Mar 31, 2009

Sales Force Automation

Sales force automation systems (SFA) are a part of a companies customer relations management (CRM) system . Sales force automation is a system that automatically records crucial data at all stages of the sales process. Utilization of a well designed SFA brings the possibilities of increased productivity and customer satisfaction.

The idea behind sales force automation is that when analytical data is shared between departments and sales stages that sales professionals will be able to ensure that they are productive as possible.


An SFA allows successful lead management, and promises that no lead will ever be lost. This allows a sales agent to contact a lead as soon as it comes in, never stored in a file where they could be forgotten about. Leads are able to be imported in from a variety of sources including spreadsheets and web captured forms. As leads are converted into customers you can view trends and analyze the trends in your SFA, showing how individual employees and sales teams could improve.


SFA also consolidates all company information into one place. This includes contacts, product purchases, and communication histories. This information facilitates collaboration across an organization and allows the coordination of sales campaigns.


Having an SFA helps you track the communication history of individual customers which is important in keeping clients happy. Well designed sales force automation systems provide easy templates to be used in creating effective emails or print mailers for customers. They also provide tools for personalization, allowing companies to reach the individual needs of their clients while providing them a good experience with the organization. By tracking communication with individual leads and customers annoying repetitive emails can be avoided, and all contact with the customer can be rewarding. They also provide information for an organization of whether emails sent are opened or not, and how long it took after they were sent for them to be opened.


A sales force automation system should integrate with all other telephony systems an organization uses. This allows the SFA to be as accurate and useful as possible in its analytic business reports. Because an SFA receives information constantly from sales agents, it can provide the exact status of a business at any given moment. This increases an organizations ability to make informed decisions on sales practices. An SFA that can produce graphs or charts of sales performance quickly and easily will show underlying trends, and will allow sales managers to quickly relay important information to their sales teams.