How to Select the Best Sales Force Automation Solution
As a newbie or a small business owner, you must be proud of how tight your grip is on your business operations, but as your customers number gets larger every day, you’ll find it impossible to recall the same sequence of tasks every time you want to collect a payment, manage inventory, or process sales.
Sales force automation is a technology brought to the markets to help businesses better manage sales operations and provide tools that help admins/managers measure achievement and track performance. In addition to all of that, this technology automates daily tasks that are repeatedly done in sales.
With all these perks of sales force automation, no wonder that more businesses have recently been seeking this solution. But the question is, how to select the best sales force automation solution and what to consider with all these providers pride themselves to be the best on the market?
In this blog, we’ll walk you through the features you should look for in a sales force automation solution and what factors can affect your choice.
What to Look for in a Sales Force Automation Solution?
Before making up your mind on SFA solution, there is a number of features you need to pursue, let’s scope them out:
Integrations with Other Services
Integrating your SFA solution with other apps is essential to easily import, sync, and store data. Integrations increase functionality and improve sales processes of your current system by connecting it to an array of tools such as Quickbooks, MySQL, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Odoo, MailChimp, Slack, and Dropbox.
Reporting and Analytics
Reports and analytics use visual representations of sales-based data indicating performance, attendance, productivity, visits, coverage, and any other aspects that can help keep track of your business.
Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting is the use of current and previous sales data to predict reps/teams sales in the future and measure an estimated revenue based on the given data. This option also helps with sales budgeting based on the sales forecasts.
Mobile Application
To better manage your sales and field teams, make sure that your SFA provider offers a user-friendly and intuitive mobile application that also has a full suite of sales tools and options.
Cloud-based data storing
Having a cloud-based solution guarantees real-time data syncing and grants unrestricted access to key information anywhere and at any time.
Offline Mode
This is a key feature if you are keen about getting the work done under any circumstances. The offline mode allows getting the tasks done when reps are unable to connect to the internet, and when they are online again, all data gets synced and the day is saved.
And now as we have reached this point in our blog, let’s step into our second concern: What factors can affect your choice and how to rest assured that you’re making the right decision.
Factors That Can Affect Your Decision
A good sales force solution can help you stand out with your services, but how to decide which sales force automation solution is good for you and which is not?
There is a number of factors that you need to consider prior to opting for a sales force automation solution. Here is the full list of features:
Business size and industry
To narrow down your options; you will first need to understand that every field and business size has different needs. Thus, make sure to look for a sales force automation that caters to your business size and has features that goes with your business industry.
For example: If you run a business in FMCG and you come across an excellent salesforce automation serves the pharmaceutical industry, no matter how good the solution is, it can’t be a good option for your business.
Cost
The cheapest sales force automation solution might not cover every aspect of your business, the most expensive one might not do that either. You can do some math to know how much you can save with a certain SFA provider and whether or not it can reduce your current costs and increase efficiency.
Scalability
A good salesforce management solution scales up as your business grows, and no matter how big your sales team gets, make sure that your choice is ready for it.
Free trial
No one wants long commitments! Why risk it all if you can test the water first? Many SFA providers offer a decent free trial period with limited or full access to services. We recommend taking your time testing every feature before you say your last word.
No doubt finding your business a good salesforce solution isn’t a piece of cake, but once you define your needs and know your goals, you will be ready to choose wisely.