The connection between CRM and SFA

In inside sales – also known as remote sales – sales agents and customers don't meet face to face to do business, at least at first. Instead your call center contacts potential leads with the intent of turning them into lifetime customers. Leads that have already become customers in turn can call the business at any time during operating hours, and request the service they need. Inside sales departments succeed by making a large volume of calls, receive a large volume of calls, adequately addressing the needs of prospects and customers, and by keeping track of all the calls and interactions that take place.

A CRM is the system used by companies who sell remotely to handle the large amount of information shared during inbound and outbound calls. These systems collect and record the important data a remote sales team needs. With a CRM, a sales agent will be able to track which of his or her leads have been successfully contacted and also when other leads need to be followed up on.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A customer relationship management system tracks all phases of the sales process: sales, marketing, support, ordering, and services.

The part of a CRM that controls and documents the sales process is called Sales Force Automation (SFA). This allows sales professionals to schedule call back appointments and phone meetings, track responses to sales and marketing campaigns, and manage individual sales accounts. The data that the SFA collects during the sales process on leads, customers, and performance will be kept in the Customer Relationship Management database.

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

An SFA facilitates successful lead management, and is designed so that no lead will ever be lost in the transfer from lead generation to lead qualification. This allows a sales agent to contact a lead as soon as it comes in. These valuable leads generated from web forms and ad campaigns will never again sit stored in a forgotten computer file where they could be overlooked and ignored. Leads are able to be imported in from a variety of sources including spreadsheets and web captured forms automatically with sales force automation. As those leads are converted into customers sales teams can view trends and analyze those trends in their SFA, which shows how individual employees and sales teams are performing so they can figure out how they could improve.

Sales force automation also consolidates all company information into one accessible place within the CRM. This includes contact information for leads, product purchase orders, and the communication history between clients and sales agents. This information facilitates collaboration across all departments in an organization and aids the effective coordination of sales campaigns and initiatives.

Using Sales Force Automation to track the communication history of individual customers with an organization helps the company to keep their 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 you can avoid the annoying repetitive emails, and all contact with the customer can be rewarding and relevant. SFA also provides information for an organization on whether or not emails sent to contacts are opened by them, as well as how long it took after they were sent for them to be opened.

Using the information gathered by sales force automation, a Customer Response Management system can analyze data recorded and provide reports for employers. These analytical reports will allow a company to know exactly how many calls the whole sales team is making each day, how long each one talks to individual leads and customers, and just what percent of their contacted leads convert into customers. This allows sales managers to accurately make decisions and changes to how their sales team should continue based on their current performance.

Analytical reports also become important in managing an organization’s marketing campaigns. With a customer relationship management system sales professionals can track where the majority of new leads are generated from and which of those new lead bring the company money. If one particular lead source, a lead generation company or ad space on a website, is not producing the quality of leads expected for the business, a CRM will show that in its reporting and inform the company that it should reallocate its resources into a source that will bring higher returns for its investment.

Converting leads and keeping customers happy is what inside sales is all about. A customer relationship management system (CRM) which incorporates sales force automation (SFA) provides remote sales teams the tools they need to do that.