Sales Force Management

Selling is everyone's business and when it's not, you're in trouble...

John H. Patterson, the founder of National Cash Register (NCR), first codified the simple rules of successful sales processes:

(1) Know your customer and product
(2) Be present when the customer is ready to buy
(3) Don’t forget to circle back to sell the customer again.

Selling is a simple process to exchange of goods for an agreed sum of money. Every firm in this thick competitive market is to sell. Even non-profit organization also does.

Today’s arena has changed a lot compare to early business scenarios. Production house was to produce because there were number of consumers to buy. That’s why production was given more importance.

But today’s markets have many suppliers to sale their products & services. Customer is coming into central point & given a lot of importance. Setting up relation with customer is necessity. In a rapidly changing world, many businesses are struggling with how to rationalize their sales resources and maximize the return on investment in finding, acquiring, and retaining customers.

New Salesperson

Due to competitive environment, industry required new way to sale products & services. Today's highly competitive environment requires that sales do more than just sell products. Industry expects more from a salesperson. Salesperson needs to have an in-depth knowledge of how their products integrate with other's solutions to give the customer a seamless user experience.

New Technologies

Technology is another catalyst for change. New technology tools are available to help salespeople demo products online, track prospects and improve customer service, while cutting costs.

One of the productivity enrichment solutions is Sales Force Automation.

Sales Force Automation

Software and systems that support sales staff lead generation, contact, scheduling, performance tracking and other functions. SFA functions are normally integrated with base systems that provide order, product, inventory status and other information and may be included as part of a larger customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sales force management systems are information systems used in marketing and management that automate some sales and sales force management functions. They are frequently combined with a marketing information system, in which case they are often called customer relationship management systems.

SFA tracks customer interaction, analyze sales forecasts and may automate business tasks such as inventory control and order processing.

Primarily two groups use them
1) Sales management: monitoring the overall performance of the sales team
2) Individual sales representatives: boosting sales growth selling more.

Using SFA tools, management can quickly figure out which are the sizzling prospects and when they are expected to close, both on an individual basis and across the entire sales force.

They can understand – in real time – how big the sales pipeline is today and how big it's expected to be in weeks and months to come. They can determine which sales reps are performing – and which aren't even close to meeting their monthly quota.

Take an example of SalesForce.com – a best application provider in CRM and Sales management. Sales Force’s web enabled, robust & customized solution includes following features.

1) Lead management
2) Opportunity management
3) Global forecasting
4) Territory management
5) Workflow automation
6) Real-time alerts
7) Update reminders
8) Team selling
9) Account management
10) Activity management
11) Product catalog
12) Sales literature
13) Email prospecting and tracking
14) Stay-in-touch relationship builder
15) Big deal alerts
16) Data quality tools
17) Sales analytics
18) Mobile solutions
19) Palm synchronization

Other than SFA, IT solution providers also enabled technologies for partner relations, customer relations and employee relations with respect to improve sales effectiveness.

Technology is just enabler. SFA and CRM help in moving selling process smoothly. But there are 4 P in today’s Sales management process for its effectiveness.

People
Sales professionals – Well trained with attitude which matches to organization objectives.

Process
Defined sales process in organization according to objectives & strategies of organization

Protocol
Technology used to implement and administer the successful and proven sales process

Persistent
Persistent in product knowledge, purpose, market identification & targeting customers, execution and measurement of success

And finally, SELLING IS knowing that this business is after all, a profession . . .THE PROFESSION of selling.

Reference & Further Reading
Wikipedia : Encylopedia
Salesforce.com
Sales Process Management – The Natural Evolution of Sales Force Automation By Gilbert E. Cargill,
Siebel
Three P's for Sales Effectiveness By Lawrence P. Gould