Leveraging resources at the disposal of your managed services business ensures sustainable growth. One of the most important tools in your arsenal is automation, which can streamline your sales process and prepare your firm for the era of digital transformation. 

According to CRN, managed service providers are not only using this technology to deliver services to their prospects, but are also using these tools to drive better results in their day-to-day operations. Sales automation tools your business better engage with prospects, develop accountability, and build loyalty. 

So, what can sales automation do for you?

Simplify your sales process, reduce redundant tasks, and improve efficiency

“How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” -Bill Gates 

The broad functionalities of a CRM are universal - a central place where businesses can store prospects’ data, track interactions, and share information with the team. However, managing sales pipelines in these systems can be a nightmare for any managed service provider. 

MSPs subscribe to CRM platforms to streamline the sales process, but soon give up on updating these applications for many reasons such as the complicated and incomprehensible user interface that makes tracking tasks and opportunities difficult, add up the administrative task of manually entering data or disconnected sales automation system that does not integrate CRM to a proposal builder, email applications, PSA systems, etc. 

‍A recent research report identified CRM as the fastest growing sector of the software market that is expected to reach over $80 billion by 2025. ‍

As an MSP, it is important to choose the right CRM for your business operations with traits like,

1. Visibility and collaboration, so you get a bird’s-eye and comprehensive view of communications with all prospects. 
2. Account management, to easily maintain accounts for prospects you do business with, add contacts to accounts, log interactions, and prioritize interactions based on urgency. 
3. Visibility of the sales cycle, to gain insight into activities across the pipeline. 
4. Quotations, to gain insight on potential deals in your sales pipeline and set up service and product proposals and quotes linked to opportunities. 
   

Save time to focus on more important tasks at hand

‍Most MSPs use multiple distributors to prepare a proposal and look for references and information in over 5 different web applications. Depending on the sales proposal, MSPs must find a suitable template, check availability of the product, compare prices, generate quotes, and enter categories, descriptions, and other data manually. 

Then they repeat that process over and over again, depending on the number of sales proposals they must send out that day. ‍

Sadly, it often takes an MSP approximately 2 hours to create each sales proposal. However, with an integrated sales automation platform, you can reduce that preparation time to 22 minutes.

You need an efficient tool that integrates with distributors to give you details about the product in real-time, sends email notifications when the prospect views the sales proposal, and sets reminders to follow-up with those who haven’t reviewed or accepted. Close deals faster with e-signatures and a built-in comment section to relay critical information.

MSPs can enjoy other benefits with sales automation tools, including the ability to upsell within a quote, provide multiple pricing options to prospects, sell bundles without disclosing constituents, and collect payments. 

Harness the power of PSA integration

A PSA solution is another crucial tool for MSPs, giving you a 360-degree view of the company's day-to-day workflow. PSAs allow you to organize your business in a single system so all your employees can collaborate and communicate through one operational platform.

But the disintegration between a PSA tool and a sales automation tool forces MSPs to go back and forth between systems for the further sales process. Once the prospect’s data is added to a PSA tool, you need to rely on supporting applications to create and send proposals, perform product discovery, and create quotes. ‍

That is precisely why MSPs need a sales automation platform that integrates well with the PSA tool, thus giving you quoting abilities, workflow power, and visibility to create end-to-end communication and tracking to better operate your business. 

Integration enables you to efficiently respond to each prospect’s needs, capture and store information needed to discover the root causes of any problems, simplify data collection, and manage sales opportunities. ‍

Decide before you devise your plan

Most MSPs, after the first meeting with the prospect, can diagnose any potential technological complications involved with a project. But in most cases, they avoid assessing the risk and quickly put a plan in place. That often leads to poor time and resource management.

On the contrary, a sales automation tool equipped with an assessment module helps MSPs to layout a plan and reduce potential scoping issues. Assessing the environment is simple, all you need is a quick scan of the project. If you discover more of a confused and neglected environment, you go deeper to do a detailed analysis. This way, you will have visibility into everything involved with the project, including users, systems, network setups, infrastructure, cloud, and on-premise systems. 

The key is to deliver a low-risk proposal that defines the scope of engagement with no room for confusion or loss, well in advance for both the MSP and the prospect.

Save time by automating workflows‍

A recent report by Smartsheet states that over 40% of workers spend at least a quarter of their workweeks on repetitive tasks. 

Most of the salespeople, including MSPs, manually perform administrative tasks like sending a welcome email every time an opportunity is created, or a follow-up email after sending the sales proposal, etc. 

However, with sales automation applications, you can save time by automating repetitive and administrative tasks. You can create multiple automations that will be triggered upon a particular instance, like programming a reminder message to recipients to sign the document 4 days after delivery of the sales proposal without human intervention. 

Measure the effectiveness

53% of MSPs believe the increase in data and data management requirements have made their operations more complex. 

MSPs traditionally avoid using sales automation tools for 2 reasons: unfamiliarity with the functionality and inexperience decoding the data. 

‍MSPs must choose an easy-to-use sales automation tool that provides detailed insight into their sales efforts and tell them what’s working and what’s not working like a sales activity report, sales pipeline conversion report, document report, etc. 

And with such efficient insights, you can easily tweak your sales game plan accordingly. ‍

Take an action today

‍To successfully transition and automate your sales process, you need to begin with a thorough evaluation of your existing model. It’s like a cultural shift within your company to introduce a novel way of approaching the efficiency to hit your MRR goal. 

Hundreds of leading MSPs rely on Zomentum to automate their sales process. It's scalable, easy-to-use, accurate, and professional platform. You can manage and prioritize opportunities and create multiple sales pipelines. Zomentum lets MSPs send proposals in just minutes, edit proposal templates on the fly, track the progress of  deals, and personalize these documents with rich multimedia images and videos. The platform integrates with major PSAs and creates rich catalogs using product content providers such as Etilize.

To top it off, MSPs can automate their workflow, perform sales assessments, and generate easy-to-understand reports, and much more. With a sales automation tool like Zomentum, you can easily drive more efficiencies within your managed services business to close deals faster and sell more. Get a free demo to learn more.