A Sales Force Automation solution is software that increases the productivity of the sales team, optimizing and automating both the processes and the management of the sales cycle.
There are many benefits for your sales team and, of course, for your company. Free your salespeople from repetitive tasks of little value, provide better information about customers and enable reports and forecasts to be prepared quickly.
At Vincle we believe that it is a great investment for any company that wishes to improve the results of its sales teams.
A 2017 IDC study shows some revealing results about the benefits of using a Sales Force Automation:
It is clear that there are many options on the market, but not all of them are equally good or meet your company’s needs.
And the latter is the most important thing whenever you want to implement some new technology or work process in your company. You can find some tips below that will help you make the right decision.
The implementation of a Sales Force Automation solution means facing internal reluctance that you must overcome and this will require some training and adapting, so you must make the right choice. To do this, the first thing you should do is analyse the needs of your company and involve various profiles and departments in a prior study: so, not only those who are going to make the decision have to participate, but also those who are going to use it every day.
This is one of the most important aspects and is closely related to the previous point: you need a Sales Force Automation technology that allows you to achieve what your company requires. And we are not only talking about the capabilities it may have, but about the option to be flexible enough to design custom features.
The software should fit the needs of your company. Make sure that these adaptations can be made quickly and that they will work. Even ask a computer expert if necessary.
Many claim to offer full customisation, but the reality is that they install the full software and disable what you have not asked for. This causes everything to go slower because in addition to what you have requested you have a lot of inactive elements.
Just by having only and exclusively what you need, the response speed will be much faster, the fact that a Sales Force Automation tool is in the cloud will allow you to take advantage of this technology. Taking special relevance to use the software either online and offline on any device.
It is vital that your salespeople can access the information at any time they need it: whether preparing a visit from home, en route while going to their next destination or even while with the client.
To do this, you must ensure that it can be accessed online (to see real time information) and offline (because in certain areas there may be no line: in some sections of a supermarket, for example).
Related to the previous point, it is also good if Sales Force Automation technology is compatible with any system and accessible from any operating system and device: iPhone, Android, Windows, as well as different smartphone and tablet brands.
In addition to compatibility with devices and operating systems, you should prioritize that it can be easily integrated with any software that you use in your company. At least with the most important such as ERP (SAP, JD Edwards, …).
A Sales Force Automation software must be able to take advantage of all the data you have available, in order to be able to provide key information for the sale: statistics, custom reports, KPIs, etc.
Artificial intelligence is making great progress and you must be in a position to benefit from its full potential.
The software must be easy to use, as well as very intuitive. In this way, your commercial team will not require long periods of training and will be able to quickly access everything they need.
Your business cannot be impaired due to not being able to work with other currencies or in other languages that your customers may require. If you have a small, local business, you probably won’t need it, but in a global market, it would be silly not to take the opportunity.
This feature is extremely important to calculate and optimize your sales routes. Take advantage of the analytical capacity of your Sales Force Automation technology to rate your leads and adapt your routes to the criteria that you consider best.