Indian Companies - What to look for in SFA

Every company Indian or non-Indian, big or small, product or service, faces similar challenges. All the companies have to manage their leads, opportunities, Mobilefield force reporting software and customers. There are some unique things to be handled by Indian companies when it comes to sales -

Ø Paper to Mobile: unlike western countries where transition has been gradual - paper to desktop to laptop/mobile/tablets, in India for most companies, transition has been directly from paper to mobile. Almost all sales agents have a mobile phone but may not have a laptop.and MRReporting software

Ø Sales processes needs to be tailored to local ask.

Ø Most companies are managed by owners-decision making is centralized.

Many Indian companies are used to doing business in traditional way using paper. They believe that SFA is not for their businesses, it is very complex and costly! Some of them feel that SFA is overkill for them and they are best served without using any technology. BusinessIntelligence This may have been true in the past, but now SFA systems make managing customers and sales very easy and efficient. If companies look for the following in their SFA, they will be able to get most out of it:

1. Ease of Use: SFA should be intuitive to work with. Ease of use should be the primary thing in SFA - how good the system is if no one uses it? SFA should help sales team to manage leads, opportunities, customers etc. It does not have to be complicated.

2. Effective Sales Process: SFA should help implement sales process defined by the company. Defining a process and sticking to it, is the key to company's success. Mobilefield force reporting software  SFA should help a company to define a process and then helpthem stick to the process.

3. Affordable: Indian market is very price sensitive. Companies should look at different models to make SFA affordable for them. For some companies user based pricing for SFA deployed on cloud may be a better option.

4. Scalable: SFA should not only support current business, but also be able to scale to future needs. Indian market is growing at a very fast rate, so SFA should be able to work for company when they are bigger in 2 years, 5 years and so on.

6. Analysis (Reports): SFA collects lot of sales data, but it is important for companies to look at this data and help make good decisions. Analysis of SFA data, in terms of reports and business intelligence, will be very helpful for Sales team and management to plan for next day, week, month, quarter and years.

7. Alerts: SFA should be able to proactively tell sales agents about the next steps - like send technical document to a prospect. Alert should also be able help management with important information.

8. Support: Most Indian companies do not have technical staff to resolve issues, handle upgrades or perform enhancements on SFA systems. Provider should be able to support SFA during stabilization phase and beyond if needed.

TenWays to Increase Sales Numbers using SFA

Sales Force Automation makes very easy to handle the complete sales process. SFA not only increases sales force efficiency and improve customer service (which it does); it improves sales numbers as well. This can be applied on all companies of any size with sales staff from fewer to hundreds and thousands, of all regions' selling product or services.

SFA can help companies to increase their sales numbers. In other words, SFA software can be used as an information system that allowsa company to deal more effectively with the process for converting prospects into purchasers in an individual way, customer by customer.

 Ten ways in which SFA can help companies to increase their sales are:

1.       Define a Sales Process: Companies can define sales process, tailored for the industry and works for them. Once the process is defined, SFA can be used to implement the process. SFA will make sure that all the leads follow theirdefined sales process and it will provide a way for management to monitor if sales process was properly followed or not.

2.       Keep Sales Team Members Informed: Using SFA, all team members in a territory will know about the prospects, sales representatives are working on. By this way, multiple sales representatives will not contact the same prospect and negatively impact the opportunity with the prospect.

3.       Keep Management Informed: Via SFA, management will know where team members are and what they are working on, which accounts/prospects are being looks at, which products, territories are targeted. SFA gives management a chance to view sales activity in almost real time and make sure it aligns with companies goals. Management can also look at sales reps load/work method and help align it.

4.       Reviews: SFA can be used to see how sales representatives are doing and let them know about it. Sales representatives' performance can be compared to their targets to see how good they are doing. Using SFA system, sales representatives and management can benchmark their performance and find areas of improvement.

5.       Management Reporting: With SFA maintained properly, sales representative will not be asked to report their daily/weekly activities separately to management - SFA will do that job. Reports can be simplified and easily obtained from SFA and letting sales team focuson sales.

6.       Work Together: SFA can help teams to collaborate and work together during the sales process - this may be especially important in working on a big account. Multiple sales representatives can work together using SFA. This will help to share their experiences, contacts, and methodology vice versa.

7.       Contact Management: SFA can help you track prospects decision tree - companies can keep information about decision makers, influencers, etc. of the prospect. SFA can help you keep track of important information about all the contacts.

8.       Alerts: SFA sends alerts to sales representatives about their important meetings during the sales cycle or on the next step or to touch base with important prospect / client if sales staff has not done so in a long time. Alerts can also be generated for middle management to let them know about progress and lackingwithin different territories across various products lines.

9.       Share Documents: SFA can be leveraged to share sales and marketing documents among the sales team. While working on a prospect, sales representatives can leverage work done by others in the team/across the team. It will save time and improve efficiency of the sales team.

10.   Mobile Applications: SFA mobile applications can be leveraged to help sales team when they are on the field. Mobile phones' GPS can be used within SFA app to generate intelligent alert and tracking etc. It can also be used as a tool for sales team to work efficiently.