Now Reading

How to Select the Best Sales Force Automation Software for Your Business

The Guide for Identfying the Best Sales Force Automation Software for Your Business

Sales Force Automation Software provides functionality that helps companies manage sales pipelines, track contacts and configure products. They provide a mechanism for collecting, storing, analysing and distributing customer related data to salespeople and managers.

Sales Force Automation Software provides the salespeople with a 360-degree view of all customer interactions. In most cases, a Sales Force Automation Software is part of a company's CRM. It is a vital software for the sales people as it helps them with the sales processes.

In some cases, the Sales Force Automation Software includes either opportunity management or contact management along with email and diary sharing. Some of the benefits in using SFA software includes accelerated cash-ﬂow, shorter sales cycles, leading to faster inventory turnover, improved customer relations, improved salesperson productivity, accurate reporting, increased sales revenue, and market share growth.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are Sales Force Automation Software?

Sales Force Automation Software automates tasks in a business such as processing of sales, tracking the interaction with customers, performing the analysis of sales and its performance, and inventory control.

The Sales Force Automation Software enables the sales people to effortlessly analyze essential metrics such as lead time, win-loss ratio, and conversion rates. For the managers and admins, a Sales Force Automation Software helps them to display a detailed outline of how well their sales team is performing based on leads, services, areas, and products. Typically, a Sales Force Automation Software helps you to fast track the sales cycles to allow you to meet your goals quickly.

The Sales Force Automation Software works by providing a single location for a company to track and manage all the sales interactions between customers and their sales team. By a Sales Force Automation Software creating a single system of record, businesses can better manage their sales-related data, therefore, allowing them to make better-informed decisions around the sales processes.

The software also provides the sales team with an excellent platform for viewing past interactions with customers and their company. The Sales Force Automation Software also has the ability to integrate other different categories of software such as sales solutions, marketing solutions, and finance solutions. With a Sales Force Automation Software, a sales team can have efficient reporting and also run the software on multiple devices such as a laptop or a smartphone.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are the types of Sales Force Automation Software?

SFA enables companies to collect, store, analyse, distribute and use customer-related data for sales purposes.Customer related data like this is the key to customer orientation and the development of long-term mutually beneficial relationships with customers. Based on the installation Sales Force Automation Software can be categorized in to two types.

Software-as-a-service Sales Force Automation Software: It is paid for monthly and hosted on the server of the vendor. As it is hosted on the vendor's server, the business owner does not have to install, update, and maintain the software.
On-premises Sales Force Automation Software: It is hosted on the client's local server and covered with a single license. They are the most expensive types of Sales Force Automation Software as they require a complex setup and regularly require extra hardware installation.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are the features of Sales Force Automation Software?

There is a broad range of functionalities offered by a Sales Force Automation Software that address the requirements of many user types within a sales department. The features are more than vibrant and are perfectly tailored to deal with most of the business tasks. The features are subdivided into four sectors which are leads, productivity acceleration, customer and deal management, and insight management.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are the features of Sales Force Automation Software

Contact Management: It comprises of a number of functionalities. First, it enables the sales reps to easily coordinate and prioritize their opportunities, enables the sales team to keep the most recent contact information and a detailed history of all interactions of accounts they engaged with, and generate multiple types of reports such as statistics and timely data about their activities. The managers also have an excellent platform for gaining complete visibility into the sales teams' activities.
Lead & Opportunity Management : Manage leads from initial capture and routing, through the qualification process, and ultimately though conversion to an opportunity.
Task Management : Manage the tasks in sales process. Create tasks for leads, opportunities and contacts to follow up and never lose track of a sale again.
Order and Purchase history tracking: It allows monitoring of orders and deliveries to ensure that customers receive their products and services in the stated time. Moreover, it offers the sales reps with the intelligence they need for identifying essential purchase trends, understanding customer requirements, and preferences, and implementing more effective strategies for up-sell and cross-sell.
Reporting and Analytics: It allows businesses to accurately assess the performance of specific product lines, sales territories and individual performance of the sales reps. It also facilitates measuring of the actual sales against quotas and forecasts, critical sales performance metrics, and revenues generated by a product line.
Mobile Access: A Sales Force Automation Software allows the sales team to access real-time information of the products data and inventory at any time and from any location. It, therefore, enables the sales teams to stay full-connected even when away from the workplace.
Partner Management: It allows you to actively monitor involvements with your partner networks as well as share objectives and activities with your partners to ensure maximum output.
Sales Forecasting: The forecasting capabilities makes it easy for the financial staff and sales analysts to accurately predict future sales revenue with the help of thorough and an in-depth analysis of the sales trends and history.
Files sync and share: It allows you to easily search for the files you need, manage any access permissions, and manage the setup to allow your sales team to receive notifications whenever a change takes place.
Territory Management: It enables you to create different territory models and allows you to preview them before rolling them out. It, therefore, gives you the freedom of balancing and optimizing the territories of your business after implementation.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are the benefits of Sales Force Automation Software?

