LECTURE NOTES

SUBJECT: CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

COURSE: BBA
YEAR: SECOND YEAR SEM: IV SEM
HANDLED BY: Mrs.V.SUGANYA
UNIT-III

Sales Force Automation

Sales Force Automation, also known as SFA, is a technology used by software to automate
business operations such as inventory management systems, account management, business
process management, customer management, real-time employee monitoring, sales forecast
analysis, lead tracking, sales team performance evaluation, etc.

Sales Force Automation is similar to automated programs that integrate and mechanize the
unique parts of the business process that process sales quotations and perform performance
evaluations in customer contact management.
It connects all the components of the enterprise in a more orderly way and allows a consistent
flow of information through various branches. To a certain extent, rigorous conceptualizations
are required at various levels and it is difficult to agree on small human resources.

SFA is one of the most essential parts of any effective organization. Efficient execution helps it
to become a resource that cannot be replaced.You may customize the Sales Force Automation
software to meet your business needs or to make purchases in the right market for your business
needs.

4 Key Features Sales Force Automation:

The characteristics of SFA are more dynamic. SFA is well suited to handle all business affairs.
These features are divided into the following sections:

1. Customer and transaction management

Since sales are the backbone of any business, you can never overlook sales. The main goal of
SFA is CRM, so some key features are part of this area.
Manage contact

Easily view customer contact details, event history, historical interactions, and account
discussions at your fingertips. You can also gain insights from different social media platforms.
The most important part is that all data is available within the SFA framework as long as you
need to refer to it.

Opportunity management

Do not miss out on ongoing transactions, such as progress, quotations, team status, and more.

Sales force participation

Create custom campaigns with a few clicks and monitor how you engage with your customers.
All developments will be notified immediately.

Sales cooperation

Find experts to get competitive information and track deals on the go.

Business performance management

Improve performance by getting real-time data from your team, setting metric-based goals,
providing training instructions, providing feedback, and rewarding your efforts.

2. Leads Management

Leads are as important as business sales. Without a lead, sales can be difficult. SFA has an
intuitive, easy-to-understand lead management system.
Lead Management

Get the most efficient ways to invest, track real-time leads and transactions, and optimize
ongoing campaigns to keep your games in top condition.

Partner Management

Work with your partner network on a whole new level. Proactively monitor engagement, share
goals and activities to achieve maximum results.

3. Increased productivity

One of the main advantages of SFA is that you can leverage the cloud platform to increase your
productivity. There are several features that can greatly improve overall productivity.
Mobile

Smartphone’s are no longer just phones. They have become a portable sales office with a sales
force automation application. Record phone calls, verify sales, respond to prospects, and get to
know your business anytime, anywhere.
Workflow and approvals

Designing and automating business processes with a simple drag-and-drop GUI is an easy task.

Minimize the management of business processes such as commissions, trade discounts,

promotions and more with a flexible approval system.

Internal Sales Console

Provide the full support needed for your internal sales team. Sales teams can now access multiple
leads from sales intelligence, detailed company information, and a single screen to build a
smarter, faster workforce.

Mail Consolidation

You can integrate all existing e-mail applications and make use of them efficiently without
making any changes.

Synchronize and share files

It was never so easy to share files, discuss with your team, and publishing and tracking content in
real time. You can easily search for required files, manage access, and be notified when changes
occur.

4. Insight Management

Insight is a sketch of effort and reward. All data handled by the SFA ends in the form of insights
into demographic data accessible to everyone.
Reports and dashboards

With intuitive interface and graphics, you can access your dashboard anytime, anywhere and get
real-time reports on your business.

Sales forecast

Deliver intelligent, simple, and accurate sales forecasts to your team dashboards in real time,
with powerful features such as inline editing, the range of visibility, and multi-currency support
to simplify sales forecasting.

Area Management

Geographical management is a very difficult business. SFA simplifies the process by creating
multiple regional models, previews, and allowing you to freely balance and optimize areas after
implementation.
SFA includes a number of tailored features designed to fulfill your business needs so you can
always control your game.

