Technology

Applied Epic Sales Automation: Tips and Tricks for Making the Switch

Published: May 04, 2018

With so many features and functionalities, Applied Epic users often find themselves wondering which ones are best for their agency or brokerage to implement. Although they’re all important to consider for the business, the sales automation functionality can be a crucial step for overall business success.

Getting the right information and setting the workflows can be a challenge, but it will improve the business’ overall returns in the end. Here, we talk to Lindsay Stradeski from Applied Systems about the reasons agencies and brokerages implement Applied Epic’s sales automation solution, what they can expect to see when done correctly and how to optimize their team for success.

Why Sales Automation?

Agencies and brokerages turn to sales automation for myriad reasons, but almost always, it’s in an effort to close the gaps in their sales pipeline to create a more efficient process. “Agencies and brokerages have reported several challenges in their current processes that lead them to choosing sales automation, including losing deals due to a forgotten follow-up, tedious duplicate-entry processes in excel, an outside CRM taking their eye off the ball of actually selling and not having a good way to sort and prioritize leads based on meaningful data, such as likelihood to close or revenue/premium opportunity,” said Stradeski.

The Biggest Challenge

Sales automation can be incredibly important for an agency or brokerage, but it often feels like an extra burden on employees’ time at work to implement. Although it is an undertaking, it’s very much worthwhile. “The biggest inhibitor to adoption is simply in finding the time for implementation,” said Stradeski. “However, agencies who have implemented sales automation are seeing average profit margin increases of 24 percent.”

There are aspects of the system to help ease that transition as well. “There are standard MyEpic and written workflows as well as default configurations for opportunity stages to help streamline the onboarding process, which can of course be tailored to an agency or brokerage’s sales process as needed,” said Stradeski. “There are also default reports to aid in sales tracking and management.”

Build a Renewal Pipeline

Renewals should be the cornerstone of an agency or brokerage’s business as 86 percent of a producer’s earnings are typically generated from their renewal business. They’re key to the agency or brokerage’s success, and for those already (or thinking of switching to) Applied Epic, that process can be automated, which means fewer lost opportunities on easy wins. “Applied Epic sales automation allows users to track and manage their sales pipeline directly within the management system, removing the need for duplicate entry and providing powerful real-time data and visualizations on sales performance across the entire organization,” said Stradeski. “Having an automated renewal pipeline alongside their new business ensure they never miss an important renewal.”

Forecast New Business Opportunities

Automating the sales process in Applied Epic allows users to easily see all sales opportunities at once through the main dashboard, where all new business opportunities are sorted by the current sales process stage and probability to close. “Using the ‘Opportunities’ list view, users can easily change their sorts based on preference, including estimated revenue or premium, source of the account, target close date, etc.,” said Stradeski. “The manager-level dashboards allow for sales leaders to keep an eye on bigger opportunities by filtering the team’s opportunities based on a premium or revenue target in the ‘Producer Support’ view. The executive-level view calls out the highest revenue-generating opportunities for the entire organization for the next 30 days. All data is constantly refreshed as new prospects are being added into the system, so there is never any worry that a prospect list or report is outdated by the time it gets into the hands of the user.”

The Dashboard Is Everything

According to Applied Systems, the dashboard is the most requested and used function of the Applied Epic sales automation features, and they have a few tips for making it the most effective for your agency or brokerage: “We recommend that clients consider which data elements within an opportunity to be ‘required’ fields,” said Stradeski. “For example, if I don’t mandate the capture of an estimated premium, I lose a lot of the power of the sales funnel visualization. Also, if clients have producers that spend any amount of time prospecting outside of the office, they should ensure they’ve enabled them with mobile access so they can add prospects and opportunities directly anywhere from their device.”