Is Sales Force Automation Part of Your Sales Strategy?

For the past couple of years every major sales force automation (SFA) company has been talking about how vital Sales Force Automation 2.0 (SFA 2.0) technology is. Combining the wireless Web with social technologies brings sales, marketing and consumers closer together, but does it solve the basic issues facing your sales team?

Vendors promise that SFA 2.0 will solve almost every issue a company has from pipeline management practices to building customer relationship that will hold up in today’s brutally completive marketplace. But SFA 2.0 is just another tool and it is useless unless it is part of an overall sales strategy. Investing in these solutions without have a plan, is a bit like buying the most expensive power tools and hiring an expensive construction crew to build a house without first investing in a set of blueprints.

Why do most SFA investments fail to pay off?

Most companies do not have a clearly articulated sales strategy. They do not have processes that help their sales reps find the most effective way to sell. If they haven’t done this vital planning, even an investment in the best new technology invariably results in costly SFA implementations that do not have the expected ROI.

How can you avoid this trap?

First and foremost, make sure that your management team has defined the overarching sales strategy and put in place processes that will enable your sales team to find the most effective sales message. Then make sure that your organization has put in place these five elements of effective sales process management.

1. Formalize the lead qualification process so that your reps can focus on the later part of the buying process.
2. Develop sales messages tailored for different market segments.
3. Design a flexible organization with the ability to ramp up or down rapidly based on changing market conditions.
4. Test, measure, track and optimize results.
5. Leverage market intelligence from other business sectors.

For most large companies, this is all achievable because the organization has the staff and resources to rapidly accomplish this. For a mid-sized company, putting these elements in place often stretches the sales management team too far and distracts from ongoing sales efforts. The most successful path for a mid-sized company is to hire an outsourced sales force and strategy organization to aggressively fill these gaps.

Has your company used an outsourced sales force or sales strategy partner to accelerate your sales efforts?

Photo credit: CP