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Chapter 8

SALES FORCE AUTOMATION

8.2 WHAT IS SFA?

‘Sales force automation is the application of computerized technologies to
support salespeople and sales management in the achievement of their
work-related objectives.’

8.3 THE SFA ECO-SYSTEM

Components

1. SFA solutions providers

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SFA solutions providers can be classified in a number of ways. Some

are SFA specialists. They compete against enterprise and mid-market
CRM suites that include SFA modules, and enterprise suite vendors that
offer a full range of IT solutions to support business, including supply
chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and
customer relationship management (CRM).

2. Hardware and infrastructure

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The performance requirements of SFA applications can create significant

challenges for both hardware and technology infrastructure. Whereas
office-bound salespeople and sales managers might be happy to use
desktops or laptops, field sales staff mostly prefer to use mobile data
devices: smart phones or tablets.

3. Services
The services component of the SFA ecosystem is very diverse. When a
SFA project is undertaken, service costs may add significantly to overall
project expenditure. In addition to paying for software and hardware,
SFA project leaders might buy services from providers that re-engineer
selling processes, manage projects, train salespeople, consult on sales
force organizational structure or conduct customer portfolio analysis.

8.4 SFA SOFTWARE FUNCTIONALITY

SFA applications offer a range of functionality, as listed in Table 8.2. Not all
solutions provide the full complement of sales-related functionality.

 Account management offers sales reps and managers a complete

view of the customer relationship including contacts, contact history,
completed transactions, current orders, shipments, enquiries,
service history, opportunities and quotations. This allows sales reps
and account managers to keep track of all their obligations in

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respect of every account for which they are responsible, whether

this is an opportunity to be closed, an order or a service enquiry.

 Activity management keeps sales reps and managers aware of all

activities, whether complete or pending, related to an account,
contact or opportunity, by establishing to-do lists, setting priorities,
monitoring progress and programming alerts. Activities include
preparation of quotations, scheduling of sales calls and following up
enquiries, for example.

 Contact management functionality includes tools for building,

sharing and updating contact lists, making appointments, time
setting, and task, event and contact tracking. Contact list data
include names, phone numbers, addresses, images, preference
data and email addresses for people and companies, as well as a
history of in-bound and outbound communications.

 Contract management functionality enables reps and managers to

create, track, progress, accelerate, monitor and control contracts
with customers. Contract management applications manage a
contract’s lifespan by shortening approval cycles for contracts,
renewing contracts sooner and reducing administrative costs. The
software may use security controls to ensure only approved people
have access to contracts.

 Document management software allows companies to manage

sales-related documents, keep them current and ensure that they
are always available to reps, managers and partners when needed.
Companies generate and use many documents to support the sales
process – brochures, product specifications, installation instructions,
user manuals, case studies, white papers, price lists, warranties,
competitive comparisons, spreadsheets, email templates and
templates for preparing quotations, for example. External agencies,
including government departments, may require companies to
maintain records of compliance with standards or regulations
relevant to the products and services they sell.

 Event management enables sales reps, managers and others to

plan, implement, control and evaluate events such as conferences,
seminars, trade shows, exhibitions and webinars, whether run solo
or jointly with customers or other partners. Some events, such as
conferences, can be very complex and involve many stakeholders
such as sponsors, exhibitors, security partners, police,
accommodation partners, travel partners, catering partners, lighting
and sound contractors, guest speakers, invitees and the general
public.

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Event management software offers a range of functionality that can

be used by event organizers across the event cycle, from initial
event development and marketing to attendee registration and event
operations, evaluation and reporting. The tools include event
calendaring, event website design, event marketing, integration with
social media, online registration, contact management, online
payment and refund, partner management tools, event reports and
analytics, attendee communications and management tools, badge
and event documentation creation and venue management tools.

