Faced with profitability challenges, a global consumer electronics firm decided to restructure its business with a focus on optimizing costs, sales productivity, and customer satisfaction. To achieve these goals, the company automated customer and product master data, disputes and claims resolution, stock replenishment, and discount management. The firm also deployed automated web-crawler tools to improve competitive intelligence-gathering. With buy-in from leadership, the company was able to reduce the cost of select processes by 15% in only three years.
What’s Your Sales Automation Strategy?
More than 30% of sales activities can benefit from automation — if implemented effectively.
June 02, 2021
Summary.
In this article, we examine sales automation’s benefits, how it can be applied to standard processes, and how to adopt new processes to improve your team’s ability to sell. We also detail five key principles for building and executing on your sales automation strategy.
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New!
HBR Learning
Marketing Essentials Course
Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Marketing Essentials. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.
Learn how to communicate with your customers—strategically.