79 percent of leads never convert to sales.

This can be largely attributed to failing to attract the right kind of leads, not identifying your best leads and most significant of all, failing to nurture your leads. With marketing automation tools you can ensure a much higher rate of success while never missing an opportunity to convert a lead to a closed sale.

Get the Right Kind of Leads

Simply acquiring a large amount of leads doesn’t mean you get a corresponding large amount of sales. Getting a bunch of phone numbers into your CRM is nice but it’s far better (and more efficient) to attract high quality leads instead. You should have a complete profile of your target customers and how your product services their needs. Going after leads who are already interested in your product or are in need of something like your product will be far more likely to make a purchase while wasting less of your company’s time on leads with no interest or need of your product. With marketing automation software you can use a form that captures contact information in exchange for a white paper, a worthwhile video, pricing information, etc.

Figure Out Your Best Leads

Once you have leads in your sales pipeline you need to identify which leads gives your company the best chance to close sales. Regular communication with your leads will give your company a better idea of the interest level your leads have. Marketing automation can “email drip” your leads and adjust the number of mass emails sent depending on the prospect’s response. With an integrated CRM you can automatically modify the records of leads who express more (or less) interest in your product. For leads with more interest you can start sending little gifts such as helpful articles or free trial offers to up their interest level high enough to make a conversion.

Ensure you are Nurturing Leads

Possibly the easiest step to overlook in the customer acquisition process. A lack of lead nurturing is one of the most common reasons for 79% of leads failing to convert to sales. This area of the sales process is where marketing automation can really shine. It’s easy to for agents to forget to follow up strong leads or send emails to weaker leads. With automation you can make sure that all of these repetitive but necessary tasks get done in a timely fashion. Additionally, integrated marketing tools can schedule follow-up calls, ensuring that you never lose a sale to a missed call or appointment.

Always Refine Your Company’s Sales Pipeline

Good marketing automation tools will have detailed reporting options available to you. There is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to sales pipelines so it’s important to continuously work and evaluate your process. As you find leads exiting your pipeline your reporting tools should be able to pinpoint which part of your process needs improvement. Marketing automation can help automate tasks for your agents but that doesn’t preclude the importance of monitoring and improving your sales process at all time.