 Incentive management is an issue for sales managers who use

commissions and other incentives to lift and direct sale reps’ efforts,
and to reward performance. With incentive management models
that consider quotas, sales volumes, customer profitability, customer
satisfaction, customer retention, Net Promoter Scores and other
performance criteria can be created.

 Lead management allows companies to capture, score, assign,

nurture and track sales leads. User-defined rules allow leads to be
allocated or routed to reps and account managers on the basis of
role, territory, product expertise or other variables. Lead nurturing is
the practice of maintaining a healthy bilateral relationship with the
lead until ready to buy.

 Opportunity management software enables reps and managers to

monitor progress of an opportunity against a predefined selling
methodology, ensuring that opportunities are advanced towards
closure. An opportunity is a record of a potential sale or any other
type of revenue generation. There are a number of selling
methodologies all of which identify a number of stages such as lead
qualification, initial approach, understanding the customer’s
requirements, developing a solution, crafting a proposal and closing
the sale. Salespeople follow the steps of the methodology as if
following a checklist, ensuring that all opportunities are handled
consistently.

 Order management functionality allows reps to convert quotations

and estimates into orders once a customer has made the decision to
buy. Order management software may include a quotation engine, a
pricing module and a product configurator. Order management
functionality accelerates the order-to-cash cycle by eliminating
manual processing and errors and by quickly advancing the status
of a sales quotation to approved order.

 Pipeline management is the process of managing the entire sales

cycle, from identifying prospects, estimating sales potential,
managing leads, forecasting sales, initiating and maintaining
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customer relationships, right through to closure. A well-defined sales

pipeline helps minimize lost opportunities and breakdowns in the
sales process. Sales pipelines typically have between five and
seven defined stages such as lead generation, lead qualification,
initial meeting, submit quotation, sales presentation and closure.

 A product encyclopedia is a searchable electronic product

catalogue that generally contains product names, stock numbers,
images and specifications.

 Product configuration applications enable salespeople, or

customer themselves, automatically to design and price customized
products, services or solutions. Configurators are useful when the
product is particularly complex or when customization is an
important part of the value proposition. Configurators guide users
through the buying and specification process, offering only valid
options and features at each step.

 Product visualization software enables sales reps and customers

to produce realistic computer-generated images or animations of
products before they are manufactured. This is a useful application
when linked to a product configurator. Static images can take the
form of a simulated photograph, 3-D model or technical drawing.
Some applications allow these images to be drag-and-dropped into
different settings or contexts. Animated visualizations can be
rendered in different ways to show how products are built, installed
or used. Visualization software often allows users to change certain
parameters, for example models, colors, fabrics and sizes, as in the
Jeep example. Visualizations can be augmented by other
information such as specifications or prices.

 Proposal generation software allows users to create customized

branded proposals for customers. Users draw on information held in
one or more databases to create proposals which, typically, are
composed of several parts, some of which are customized: cover
page and letter, introduction, objectives, products, product features,
services, benefits, prices, specifications, pictures, drawings,
embedded video, people, experience, résumés, references,
approach, schedule, organization, scope of work and appendices.
Proposal templates can speed up the creation of proposals that can
then be delivered to customers whilst they are in buying mode.
Templates exist for different types of proposals such as Statements
of Work, Grant Applications and Service Level Agreements.

 Quotation management software allows reps and managers to

prepare costed proposals – quotes – for opportunities. The software
allows users to create, edit, approve and produce costed,
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customized proposals quickly and reliably. Some software enables

users to create multimedia quotations with audio, animation and
video.

 Sales forecasting applications offer sales reps and managers a

number of qualitative and quantitative processes to help forecast
sales revenues and close rates. Among the qualitative methods are
sales team estimates that can be created collaboratively, and
among the quantitative methods are time-series analysis and
regression models. Some sales forecasting methods project
historical sales into the future. Other methods draw on and interpret
the sales opportunity and pipeline data maintained in CRM systems.
Another method is to import data from external sources and apply
quantitative methods to forecast sales. Accurate sales forecasts
help resource allocation throughout the business.

