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How to choose the best automation tool to transform your field sales force & Distribution:
by Sachini Sandereka
What Is sales force automation?
Sales force automation (SFA) is a technique of using software applications to automate the sales task of the organization such as field sales force and distribution process.
The objective of Sales force automation is to digitalize and automate field sales force & all sales related activities such as opportunity tracking, customer management, order processing, collection management, sales forecast & sales analysis.
Sales force automation connects every aspect of the sales process and ensure the consistent flow of information through each employee and the departments.
Therefore, it provides right data to the right people at the right time, and it will enable organization to reduce the manual administrative tasks that sales representatives and their managers have to perform.
Sales Managers can use SFA software to monitor sales people's activity and productivity, and it will provide real time information to produce marketing plans and sales forecasts.
What Is field force & Distribution?
Field Force refers to the people in an organization who are working in fields to sell the product and services on behalf of the organization to the end customers and generate profits. They are responsible for generating the leads and ensure sales in an organization.
Distribution refers to the process of selling products and services to the end customer using various sales channels. Distribution can do directly from the manufacturers point or some organization sell their product through intermediate parties such as by distributors and dealers. Most of the time distributors have their own sales reps to sell the products to the end customer.
What are the latest trends in Sales Force Automation?
➊ Seller Focused
A sales-oriented company focuses on strategies and tactics that push people toward buying products, therefore the most of the new sales force automation software follow seller-oriented strategies to give better experience for top level and middle management. This enables them to focus on seller-oriented strategies such as free issue & trade schema and allow organization to acquire more customers towards their products and effectively and efficiently manage the seller-oriented strategies.
➋ Artificial Intelligence
Nowadays artificial intelligence use as a business currency in sales force automation industry. Most of the sales force automation software providers aimed on designed intelligent sales force automation software powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.AI assisted sales force software make the sales representatives’ work easier and fast. Apart from the artificial intelligence, SFA software providers focus on integrating IOT device for their software for tracking vehicles and inventory related data.
➌ Ecosystem
The demand for the CRM integrated sales force automation software rapidly increased in past few years.
customer relationship management (CRM) system automatically records all the stages in a sales process and interactions with the clients. The powerful CRM integrated software track all contact that’s been made with a customer, along with the purpose of the contact, and any other follow up that may be needed. Having this information at fingertips means business is able to reduce the risk of irritating the customers and increase the sales acquisition.
Why Organizations need sales force automation?
The sales function of any organization is one of the most important business functions. The sales function has a direct impact on the organization’s bottom line and the more effective the sales team, the more profitable the organization. Therefore, every organization must seek to optimize its sales function and ensure that adequate tools and resources are available for the sales team to carry out its responsibilities effectively and efficiency.
Below are some of the top reasons of why does business needs sales force automation:
• Manual Paper Work:
Sales Managers and Sales Representatives have to do manual paper works throughout the sales cycle, out of selling. Data can be misplaced and management of the organization are not able to access to the real time data quickly.
• Unable to manage large field force:
Without proper communication medium and activity tracking techniques, organizations fail to ensure the information flow between the field sales force and clarify whether the field sales force is performing their task well or not.
Features of Sales Force Automation:
The best SFA software helps the organization to streamline their sales process and ensure the flow of information between field sales force and their management. To achieve this, the sales force automation software must have the following features:
Visit & Route Planning
Create Visit plans & get the approvals from the Management.
Location Tracking
Track the sales Representatives real time location & activities by geo fencing routes & Geo Tracking.
Order & Payment Management
Create & Manage all the data related to sales orders at a one place.
Inventory Management
Manage & Access to the inventory details fast.
Customer & Prospect Management
Update and manage the customer & prospect related data within one second.
Opportunity Management
Record & Track all the opportunity related data and the activities to increase the lead generation.
Free Issue & Trade Schema
Define free issue and discount scheme for each and every item and successfully managing complex free issue schemas.
Commission management & Leave Management
set targets for each sales employee, evaluate employees and manage the commissions, leave management module to manage the leaves of each sales employee.
Expenses Management
Update the daily expenses of the sales representative and get the approvals from the management.
Report Analytics with Power BI
Business insight with real time analytical data through reports.
Why to choose Pristine SFA:
Pristine Sales Force Automation (Pristine SFA) is a mobilized, integrated system for your sales and distribution operation that runs on cloud.
Pristine Sales force automation offers you a Back-end Web module and mobile application modules for sales representatives, security checkers, drivers and for collectors in order to manage your field sales force and redistribution effectively & efficiently. Pristine SFA is a flexible solution thus it can be integrated with any ERP.
Pristine SFA offers you a wide range of features for field force management and transactions management start with opportunity tracking to collection management and customer care.
Pristine SFA can help your organization to:
• Effectively Manage the field sales force
Pristine SFA enable sales management to actively monitor field sale force, sales employees and collaborate the teams. It provides accurate metrics for organization to form territories for sales managers and sales representative using area demarcation. Therefore, the sales team and sales process management will be simplified.
• Improve the accessibility of the data
Pristine SFA comes with a cloud-based integration and centralized database, it is quite easy to access to any crucial data from anywhere, anytime. It allows a comprehensive 360-degree view of all the interactions and activities between your company and the customers.
• Automate and streamline Activities
Pristine SFA includes number of tailored features designed to streamline manual, tedious, repetitive sales tasks. So, the sales team can focus on more selling than admin. Pristine SFA comes up with advanced features like opportunity tracking, prospect management, customer management, order management, delivery management and collection management.
• Real time data Analysis
Pristine SFA offers you the real time data analysis with its fully automotive operating system, integrated analytic tool and built-in report templates. Analytical tool helps you to See dynamic, visual snapshots of real-time metrics covering sales productivity and performance.
Conclusion
To sum up, sales force automation software has revolutionized by automating sales processes and sales management. It is a flexible, customizable, and fully integrated solution. At the same time, it’s more accurate and works in real-time. Above all, SFA software serves a dual purpose- sales tracking and sales pipeline management and is highly beneficial in today’s competitive industries.
