Management Features of Sales Force AutomationSales, Automating Sales Functions, Effective Sales Management, Oppurtunity Management. Diane Newsom
September 28, 2006
Sales force automation, or SFA, is a term that refers at its most
basic to automating critical sales functions like lead and account
management. Sales force automation uses software to automate sales
tasks like order processing, lead generation, information sharing,
contact management, customer management, and employee evaluation. It also keeps track of customer preferences, buying habits, demographics, and performance management.
Sales force automation tools improve field sales productivity and open
whole new realms of possibility for companies. With an on-demand
architecture that allows effective sales force management and CRM,
managing sales information is easy on even the largest scales.
Essentially, customers and sales employees can manage and share any
type of information. There are a number of benefits and features
that come with sales force automation technology, and these features
comprise the backbone of the SFA system. They include: Lead managementLead
management allows companies to keep better track of leads by ensuring
they don't get cold. This can reduce or eliminate the need for manual
routing and lead assignment duplication, clearly defines opportunity
assignments, and is able to automatically assign leads to the correct
individual based on territory, product expertise or user-defined rules.
Thus SFA allows for automatic load leveling across sales territories,
and better relationships between team members. For example, with
automatic lead management, you can set security controls that ensure
teams or partners can access only their own leads, increase lead
conversion rates and improve sales response times. Opportunity managementOpportunity
management allows sales teams to work better as units by standardizing
sales methods and systems, identifying bottlenecks, and tracking deal
closures. It also allows employees to focus their resources on
strengthening key partnerships and dominating key competitors instead
of competing with each other. More organized sales teams allow managers
to delegate tasks and set up automatic reminder emails for themselves
and their team. Most importantly, the opportunity management
feature allows companies to centrally track custom information like
partner and customer communications and milestones while simultaneously
monitoring myriad sales processes like sales channels, service
effectiveness or product lines. Account managementAn
account management system ensures that your company is able to attain
full knowledge of your customer accounts. Accurate knowledge of
customer account equals better collaboration amongst your sales teams
and retains lasting customer relationships. Additionally, account
management allows a company to defines and evaluate all those involved
with the account, from the project manager to the executive sponsor. With
account management, you can set up online access to all customer
account information, like organization charts and current
partners-across the entire company. No one is left in the dark and
everyone knows the account status and history. Territory Management On-demand,
advanced territory management capabilities allow you to adjust to rapid
changes within your company. An easy point-and-click interface ensures
your company can automatically route accounts and opportunities to the
correct territories. A solid territory management system also
decreases lag time in lead assignments by ensuring a lead never gets
cold; lead assignments are easily queued and automatically sent to the
correct territory. In essence, territory management allows companies to
easily monitor, set up, gather, transfer, assign, re-assign, and change
accounts across territories. Contract ManagementContract
management is another integral feature in sales force automation.
Essentially, it allows companies to manage a contract's lifespan by
shortening approval cycles for contracts, renewing contracts sooner,
and reducing administrative costs. This SFA feature improves
tracking and management of contract information, such as value,
conditions, terms, evaluations, and more. Traditionally, most
companies have had to build, buy and sustain an IT software system all
on their own; however, this leads to extremely high maintenance fees
and myriad other costs. Today, the advent of automated sales force
technology allows businesses to subscribe to already built, on-demand,
customizable services that provide everything a traditional IT software
does and more. The architecture of sales force automation
allows for a decrease in the total cost of ownership, reduction of risk
factors, a decrease in wasted time, and a new focus on business and
management rather than technology.
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