Revenue Ops & Automation Blog

Creating a HubSpot sales chatbot can be an exciting and exhausting process for your team and company.

You can easily spend four or more weeks building the ultimate bot with the goal of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your sales booked meetings (without adding any extra work for your sales team).

Upon completion of the logic, development, and automation, most sales chatbots also need an additional two weeks of testing and adjustments made before finally, they’re ready to go live. 

It's safe to say that 2020 has radically shifted the way everyone works. For anyone running a sales team meeting in the past year, you've likely had to adapt how you manage, engage, and collaborate with your sales team. 

While it's undoubtedly been challenging, this shift has also been an opportunity to purge bad meeting habits and adopt more effective ones that overall result in better communication. Now that we’ve gotten more comfortable with our new way of meeting, we can focus on overcoming other challenges.

According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales Report 2020, 97% of salespeople said that technology is either “important” or “very important” to their sales process. Meanwhile, the number of salespeople relying on sales intelligence tools has increased 54% in the past two years. 

In the past decade, the sales playing field has changed dramatically. What may have worked for sales reps before is now insufficient.

In the recent past, a bright charisma, creativity, and improvisation drove the majority of sales. Then, authenticity ruled the day. Most recently, social proof and trust-building are essential for brands.

While all of these are still valued today, these approaches alone just don’t cut it. 

Sales enablement is a term that is gaining traction in the corporate world and its definition varies greatly depending on who you ask. 

To some, sales enablement means content management. To others, it means sales rep training or coaching. Some would venture even deeper into the concept of sales enablement and say it’s not a business strategy, but instead, a company vision.

Being a successful salesperson doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make a great sales manager. After all, the customer-centric skill set that helps you close deals is much different than the team-focused skills needed to coach, motivate, and inspire a diverse group of salespeople. 

According to HubSpot research, the average salesperson only spends about one-third of their day selling. The rest of their day is spent on non-revenue generating activities such as writing emails, entering data, prospecting and researching calls, going to meetings, and other administrative tasks. 

The most successful sales teams are made up unique individuals with different backgrounds, personalities, and levels of work experience. As a sales manager, you understand that working with and coaching a diverse group of talent can be as challenging as it is rewarding. 

Technology is continuously improving the sales landscape, but the overload of options and information can seem daunting to even the most versatile sales leaders.

While they understand that AI-driven insights and relevant data based on machine learning can be valuable tools, top revenue executives also know that sales and CRM processes must be as simple as possible so that reps can sell quickly and easily. 

While product, markets, and messaging may vary, a successful sales organization always starts with plugging the right team into the right culture. The best people in an unhealthy culture will result in unproductive habits and slower than expected growth. And eventually, you’ll lose top talent. If you have the wrong people with a strong sales culture, you are not much better off.