Chapter 3

Sales force Automation (SFA)

 SFA: Now and Then

• 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

 What is Sales Force Automation (SFA) ?

• SFA software is a type of program that automates business tasks such as:
- inventory control - sales processing
- tracking of customer interactions - analyzing sales forecasts and performance.
• sales force automation is a technique of using software to automate the business tasks of
sales, including order processing, contact management, information sharing, inventory
monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and
employee performance evaluation.
• Most Sales Force Automation software today contains tools designed to assist efforts for
marketing to generate leads as well as selling to existing accounts and new customers. Some
SFA software offers limited service or support capabilities.

 Benefit of Sales Force Automation

• The first major benefit of Sales Force Automation is having sales information captured and
available to every member of the sales team in one real-time data repository. This
eliminates individualized Excel spreadsheet lead lists and pipelines, and errors of omitence.
• It organizes a sales team’s efforts as almost all SFA software on the market today interfaces
with Microsoft Office. Almost all also have the capabilities of designing and utilizing
templates, such as form letters for email campaigns that can be merged with individual
contacts.
• Automating activities such as the dialing of telephone calls, merging of template letters, and
automated generation of sales quotes have two major benefits for a salesperson. First, it
increases individual productivity and efficiency. Second, it makes reporting easy.
• SFA can increase productivity as the whole team can easily spot busy and available times.
For individual account management, scheduling automatic notifications for selling
opportunities can improve time management and ultimately increase recurring sales.
• SFA helps automated repeat selling include the renewals, replenishment or supplies that
clients need regularly. Internet firms, in particular, have this fulfillment down to a fine art.
• By sharing information, a salesperson can discuss all kind of sale opportunities with peers
and managers. Defining and automating the stages of a sale allows calculation of closing
statistics based on previous, similar opportunities, and results in more accurate sales close
rates within specific timeframes.
• Relieved of tedious repetitive tasks, a salesperson can focus more time on managing the
sales process and moving it closer to a win.
• One of the capabilities of a Sales Force Automation system is the ability to categorize the
stages of a sale from prospect to close. A salesperson can then prioritize and focus on the
most winnable sale opportunities
• By having real-time visibility to a complete sale opportunity pipeline, the Sales Manager can
 focus team members on those deals on those deals that can be won or those deals that can
close immediately. That executive can also ensure there are enough leads in the pipeline and
apply resources to move the opportunities through the process faster.
• Slowed opportunities are easily identifiable, and decisions can be made to change strategy,
qualifying them out or assign the opportunities to a nurture campaign, and market to them
on a less aggressive schedule until they eventually mature or go away.
• SFA software minimizes the risks involved when best salesperson is lured away by fiercest
competitor. Most Sales Force Automation software systems have the functionality to re-
assign existing accounts and leads from one salesperson to another en masse in minutes
minimizing the risks of stalling or losing sales in the pipeline.

 Sales Force Automation: Functionality

There are core feature such as:
1. Contact management and 2. Prospect management
3. Account Management 4. Opportunity Management
5. Lead Management 6. Pipeline management
7. Sales forecasting 8. Quotations and Orders

1. contact management
• A Contact Management System (CMS) is an integrated office solution that allows
organizations and individuals to record relationships and interactions with customers and
suppliers. This information includes all emails, documents, jobs, faxes, calendar and more.
• Contact Management:
o Subset of sales force automation that deals with organizing and managing data across and
within a company’s client and prospect organization
o Software can contain various modules for maintaining local client databases, displaying
updated organization charts, and allowing salespeople to maintain notes on specific clients
or prospects
- Can answer specific questions quickly
- Enable salespeople to communicate their schedules to the organization at large
o Real value of CM is in its capability to track where customers are and who they
are in terms of their influence with sales management functions
• Many software programs allows users to query remote databases for supplementary
information or to synchronize laptop local data with a corporate customer database.

 Sales people can answer questions like

• Who is the contact individuals for a specific client, and for each department?
• What is the client’s mailing address or billing address?
• Which customers were included in the most recent promotion for a specific product?
• When is my next sales call?
• When was the last time I called on that customer?

