing team.

The Transformation of Automation

Automation is a powerful tool that can transform small businesses by increasing efficiency, reducing manual workload, and ensuring consistency in critical processes. Businesses can focus on strategic growth and enhance their overall performance by automating lead management, email marketing, sales outreach, quote and proposal generation, and financial processes.

Platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot offer robust automation capabilities that make these improvements possible. Embrace the power of automation to streamline your operations and drive your business forward. If you’re ready to implement these changes, consider partnering with experts who can guide you through the process and help you leverage these platforms to their fullest potential. At Fast Slow Motion, we specialize in helping businesses harness the power of Salesforce and HubSpot to achieve their goals and drive sustainable growth.

By automating key areas of your business, you will improve efficiency and create a more agile and responsive organization capable of growth. Start your automation journey today and experience the transformative impact on your business.