SFA Software: Streamline Sales Process with Sales Force Automation

Many organizations suffer from similar problems with sales and marketing pipelines. Without a centralized and standardized tracking system and source for information, data gaps can cause significant duplication of effort, loss of potential leads, and inefficient team management. Common problems, and how a SFA software aolution can help, include:

Problem: Managers can be stifled with the task of delegating prospects out to their sales teams.
SFA Software: SFA software solutions can provide a simple, easily managed overview of all team members' clients and status of active accounts. This makes it simple for managers to see workloads and where sales transactions are in the pipeline, enabling them to easily delegate prospects and tasks to the most appropriate sales representatives.

Problem: Sales people will typically be focused on making the next sale rather cultivating their existing customer relationships.
SFA Software: SFA software solutions can track sales leads and customer histories, ensuring that "warm" leads don't slip through the cracks and all potential clients are follow-up with in a timely manner.

Problem: Lack of and loss of customer history - Companies cannot expect or plan for their employees to stay with them for the entirety of their career, or even an entire sales cycle. Maintaining accurate records of customer leads and sales is imperative to keeping clients happy and sales coming in. When individual sales teams are managing their own information processes, the company runs the risk of losing customers when staff turnover or experiencing significant lag time while information is deciphered and transferred from format to format and person to person.
SFA Software: SFA software solution functions as a database of client information and transactions, logging information in a standardized, easily transferable format, allowing simple and fast transfer of accounts from one sales person to another without any significant time or client information loss.

Problem: Difficulty producing accurate and timely sales forecasts and lack of standardized reporting- Companies need to ensure a consistent and growing stream of revenue. Accurate and timely forecasting is the key to maximizing marketing and sales efforts for continued success. Without a standardized reporting system, sales teams may be tracking clients and projects in disparate and inconsistent formats, making it difficult to decipher and collect information in a timely and easily interpreted way. While management can set goals for sales, without consistent and accurate sales data, it's nearly impossible to forecast sales and understand which regions and customers require extra attention, and which marketing campaigns are working and where.
SFA Software: SFA software solutions can be customized to not only collect sales and client information in a standardized way, but also to automatically produce periodic reports in multiple formats and containing handpicked sets data that show the "big picture" of the entire sales and marketing teams, past, present, and future, enabling accurate forecasts and allowing management to strategize and make the most informed decisions possible to ensure efficiency and productivity in the sales process.

Problem: Duplication of effort - When sales people manage their own processes, there is a greater chance for the duplication of effort in many areas. This is especially true in organizations where there are sales teams for different product lines and/or in different locations. With no centralized node of communication, a customer may be contacted more than they wish to be, data may be repeatedly be collected, and significant time and opportunities may be lost due to inefficiencies.
SFA Software: An SFA software solution provides one central location for client contact, sales, and history information, eliminating duplication of data collection efforts and avoiding undesirable repeated contacts to potential and existing clients.

Problem: Selling inventory which is not available or promising unrealistic delivery times - Customers require accurate and up-to-the-minute information on inventories and product specifications. Without access to a centralized inventory or product database, sales people may over-promise inventory or underestimate delivery or rollout times, causing client frustration and a damaged service reputation.
SFA Software: Sales people don't have the luxury of simply stating "I'll get back to you" when it comes to inventory and delivery data, as the potential for a competitor scooping up that sale is too great a risk in today's online and fast-moving markets. The faster a response can be made, the greater the chance for the sale. SFA systems can be designed so that inventory data can be made easily available to sales team members (pulled from a full CRM system for example), allowing them to provide accurate inventory and delivery times to customers.

Problem: Order errors - Many companies rely on the sales person to phone, fax, or email and order back to a main office or warehouse for processing. This process is prone to mistakes and delay due to human error. Also, if a customer has a question about their order, the sales person must call in and check with the fulfillment team to get the status.
SFA Software: SFA software solutions can automate purchase orders and sales transactions, sending information directly to the distribution center or fulfillment team without any paperwork or time delay. This ensures error-free orders and significantly cuts delivery or production time, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.