How to automate revenue generating activities in sales? Explained

As a founder, COO or sales leader you want to automate revenue generating activities in your sales organization through Revenue Operations (RevOps). If you want to do more with less during this economic downturn, this guide is what you are looking for.

You will learn how to minimize your headcount investment and how to utilize automation across different areas of your business looking at:

• How automation can help your business
• What are revenue generating activities you can automate
• What constraints you will face during automation
• How Revenue Operations can help you automate

If you are a sales leader, COO or founder looking to maximize revenue at the lowest potential cost, this guide will help you.

Megan Foster is a sales leader and revenue operations manager with 5+ years of experience in high tech SaaS. She has experience in both regional and global sales and marketing teams. She is the co-founder of SlideFill.

The topic that’s now top of mind for organizations, especially due to the economic downturn, is how you, as a leader, can do more with the same amount or potentially less resources. If this is on your mind today, automation is the answer you are looking for.

Let’s start with defining what exactly is automation of revenue generating activities.

There are two parts to the automation of revenue generating activities:

• Automation: Automation is simply the ability to take an action (Y) without or with minimal human intervention when a trigger or condition (X) is met.
• Revenue generating activities: Activities performed by sales, marketing and customer success that are driving additional revenue or prevent the loss of revenue.

These activities generally take time which requires human assets or headcount. Similar to other resources in your organization, headcount comes at a cost. That cost can be defined as a direct cost (for example: compensation) or an indirect cost (for example: the opportunity cost of time).

The automation of revenue generating activities is subsequently:

The ability to take a revenue generating action (Y) while saving resources when a trigger or condition (X) is met.

An example would be:

When a client fills in a lead form (trigger X), send a personalized proposal based on the input they have provided (action Y).

With that definition set, we can look at the question: “How can automation benefit your business”.

To provide multiple benefits of automation:

• Save time
• Increase productivity
• Grow performance
• Decrease operating cost
• Elevate operational excellence and visibility on required action
• Improve customer experience and differentiate from competition

These benefits can be categorized in three categories related to your metrics.

This first category has to solely do with the input of resources in your organization. These input resources often have a direct or indirect impact on the (‘client facing’) output but we leave the link between the two out of this category for now.

The main goal you have with input resources is to make the resource more productive. This means from the list above that you want to make sure the automation can save time in order to make the resource more productive, performant and eventually decrease its relative cost.

The decrease in operating cost (or cost of sales in our case) will be defined by either more output with the same resources (decreased marginal output cost) or the same output with less resources (decreased cost).

In a sales organization, this is often tied to headcount and the task – input – performed by the headcount such as sending emails, making presentations, creating reports, meetings, vetting leads etc.

The first category made an abstraction of the impact of input on output and also (non-explicitly) didn’t talk about the potential ‘pull’ from output (clients and revenue) for which the input resources need to take action.

Given the line above is rather confusing, you will find two examples below:

Example 1: Output to Input

A client (trigger X) is at risk of churn, how do we communicate to the salesperson to contact the client (action Y).

Example 2: Output to Input

A seller sent an email to a client (trigger X), how do we make sure the seller follows up with the client (action Y).

The action here is slightly different compared to the first category: the action itself is passing information to our resources in order for them to know which task to perform.

This will improve operational excellence and increase visibility on required action.

The last group of automations is related to automating the reaction to output (clients, revenue) without the intervention of input. It’s similar to the first category, but the trigger here is coming from outside the organization and the action is taken without the intervention of a human resource.

You experience this specific category every single day: when you order a product online (trigger X) and get a confirmation email (action Y), when you cancel a meeting (trigger X) and are asked to book a new one (action Y) or when you are late for dinner (trigger X) and get an angry text from your partner (action Y).

The key thing to remember here is that the trigger is mostly external (and not from within your business or organization) while the action is internally set up. This action is often a ‘response’ or a form of acknowledgement which will improve the customer experience and can differentiate you from competitors at scale.

When you look at activities you can automate in your organization, you most likely will end up with an endless amount. To prevent that you need to scroll for hours, you will find a high level overview on a more conceptual level.

Things will get a bit more complex here, but you will find a step by step overview.

Step one is to understand the key criteria to keep in mind on a conceptual level. The three key criteria are:

This is related to the value of the external output (client) which is measured as the revenue coming from the client, the total contract value, the risk of losing the client and so forth.

This is related to the opportunity cost of the manual action required when the triggering conditions are met. Think about the cost of saving time, the cost in productivity and the cost in performance.

Through the automation of the activity, we gain efficiency (with a value calculated as):

(Cost of resources without automation) – (Cost of resources with automation)

This efficiency gain can either be invested in more resources (more resources for the same amount of investment) or in the reduction of resources (saving cost).

