Sales might seem like the business process that is least suited to automation, as it leans heavily on personal connection and interaction. However, Jeroen Corthout, co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, believes that most of the admin and decision making can be automated. For this to really take off though, companies need to really think about how their existing systems work, and if they are helping or hindering.

So here are 5 things we learned from Jeroen on That Marketing Podcast.

Listen to the full conversation here. 1. Existing solutions rely too much on disciplined admin. “Anything out there [before we built Salesflare] was great if you manage to fill it out consistently and completely and have this awesome amount of discipline and time and energy, which is usually not the case. Then most systems start failing because you just don’t fill it out consistently.”   2. The problems begin when systems get built on top of each other ad-hoc, rather than having a plan from the off. “We have started from the idea that a CRM should be fully automated, and then secondary, you could adapt some stuff yourself. While everything that was started before was that old model, where you are manually inputting, and then have been adding stuff. So, they have been adding an email integration, then adding a calendar integration. But these things are not built in such a way that it’s really built for automated data inputs. It’s sort of after-thoughts, adding to the existing way of working.”   3. More data is good, as long as you are feeding it into software to make decisions. “It’s mainly a matter of the computers understanding the significance of what happens and being able to summarise this kind of stuff. Then if you want to drill down, you can go deeper. I think systems should definitely be built like that. Technology is coming to a point that we don’t have to drown in data at all.”   4. Get the sales team involved early if you want them to actually use the system. “The full success of a system will be dependent on the sales team. Because if the sales team does not use the system then the whole system quickly falls apart. Anything that you thought it will achieve, it won’t. So, make sure your sales team is on board. If you make a decision about a system, involve salespeople in looking at a few of the ones you’ve seen, maybe have them come up with others, have them use it for a bit. That will make sure that first of all, it’s something they enjoy using.”   5. Software is only a thing that enables stuff. “If you want your team to not just start using it, but also keep using it and keep using it together in a consistent manner, then you need to make sure that they understand the software and know what it can be used for. You need to take a little bit of time to understand how you’re going to use it as a team”.   What Next? Whether you’re looking to upgrade your CRM or not, Spotler’s platform can help you down the path of automating your sales process. GatorLeads is a one-stop shop for identifying hot leads based on their web activity, and Workflows can handle the hard yards of warming up a contact and showing them how you can offer them great value. Explore what Spotler could do for your marketing by booking a demo with one of our sales team.