When your business depends on the actions of a mobile sales force, the team managers will need to keep in control. It’s easy for such a team to get away from you, and once they are away you may find it difficult to get them back on track.
But every manager, no matter how good they are, will be limited by the number of hours in a day. If you’re trying to look after 10, 20, or more members of a field force, you’re going to have a hard time of it without mobile sales force automation.
Do you know what the sales figures are? Any idea who is meant to be meeting a client? Do you know if they got there on time, and what the result of the meeting was? Automation solves many of these problems, and more too!
The Benefits of Mobile Sales Force Automation
To keep the business running, the goal of any salesforce – mobile or otherwise – is to simply make sales. This brings in the revenue that keeps the machine turning, providing the profit that can be invested in advertising, salaries, and product development.
Each member of the sales force team will know their individual targets, and in an ideal world, they will work hard to achieve them.
Unfortunately, they sometimes become a little too focused on making sales and don’t get on with the tasks that will allow managers to formulate strategies to move the business forward. It’s often the “little things” that cause issues – like not sending in sales reports on time.
An automated system removes this burden from the sales force and allows them to carry on selling without interruption as everything happens without human intervention.
The Effects of Mobile Sales Force Automation
This provides relief for the managers as the numbers they need are at their fingertips. There’s no need to wait for a salesperson to take action, it happens automatically.
But sales reports aren’t the only thing a manager can become concerned about. The mobile sales force members will have sales meetings to attend regularly – possibly every day. Nothing ruins the chances of making a sale more quickly than missing an appointment, so it becomes the burden of the manager to make sure everyone gets to their meeting on time.
How is this normally done? With many, many telephone calls. Checking the location of the team member half an hour before the meeting, then again five minutes before, then again after the meeting is presumed to have finished.
A manager could spend half their life calling team members to find out where they are. Automation provides a solution that is both innovative and simple.
Finding your Mobile Sales Force
By using an app on each team member’s phone, you’ll be able to find what your mobile team is doing easily. Using GPS technology, the app can track the location of each team member, and even display their location on a map for you.
You don’t need to call them to find out where they are – you can see it. Using geofencing, they will automatically be checked in to their destination when they arrive, and if they are too far away you can call the customer to advise them on the estimated time of arrival.
Making one call here and there is much easier than constantly calling an entire team!
Linking the CRM to your Mobile Sales Force
You might still wonder how you can find out what happened in the meeting. As the sales team member leaves the location of the meeting, they can use the app to check out and add their notes about the outcome.
These notes automatically sync with your CRM, and so you’ll know quickly how everything went. No more chasing before, during, or after meetings!
Other CRM automation for Mobile Sales Forces
It’s not always the sales team that sets appointments. Sometimes, the manager will know a meeting needs to be set up and will take action to arrange it. Rather than getting in touch with the sales team members directly, information can be added to the CRM which then replicates to the mobile devices of the sales force.
Alerts, notifications, and warnings will let the appropriate member that a meeting has been set, where it is, and when they need to be there. The calendar of the team member will be known to the manager, and so there won’t be any chance of a meeting clashing with another, and so getting someone to site has never been easier.
Does automation lack personal touch?
No, automation does not lack the personal touch, as there is no need for it in this instance. Booking events in a calendar, checking the location of team members, and sending reports require no “personality” at all – it’s simply a matter of checking facts.
Because of this, using automation in these instances to enhance the performance of your sales team will only benefit your business. The team will have the maximum amount of time to engage with leads and customers, while the managers will have more time available to make plans and work on their own aspects of the business.
This makes for a more efficient business overall and removes the hold-ups and delays that often accompany the actions of a mobile sales force.
Further Automation for a Mobile Sales Force
Whether your sales team is office-based or out in the field, the chances are that they will need to send messages and keep in touch with leads and customers. The same automation options that apply in an office will also apply on the road, and so when a lead asks for further information about a product, a response (or chain of responses) can be automatically sent.
With lead tracking, the content of the CRM can be automatically updated, and the sales team (wherever they are) will always have access to the latest information the business holds about the people who have been in touch with them.
Automation makes everyone’s job easier, giving a greater opportunity to focus on the needs of the customer and get things done on time.
