Task Automation with Smart Queue: How to design your entire day!

We have all used to-do once in our work life.

Some of us (me) are purely in love with the concept and use every single day to finish tasks one by one. There is definitely a sense of accomplishment when you cross off a task.

But, did you ever think beyond to-do?

I mean, to-dos give us a broader picture of our day. But they are not making any addition to our work style. It is merely reminding us of what our day looks like, and what to do next.

What if there is a to-do that can help you complete your tasks one after another, and add value to your work style for real. A tool that can drastically improve your sales productivity.

Welcome to the world of Smart Queues, my friend.

What is a Smart Queue?

In simple words, a Smart Queue is a series of tasks or activities that run one after another, taking away manual efforts from your everyday routine. 

Smart Queue feeds you one activity after another in a row so a user can complete the maximum number of tasks in a time frame using task automation.

The concept behind the Smart Queue task automation

The whole purpose behind designing Smart Queue is to steal the time that you otherwise waste in between two tasks. The motive is to eliminate the manual effort & time that sales reps make either to make a call, switch between activities, or change the status of activities. 

Smart Queue takes away that part of the process from your routine, so you are left with more time naturally. 

Think about it. Suppose you have a 4-step process, and it takes a day to complete. If you automate the 3rd step, it will naturally complete in less than a day.

How Smart Queue can help your sales team

In our experiments, we have found more than just time saving with Smart Queue task automation. These are some of the obvious benefits you’ll notice after using a Smart Queue:

1. More number of tasks per day: Because you have saved a lot of time with task automation. 

2. More focused on the activity: Because you have one activity after another coming up. There are no extra efforts given, no distractions, no changes in the to-do – A dedicated list of activities that you have decided and finished off like a pro.

3. No thoughts on what to do next: It sounds stupid, but we all have been through this. Wasting a good number of minutes on what do I have to do next, even though we have our very own to-do. We often make sequential changes in our task list all the time. Smart Queue takes you from one task to another. Here, your complete focus is on executing activities.  

4. More individual & overall productivity: Not just sales reps can perform more tasks per day, but they can execute their tasks with a faster approach.

Apart from these 4 benefits, I have listed down some 2nd or 3rd level benefits that come as byproducts for sales reps and managers after using Smart Queues:

What are the things you can control in a Smart Queue?

Even though automation is the heart of Smart Queues, users still have all the necessary controls. 

If I want to use a Smart Queue or any automation for the matter, I would want it to enhance my productivity, but it should still be in my control. 

Smart Queue has the same concept.  

You have everything in control, yet it can help you save a lot of time. Let’s dig deeper into the controlling parts so that we can get a better idea.

1. Selection of activities

This is a fundamental thing, yet very important. Smart Queue is not something that runs on random activities. You have to choose all the activities and create a queue. The activity selection can lead us to a revolutionary way of working (more on that later.)

Take a look at the image of Salesmate Smart Queue below:

2. Pause and resume Smart Queue

At any point in time, users have the controls to Pause and Resume the automated queue. Take a look at the image of Salesmate Smart Queue:

The Pausing feature can be handy when you want to take a short break or attend a brief meeting with your colleagues. After the break, you can start where you left off.

3. Skip and reschedule

When the Smart Queue is running, you might want to keep some activities for the last. You can easily skip a particular activity and jump to the next one. You can even jump to a specific activity. For example, jump to 8th activity from the list of 26.

While skipping can be very useful, it still keeps the skipped activity in the queue. Smart Queue also allows you to reschedule a particular activity for a desired date and time.  

4. Complete activities and automatically log

One of the finest features of the Smart Queue is, you can complete a particular activity, and it will automatically record the updates in the activity timeline. So, while completing the list of activities, you don’t have to worry about keeping track of the changes, Smart Queue does that for you.

5. Use it as a Power Dialer with Voicemail Drop

I’m saving the best one for the last!

Power Dialer is one of the use cases of Smart Queue, probably the biggest one.

Power Dialer is a highly demanded feature from sales reps, especially from the once who are always on calls. Power Dialer simply dials one call after another, so the reps don’t have to dial manually.  

We have already talked about what is a Power Dialer and its benefits in detail in our previous article. You can check it out to know more about this feature. 

Have a look at the image below where Salesmate Smart Queue is used as a Power Dialer with excellent use of Voicemail Drop.

Voicemail Drop is a simple, yet very time-saving functionality from Salesmate that allows users to record a bunch of Voicemail messages. Users can drop these messages when prospects are not able to answer the calls.

Reps don’t need to record a new message every single time. 

They just need to select from the pre-recorded voicemail messages, and boom!

How does the Smart Queue work inside the Salesmate?

Salesmate recently introduced the Smart Queue feature to automate everyday activities. In the beginning, the sole idea was to build a Power Dialer, but we went one step further and provided a solution that can work not just for calls, but all kinds of activities. 

Smart Queue works with all kinds of activities inside Salesmate like Calls, Emails, Demos, Meeting, anything. 

All you have to do is pick those activities and start an automated queue. 

Let’s understand this with a relatable example. 

Let’s say Mark has a very tight day. He has to make 25 calls and email to 30 prospects. 

The first step for Mark is to identify and select these 55 activities for the day. He can use advanced Salesmate filers to shorten the selection process. The next obvious step is to hit the “Start Queue” button. 

This means the Smart Queue is started, and Mark will be automatically taken to the 1st activity screen.

Mark doesn’t have to go to Record Screens manually and waste his time; Salesmate Smart Queue will do that for him.

For example; the second activity is called ‘Call Joseph About XYZ.’ As soon as Mark finishes the first activity, the Queue will take him to Joseph’s contact screen. 

An interesting thing to notice here is – Salesmate will always prioritize Deals over Contact and Company record screen.

That means, if Mark has placed all the details while creating the activity, Salesmate will give first preference to the Deal screen. If that is not available, then Contact Screen, and then Company Screen.

Just like that, Mark will move from one activity to another in a row without putting manual efforts. All he has to care about is the deal and what the prospect wants!

Design your entire day with Smart Queue

We have discussed a long list of benefits from this awesome task automation feature.

But there is one more way that can help you simplify and improve everyday performance. This way has a psychological edge to it.

Have you ever put so much thinking into brushing your teeth or having coffee? Probably not (if you have, it’s an excellent spiritual exercise).

The point is; there are some things that we just do. Essential things, but we have made them a part of our routine. 

You can apply the same concept to your sales routine using the Smart Queue.

See, all Smart Queue does is throws activities to you one after another, but the selection of activities is still in your hands!

So what if you call prospects that are in the first stage of the sales pipeline every single morning. 

That’ll be 30 calls to prospects who are in the first stage of the pipeline in the morning. All you have to do is choose those 30 people and start the queue. 

When you segmentize your activities, you don’t have to change your mindset after every action. For the next 30 calls, you can have the same mindset, because they all belong to the same pipeline stage, the same group.

Next, spend an hour on the prospects who are in the fourth stage of the pipeline. Suppose you have to ask about the experience of the prospects who have just finished a free trial of your product. Choose this bunch, keep the same mindset, and boom!

By performing this practice every day using Smart Queue, you can literally design a perfect and personalized work routine for yourself.

Bottomline

Smart Queue is task automation, but with Salesmate, you can still have all the controls. So start experimenting with Smart Queues. The best thing you can do is to segment your activities, and you can use Salesmate filters for that. 

Start using the Smart Queue now and let us know how it helped you plan your day.