2. Prospect management
• Prospect management enable individual sales representatives to quickly identify their best
prospects, develop, implement and measure their prospect’s next step strategies, properly
balance their selling and prospecting activities, understand the need to prospect on a
continual basis, objectively determine which prospects are most likely to close, and better
 plan and manage their time.
• Prospect management help sales men:
• Understand sales ratios and how to improve them
• Understand the steps of the sale and their progression
• Understand \ sales cycle and the time/probability factor
• Introduce the "do" versus "need" sales philosophy
• Understand time and activity allocation
• Understand continual prospecting, replenishing prospect base
• Rank sales situations according to established criteria
• Justify board ranking
• Present "next step" strategy
• Apply system criteria to actual prospects
• Evaluate prospect ranking
• Strategize "next step" activity
• Enable individual sales representatives to quickly identify their best prospects, develop,
implement and measure their prospect’s next step strategies, properly balance their selling
and prospecting activities, understand the need to prospect on a continual basis, objectively
determine which prospects are most likely to close, and better plan and manage their time.

3. Account Management
• While a sales team works to close deals with small to large businesses it is necessary to
maintain individual accounts and keep track of contacts under them.
• Effective organization in interacting with your contacts, who may represent or account for a
particular company or such other bigger concern is of high priority.
• The relationship with the concern as a whole would become inharmonious and cause
potential deals to slip if interaction with contacts is disorganized.
• Account management helps maintain harmony and makes the process of sales to businesses
with multiple contacts easy and efficient.

 What are accounts?

• An account represents a company, organization, business or a similar concern that has
many employees and personnel working in it.
• They could all serve as contacts at various levels. In a B2C (Business to Consumer) scenario
where the end customer is an individual, an account is redundant since he or she is a single
contact.

 What is account management?

• In simple words, account management is the process of managing the communications and
transactions with businesses having many contacts and divisions.
• This makes it possible to cater to the needs of specific divisions inside a business.
• By categorizing contacts to accounts by their sub-divisions and functions, communication is
directed to the proper personnel in charge.
• This saves time that may be lost in approaching the wrong contacts and wasting effort in
improper directions. The success of a sales operation relies heavily on account
management.
• Account management module presents a simple and straight forward interface to manage
 accounts.
• Apart from basic information fields, the history section at the bottom helps in monitoring
potentials, contacts, notes, activities and products categorized by account.

 Account management Benefit

• Track all accounts and related contacts, opportunities and other details from a common
repository
• Associate accounts and related subsidiaries or sub divisions by setting parent-child
identifiers
• Generate printer savvy sales quotes, invoices and sales orders for the accounts
• Store notes pertaining to accounts and keep track of contacts, opportunities and other
details more elaborately
• Export accounts to spreadsheet software to analyze the buying patterns of a customers and
set up loyalty programs
• Track purchase history of the customers and analyze opportunities for up-selling and cross-
selling in future

4. Opportunity Management
• Opportunity management enables sales teams to work together to close deals faster by
providing a single place for updating deal information, tracking opportunity milestones, and
recording all opportunity-related interactions.
• Opportunity Management can be customized to fit internal sales methodologies and
processes, making it easier for managers to monitor their sales pipelines.
• Benefits:
:: Standardize sales processes and methodologies
:: Identify bottlenecks and shorten sales cycles
:: Proactively counter competitive threats
:: Facilitate collaboration across your teams
:: Effectively manage multiple deals simultaneously
:: Track deal progress and milestones
:: Close more deals and increase sales productivity
• Details:
o Opportunity Tracking : Centrally track all opportunity-related data, including
milestones, decision makers, partners, customer communications, and all other
custom information unique to your company.
o Sales Methodologies : Use built-in support for branded sales methodologies such
as Miller Heiman, or set up you own customized sales methodology or sales process
o Multiple Sales Processes : Set up different sales processes and page displays for
different sales situations, whether it be different business units, different product
lines, or different sales channels
o Product Tracking : Track product-level information on each sales opportunity,
including quantity, standard price, quoted price, and product codes. Additionally, set
up revenue and quantity schedules for each product to mirror payment and delivery
terms
o Opportunity Update Reminders : Ensure sales teams keep opportunity
information up-to-date with scheduled email reminders. Managers can set up
automatic, recurring emails for themselves and their teams
 o Competitor Tracking : Track the competition and key competitive issues on each
deal. Roll up competitive data in win-loss reports to understand competitive trends
and emerging threats.
o Opportunity Analysis : Easily analyze your sales pipeline so you can quickly
identify and eliminate any bottlenecks in the sales cycle or determine the cause of
downgraded sales opportunities

