Companies automating their sales forces are demanding systems that can answer clients’ questions, gauge their buying intentions and manage relationships with them. And one other thing: These systems have to be able to do it all very quickly.
Sales force automation systems are electronic software-based devices that enable field salespeople and companies to keep detailed records of their dealings with customers at all stages of the sales cycle, from initial contacts through closing contracts.
“Velocity is what matters now,” says Joe Batista, director of Internet enterprise marketing at Compaq Computer Corp.
Since the Houston-based company began using Field.first, an online sales force automation system developed by Conjoin in Burlington, MA about a year ago, its salespeople have been able to furnish information 37% faster than they used to.
In the past, notes Batista, when clients asked salespeople for things like more extensive product information, often they’d have to wait more than two weeks to get all they asked for since much of it would be housed in different departments at Compaq. Now it takes only a few hours.
Compaq carries close to 300,000 individual products, including computers, storage devices, printers and networking devices.
Overall, he says, Field.first helps Compaq cut the time it needs to get an order by decreasing correspondence between sales and marketing departments. The program also helps salespeople on the road by providing high computer bandwidth, allowing them to do a lot of things at once.
Field.first is one program in a long line of sales automation software that has been evolving since the mid-’80s, says John Coe, president of Database Marketing Associates in Scottsdale, AZ. He says that 10 years ago, the only program available was contact management software like ACT!, which was intended only to help independent field salespeople organize themselves better.
About five years ago, sales and corporate management began to see a need for systems that would share sales information companywide so that marketing, customer service and other departments would have the most current information to work with if salespeople left companies or were promoted.
Pat Sullivan, president of Interact Commerce Corp. (ICC), also based in Scottsdale, pioneered ACT!, which he later sold to Symantec. He then began developing software called SalesLogix, and formed a company by the same name in 1996. Earlier this year, he re-acquired ACT! and established ICC.
SalesLogix claims to give salespeople immediate access to detailed contact and account information along with a complete history of e-mail, proposals, and notes from meetings.
One long-standing issue with sales automation is that salespeople are reluctant to share customers and prospects with their parent companies for fear that others in the firm might cut into their business.
But one firm found the opposite to be true. The 60 or so salespeople at medical products marketer Pegasus Airwave, Boca Raton, FL, welcomed the adoption of SalesLogix 3.1 last November, reports sales administration director Linda Masterson.
Before then, Pegasus, which markets special air mattresses to medical facilities, was completely paper-based. “If you fill out just one form wrong, insurance companies will use that as an excuse to deny or delay payments,” she says. “But we were able to put most of our forms on SalesLogix and [that] helped speed up payments.”
In the past nine months, a number of smaller online sales automation systems developers have sprouted up and have been touting their suitability for small businesses (and low prices).
One such firm, MyNetSales.com, Boston, says it can offer salespeople a game plan in which they can move readily to the next step in the process.
Because this system is entirely Internet-based, it is said to be able to streamline sales processes in companies with several different offices, since individual sites don’t need their own servers. As a result, companies need fewer IT employees.
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