Prospecting is an indispensable part of the sales process. After all, to close new deals and expand your business’s client base, salespeople need a consistent stream of fresh leads in the pipeline. But maintaining a healthy list of early-stage leads takes hard work and—as any sales rep will tell you—lots of time. Over 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of any sales process.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! Integrating automation into your sales processes can facilitate prospecting and support your sales teams by generating rich lead lists and giving reps more time to connect with qualified leads. This article discusses how sales automation tools can streamline prospecting workflows, starting with sourcing new leads.

Sourcing new leads from online sources

Websites like LinkedIn and Quora have proven valuable resources for new leads, but combing through the vast online networks can quickly become a full-time job. Automation tools like Prospecting Wrkflow automatically import new LinkedIn connections and people who engage with your business online.

And it’s not only names: automation tools can extract contact details and other valuable client data and import it directly into your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Ultimately, this capability ensures that your sales teams aren’t spending all their time searching for prospects while ensuring that no potential customers slip through the cracks.

Importing new contacts from industry events

Finding new leads online is only part of the prospecting process; making the most of in-person connections made at industry events and trade shows is also important. Automation can’t shake people’s hands, but it can help convert those handshakes into detailed lead profiles in your CRM platform.

With our Lead Transcription Wrkflow, all sales reps must do is upload photos of business cards or event badges collected at events to Google Drive. From there, the Wrkflow extracts the lead data and imports it into your CRM along with other valuable data, like what event they were at. This simple automation can save sales professionals hours of data entry and free up time and resources for making human connections with prospects.

Automating referral requests and offers

Referrals are a tried-and-tested method for securing high-quality leads. But don’t take our word for it: 71% of B2B businesses experienced higher conversion rates from referrals compared to other customers and referred clients tend to have a higher value over the long term.

Automation can be part of your customer success processes to help boost organic referrals and enhance prospecting. For instance, our Customer Retention & Growth Wrkflow automatically triggers a referral request from clients that reported positive survey results. You can also use automation to generate and schedule exclusive referral offers to send to clients at a specific point in the customer journey.

Automate outreach emails

Prospecting doesn’t end when there is a full list of early-stage leads; the next step is to evaluate which new leads show interest in your business’ product or service. Automation can support sales teams as they qualify and score these prospects by sending out personalized (and strategically timed) outreach emails.

You can also tailor automation tools to align with your existing sales process. For example, if sales reps know they must send out at least three outreach emails before getting a response, that routine can be automated. Once leads have been scored, automation can send meeting invitations to the warmest prospects, funneling the warmest leads directly to your sales experts.

Boost efficiency with automated prospecting

Ultimately, integrating automation to simplify various steps of the prospecting process can offer many benefits. Efficiency is the first to come to mind—for obvious reasons. Automation can take tasks off your team’s plate, giving them more time and space to make deeper connections and pursue more leads.

Along with that comes the benefit of scalability. With automation, sales departments can maximize their resources and bandwidth to process more leads and boost revenue potential. Finally, automating prospecting can help your sales teams feel more motivated since they won’t be bogged down with as much tedious admin, which will translate to a better selling/buying experience for prospects. It’s a win-win!

Want to learn more about Wrk’s automation solution for sales processes? Speak with a member of our team today.