Currently, and at all levels of organizations, many people ask the question: how to sell more and better? Although the answer to this question is composed of many elements, in this article we are going to develop how to improve sales using sales force management technology.
At times like the current ones in which the sales of most organizations have fallen compared to previous years in most sectors, on many occasions we ask ourselves, what is wrong with sales? We ask ourselves, is it the product / service? Is it the competition? Is it the prices? Is it the external or internal sellers?… Is it all at once?
Surely the answer is that there is a bit of everything. But, in this sense, a lot is said about issues related to strategic marketing: positioning, competitor analysis, brand, pricing policies, communication plan, etc., but very little is said about sales force management both internal and external.
In fact, it is curious to see that while in production (or in other areas) for many years we have found an increasingly accurate and optimized management: advanced computer systems for production management, production orders, documentation, codes of bars, permanent inventories, etc., we find ourselves in totally chaotic situations most of the times in the sales area.
Sales management is being the great forgotten for many reasons:
The sales area, due to the profile of results-oriented people, is more difficult to organize and create procedures than in other areas.
Developing a large part of its activity outside the company makes its management and optimization more complex.
Constant interaction with the client makes planning difficult as there are many “external” elements that make time optimization complex.
But, at the same time, sales cannot be abandoned for a second since proper sales management is a critical process for several aspects:
It is one of the most responsible for achieving the turnover, a critical parameter in any organization.
Small improvements in sales management achieve significant improvements in the organization's overall results.
On many occasions, it is the most important line of communication between the organization and the client and therefore the image of the organization for the client.
The costs of personnel in the commercial area are, in most cases, quite high.
The high level of staff turnover creates problems due to the amount of information that is lost each time a person leaves the organization.
The reality in most cases is that some of the following situations are common:
There is no global knowledge of the customer since information about customers is lost in notes, non-centralized databases, in the heads of salespeople, etc. This causes problems such as not being able to segment well and treating each of the customer segments in a more personalized way.
There is no control over the performance of the sales network as well as the causes of its positive or negative performance.
It is costly to set and review goals in the sales area. It even takes time to calculate the variable part of the remuneration in the cases in which it occurs.
It is difficult to draw conclusions about customer behavior and it is difficult for us to answer questions such as What are my most profitable customers? And the least? Which ones do I bill the most? Which are the ones with the greatest growth potential? And the minor ?, etc, etc.
Sellers cannot easily enter orders into the computer system.
Planning and forecasting sales is an almost impossible task on many occasions since doing it involves having endless meetings with each of the salespeople and for them to collect the necessary information that in many cases they do not have prepared either.
There is not enough information for the correct decision making about the sales network. Information is almost always lacking on the success of the visits made, the profitability of each of the sellers, the impact of discounts on profitability, on which customer profile is interesting to visit based on acquisition cost, etc.
It is complex to know in what state of the sales cycle each one of the budgets handled by the organization is in order to be able to make forecasts for the other areas of the organization.
If it is sold through distributors, there is no knowledge of the market and its needs, so there is a certain degree of "opacity" with the market.
It is almost impossible to accurately calculate the degree of success and return on investment of marketing campaigns.
The lack of customer information means that the incident management and after-sales service are carried out without sufficient efficiency, which results in the quality of the after-sales service, acting negatively on customer loyalty.
In certain sectors, the lack of precision in terms of sales forecasts can lead to failures in production planning, with the additional manufacturing costs that this implies.
If we feel identified with more than one of these situations, we have problems in the sales area. In this "problem", technology can help a lot… and that is when we enter the CRM solutions for sales force automation to:
Have a clear vision of customers, having centralized all the information about them: their profitability, their contact history, their purchases, their potential, etc.
Have a history of contacts with customers, that is, of all communications that have been had with them: emails, faxes, phone calls, etc.
Manage the agendas of all sellers and also inserting actions automatically based on planning and follow-ups.
Have a clear vision of the status of all business opportunities in the company, knowing their amount, probabilities of success and approximate closing time.
Obtain sales forecasts quickly and easily and also with a high level of precision.
Sellers can enter orders automatically at any time and from anywhere via their laptop or mobile device.
Have a correct management of commercial monitoring, assigning certain monitoring actions automatically and thus simplifying the monitoring process.
Assign to each business opportunity the most appropriate salesperson in each case based on different parameters.
Know the efficiency and effectiveness of sales by vendors, areas and products.
Any user of the system (from the salesperson to the general manager, through the commercial or marketing director), can enter from anywhere and at any time, to consult any aspect of customers, opportunities or marketing actions.
Know the cost structure of the commercial area to know the cost of acquisition per customer, the value of a customer, profitability, etc.
Have a clear vision of the effectiveness of marketing actions and the impact it has on costs.
Plan different actions so that they are inserted directly into the sellers' agendas, such as the first visits after a direct marketing action or send you a customer satisfaction evaluation after a month of your purchase.
Integrate orders and contacts through the website into the system.
All of this will be given to us by technology, although it has to be encompassed within a much broader concept that leads to the management of change in the organization in the sales and marketing area. That more global vision must consider strategy, technology, processes and people.
