How small business founders can eliminate manual sales work with an autonomous CRM

Your sales team is the core of your business’s revenue engine. They’re at their best when they’re meeting with potential leads, finding out what they’re looking for, and matching up whatever you’re selling with those needs.

But far too many salespeople are stuck dealing with administrative work and data entry. That’s why, according to Salesforce, they spend up to 72% of their time on tasks other than selling.

An autonomous CRM, meaning a CRM that uses AI to automate those non-selling tasks, can completely eliminate that work and give your salespeople their time back.

Here’s how it’s done.

Identify the tasks draining your sales team’s time

Most small business founders have absolutely no idea just how much time goes towards tasks their salespeople would rather not do. Tasks that decrease their bandwidth for activities that can actually generate revenue.

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of some of the most common non-selling tasks your salespeople have to do, and how much time they’re costing. Use it as a baseline for identifying these tasks in your business

Set clear goals for your autonomous CRM

An autonomous CRM will work best for your sales team if you have clear goals. “Automate everything” isn’t quite robust enough as a goal to support this kind of deployment.

Making these goals clear and measurable will allow you to gauge the impact of your CRM over time, as well as prioritize the automations and AI features you want to roll out first. Here are some examples of goals you might aim for:

• Reduce manual data entry time by 60% within 30 days.
• Increase lead-to-opportunity conversion by 25% after automation.
• Cut average sales-cycle length by 15 days.

Before you finalize your CRM purchase, run through this quick checklist and define measurable goals for each:

• Top 3 Pain Points: (e.g., missed follow-ups, no pipeline visibility, clunky data imports)
• Budget & Time Constraints: (What’s your monthly budget? How fast do you need to be live?)
• User-Friendliness: (Can your team navigate it without full-time admin support?)
• Must-Have Integrations: (Email, Slack, analytics, payment platforms, etc.)
• Growth Outlook: (Will you outgrow this CRM in 3 months or is there a path to scale?)

Decision Time: Compare how each CRM scores on these 5 items. The one that addresses your biggest pain points and fits your budget/time constraints (while offering a reasonable growth path) is your winner.

Research and shortlist autonomous CRMs that fit your budget

There are many examples of CRMs built for small businesses on the market, so you need to choose the right one. It’s a market that’s quickly changing, with a few key players that control the majority of it, making it prime for disruption. You want to look for tools that offer robust AI features, whether that’s AI-assisted content generation (for writing better outreach emails), event-driven architecture (for automatically updating the right objects based on certain triggers), or predictive analytics (for refining your sales processes over time.

And, above all, it has to fit your SMB budget. Here’s an example table breaking down some of the most popular CRMs in the space right now.

Run a quick pilot project to see results before a full deployment

As exciting as the prospect of automating all your non-sales tasks might be, you don’t necessarily want to deploy your autonomous CRM at scale as soon as you find it. Like anything else, using a CRM is something you should test and iterate on. The best way to do that is to use a pilot project, a small, measurable project you can turn around relatively quickly. Here’s how you can do that:

• Keep the scope small: You can start by automating just a single process (e.g., lead capture from website forms) or having one salesperson use your autonomous CRM for all their tasks.
• Pick a timeline: You’ll need a decent amount of time to see any changes, like a few weeks or even a few months.
• Pick a metric: Ideally, you should turn one of the goals you’ve already set into a smaller, measurable objective. Like, say, how much time your one salesperson saves each day they use the new CRM.
• Compare against a control group: Use the metric you’ve chosen and measure it with the salespeople or processes where you’re not using your CRM. This will give you something to compare your CRM’s impact against.

An autonomous CRM is almost guaranteed to have an impact on the way your salespeople work, but it has to be used in the right way. That’s what a pilot project is so essential (it’s also a great way to get buy-in from a manager if you need it).

Deploy your CRM and onboard your team

If your pilot project is a success, you can go ahead and deploy your CRM to your entire team. Congratulations! Here’s a checklist to make sure that deployment goes off without a hitch:

• Find out how you’re going to migrate your data: Whether you’re already using a CRM or still relying on spreadsheets, you need a way to get data from your current systems into your new CRM. Most CRM platforms have built-in platforms that help you do this or, at least, let you import CSV files.
• Train your people: Even in a small business, you don’t want to leave your team to figure things out on their own. Guide them through the deployment and have a champion (like the person who ran the pilot) who can help them through any questions they have.
• Onboard new processes bit by bit: You don’t want to turn on automations for all your processes all at once. Slowly start relying on your CRM more and more over time. That way, you won’t overwhelm your sales team with new things to learn.
• Don’t hesitate to reach out for help: The CRM you’ve just deployed likely has a support team who’ll be happy to help you through your deployment. Don’t be shy and reach out if you need them!

Measure results and iterate

Just because your CRM is successfully deployed doesn’t mean you should stop tracking your team’s success metrics. You want to quantify your new CRM’s impact so you know where it’s helping your team the most and where there’s an improvement to be made. You should track the metrics you identified in your initial goals, but you can slowly add on the following as you start to rely on your CRM more and more:

Efficiency metrics

• Hours saved on manual data entry each week
• Reduction in admin task completion time
• Increase in selling time

Revenue metrics

• Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate improvement
• Average deal size changes
• Sales cycle length reduction

Cost metrics

• Productivity gain per dollar spent
• Cost per qualified lead generated
• Revenue gains compared to the amount spent on your CRM

A quarter review to assess these metrics will help make sure you’re consistently getting maximum value out of your CRM.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to deploy an autonomous CRM for a five-person team?

Depending on the CRM you choose, it can be deployed in just a couple of hours. Full onboarding for your team might take a week or two, at which point you’ll start seeing results.

Which sales tasks should be automated?

Commonly automated sales tasks include:

• Call and email capture
• Contact enrichment
• Lead scoring
• Deal creation
• Task assignment
• Follow-up reminders

Autonomous CRMs can also automate more complex tasks, like proposal generation, meeting scheduling, and prospect outreach.

How can I get data from other sources into my CRM?

Most CRM platforms allow you to import data from other tools through CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets files. Some also have built-in integration solutions to pull in data from other tools. Alternatively, you can use third-party integration platforms like Zapier to move data between these systems.

How can I measure the ROI of a CRM?

Metrics like time saved on manual tasks, improvements in conversion rates, and increased deal velocity can help you measure the ROI of a CRM. You can compare improvements in these metrics to the cost of your CRM to see if you’re getting a positive ROI.