This is related to the potential damage the automation can do when timed or set up wrongly.

Going back to a previous example:

When you are late for dinner (trigger X) and get an angry text from your partner (action Y).

It would be most likely undesirable that you, on your end, have automation that is:

When you get an angry text from your partner (trigger Y), send an automated reply stating you don’t care about their complaint (action Z).

The automation here would do more bad than good. The same mistakes are made within businesses and you should prevent them from happening.

Think of a client sending an email that they are not satisfied with their subscription (trigger X) and your automated first reply being an email with the purpose to upsell them to a more expensive one (action Y).

Or try to think of the last time you urgently needed a person to assist you (trigger X), but you got caught in a loop and endless conversation with a chatbot (action Y).

These experiences can break the relationship between your business and your clients very abruptly. When you decide about which activities to automate, you need to take into account the risk associated with the automation.

The amount of risk you will have will often be influenced by the relationship with the client, the importance for the business and the accuracy of the trigger (data) and the alignment of the action to the situation.

If we would rewrite the above situations but did our job well, you feel we would be in a better position:

When a client sends an email that they are not satisfied with their subscription (trigger X), send an automatic reply acknowledging their feedback, offering a meeting and provide a temporary upgrade (action Y)

When a client needs urgent assistance from a person (trigger X), instantly connect them with a customer service rep (action Y).

You can see how these situations, still automated, most likely will increase relationships and value.

In short, whenever we make a decision to automate an activity, we need to think about the:

• Value of the output related to the automation (higher better than lower)
• Efficiency gain of automating the input such as saving time (higher is better than lower)
• Risk of automation (lower better than higher)

Given I didn’t figure out how to make the right decision matrix with more than 2 variables, we will need to go over a couple of steps to make the best decision about which activities to automate and how to decide what activities we automate first.

The first decision is between:

• Value of the output of the automation
• Efficiency gain of automating the input

Ideally, we want to prioritize activities that cost us a lot of time (e.g. efficiency gain is great) and have a big positive impact on our business (revenue, retention, churn prevention etc).

1. The Value-Efficiency Automation Matrix © SlideFill 2023

There are four outcomes when you do this exercise. We will need to calculate the ‘weighted’ value of these outcomes. When the parameter (value or efficiency gain) is high, attribute 10 points.

Example 1: Calculation Weighted Value

Automating a high value activity that would normally cost us a lot of time (high efficiency gain) will give us a score of 10 + 10 or 20 points. The weighted value of this combination is 10 points (20 points / 2 parameters).

Example 2: Calculation Weighted Value

Automating a high value activity that would normally not cost us a lot of time (low efficiency gain) will give us a score of 10 + 0 or 10 points. The weighted value of this combination is 5 points (10 points / 2 parameters).

In an ideal world without risk, we would want to prioritize the 10 points value above the 5 points weighted value.

There are four outcomes when you do this exercise for your activities and the value:

• High Value + High Efficiency Gain: These are activities you want to prioritize when setting up automation, but due to the high value, it’s important to make sure to estimate the risk (step 3)
• Low Value + High Efficiency Gain: These are activities you want to prioritize when setting up automation, given the lower value there might be lower risk, but as per example above, the wrong automation might do damage.
• Low Value + Low Efficiency Gain: These are activities you want to deprioritize except when it’s extremely fast to automate them (think for example a confirmation email when someone signs up)
• High Value + Low Efficiency Gain: These are activities that are somewhere in the middle of prioritization, given they might impose high risk while not saving a lot of time, but when set up correctly, they do have a big positive impact.

The weighted value we will call the ‘input and output combined value based prioritization’ score which we will use in step 3 to make our final decision about which activities to automate first.

The second decision you will need to make is the trade-off between the combined input and output value and the related risk of the activity.

The risk of automation is linked to:

• The value of the output
• The type of activity
• The quality of the data used as trigger

The value of the output is very straightforward: the more valuable the client is, the more we have to lose.

Example: Value of output

Making a mistake on a $10 million contract is going to impact your business more than making a mistake on a $5 dollar subscription.

Secondly, risk is linked to the type of the activity and what you are automating.

As seen above, failing to show up with the right solution, at the right time (for example trying to upsell your client when they are thinking about moving to a competitor) can have a long lasting impact on your relationship and subsequently revenue and retention.

Example: Type of Activity

Sending a client proposal containing data that’s under NDA with BMW by accident to Mercedes through automation, will more negatively impact your business than addressing someone at BMW with the wrong name.

