It’s one of the most common misconceptions about marketing automation: that it’s a tool built solely for marketers, and that your sales team will have to invest hours of their time into learning a new system that will do little for them. Well, consider this myth busted. While marketing automation certainly simplifies the lives of marketers, it also yields significant benefits for your sales team — and ultimately, your bottom line.

There are a number of ways that sales reps can use marketing automation to track prospect activities, prioritize their leads, and target their sales pitches. But as any good salesperson will tell you, it’s all about the numbers — and when it comes to marketing automation, the numbers speak for themselves. See the presentation below for eight stats directly from the Marketing Automation for Sales Playbook, as well as a brief analysis of what these stats imply.

“Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.” -InsideSales.com

The ability to react in real time is imperative. Your prospect has a busy schedule; researching your product and understanding its potential benefits is probably not the only thing on his or her to-do list. Real-time alerts give you the tools you need to be proactive, and allow you to make your move when you are top of mind. If you see that a prospect is browsing your website to read up on your product, pick up your phone and give them a call. Not only are odds in your favor that they’ll have a free moment to talk, but they’re likely to be more receptive to what you have to say.

“61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; However, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.” -MarketingSherpa

Phrased differently: for a majority of B2B companies, 73% of the leads that sales receives are a waste of their time. Consider the impact of being able to identify and weed out this 73% ahead of time — and allowing your sales reps to spend the extra time focusing on only the hottest and most sales-ready leads. Using marketing automation, marketing and sales can build out a blended lead scoring and grading model, based on their ideal buyer persona and implicit buying signals. Leads will automatically be passed to sales when they meet certain qualifications, and sales reps can feel confident that the leads they’re reaching out to will be well worth their time.

“Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.” -The Annuitas Group

Although significant, this stat really isn’t surprising when you consider that lead nurturing is all about relationship building. By periodically sending helpful, non sales-heavy content to a prospect over a period of time, you begin to establish your brand as a thought leader and a reliable source of information — and most importantly, you begin to establish trust. By the time a sales rep begins to talk pricing with a prospect, they no longer see your product as just another commodity, and are far less likely to try to talk you down in price.

Check out more insightful stats in the SlideShare presentation below, and be sure to download the Marketing Automation for Sales Playbook for deeper insights into how your sales team can put marketing automation into action.