The need for SFA for your business

According to a recent IDC survey, SFA achieved the following results:

 Transactions increased by 30%.

 Shortened sales cycle 18%.
 Sales management time decreased by 14%.

When these numbers are applied to multi-million dollar financial institutions, the overall
productivity and profit growth can be significant. If you want to stay at the top of the league, the
sales force automation system is essential for your business in a modern environment. Working
hours have been reduced a lot.

SFA saves hundreds of hours a year for sales teams. SFA can be responsible for providing
customer contacts, managing past interactions, sorting emails and appointments, tracking
responses, and more. You can spend some time each week and consistently sync these tasks
manually. However, with cloud technology, all team members are updated on the go.

Sales forecasting and trend detection

Smart sales forecasting is one of the most important features of SFA. Analyze past sales records,
view current sales databases, and see opportunities for sales teams to come up with pipeline
opportunities. You can also analyze past sales models and create custom campaigns to get better
leads from existing customers.

Manage your sales team

You can count most of the sales team’s time by counting different parts of the metric. SFA can
solve this problem.
All metrics are managed and calculated as soon as they are created, and features like multi-
currency conversion are used. Also, because area management is so easy, sales teams can use
most of their time to increase productivity without managing anything.

Leadership Management

It’s easier and more convenient to find potential customers than to use lead management in SFA.
Create and transform leads from social media interactions, site visits, and campaign
performance. The sales team instantly receives notifications for popular sales leads and allows
customer participation in real-time.

Cloud platform and permissions

SFA is cloud platform software that enables seamless data to flow anywhere, anytime in the
business. The sales team does not need to contact the inventory management team manually to
determine the status of their business with their audience. Anyone can know everything they
need and can access the terminal or device in real time, 24/7.

Advantages of Sales Force Automation

Administrators often have multitasking. As a result, you can accidentally blame some
responsibilities that can affect the quality of customer service. Also, you may not be able to
accurately track employee performance. This situation can badly impact your business.

Salesperson Automated management systems are a popular way to facilitate the sales process.
Automatically handle multiple steps in the sales process. This enables businesses to grow their
customers and employees faster.
The following are key benefits of sales force automation:

Create simple and fast sales reports

With this software, users can configure and track deposits, held payments, and returns. This
makes it easier to create sales reports. Administrators do not need to do every task manually.
This system also allows you to determine where to increase sales and when to follow up. As the
report is generated, you can plan for the future, such as promotion.

Avoid Incorrect Deployment

The sales force automation system allows administrators to create and track appointments. This
software does not miss to remind you of appointments. This helps administrators improve
relationships with business partners, customers, and employees.

Easily and centrally track customer information.

With this system, administrators can easily record by making changes to the originally provided
details. This allows you to stay up-to-date with your customers by providing the latest
information. If the phone is involved, the system will track and store information for easy access
later.

Easy Sales Forecast

This system allows you to track customer behavior and market volatility. This software archives,
stores and analyzes all information important to sales forecasts.

Benefits of mobile SFA for sales teams

The future of sales is not in the office but in the pocket.

Traditionally, sales have been made, including many face-to-face meetings. When a salesperson
returns to headquarters, many paperwork and data entry is required.
Here, interest in implementing the SFA software matches the interests of the sales team. With a
sales team that can do everything in the field, you can:

 Efficiently mobilize resources without being limited by geographical location.

 Monitor teams during site visits.
 Ensure that important information is not lost between customer meetings and offices.
 Of course, these benefits can have a positive impact on the sales team, and the sales team can
prefer independence rather than picking up outside the office.

As technology becomes a reliable and efficient resource for large enterprises, it’s time to apply
filtering technology to small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) like yours.

A simpler and intuitive user experience gives SMB sales teams access to mobile SFA. This team
may not be supported by the IT department and does not help users understand how to efficiently
implement new systems in their daily workflow.