These risks are influenced by the quality and level of details of the data that was used to trigger the automation.

Risk increases when the quality of data decreases, as the data will decide which automation to trigger.

Example: Quality of data used as trigger

When you aren’t certain about the quality of the language data about your clients in your CRM, it’s not a good idea to set up automated messaging in that specific language.

* NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement

When mapping out the trade-off between the combined input/output value and the related risk of activities, you will have four possible (extreme) scenarios:

2. The Weighted Value-Risk Automation Matrix © SlideFill 2023

• High I/O Value + High Risk: These activities should be deprioritized in terms of automation.
• Low I/O Value + High Risk: These activities are somewhere in the middle in terms of prioritization, overall the damage you can do is low and you should focus on decreasing the risk.
• High I/O Value + Low Risk: These activities should be prioritized in terms of automation given low risk and high impact.
• Low I/O Value + Low Risk: These activities should be prioritized but a secondary to the ones above, given the impact is lower.

You can use a similar system in terms of ‘points’ compared to step 2.

Most cases will not be extreme and if the weighted value between combined input/output value and risk is favorable, you should move ahead with automation.

The above decisions are all to assess the value that can be generated and the trade-off with the risk involved to create that value.

As William Shakespeare would say when he was still around in our day and age:

“To automate, or not to automate, that’s the question” — definitely not William Shakespeare (2023)

The final decision to automate or not will depend on other constraints related to setting up the automation itself. Factors involved are:

• Cost of automation
• Difficulty of automation
• Opportunity cost of automation

3. Factors to consider when automating sales processes © SlideFill 2023

The cost of automation is purely the financial cost (or cost of resources) in order to make the automation.

Example: Cost of automation

If you want to automate a low risk and low value activity saving your business $1,000 a month but the monthly development and maintenance cost is $2,000, it makes no sense to decide to automate.

This cost is often impacted by the difficulty to automate. That difficulty is related to the data available, the software involved, the quality of APIs and the internal skill set in order to bring the automation to fruition.

Example: Difficulty to automate

Imagine you want to set up automatic pitch decks based on industry and location, that will send an automatic email to potential leads with a personalized presentation about the value your business can generate for them (based on their input in the lead form).

To realize this, you will need to:

• Set up the lead form to capture data in your CRM
• Send the data from your CRM to Google Slides
• Create presentations based on different conditions (industry, location)
• Draft an automated email in a SEP (Apollo, Outreach, …)
• Attach the presentation to the email
• Get the contact details from your CRM in the SEP
• Send the email

You can see this is a complex installation involving a lot of software flawlessly working together.

Your organization might not have the resources to set this up, while the impact would be of great value: personalized proposals to new leads which will increase their likelihood to convert and increase your revenue.

Taking the opportunity to do some shameless product placement here, but we are building this functionality into SlideFill in the future.

Lastly, your final decision will be based on the opportunity cost of setting up the automation.

Automation will cost you money and time, which makes the same resources not available for another project.

From a business strategic prioritization point of view, it might make more sense to allocate these resources to a different pillar in your organization.

When making this decisions, it’s important to actualize the value of the automation as it often requires set up and a relatively low cost of maintenance

Example: Opportunity cost of automation

You need to decide between automating an activity or sending all your clients an end of year gift. The total cost of both is $25,000. The uplift in relationship with your clients through the end of year gift, will return you $100,000 in additional revenue in the upcoming year. The automation on the other hand will save you $10,000 per month.

On a first glance it might look like the end of year gift is the way to go. But if you would actualize everything to the beginning of the year:

Value of the end of year gift: $100,000 – $25,000 = $75,000
Value of the automation: $10,000 x 12 – $25,000 = $120,000 – $25,000 = $95,000

Most likely you will also be forced to do the same ‘end of year’ action the next year, while the value of the automation will run over in the new year without additional cost for your business (apart from maintenance).

You should be well equipped now to make the right high level decision about what you want to automate based on:

• The external value of the automation
• The internal value of the automation
• The risk related to the automation
• The cost of the automation
• The difficulty of the automation
• The opportunity cost of the automation

Your Revenue Operations Manager will play a vital role in the automation of your sales and potentially by extension marketing and customer services. The person you want to hire should be able to:

• Make decisions about prioritization
• Understand impact of automation across functions
• Scope business and technical requirements and feasibility
• Drive cross-functional stakeholders to execute set timelines

Knowledge often lives in silos. One of the most amazing things about being in Revenue Operations is the holistic organizational view: across departments, functions, business, marketing, technical etc.

This view is crucial to prioritize requests. Your Revenue Operations team will get most of their requests from revenue driving stakeholders (thank you Captain Obvious) and all of these stakeholders will have their own ideas and goals.