5. Lead Management
• `Lead generation is the process by which a company finds prospective customers for
its product offerings.
• Prospects can come in the form of names and addresses, names and phone numbers,
email addresses and fax numbers.
• Lead 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
• Tools :
o can provide qualified leads through marketing campaigns or lead referrals
o can also track other prospect attributes
o These capabilities can result in answers to questions that previously
demanded guesswork
• lead management not only track customer account history but also monitor leads, generate
next steps, and refine selling efforts online.
• Enable a company’s marketing or sales management organization to automatically
distribute client leads to a field of telemarketing rep based on the rep’s product knowledge
or territory. Can result in faster deals and higher close rates.
• Prospect attributes such as product interests, discretionary budget amounts, and likely
competitors, which provides a real-world view of each lead and its likelihood of becoming a
full-fledged sale.
• Can also feed sales forecasting software and result in more accurate predications than
relying on traditional spreadsheets of past performance.
• Questions can be answered such as:
o At which step in the sales cycle do we lose most of our perspective?
o What percentage of leads resulted in sales in a certain region?
o How long is the average sales cycle?
• Lead management is only as good as the data that feeds it, and different products provide
different levels of sophistication.

 What is Lead Management?

Lead management encompasses:
• Lead acquisition and data capture
• Data cleansing and lead import
• Lead distribution
• Lead assignment rules
• Lead scoring and prioritization
• Lead list management
• Qualification and conversion or nurturing
• Workflow for automating lead processes

6. Pipeline Management
•Maximize the revenue potential of every lead. With a transparent view of all sales
activities, sales team can generate instant and accurate forecasts based on revenue and
customer demand.
• Now company can effectively communicate and collaborate, transforming prospects into
profitable and lasting customers.
• The “sales pipeline” is a peculiar term for the execution of the established sales process.
Each company has its criteria for what constitutes its sales process, but opening and
closing tend to be the process bookends.
• A sales process sequence could be:
1. Prospecting 2. Potential lead 3. Qualification 4. Oppurtunity
5. Building vision 6. Short List 7. Negotiation 8. Closed:won or lost.
• In other words, every company has its own sales process. The variations may not be
infinite, but they are extensive. If you can successfully embed your sales process into
SFA application, you can use the application as it was meant to be used.

7. Sales Forecasting
• A new level of control and predictability allows to plan sales activities with confidence.
• Sales personnel provide forecasts and historical reports to their managers as requested.
• Forecasts roll up throughout the organization and managers have the ability to add their
own assessments to the forecasts submitted

8. Customer quotation build-up

• Most good SFA packages have automated generation of quotations and orders.
• Product catalogs-whether they cover physical inventory or services offered-have to be
created.
• All the services, products, and combinations of services and /or products have to be entered
into catalogue.
• Then a pricing schedule that allows for special discounts, volume discounts, times
discounts, and such has to be created based on some criteria.
• Customer quotation build-up helps organizations manage even the most complex product
catalogs with ease.
• You can easily maintain and secure even large catalogs and multiple price books centrally
for increased consistency, while giving your teams easy access to the precise product and
pricing information they need.
• Benefits:
:: Eliminate disparate and out-of-date product catalogs
:: Manage special pricing for certain customer segments
:: Support global teams with prices listed in multiple currencies
:: Increase efficiency, accuracy, and consistency

 Order tracking : This feature tracks the status of the

invoice and the product delivery. This is normally tied
into the back-office financial functions.
 Sales quota management : This is normally for
 sales managers. It allows them to see how the
individual salesperson is doing relative to their quotas
within some defined time segment.
 Commission Management : This is a tool that
calculates the commissions for salespeople.
 Territory Management : Easily administer,
analyze and change territories. Territories are
organized based on geography, industry, product or
other customizable criteria. Instantly and
automatically route sales activities to the right sales
personnel – anytime, anywhere.