For small businesses, it’s best to jump out of the traditional methods and implement mobile SFA
in sales automation program.
Benefit 1: On-The-Go Function

A key benefit of Mobile SFA for your team is that you can handle your business on the go. This
means that you can complete tasks on your mobile device (mobile or tablet) and update your
system in real time, such as on a laptop or desktop computer.

A powerful mobile SFA system works in the opposite way. The sales team must be able to
access all the data on the system through the mobile device before or during the meeting with the
customers.The ability of Mobile SFA to prepare and complete a team’s work on the go will make
it a more powerful salesperson and get more benefits. This is a key selling point for the team.

Benefit 2: Field data access

With mobile SFA, teams can be more efficient and access information more effectively in the
field, providing immediate and substantial benefits that can be a key selling point for the new
SFA system.Mobile SFA will directly benefit if some of your teams sell outside of your
headquarters. This is not only ready to meet with the customer but also shows the additional time
required to complete other tasks on their own.

Benefit 3: Greater independence

Joining a team to mobile SFA can cause the same problems as placing it in a new desktop SFA
system. The more openly you communicate with your team, the more mobile SFA will provide
you with a backup database that will show you how to actually increase your independence and
reduce the reaction to the annoying intrusion into your processes. This not only allows for more
mobile SFA but also makes mobile apps a selling point for large SFA systems.

Conclusion

The sales force automation system is essentially required for all businesses that have sales and
customer relationship management. SFA software can reduce thousands of wasted working hours
and increase productivity. If you need a business to compete in a tough competition, SFA is the
answer.
Sales Force Automation and its software

Automation is essential in CRM considering the requirement of handling a huge size of

customer base and the level of complexity in each sales force related or marketing related tasks.
CRM makes use of three types of automation: Sales Force Automation (SFA), Marketing
Automation (MA), and Services Automation (SA). In this chapter, we will learn about Sales
Force Automation.

CRM needs to be accessed by various people in the business. It is most frequently accessed and
used by salespersons and managers of the sales activities at various ranks of seniority. Sales
Force Automation is software that works as a supporting system for the salespersons and
managers to achieve their work related objectives. SFA technology helps a business to collect,
store, modify, analyze, and transport the sales related data. SFA is the strategy used to drive
efficiencies in your sales processes.

SFA software is used by various salespersons such as salespersons in B2B and B2C contexts,
door-to-door salesmen, direct sellers, online sellers, etc. It is used by managers to track
customers, manage sales pipelines, customize the offers, and generate reports, to name a few.

SFA Solution Providers

Some SFA providers are specialists focus on a particular functionality of SFA. They compete
against enterprise solution providers (who provide a complete range of business solutions such
as Supply Chain Management (SCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and CRMs) and
also some providers of CRM suites that include SFA modules. Some renowned SFA specialists
are as given below −

SFA Specialist SFA as Part of CRM Suite SFA as Part of Enterprise Suite

Cyberform Microsoft Dynamics IBM

Salesnet Salesforce.com Oracle

Selectica SalesLogix SAP

The CRM solution providers also come up with configurators, the software engines that allows
the customers to customize their products. Since the configurators help to build customized
products, the stress on the salespersons of handling complex data without errors is reduced. In
turn, their training cost is also reduced.

For example, Dell computers allow its customers to interact with the configurator. The
customers can select devices of their own choice and specifications, and build their own
computers.

SFA Hardware and Infrastructure

In the era of growing businesses, the SFA hardware and infrastructure must be able to cope up
with large number of customers for long time.

In house salespersons are comfortable using desktop or laptop computers but the outdoor
salespersons of a business prefer palmtops, tablets, phablets, or simply, the smartphones. In
such wide range of devices, the SFA technology should be capable of executing on each type of
device.

