When it comes to sales, time really is of the essence. And when nearly 75% of sales to new customers take at least four months to close, the faster you can send paperwork to a prospect and get it signed, the sooner you can seal the deal and get paid.

Yet, many so many sales teams are hamstrung by a slow process that costs salespeople time they could be spending chasing up more leads.

By building smarter workflows that replace your manual sales processes, you can save time, boost collaboration, and improve your sales output. No more overlooking leads or wasting precious time manually inputting data into your CRM. Here’s how to automate workflows to eliminate steps in the sales process and save time.

What is sales automation?

Sales process automation takes tedious, time-consuming tasks and uses digital tools to track and optimize the sales process. Sales automation can target several areas of the sales cycle, like recording customer interactions, document preparation, deal tracking, pipeline management, and even detailed forecasting—helping you analyze the entire sales cycle in one place.

According to McKinsey, over a third of sales operations can be automated with existing technology, including:

• 29% of sales strategy and planning activities
• 43% of quotation processes, negotiation, and contract signing
• Half of all order management, including credit checks, invoicing, and payment collection
  

Yet, only 1 in 4 organizations have opted to automate at least a single sales process. And it’s largely because sales teams are not yet aware of the value that automation unlocks.

Automation in action

Companies one step ahead have already started taking advantage of automation to streamline their sales processes.

Marketing platform Vivial integrated eSignatures into Salesforce to avoid the inefficient and manual processes of signing, scanning, and faxing contracts to customers. Vivial initially decided on a legacy eSignature solution but found that the ease of use and user support they expected was missing—and so the search continued.

Vivial’s team then came across Dropbox Sign and were won over by its level of customer support and intuitive Salesforce implementation. Now, the Vivial sales team can easily create custom buttons, tag documents, and send off agreements to customers to have them signed off faster than ever. Even better, Vivial integrated Dropbox Sign into Salesforce 2x faster than its previous eSignature solution.

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How to get started with sales automation

While Vivial is ahead of the curve, sales automation is catching on fast—in fact, it’s forecasted to grow 115% over the next few years. That makes now the perfect time to get your automation journey rolling.

How? Here are three steps to get you started:

1. Identify task creation pain points.

Likely no one knows better the time-wasting, manual steps it takes to complete a sales process than your own team.

Ask your team to outline redundancies, especially in paperwork where multiple documents might need similar information, or if they need to print, sign, and scan documents before they’re able to move on to the next step.

Typically, these tasks are ripe for automation and will free up your team to focus on the next sale.

2. Examine your CRM with a workflow mindset

If you’re familiar with sales tools like Salesforce or HubSpot, then you likely know that they can streamline the lead-to-customer lifecycle. However, it’s when you start connecting your sales tools that you start seeing the full benefits—but to do that means adopting a workflow mindset.

By looking at all your tools as one long workflow, rather than a series of disjointed tools and steps, will help you understand how an agreement travels through your sales entire process—and where it might slow down or get stuck.

With a view of the entire process, you can then see where strategic integrations can unlock time savings, like automatically importing customer data directly into contract templates.

3. Take 15 minutes to integrate and save sellers hours in admin

We learned from recent Dropbox research that integrations aren’t nearly as hard as people think. A simple 15-minute one-time integration can result in significant time savings in the long term.

Whether it’s creating a template or adding an integration for other sales tools like eSignature, Slack, or Gong, by committing time to optimizing your sales workflows can save a lot. Take eSignatures for instance. By integrating eSignature tools, your sales team can send out contracts directly from your CRM. And when your customers can sign contracts anytime and anywhere with ease, you’re not only providing them with a better experience at every stage but we’ve seen it lead to businesses closing deals 80% faster, too.

Discover smarter sales workflow automation with Dropbox Sign

Say no more to tedious, repetitive sales steps that can slow down your team’s closing strategy.

By tapping into the power of sales automation, you’re creating smarter, faster sales processes that get your team performing at its best.