 Other SFA applications:

1. Incentive compensation system 2. Competitive information system
3. Telesales campaign management. 4. Sales assistant
5. Learning management system/content delivery tool 6. Expense reporting
7. Marketing encyclopedia 8. Partner management capabilities

 Sales Force Automation: The Technology

• What makes SFA powerful is not just the functionality ,but also the combination of the
functionality and the flexibility of the technology.
• The two makes SFA useful to both the professional on the road and the manager back at the
headquarters.

 DATA SYNCHRONIZATION
• One of the most significant technologies is data synchronization.
• Data synchronization is the process of updating information among unconnected
computers-laptop, mobile ,or desktop .
• Each synchronized system gets data that conforms with the data on any other disparate
system.
• Salespeople in the field can maintain a subset of the master database and update their local
data while others are working with the same data simultaneously.
• Synchronization also allows corporate managers and sales teams to share information
created by field salespeople, such as meeting notes, schedules, and forecasts.
• Important recent sales trends related to mobility and wireless data make
synchronization more important:
o Sales people are spending more time out of the office with customers and prospects.
o sales people operate as members of sales teams as products become more complex
andtechnical, so the need to share information grows.
o Entire sales and marketing organizations are using computer based customer, sales
and project information to sell more effectively.

 Data Synchronization process

• Synchronization products specifically designed for sales force automation allow users to
maintain a corporate database in Oracle or Sybase and distribute a subset of data to the
remote users running relational database applications in stand-alone mode.
• Most SFA products run a single batch job each night to produce a host database extract for
 every user.
• A big problem with this approach is that the reps are always receiving yesterday's
information. In some cases, the update may require two telephone sessions--one to upload
and another to download fresh data.
• Companies with hundreds of salespeople may literally run out of time during the night
batch process window, failing to complete the database update.
• The latest sales force automation products use single-session, bidirectional, on-demand
database synchronization.
• In a global environment where information must be updated 24 hours a day, bidirectional
communication ensures that data does not become "out of sync" due to lags between
uploads and downloads.

 How does it work

• Field salespeople with laptop computers need to download a pertinent subset of data,
manipulate and update the data, and reconcile their changes with the new information from
the host database.
• The typical process of synchronizing data between remote and host systems.
• Remote databases are created for mobile salespeople and branch offices.
• Each database is a relevant subset of the corporate database.
• For example, the information on a field salesperson’s laptop need only pertain to his
particular account.
• The synchronization system tracks changes pertinent to the particular salesperson to both
the remote databases and the host database.
• Rmote salesperson can connect to the home office using low bandwidth modems or wide
area network (WAN) connections. Salespeople or managers who are at a desk can connect
via their local area network (LAN).
• During connection, log files are exchanged that contain new information to be updated in
the respective databases.
• After the connection is completed, new data is applied to each database so that each
database has up-to-date information.

 Flexibility and performance : A synchronization system should be capable of

supporting large-scale field implementations with potentially hundreds of users, even if
your remote sales force is currently small.

 Reporting tools
• Good reporting tools as part of the technology of SFA (and CRM) are essential.
• Lack of or poor reporting can lead to bad strategic or tactical decisions, redundant work
efforts, and missed opportunities.
• Reporting is the creation of customized onscreen or printed views that provide the
viewer/reader with information specifically in the form they want and with content they
want.
• Report engine pulls information from multiple sources, including your financial
applications, your customer data repository and your SFA application, and can put together
reports on an adhoc basis that can be dynamically altered.
• For example, you can view the sales figures for the year, quarter, or month, by customer,
sales person, or profitability-all by simple drag-and-drop operations. It saves money, makes
analysis easier, and can be critical for decision making.