In case of global business, the salespersons and managers across all the outlets need to access
the CRM database a large number of times. In such situation, the SFA technology should be
equipped with handling distant communication or data transfer over wireless and speedy media.
SFA Allied Services

The services generally take 50 to 60% portion of the total automation project costs. For
example, data services such as data security.

The SFA project managers sometimes buy services from the service providers. The service
providers contribute in business profits and the cost of the entire CRM projects. These services
need re-engineering or tuning few selling processes according to the business requirements.

Functionalities of SFA Software

SFA software can provide the following functionalities −

 Account management − under this, the salespersons and managers get a complete
overview of customer relationship. It includes customer’s personal details; contact, past
contacts, past orders delivered, current orders, transactions, etc.

 Contact management − It refers customers’ contact numbers, Email ID, address,

contact preferences, etc., for maintaining contacts by creation, updating, tracking
appointments and contacts, etc.

 Contract management − It helps users to manage contracts with the customers by

offering the functions of tracking, monitoring, progressing, and terminating the
contracts.

 Document management − It helps the users maintain product lists, brochures, product
specification manuals, price lists, and quotation templates.

 Event management − It enables to plan the events such as conference, trade show,
webinars, seminars, meetings, etc. with customers or other partners. It features event
calendar, event reports, etc.

 Incentives management − The sales managers use this function to appraise and reward
the salesperson’s efforts. It can be linked to payroll application for automatic payment.

 Lead management − It enables the business to create, assign leads to various

salespersons for equal task distribution, and track sales leads.
  Opportunities management − It enables users to create opportunity, administer its
progress, and estimate users’ bonus.

 Order management − Once the customers agree to purchase a product, this facility
turns quotation into accurately priced orders. It is composed of price lists and product
configurator.

 Pipeline management − It helps to maintain entire sales cycle right from identification
of prospects to order delivery and closure.

 Product Encyclopedia − It is an electronic encyclopedia of products with their names,

model numbers, picture, and specifications. It is made accessible to the customer online.

 Product Configuration − It enables users or customers to design and price the product
by selecting the specifications of their choice.

 Product Visualization − It enables the users or customers to create a realistic 3D model

of the product. It is created by referring to the technical diagrams.

 Quotation management − It allows the salespersons and managers to create, edit, and
deliver customized proposal.

 Sales prediction − It helps the salespersons and managers to forecast sales figures.

Benefits of Sales Force Automation

Vendors, salespersons, and managers claim myriad benefits of implementing and using SFA.
Some important benefits are as listed −

 Vendor’s perspective − Improved customer relationship, staff productivity, and

business revenue.

 Salesperson’s perspective − More closing opportunities, short sale cycles, ease of

tracking sales cycle.

 Manager’s perspective − Increase in sales force productivity and accurate reporting.

 Business perspective − Improved customer relationships, Increase in sales revenue,

improved market share, increase in profitability.
Contact management
Contact management is the process of recording contacts’ details and tracking their interactions
with a business. Such systems have gradually evolved into an aspect of customer relationship
management (CRM) systems, which allow businesses to improve sales and service levels
leveraging a wider range of data.

How contact management evolved into customer relationship management (CRM)

This image shows the evolution of contact management software briefly, have a look:

In simple words, contact management is a system where all the customer data is stored, and users
can find every detail from a single place. Initially, contact management software used to gather
basics like email address, phone number, notes, etc. But soon, businesses felt the need for much
more. Now, a contact management system can gather more information like recent activities with
clients, email conversations, shared files, messages, call logs, etc.

The 1980s was the time when businesses had a lot of information to sell products. In the 1990s,
businesses started exploring more ways to use that information to drive more sales by Sales
Force Automation. SFA helped businesses in streamlining some daily tasks like updating
records, assigning tasks, taking follow-ups, sending emails, etc. Sales Force Automation saves
significant time so that businesses can utilize it in more productive ways.

1995 – Businesses were reaching new heights; hence the need for advanced features was also
rising. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was introduced that can help businesses keep
track of customers and take important steps to increase sales. Soon, the development of CRM
tool grew, and now we have many advanced features in a single suite. Features like visual sales
pipeline, sales goal tracking, bulk emailing, email tracking, shared team inbox, built-in calling,
and many more.

