How to use scripts to better your revenue

Let’s start by tackling the elephant in the room. Almost every article you come across on this subject is going to hark on the benefits of automation and scripting for improving sales and automation the sales funnel, but that is only a small part of what scripting can add to your business. If you were to take an audit of the time your staff members waste due to avoidable tasks, you would be staggered. From having to update patches to schedule collaboration, your company is bleeding productive time, and yet with just a few changes to how you operate, you could automate most of the wasteful tasks within your company.

The power of programming

There is a moment in a programmer’s first tentative days when he or she feels like anything is possible. That moment often happens during that person’s “Hello World” moment. Scripts, automation, and even machine learning, are mere extensions of that feeling. When people talk about flexibility and absolute customization, they are talking about raw programming. The most refined version of that process is IT automation and scripting.

Pre-Sale, sales, after-sales, repeat sales

The sheer weight of what scripting and automation can do for your sales funnel is awe inspiring and is the reason why many online articles from companies like Inc, Forbes and Entrepreneur seem to focus on it to the exception of all else.

Automated replies to questions is highly customizable in a way that allows companies to personalize the experience in a very deep and meaningful way. This type of automation is also common with personalized outgoing emails, which can make warming leads a lot easier. With the use of dynamic websites or even with a clever navigating system, you can use scripting to direct buyers to the items they are most likely to buy (suggested purchase items are still effective).

Upselling is very popular even with smaller companies and eCommerce websites because it so easy to implement (e.g. You want the bronze package, have you considered the silver?). As are the many methods you can use to get people to buy more before they finalize the checkout. After-sales is easily manageable with automation, from auto-replies to tech queries, to surveys on how the products are going.

Finally, you can use scripting to help you get repeat sales. How in-depth you go with it is up to you because in essence all you have to do is ensure that the customer had a good experience with your company and has no reason to try a different company next time.

Patching, updating, maintaining, optimizing

In office/business operational costs can be lowered through scripting. We all know that devices auto-update these days, but having your devices update during productive hours is devastatingly wasteful. With the use of scripts, you could have all updates and patches checked, downloaded, and installed at night when the devices are set to turn off. This method, facilitated by patch management, ensures that instead of turning off directly, they do their downloading, patching, updating, and undergo all their restarts, and then they power down ready for the next day.

Routine maintenance isn’t just a task for a world-weary tech support agent. Many of the tasks can be done automatically through clever scripting. These include things like creating system restore points, deleting temp files, deleting internet histories, reboots, shutdowns, defragmenting (all disks) and running checkdisk (all disks). With the use of scripts, you can make small changes that don’t seem like a big deal to other companies, but that make a massive difference to the productivity of your staff.

For example, you have a social media agent who uses 50+ different profiles per day. You can set your Edge browser to delete temp files, cookies, etc., every time all Edge windows are closed. This is good because it stops cookie/temp tracking across different social media accounts, so that social media platforms do not link your accounts in any meaningful way. But, with scripting, you could automate the entire process so that temp files and cookies are deleted when using some accounts or browsers, but not with others. This would allow your social media agent to jump seamlessly between one account to the other without social media companies and advertising companies tracking their movements.

Take time and waste audits

When people say that a company is run by accountants, they usually mean it in a negative way. It is a very cold management method built upon squeezing being very frugal and robotically efficient. Having every penny of revenue and expense scrutinized is never as fruitful as it seems. What you gain in profits you lose through paralysis by analysis.

The reason for this is that every time you find an area where time is being wasted, or resources are being wasted, there is often a programmatic solution. Even if your business is being run like a finely tuned engine, there are indirect ways that scripting can help improve your revenue, such as through improving your service quality.

Things as simple as alerts whenever a customer query goes unanswered for more than 12 hours is enough to improve revenue over the long term, especially when it comes to customer retention and brand building. Run an audit on the productive time your company could save and/or on the wasted resources your company uses and see if scripting offers the solution to any highlighted problems.