RevOps is in a great position to ‘centralize’ all of these ideas and goals and make a decision about the prioritization of the requests from the different teams.

Your Revenue Operations Manager will be able to provide strategic advice around which projects to pursue and which projects to kill based on the criteria outlined under the previous heading.

Once your Revenue Operations Manager has decided which automation projects to pursue, they are also in the right position to determine the impact of a project on other stakeholders, the similarities between projects and the potential spillover effects for other functions (economies of scale).

Similar to product managers they will be able to find ‘common themes’, think of solutions that are beneficial for every step of the sales process and find potential gaps that might break in between steps.

Example: Economies of scale

An automated lead scoring model to prioritize leads and find the most valuable ‘variables’, might be reusable with some modifications to find out which existing clients are the ones you should focus on for accelerated growth.

Example: Gaps between steps

An automation solution that increases the conversion of leads to existing clients by 10%, will require more resources on the existing business side to serve this increased volume of customers.

It’s key that the person you hire is capable of ‘seeing scale’ (across regions and functions) while being critical about potential points of failure.

Now the decision has been made which automation projects will be pursued, the potential scope of the project and the potential impact on other stakeholders; Revenue Operations will play a crucial role in the high level planning and ensuring the execution of the plan to make it become reality.

To do that, Revenue Operations will start working on the business requirements and the translation of these business requirements in high level technical needs. This leads me to the question that I got the most while being in Revenue Operation is:

“How technical is a Revenue Operations job?”

The answer: It’s not a necessity to have in-depth technical knowledge.

Understanding technical concepts will help you as Revenue Operations Manager to translate business requirements into technical needs and it will also help you to guide technical teams. The core is into your ability to explain as clearly and structurally what needs to happen in an ideal state and what needs to change between the current and future state.

The format you use to explain this: logic, visualizations, text; doesn’t matter as long as the other party understands you. I personally never needed any in-depth coding skills in order to do my job and it would most likely mean you are too much in the weeds.

Now that is settled – we continue the revenue operations objective. After translating business needs in technical requirements (and checking feasibility), your Revenue Operations Manager will set the executional timeline and ensure cross-functional stakeholders move the execution forward.

In an ideal state, Revenue Operations role during execution is to ensure stakeholders adhere to timelines and meet the quality set.

Depending on the scope and stage of the automation projects, these stakeholders are:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Customer service
• Engineering
• Product
• Procurement
• Finance
• Learning and Development
• Reporting

And these stakeholders are tied to different roles:

• Scoping: sales, marketing, customer service
• Planning: revenue operations
• Technical solution (in-house): engineering, product
• Technical solution (external): procurement, finance
• Testing: revenue operations
• Roll-out: learning and development, revenue operations itself
• Measurement: reporting, sales, marketing, customer service
• Feedback / iterations: depending on which steps to iterate
• Documenting of learnings: revenue operations

Over the whole timeline and most stages, Revenue Operations within their RACI be: accountable and informed.

In some stages they will also be responsible or consulted (either directly or through their relationships).

* RACI = Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed

Before you head to the conclusion of this article, you can find answers on frequently asked questions related to automating revenue generation activities in sales.

It’s very likely you will be able to automate revenue generating activities across your sales, marketing or customer success team. If you’re serious about doing more with less, increasing revenue while decreasing cost, you will need to start building automation prioritization within your company.

While it might require an upfront cost, it’s important to understand that the long term value most likely will outperform this cost leading to an increase in profit over time.

You want them to focus on three main areas:

Outline your input metrics, output metrics and the link between input and output metrics. Decide what is most important to you: saving resources (input metrics) or increasing revenue (output metrics). Order metrics you want to start influencing and the potential benefit for your business in doing so.

For the selected metrics, prioritize the revenue generating activities to automate. Make a prioritization decision based on the value, efficiency gains and risk involved in the automation. Take into consideration the time necessary to implement the automation.

Work together with your Revenue Operations (RevOps) team to start building a roadmap of necessary steps to implement the automation. Map the stakeholders involved to every single step and set roles, responsibilities and deadlines to make sure the execution moves forward.

This expert article is part of a free eBook and 7-part series addressing multiple aspects of how to do scaled business in today’s economy:

1. Lead Scoring and the impact on revenue
2. From reporting to revenue generating insights
3. Automation of revenue generating activities
4. Closing the service gap through data
5. Making marketing initiatives measurable
6. Customization of content at scale
7. Revenue Operations and generative AI

Or download the eBook for free

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No generative AI was used to write the article.
All examples are illustrative and fictional.