Why this evolution?

Any evolution takes place because the system demands certain changes. Humans evolved from
apes because our surrounding was asking for the change. The same way, contact management
system wasn’t enough for modern businesses, hence the slow birth of customer relationship
management software.

Back in the 1980s, businesses were more concerned about managing the details of customers, so
they can connect with them and sell their products. In the late 1990s, business preferences were
changed, and the systems were more focused on how to build a deeper relationship with
customers to sell and up sell products. Contact management software was not enough for
businesses, but still important as a feature.

One more important reason for this evolution is – Team Collaboration. Back in the 80s, customer
details were used by sales teams to make cold calls and pitch products. Now, the picture is
prettier.

Marketing and sales teams are collaborating and finding more ways to pitch products to the right
prospects, at the right time, so sales are assured. We can safely say this evolution has changed
the equation from “Sales” to “Marketing + Sales” and that’s how the contact management
became one of the features of a CRM.
Why we use contact management in CRM?

91% of the businesses with more than 11 employees use CRM software.

The use of CRM is increasing every single day for various reasons. In this segment, we’re
talking about why businesses are using CRM for contact management, and why you should too.

1. Everything at once

You can manage every detail of your customer at a single place, so you can find it whenever you
need it. Starting from contact information to deal status, you can fetch the entire history of a
particular customer with your business.

2. The timeline

From the moment you create a contact till right now, you can check every small progress of
customers with your company. The timeline can give you great insights on points of selling & up
selling. You can predict when exactly you can pitch products/services to customers. The timeline
also helps in activity management, email tracking, and many more.

3. Activity management

With contact management in CRM, you can create new activities, set up reminders, add new
deals, add notes, attach files, and check past activities. Managing activities inside a CRM keeps
you informed about your previous conversations with customers, and help you take the right
decisions in the future.
4. Integrations

Integrations make things easier! One of the major benefits of using contact management in CRM
is Integrations.

CRMs are capable of integrating with third-party apps like Slack, ClearBit, Google Drive, etc.
You can fetch data from these apps and create contacts directly in your current CRM.

5. Built-in telephony

One of the most exceptional benefits of CRM with contact management is – Built-in calling. You
can call and connect with customers without leaving your CRM. This is a solid feature for
businesses that use cold calling. With CRM, you can directly purchase virtual phone numbers of
your desired location, and start connecting with customers.

6. Workflow automation

One of the major reasons why businesses use CRM is to reduce dependency by using workflow
automation. You can define action triggers and reciprocate accordingly for a better success rate.
Major CRMs also allow integration with third-party apps to move your data and utilize for
conversion practices. One such example is using Sales mate customer data in Mail Chimp for
email drips.

You can send personalized emails, take follow-ups, send out newsletters, and invoices on a
defined timeline. With automation, you can reduce repetitive tasks, human errors, and utilize
saved time in more fecund ways.
Bottomline

Contact management software was a vital step for the evolution of customer relationship
management system. Every important feature of CRM revolves around contacts, and we’re
finding more ways to stay connected with contacts to build a stronger relationship. Today, CRM
is on SaaS and Mobile, and it will inevitably evolve again when businesses demand change.

Contact management in CRM is extremely important for small businesses and startups. With
contact management feature in a small business CRM like Salesmate, you get a 360° customer
view showing every tiny activity with the contact. Find everything about your client or prospect
on a single screen, starting from contact info to lead progress.

The limitations of contact management systems

Contact management quickly evolved from Rolodex and Filofax systems into desktop-based
contact management software and email clients with built-in contact management tools. Yet
despite these significant technical advances, many businesses found that their contact
management systems fundamentally amounted to little more than a simple database containing
names, phone numbers and notes.

