Why Your Field Sales Teams Should Use Sales Force Automation Software

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Time Spent on Reporting is Reduced

One of the most challenging tasks for sales teams and managers is preparing and sending daily and weekly reports via Excel and email. Since these reports come from different sales team members, consolidating and reading them, and making decisions based on them, leads to significant time loss for both sales teams and sales managers. Additionally, delays in learning about important information from the field and the risk of missing critical details negatively impact our ability to make swift decisions. To manage time effectively, gain immediate control over information from the field, and make instant decisions in sales team management, SFA software is the best solution.

“SFA software, which minimizes the time teams spend writing and reading reports, can save you at least 4–8 hours per week and an average of 4 to 6 business days per month.”

More Frequent and Focused Customer Visits

Thanks to SFA software, you can segment your customers correctly and determine your visit frequencies and priorities accordingly. We generate 80% of our sales from 20% of our customers. By segmenting based on various factors such as dealers’ sales figures, marketing investments, and working with competitors, we can understand how much communication is needed within a month. This allows us to clearly see how many of our dealers in the region we are reaching. Additionally, we can accurately observe the conversion of these visits into sales.

Ekmob SFA Segmentation Example

Increase Dealer Satisfaction

Sales teams are crucial in observing our customers’ current situations and transferring this knowledge to corporate memory to make better decisions about the region. It’s essential to closely monitor the following aspects of dealers:

• The current status of marketing efforts (signage, hardware support, etc.) provided to the dealer.
• Recent updates about the dealer (information on owners, current store condition, employee details, collaborations with competitors, etc.).
• Setting expected sales figures for dealers by sales teams and comparing them with actual turnover.
• Competitors’ activities in the region and competitor analysis.
• Market size and analysis of the region.

Additionally, measuring dealer satisfaction helps take quick action in resolving identified issues. Satisfaction levels, positive or negative feedback about our company from dealers, can be measured through complaint forms. SFA software includes automations that route negative feedback to relevant departments, enabling prompt responses to dealer concerns. This contributes to increasing dealer satisfaction rates.

“Using SFA software can increase dealer satisfaction rates by 40%.”

“Moreover, you can observe a 55% improvement in data quality serving corporate memory.”

The timing and quality of our dealer visits are crucial for every company and customer representative. Preparation should include pre-determined topics for discussion with customers at dealerships, focusing on outcomes. It is essential to analyze financial and commercial information thoroughly beforehand. SFA software integrates data from your ERP layer, pulling various data points such as collections, financial risks, product preferences, and growth trends based on turnover, providing the most current information before and during visits. This ensures more focused and efficient visits.

Enhance Dealer Visits for Quality and Efficiency

“Using SFA software optimizes visit duration by over 35%.”

“You can enter customer visit data in less than 45 seconds during customer visits, ensuring efficient data input.”

Access Instant Decision-Making Reports

One of the significant challenges observed in companies not using SFA is difficulty in accessing real-time decision-making reports. Customer visit reports, sales data, market competitor information, etc., are housed across different software and departments within the company. Consolidating this data and generating decision support reports often requires sales support teams to use various BI tools for reporting. Companies using SFA software consolidate data like customer visit information, sales data, and market analysis into a single platform, providing decision-making reports to both sales managers and field sales teams. This enables real-time monitoring of dealer, representative, and regional performance and enhances the ability to make faster decisions.

Improving Internal Team Communication

WhatsApp and other similar applications used for internal communication unfortunately negatively impact decision-making processes and hinder the development of corporate memory. Important customer information shared through WhatsApp groups may be seen late or missed by managers or other teams. This, along with the transfer of daily inter-team processes between relevant teams, leads to excessive time spent on daily internal communication. SFA software records all team planning and visits in real-time, notifies relevant parties instantly about visit data, and enables immediate feedback. This fosters retrospective corporate memory and enhances the quality of internal team communication.

Why Sales Teams Do Not Use/Can’t Use CRM

CRM software is not designed for field sales teams.

“According to research, 50% of sales teams resist using CRM software.”

The primary reasons include time loss, difficulty in generating reports, and the lack of sales-boosting impact for current and potential customers. Sales teams require SFA software due to their mobility and the need to access varying levels of customer information, as well as the demand for faster activity management. Therefore, companies will increasingly invest in SFA software specifically tailored for field sales teams in the coming period.

Data-Driven Sales Management Supported by Machine Learning and NLP

SFA software supports data-driven decision-making systems for field sales teams. According to Gartner:

• By 2026, 65% of B2B sales organizations will shift to data-driven decision-making using technologies that integrate workflow, data, and analytics.
• By 2025, B2B companies will use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing in 70% of customer interactions to obtain competitive and market information.

Based on the data it gathers, SFA software can provide data-driven insights such as identifying your most profitable customers or pinpointing where your sales team may be struggling or excelling. Additionally, through natural language processing technology, it can generate alerts based on the importance of field-entered notes, detecting the negativity level of notes like starting to work with a competitor or returning products, and notify relevant managers or departments for necessary information and guidance.

Conclusion:

In a competitive environment with decreasing profitability, we must ensure our sales teams become more efficient. Particularly during turbulent times, we should enhance visit performances, strengthen dealer visits, and enable data-driven decision-making processes. These actions will facilitate quicker responses in competition.

Together with OSS Association, we delved deeper into this topic in the “Sustainable Sales Techniques During Turbulent Times” training session for field sales teams. In the future, every salesperson will become an excellent relationship manager, and the right sales force automation software will form the backbone of sustainable sales.