Is that what your business needs?
I’m sure many questions come to mind when trying to decide whether or not you should automate your sales force: Is it really necessary? Would it work? Is it the right time to do it ? Well, let’s explore some aspects of Mobile Sales Force Automation (SFA) before answering all these questions.
Sales have traditionally been in the field. The sales cycle begins when a representative organizes his route in the morning, serves as many clients as possible during his journey, and then returns to the office by the end of the day to report and upload all the information collected (# of sales, visited / unvisited clients, etc.). This process is simple to follow, IF you only have a few sales reps and your customer list is short. But what if you have a sales team of more than 10 reps? What if each of them visits more than 10 clients per day? If so, there is a good chance that you’ll lose key sales information (details that can be forgotten or misloaded) and control over sales activity (you don’t know where they went, what they did exactly and why you are getting good or bad results).
This is where your interest in implementing Mobile Sales Force Automation (SFA) converges with your sales’s team organization and performance . The idea is to mobilize your resources efficiently, monitor your sales reps while they are doing the field work, and make sure that important information is not lost between the field and the office (and vice versa).
Mobile Sales Force Automation aims to eradicate all these challenges that sales reps face while working on/off the field. This type of tool optimizes the sales process while providing the team with key tools, valuable resources and relevant information for their operation. The office backend benefits supervisors by providing complete visibility into the activity of field reps, real-time sales updates, sharing customer data among all units involved, and collecting & processing all key information without any loss.
Let’s go back to the questions: Is it really necessary? Would it work? Is it the right time to do it?, the answers are: Yes, Yes and Yes! Since if you are looking for a mobile SFA tool, it’s because you need to improve your sales cycle, you think something is not working as it should or you are facing a growth of your sales team and things are getting out of hand.
If you still have doubts, here are three reasons why a company should implement a Mobile SFA strategy:
- To improve sales team’s performance
Performance in a sales team is measured by its ability to produce greater and better results within the available time frame (which means being more productive). By taking advantage of a Mobile SFA tool, vendors can upload and update information of each completed activity in real time and directly on their mobile devices, without the tedious job of uploading them when they return to the office after a long workday. Plus, every time sales reps interacts with their customers, they have complete customer information at their fingertips (before the visit), reducing response time to recurring questions and increasing their satisfaction rate. By using the right tool, sales will not be lost, you will not miss any opportunity, and your customers will not be disappointed.
- To monitor sales activity
Most sales managers have concerns about the activity of their field representatives. Are they making visits? Are they taking the proper time to do them? Imagine a sales supervisor sitting at the office desk, being able to visualize on a map the exact time and location of all executed transactions, according to the GPS coordinates of their vendors’ mobile devices. Furthermore, imagine the same supervisor generating automatic management reports based on all transactions made per day, per seller, per customer, and thus proposing adjustments in sales strategies. Well that’s exactly what you can do by implementing an integrated SFA tool.
- To increase customer’s satisfaction
Successful companies depend on happy customers, and customers are happy when they receive prompt, efficient, and appropriate attention. Mobile SFA tools enable the sales team to process orders instantly, upload relevant information about their customers, check information from previous orders & billing history, among many other things … all online, making it easier and faster for them to do their job and leave more space to attend to customer issues and needs.
So if you’re about to make the decision and wonder “what next?”, We have a revelation for you. This is exactly what XSales® does! We summarize all the advantages of a Mobile SFA and add some extra features that will improve your experience. We have been doing this for over 20 years and we love it! to get a taste of what to expect here are some of the benefits that our solution offers:
- Coverage of the entire sales cycle from order taking to invoicing and settlement.
- Enhanced productivity and profitability at all levels.
- Comprehensive Field Force Attendance information (sales & billing history, selling policies, inventory, price lists, etc.)
- Real time tracking of field sales person and their transactions.
- BI & Performance Analytics (Dashboards & Reports)
- Geographic Route planning and management
- Full visibility (even with third party distributors involved)
- Messages to your team, signature validation, multimedia, surveys, etc.
Mobile Sales Force Automation is a must for companies looking to boost their sales, it is an icing on the cake for those who have already automated some activities and it’s the best investment for those who have not taken advantage of any of the available digital world tools.