As the categories of sales management and contact management software have grown closer in
recent years, enterprises started to appreciate the benefits of unified processes and systems
capable of capturing a wider range of business data.

Taking contact management to the next level

By combining the tracking of contacts, their interactions with the business, and their preferences
and service issues, it became possible to create a single, unified view of the customer -- vital data
not only for a successful sales team, but also for the delivery of excellent customer service.
To maximize the value of this data, what was needed was a fundamental move beyond a
sophisticated contact book, and towards processes and systems that track the entire customer
journey from start to end – and then connect those to products.

How contact management evolved into customer relationship management

Contact management evolved into customer relationship management as a result of two key
developments:

 The shift in focus from contact details to relationships.

 The move from individual desktop databases to sharing information business-wide.

Free contact management software, or packages that came bundled with other business utilities
such as spreadsheets, made it easy to store and retrieve contact information.

But contact management tools and programmes have been integrated into and superseded
by CRM systems that can track everything from customers and sales leads to marketing
campaigns and sales team performance.

Putting customer relationships at the heart of the business

Every interaction with a contact can now be tracked and connected to actions and reminders for
follow-ups. And doing this through a single, shareable database cuts confusion and keeps
everyone in sync, automatically.

CRM systems make all that contact management information instantly available to others, to the
benefit of the whole organisation. For example:

 Salespeople and customer service teams can present a joined-up presence to prospects and
customers.
 Sales managers can monitor the effectiveness of individuals or whole teams.
 Marketers can measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Cloud-based contact management and CRM systems

The next evolution of contact management is cloud-based CRM software. A cloud-based system
allows employees to update their system with the latest information about a contact wherever
they are, from any web-enabled device. This is possible because all data is stored on a single
database based in the cloud, so new and updated information is instantly available to all
employees.
The benefits of cloud-based CRM and contact management:

1. Access to data in real time from anywhere

2. Integration of customer information from other sources
3. Integration of social information
4. Smart collaboration with colleagues

1. Access to data in real time from anywhere

With a traditional desktop-based CRM or contact management system, information is only

available via a workstation with the software installed – people have to rely on an obsolescent
database snapshot.

Cloud-based CRM software provides up-to-the-minute information that is available to all

instantaneously via any connected device, anywhere. This is because it uses multi-tenancy cloud
architecture, which means all users and applications share a common infrastructure that is
centrally maintained and updated.

2. Integration of customer information from other sources

When a customer is at the centre of a cloud-based contact management system, it’s easier to fill
in any missing gaps about them, using other, compliant sources.

Connected to other cloud-based data sources such as Data.com, the contact management system
can automatically fill in the blanks in customer information.
3. Integration of social information

The cloud can also easily be used to analyse the social interactions and conversations that
contacts are having on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks.

Is there a problem that a customer is having with a product that they are discussing with others
socially? A connected contact management system can give organisations a real-time view of all
those interactions and proactively find a solution.

But social networking goes far beyond handling support issues and dealing with problems any
contacts may encounter. By integrating social networking and contact management, it’s easy to
see who the contacts' contacts are, who they are talking to, who the key players and influencers
are who ideally should be contacted, along with an indication of who can provide introductions
to them.

4. Smart collaboration with colleagues

While salespeople are often ambitious individuals who’ve developed a personal style that works
for them when it comes to pitching, selling and closing, there are times the business needs to pull
together as a team to get a deal over the line.

This can especially be the case when:

 a deal is complex
 a deal is in danger of stalling
 the primary account rep isn’t an expert in some of the key aspects of the deal.

At times like these, salespeople need to lay aside their egos and find ways to work smartly
together, harnessing their strengths in a complementary way for the good of the whole team.
Advanced CRM and contact systems are designed to support just this kind of collaboration.

No two deals are the same, of course, so the sales manager must work out who’s best to play
which role to achieve a pitch win or secure a long-term commitment. This will vary between
accounts: someone who is ideal as the relationship lead on one account may do better on the
delivery side with another opportunity.