A field force tracker could be easily compared with a binocular. You are concerned about something but can not see it from a distance. You need some tool to get the visibility of what is happening on the field, without physically being there.
In tech terms, a field force tracker is an app which helps you to track the activities and performance of your field force team. As individuals and as a collective, giving full visibility into the field operations.
Answering the WH- questions
So, you’re at your office, trying to manage a large team of field sales reps. There’s that sense of insecurity that overwhelms you. Because you’re uncertain of so many things. They’re doing the meetings all right but the deals aren’t closing. Different questions roam your mind? Top of which is: why are your sales team members not converting hard-earned leads? What are they doing wrong? Who have they been talking to in the first place? Amongst many others.
It is ultimately starting to feel like a failing marriage, where you don’t trust that your salespeople are doing what they are supposed to do.
You are not even sure if they are at the client’s office or watching a blockbuster with their family.
But there’s only one way to be sure – to be with them, not physically. Remember Binocular? And this is where the field force tracker comes in.
Where?
For most field force managers, the biggest challenge is to track salespeople at different times and tell where they are?
Their concern is the meeting getting missed or delayed. A near perfect solution would be to see the sales rep in real time during work hours with the help of an in-app GPS, especially if they have big/many appointments during the day
Some modern-day field force trackers will not only show you the current location of your sales team, but also the leads or the prospects near them. This is a very important feature from the route-optimizing standpoint. Or sometimes when the meeting gets canceled, you can quickly assign another meeting (which is probably in the neighborhood) to optimize their time or routes.
What?
The second most important question which lingers in the sales managers mind is what is happening in the meetings?
You don’t have the energy or the will to call your salesperson every 10 minutes to check on the meeting. You need something better, an efficient way to know what is happening in real time
Field trackers come with a feature called real-time meeting notifications, where a sales rep can upload the meeting notes instantly. They can check into the meeting and check out when it is over. Upload important documents, notes, customer objections, even without internet connectivity.
Why?
The third, but the most important question. Why the deals are not getting closed?
The sales tracker is not just the spying tool, it provides you heaps of invaluable data to dig and find out where your deal is breaking. By tracking your sales reps, lead information, and client interactions in one place, you can analyze and improve your field sales process.
Is sales tracker enough?
Coming back to our binocular analogy, with sales tracker you can see what’s happening but can’t do anything about it. To transform your field sales into a pack of closer’s you need to impart data, knowledge, and guidance at the right time, much like how the air traffic controller controls various aircraft at once to avoid any accidents. If the Sales tracker is deeply and smartly integrated with a lead management system/ CRM/ Sales execution engine, with the predictive algorithm, it can suggest the further steps automatically.
On a closing note, I would like to say it is hard to create a connected and measurable ecosystem. With tools like LeadSquared, which has a sales, marketing and field force app unified in one platform, you can spend less time in setting up, learning and integrating the software and more time monitoring and mentoring your field sales.