 Sales management reporting functionality is integrated into all SFA

systems. This offers users a number of standardized reports that
can help sales managers evaluate and enhance the effectiveness
and efficiency of their sales team. In addition, managers can create
ad hoc reports on any variable or mix of variables maintained in the
sales database – this can include reports on all the issues we are
discussing here: contacts, contracts, orders, opportunities,
proposals, sales pipeline and so on.

Salesforce.com, for example, offers over 50 standard reports, and

enables users to construct their own customized reports using
wizards. These deliver charts, tables, text and other graphics to
receivers’ devices. Dashboards deliver real-time sales data to
executives that can be refreshed at a single click.

 Territory management applications allow sales managers to

create, adjust and balance sales territories, so that sales reps have
equivalent workloads and/or opportunities. Territory management
applications usually come with a territory management methodology
that users can follow when establishing sales territories. Some
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applications integrate geographic mapping or geo-demographic data

into the application. Applications generally enable companies to
match sales coverage to market opportunity, create sales territory
hierarchies (cities, states, regions) and reduce the cost of selling by
reducing travel time. Call cycle scheduling, calendaring and lead
management is often enabled by the software. Eligibility and
exception rules can be established in and monitored by the
software. A sales rep might be eligible to sell some products but not
others, to service all customers in her territory with the exception of
certain named accounts, or to sell into certain accounts in another
territory because she has a well-established customer relationship.

 Workflow development software is used to design sales-related

processes including the lead management process and the event
management process. A simple automated workflow spells out the
actions that are taken when a web-form enquiry is received by the
business. A more complex project is to automate the workflow in the
selling process itself – the series of steps that a sales rep must
follow in shifting a prospect from initial awareness to the close.
Some leading SFA applications contain modules where selling
workflow follows established published methodologies. Automated
processes are much easier to monitor for process failure. When a
process fails, often this can be an indication that the process needs
to be simplified, user training needs to be refreshed or technological
support for the process needs to be upgraded.

Although we have thus far discussed a generic set of sales-related

functionality, SFA software is also designed for context-specific applications.

8.5 SFA ADOPTION

Generally, a company’s decision to adopt SFA follows a two-step process.
First, senior management decides to invest in SFA, and second, sales reps
and their managers decide to use SFA.

1. Benefits from SFA

Vendors and consultants claim a number of benefits from SFA
implementation, including accelerated cash flow, shorter sales cycles
leading to faster inventory turnover, improved customer relationships,
improved salesperson productivity, accurate management reports,
increased sales revenue, market share growth, higher win rates, reduced
cost-of-sales, more closing opportunities and improved profitability.
These benefits appeal to differing SFA stakeholders:
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 Salespeople: shorter sales cycles, more closing opportunities,

higher win rates.

 Sales managers: improved salesperson productivity, improved

customer relationships, accurate reporting, reduced cost-of-sales.

 Senior management: improved visibility of the sales pipeline,

reduced risk of unexpected variations from sales forecasts,
accelerated cash flow, increased sales revenue, market share
growth, improved profitability.

8.6 HOW SFA CHANGES SALES

PERFORMANCE
There have been a number of independent assessments of the effects of
SFA on sales performance.

It seems likely that SFA will have more impact on sales performance
when a number of conditions are met.29 These include:

1. Salespeople find that the SFA application is easy to use.

2. Salespeople find the technology useful because it fits their roles

well.

3. Availability of appropriate-to-task SFA training.

4. Users have accurate expectations about what SFA will deliver.

5. Users have a positive attitude towards innovation.

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6. Users have a positive attitude towards technology.

7. Availability of user support after roll-out, for example, a help desk.

8. Involvement of user groups including sales reps and managers

during SFA project planning and technology selection.

9. Deployment of a multidisciplinary team in the SFA project planning

phases.

10. Senior management support for SFA.

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