Essential features that a sales person looks in a sales automation solution
Nowadays when competition is higher every business wants to enhance their sales performance using some sales techniques/automation. Salespeople are action led people who like to stay in the forefront and close the deals. They do not want to linger around a subject without any cause. They would want to get the essence of their targets, reports in a short span of time without calling their managers. On the other hand, it is equally important for managers sitting in an office to monitor the sales activities and check their daily progress.
Organizations look forward to such solutions that help them improvise their day-to-day sales activities from checking their attendance till order booking and report generation. Companies want to idealize their sales processes and shorten their closure cycle. The time spent by an executive in updating their senior managers could be saved by using automation tools.
The system/solution that bridges the gap between on-ground sales solution and senior management is a Salesforce automation solution. Though the market comprises many such solutions, industries should decide based on their requirement. SFA requirement is different in a pharma industry as compared to FMCG, and so on.
Some of the essential features that a sales automation solution must have:
Route Management/Planning: This is a unique feature that caters to organizations with on-ground sales force team, allowing senior managers to assign them routes as per their retailer/stockiest allocation to book orders.
Attendance Management: One of the major hurdles that get resolved with a sales automation solution is the executive’s attendance. Having one such feature in the solution eases the daily reporting structure, sales person need not make separate calls to their managers to mark their presence. This makes the communication seamless.
Product Information: The solution maintains an informative database along with the product image, price, quantity and other relevant details. The solution should maintain an informative product database accessed by salesperson anytime even in offline mode.
Sales Reports and Dashboard: This feature is a must as this quantifies the sales data and brings in the analytics. Allows users to dig into their sales data and get a clear picture out of it.
Expense Management: This feature in a sales force automation solution provides the capabilities that comprise managing individual daily expenses, raising their reimbursements, uploading other expense details. Collaborative and well-maintained expenses simplify the management tasks and allow them to focus on strategic planning and growth.
Summary:
Salesforce automation is an important and critical tool for managing on ground sales staff and their orders. Though the inner SFA structure completely depends upon the industry requirement and how well they can integrate the same with their existing system. Being a sales automation solution, it is very much clear that it should perform all the sales related activities including their order booking, Retailer Database, Payments, Expenses, till their daily attendance and generate timely sales reports which in turn helps management to take better actions.