Sales Force Automation

SFA
• SFA were originally meant to improve sales
force productivity and encourage salespeople
to document and communicate their field
activities.
• They are becoming increasingly focused on
cultivating customer relationships and
improving customer satisfaction.
 Scenario One
You are on your way to a meeting with one of your best customer. Jim
is not only one of your best customers – he’s one of the company’s
best. His firm accounts for 2 percent of this year’s revenues. Soon,
you hope it will be 3. You arrive early at the customer’s building,
show your badge at the desk and take the elevator to Jim’s office.
He is in a meeting with a member of his staff, but quickly dismisses
them when he realizes you are there. He is always willing to listen
to a sales pitch. However, he is not placing an order today, in fact
he may never place another order again. His entire firm has been at
a standstill for the past 48 hours because of your product. Your
product is still on the fritz and Jim and his people have been on the
phone to your customer support center for the past day and a half.
Your face displays surprise. “No one told me about it, Jim,” you
stammer. Jim stands up from behind his desk, a wordless
acknowledgement that he’s far too busy to hear about your
communication breakdown. After all, he’s got a big one all his own
to worry about. You think about how to make up for the 2 percent
in revenue you and your company are about to lose.
 Scenario Two
Jim is still the customer being discussed. En route to your customer’s
site, you turn on your PDA which begins to beep. Priority one alert!
Customer Impacted! Flashed on the screen. You pull to the side of the
road and read more, according to the message the customer you are
about to see has experienced a major outage. A field service rep has
been contacted and is now working on the problem. Instead of going
upstairs when entering the building, you walk to the back and find the
service rep repairing equipment. When you find out that he’s working
to repair the problem and will have it fixed in the next thirty minutes.
You feel relieved and walk upstairs to meet with Jim. Upon entering
his office, Jim smiles and says he knew it would be taken care of. Then
he asks when the company can get an upgrade. The revenue
contribution also increases to 4 percent during the conversation.
 SFA Software
• Organizes and manages data about (Sales
Pipeline)
– Sales touch point
– Customer history
 Sales Pipeline
Identify leads Contact buying
Qualify leads centers
(suspected
(value estimates) (recognize key
interest)
players)

Re-contact Develop relationship

(win-back No Yes (cultivate
interest) interest/desires)

Close Negotiate terms

(ask for the sale) (long-term view)

SFA uses data mining to integrate pipeline data with

other CRM data and make suggestions about
activities to a sales representative.
 SFA Task

Contact and time Opportunity or lead Knowledge

management management management

Price quotes and order Follow-up management

management

Analysis and reporting

tools
 Contact and Time Management
• Customer data-Mapping the people in the organization
chart, influencers, decision makers….
• Clients birthday, hobbies, favorite
restaurants……personalize the sales call
• Integrate with external data….Maps…driving directions
to customer location
• Corporate financial from Data publications(Dun and
Bradstreet)…..
• Company processes and expansion plans
• Collaborative features- share information with pre-
sales, sales, service, project teams
• Personal calendar- helps SE with time management,
make important calls, appointments and meetings.
 Contact and Time Management
• Activity management:
– Offer calendars to assist in planning of key customer
events
– Automates both individual and organizational to-do list –
Team collaboration tools
– Provides valuable post facto analysis of a sales cycle; which
allows the team to examine the duration and procedures
involved in critical tasks
– Sales process and activity management are only as good as
their ability to be tailored to intervals sales methods
 Lead Management and Opportunity
Management
• Prospecting- referrals, adv inquiries, record of visitors to
off-line and on-line…..lead….
• Qualify as lead- choosing parameters- need the product, be
in a position to place the order of sufficient size, be able to
pay for it.
• Once qualified- assigned to most appropriate SE/domain
expert.
• Recommends- visit in person, call, or first send brochure
• Presence of competition and weightage of it-Helps in
proposal development
• History-when contacted, when proposal sent,
• Output- sales forecast….best guess…planning information
 Lead Management
• Also known as • Tools:
“opportunity
management” and
“pipeline management”
• Aims to provide foolproof
sales strategies so no
sales task, document, or
communication falls
through the cracks
• Sales people follow a
defined approach to
turning opportunities into
deals
– can provide qualified
leads through
marketing campaigns
or lead referrals
– can also track other
prospect attributes
– These capabilities
can result in answers
to questions that
previously demanded
guesswork
 Configuration Support
• Tools:
– Allow a salesperson to input client and prospect
information into an easy-to-use tool
– CRM products have evolved to leverage this information by
providing product-specific configuration support to
companies who must build products for their customers
– Often use graphical sales process
– Order stage is reached, the tool can calculate a product
configuration and price quote automatically
– Can then provide forms that facilitate electronic
communication of the information to other areas of the
company
 Sales and Territory Management
• Sales managers oversee tens or hundreds of
sales teams and cannot stay abreast of
every active sales initiative
• Sales management tools can enable them to
manage this large task
– Offering data and reporting options to
provide on-demand access to sales
activities
– Teams can be linked to headquarters
specialists
– Sales managers can track territory
assignments and monitor pipelines and
leads for individual territories
– Limits on territories
 Knowledge Management
• Organizations intellectual property-intranet-
private data network- company documents, data,
network,videos, available to only employees.
• Access from anywhere…., admin purpose-
expense form,applications,sales history, product
literature/updated,press releases….
• Extranet- shared with suppliers,
customers….order entry….steady state business…
• General Electric-36000 suppliers (GSN) Global
supplier netwok…25+ business units….B2B
Price Quotes and Order Configuration
• Providing price quotes
– Product Catalog
– Price list
– Discount schedules
• Imp- selling complex products and custom
tailored for particular customer.
• Suggestions on Cross selling and Up-selling –
combinations provided.
 Follow up Management
• Part of Contact Management software
• Visibility to sales people on order delivery
tracking- One point of contact…
• Automated generated updates provided to the
customer on the status of stock availability
and delivery commitments, also provides
updates if there are any deviations in
process….thus sets the expectations right.
 Analysis and Reporting tools
• Query based Call reports and Sales report.
• Sales figures, activity level, time period, by
customer, sales territory, geography,….any
criteria….
• Conversions of lead to Sales….
• Scientific incentive calculations and rewards
 SFA and Mobile CRM
• (PDA) Personal digital assistants can support
anytime/anywhere