The Sales Force Automation Software is typically used to facilitate the sales process by automatically handling different sales process phases. With this, it provides a number of benefits that enable businesses to provide support for their employees and customers leading to a faster growth.

What are the benefits of Sales Force Automation Software

Easy and fast report generation: The sales team can easily organize, track collections, returns, and pending payments. With this, it is easier for the sales team to come up with sales reports. It also means that managers do not have to do everything manually. In addition, the reports generated by the Sales Force Automation Software will enable the managers makes appropriate plans in areas where they have to improve their sales.
Quick and centralized tracking of customer information: Managers in a company can easily take note when customers make changes to the details initially provided without any hassle. A Sales Force Automation Software will also help you to keep track of any calls involved with the customers and store the details for easy access in the future.
Improve sales forecast: The sales team can easily track the behaviors of the customers and market swings. With this ability, a Sales Force Automation Software will store and analyze all information that will be essential in coming up with sales forecasts.
Improve scheduling: A good Sales Force Automation Software helps managers to create and keep track of their appointments. The software also has the ability to remind them about their appointments. With this, it helps managers to improve their business relationships with their customers, employees, and business partners.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

What are the latest trends of Sales Force Automation Software?

There are major shifts taking place in the Sales Force Automation Software. There are new emerging products and technologies added to the Sales Force Automation Software which focus on empowering the seller.

Seller focused: The new technologies are giving the Sales Force Automation Software an edge by enabling them to be more seller-oriented. The new technology provides solutions aimed to offer insights for the top and middle management. The new technologies also remove the need for depending on spreadsheets to make forecasting as they were time-consuming.
Implementation of artificial intelligence: The goal of implementing artificial intelligence to the Sales Force Automation Software is to do ore of the automation. By this, the sales team will have more time to engage with their customers. The use of artificial intelligence applications will also enable the managers to have the ability to prescribe recommendations that help sellers to be more effective with their customers.
Development of an ecosystem: It is one latest emerging trends of the Sales Force Automation Software. The ecosystem which will be developed by the vendors to provide a more developed seller related functionality. The ecosystem will also be aimed to improve some of the parts of the software as well as drive the market of the software.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software

How to Select the Best Sales Force Automation Software for Your Business

Managing a sales team can be a challenge as there are a series of hurdles that you have to overcome each day. It is even a big challenge when dealing with large sales teams as the small issues can be difficult to identify and which would later be large problems. Having a good Sales Force Automation Software will help you to overcome this. These are the factors to consider when selecting and buying a Sales Force Automation Software;

Know each product with a free trial: Before purchasing a Sales Force Automation Software, try to sign up for a free trial plan or request a demo. With this method, you will have an excellent platform for listing the crucial elements and getting a good comparison of the features.
Checkout on reviews and rankings: It is a good idea to have a look at the rankings and customer satisfaction rating of the Sales Force Automation Software you are intending to purchase. Try and select the ones with impressive ratings and reviews even if they are a bit expensive.
Integration: Consider the integration requirements you have for Sales Force Automation Software with your customer databases, order management systems.
Cost: The best solution for you would not necessarily be the cheapest rather it will be the one that gives you the best value for your money. The vital cost you should be calculating should be the human cost. The Sales Force Automation Software that you will select should free your sales team from the administrative efforts of manually reaching out to prospects. It, therefore, means the software should save the resources and time used by your sales team during the day. This is far more important than the price tag of the Sales Force Automation Software you intend to select.
Scalability: The software you choose should grow with you. Therefore, do not select a Sales Force Automation Software based on the current number of your sales team to avoid any logistical problems in the future.

You may like to read: Top Sales Force Automation Software