Beyond Sales Force Automation

By Rachel Bates, CRM Source

An important part of Customer Relationship Management is sales management. There are 2 concepts that have been discussed quite a bit in the CRM world. One is Sales Force Automation (SFA) and the other is Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE).

When we refer to sales force automation, we are really talking about taking very manual activities and events, and moving them to the system where they are automatically triggered by a series of pre-determined business rules. For example, let’s say that after every introductory phone call with a prospective customer, our sales rep is supposed to send a “thank you for your time” email. Instead of the rep having to remember to create an email, the CRM system checks to see if an introductory phone call has been completed, and if so, automatically sends a personalized email to the prospective client.

When automation has been carefully planned and matched to “best practice” processes, it can be an extremely time-saving tool. Automation can also ensure that new business opportunities are tracked and closed consistently and efficiently.

According to relationship management gurus Peppers & Rogers, Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) is really about “managing the entire customer process to maintain loyalty and to focus on selling more profitably.” CRM technology enables the sales force to be more effective through the whole course of the customer life-cycle.

Microsoft CRM enables sales people to maintain a detailed, complete view of each customer, including data tracking and information about leads, opportunities, competitors and more.

Let’s take a look at some of the components of Microsoft CRM Sales

Sales Force Management

Measure your employee sales performance against their goals. As new business opportunities are closed, they are credited to the assigned salesperson’s quota.

Territory Management

Create and manage territories for salespeople and evaluate territory-based sales processes with workflow rules and reports.

Reports

Identify trends, measure and forecast sales, track processes, and evaluate performance with a wide range of reports.

Sales Literature

Create, manage and distribute a searchable library of sales brochures, white papers, competitor information, and more.

Competitor tracking

Maintain detailed competitor information, track competitor activity, and associate that information with opportunities and sales literature.

Direct e-mail

Increase sales productivity easily by selecting customers with common characteristics, and then use templates to send customized emails with special offers.

Complete customer view

View and manage customer account activity and history, including contact information, open quotes, pending orders, invoices, credit limits, and payment history.

Opportunity management

Use customizable workflow rules to automate leads routing, notifications and escalations, and opportunity and pipeline activity management.

Sales process automation

Automate stages in the sales process to ensure that opportunities are tracked and closed consistently and efficiently, using customizable workflow rules and selling methodologies.

Information sharing

Tightly integrated Sales and Customer Service modules let salespeople share information about contacts, accounts and orders while viewing accurate, updated information about customer support incidents.

Quotes

Create and modify accurate quotes for prospects and existing customers using a full-featured product catalog that supports complex pricing levels, units of measure, and discounts.

Order management

Convert quotes to orders that can be modified and saved until they are ready to be billed as invoices. This is where the integration with an accounting package like Solomon makes Microsoft CRM even more powerful!

In the next issue, we will focus on the Customer Service aspects of CRM.