Ep 30: Sales Automation with Jeroen Corthout

Problem: How do we fix sales automation?

The main thing we want to solve is that we want to free up energy from tasks that don’t really need that energy. Some of the really basic follow-ups that you do over and over again. To make sure we eliminate a lot of the time spent on that and make sure we can redirect that time toward things that add more value. Not that this is not valuable, but it’s something that doesn’t need human energy every day.

The Steps of Sales Automation

Step 1: Start manually (before automation)

If you start automating right away, you immediately start making these feedback loops longer because somehow you need to formalize the thing you’re doing and if you do that too early, that’s more work involved than changing.

Step 2: Get feedback

That’s not an easy thing to do these days because a lot of people like to do things themselves and when people start contacting them, they become wary. 

Step 3: Stop and analyze if you’re ready to move on with the process

When you’re starting to feel like a robot and repeating a routine over and over, something that seems to work. Then you should stop and write down a templated process.

I usually just fire up notepad on my computer and I start typing up bullet points. That’s how I generally approach things. No fancy flow charts or anything like that.

Step 4: Setting up and testing the automation

The testing portion of this step will vary depending on the company and product, especially when it comes to automating at scale.

Also, after you set it up, I generally keep a close watch on it to see how it works and what the results are. It always scares me a bit to set something like that live.

Step 5: Moving on.

In the end, you’ve made this automation so you can create time for other things. Make sure you’re utilizing that time productively.

A few resources on sales automation

While Jeroen doesn’t know of any books on the topic of sales automation, a simple Google search of “Sales automation” and “Salesflare” will result in a number of articles they have written on the topic. In addition, you can access their informative and knowledgeable blog here.