Automating your sales process online is one of the best solutions to save time and resources - and it enables you to grow and expand with ease and efficiency. You can do this to a product or service, or even an entirely bespoke package or programme you offer.
With so many different systems and processes available to use for your customer’s journey online, it can take a lot of time and effort to facilitate it manually or physically. However, if the entire sales process was automated, it would not only make your product’s sales process smoother but also more effective and less reliant on your day-to-day manual inputs.
Automating a sales process includes 7 steps:
Step 1 - Have a Product or Service to Sell Online
Having a solid offer or service in place that you ultimately want people to buy or subscribe for, ideally available to be purchased online. This could be a product, service, course, package or another solution presented on your website.
Step 2 - Create a Free Taster
Create a short information piece, in other words a taster, to provide valuable information or tools for your target audience. This could be, for example, a free guide, a short video, or a live or evergreen webinar that ends with promoting your main offer (step 1). This should have an intriguing and value-driven headline, for example something that starts with "5 Steps to Transform Your…". Your topic should be focused on your specialism and it needs to be relevant to the service that you will be offering (step 1).
Step 3 - Create a Landing Page
Create a landing page that promotes your free taster (step 2). The page should also include a short description of your taster, giving a solid reason for downloading or accessing your resource. Remember what your customer wants and needs and tailor the message according to this. Anyone who now lands on this page can enter their email address, meaning you can start building your list of interested leads and buyers. Adding an eye-catching or relevant image can make all the difference in bringing your landing page to life.
Step 4 - Create an Autoresponder Email
Create an email that confirms your new subscriber’s access to your free resource. Include your free guide as an attachment or add a link to your webinar or video. Mention what your company does and how you enable this particular target audience to achieve their goals. This email must be then linked with your landing page (step 3), going out automatically whenever anyone subscribes for your free taster.
Discover how to create a free landing page and an automated email in this blog:
Step 5 - Create a Promotion
Create a post or promotion (text and image) that is intriguing and valuable to your target audience. Provide a link to your landing page (step 3) and briefly explain the benefits of accessing your free resource. Before you put your promotion out officially, make sure to read and test your content and all the links.
Step 6 - Promote!
You can now share your promotion (step 5) in different social media platforms, on your website, or even share it in networking events designed for your target audience. You could choose to use Google advertising or paid social media advertising; select the most appropriate marketing method based on your customer’s most typical online behaviour.
Step 7 - Follow Up
You now have the email address of your lead (step 3), meaning you can send a range of emails and promotions to your potential customer. Ideally you would first create an email sequence (5-30 emails), with individual emails going out at least twice a week, that provide relevant tips and tools for your target audience. Now is your opportunity to upsell or cross-sell something that you know is a value to this particular audience. Reiterate your main offer (step 1) and provide examples and case studies of customer successes.
Getting Started
When looking at improving your sales process, the best starting step is to assess what it is you already have in place. Does the message and product descriptions still align with your business now? Ensure your service or product descriptions are designed to impress your ideal customers. Although your website won’t necessarily require changes on a regular basis, it’s important that you have sporadic checks of it to ensure that the information is still relevant and that it is easy for your potential customers to understand. Even adding small things, such as additional calls to action or the use of different images, can make all the difference to a user’s experience on your site.
Give Great Value
When thinking about adding additional calls to actions to your site, they don’t necessarily have to lead to a purchase quite yet - your lead most likely needs a bit of “warming up” first. A great way to attract more leads and make a great impression with your expertise is to offer something for free, such as a free guide or a video link, or better yet an evergreen webinar that can be watched any time. With this call to action, you can use it as the focal point for the posts that you share to your social media channels to generate traffic and bring more leads to your site. These promotional posts could also be created in bulk and scheduled onto social media to again reduce the number of daily tasks you have to complete. Buffer is a comprehensive tool to automate all your social media promotions.
Once your lead subscribes for your free taster, it’s important that you follow up with them and offer your additional products and services. Having an email marketing system in place will allow you to have an automated follow-up sequence to keep those leads engaging with your business. The system will also have tags which can be used to segregate your audience and provide more tailored content to them based on their engagements with your emails and promotions. More information on how to leverage tags can be found here: https://www.discoverchange.ltd/post/using-tags
Bringing it All Together
When you have the steps and processes in place, the next thing to do is integrate them with each other, so that the entire process is truly and fully automated with no faults or gaps. Nowadays many platforms will have built-in integration tools, however if that’s not the case then tools such as Zapier can be used to make this possible. If you have questions about integrations or would like any support with the system creation, get in touch with us or schedule a consultation.
Before you integrate any of your processes together, make sure you’ve clearly mapped out the entire journey the customer will take through your sales funnel. Imagine it from the customer’s perspective - what should they see and receive? This way you’ll know the steps they will be taking, which will then lead to you planning and knowing which platforms need to be linked to each other. If you're unsure on what a sales funnel is or what it could look like in your business, we have a FREE Sales Funnel Workshop available to help you discover how you can attract, engage and convert more leads to customers online in a highly strategic, efficient and scalable way.
You can join the workshop here (it’s immediately available): https://www.idiscoverchange.com/courses/free-sales-funnel-workshop
Well Planned is Half Done!
There may be many processes to consider when it comes to automating your sales process, but do remember that the reward in the end can be and will be tremendous. Having a scalable sales process will enable you to reach new heights much quicker than doing all the marketing and sales calls and follow-up emails manually. The good news is that a sales funnel and automated sales process can be done and in use within a few hours, but it all must start with a clear plan and understanding of what value you are bringing to your leads and customers and how that will come together in a digital format. So join the Sales Funnel Workshop and get all the tools and resources you need to launch your sales funnel in quick and simple steps - with a free sales tool!