What is Sales Force Automation (SFA) Software?

Sales force automation (SFA) software is a bundled information management and collaboration tool which allows companies to standardize their sales processes and activities, starting from lead generation to conversion. This software auto collates numerous sales records in a matter of minutes and effortlessly analyses metrics such as conversion rates, win-loss ratio and lead time, along with reporting efficiency. Additionally, it displays a clear picture of your sales team’s performance with regards to products, sales, and lead handling. Closure rate, calls made, total time spent on call conversation, status of leads, customer experience data etc, are all information provided by the software. You can use these to understand how your sales team is performing and where it can improve.

Why Sales Force Automation Software

Salesforce automation software fast-tracks your sales cycle, ensuring that you meet your goals sooner than later. The software provides enhanced visibility, structure and automation to different online selling processes such as sales order processing, contact activity management, and account management.

SFA Software gives businesses a chance to improve their sales effort. Its different features help in reducing disorganization significantly shortens the sales cycle, and helps in assessing sales performance and forecasting future growth. Other crucial features of SFA include stock control, sales forecast analysis, contact administration, quotation management, and product management.

You need this software in your company for: -

• Efficient prioritization of leads & easier assignment of leads to the sales team
• Smarter forecasting coupled with business intelligence
• Better employee accountability & real time analysis of productivity
• Easier collaboration and data sharing among teams

SFA Software Features

Contact Management

This software helps you monitor all interactions made with your clients. The contact management dashboard includes records of names, phone numbers, addresses, email ID, description, and other relevant information of each contact. With every information at your disposal, you can contact customers only when needed and avoid over-contacting them. CRM systems offers a complete view of all interactions and activities between you & your customers.

Opportunity Management

You can view complete details of your team’s performance with the opportunity management feature of CRM system. With the opportunity management feature, you can observe sales stages, quotes, products viewed and more. You will get in real-time every information to close a sale.

Sales Forecasting

Sales automation lets you conduct in-depth analysis of your sales history, current market trends and buyer behavior. You can effectively predict sales figures and consequently improve the chances of higher sales revenue.

Sales Performance Reporting and Analysis

CRM applications generate performance reports for managers to get real-time data about forecast vs performance, revenue generated and other related metrics.

Lead Management

Salesforce automation software plays a big role in the entirety of a lead’s passage through the sales funnel. This feature lets you track sales progress, deal status, pending sales-related activities and move them through the sales funnel. Lead management works alongside contact management so that you can view customer interaction information and profiles through one window.

Deals and Tasks

SFA can be used to add, assign, and track actionable tasks in the sales pipeline. Deals and tasks are automatically created with correct customer information, as soon as the latter is entered into the system.

Campaign management

Managing your marketing & sales campaigns from start to end is easy with this feature. You can use it to set up target audience and customers, automate workflows, and measure its success, as per clearly defined metrics.

Email Tracking

CRM application software tracks email clicks, impressions & opening rates, which you can view as quantifiable data. It works with popular mailing solutions like Gmail, Outlook, MailChimp, etc.

Customer Profitability Analysis

Customer profitability analysis helps a company understand the net profit gained from each sales transaction. This is calculated by looking at revenue minus costs. Costs here include manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, services and any other related costs which are undertaken to better serve customers.

Business Intelligence Analysis

Using business intelligence tools of sales automation, you can make informed decisions about your sales process. Data for the same is collected from both internal and external sources, and then collated for analysis on a single unified dashboard.

Activity Workflow Manager

Assigning tasks and regulating your employee’s activities is simplified with this feature. You can define the entire workflow, from individual to team level, and monitor it to reduce redundancies.

Social media integration

With a CRM application, consolidating and managing your business’s social media accounts is much simpler. You can access your social media data at one platform, track lead generation activities, find leads and assess success metrics for effective customer management.

Advantages of Sales Force Automation Software (SFA)

Gain Key Insights for Improved Decision Making

Sales force automation software lets you collate and analyse sales & customer data to find patterns, trends, and insights. Such data is crucial for making strategic business decisions.

Increase Sales Opportunities

The data you obtain from lead management software lets you qualify new leads quicker and focus on important prospects. You can also identify customers for upsell, cross-sell, and reactivate dormant customers.

Better Time Management

CRM system lets salespeople optimise their daily schedule to prioritise tasks. This ensures that potential customers aren’t accidentally ignored and key prospects are contacted on time.

Reduce Cost Per Sale

With customer relationship management, you can identify the best sales practices and remove redundancies in the sales funnel. You can train your team in the same, and consequently, reduce conversion time. This will reduce the cost incurred per sale.

Increase Rep Accountability

It’s different tools and procedures let you analyze if sales reps are performing well and if not, then what’s causing them to slump. You can communicate the same to them and help them perform better. Additionally, it’ll also make reps aware that their work is being monitored, making them more accountable towards the task at hand.

Improve Client Retention Rates

Information obtained from different channels ensures that clients are contacted in advance about their contract expiration dates. Salesforce automation CRM also alerts sales reps about any issues with their client accounts.

Align Sales and Marketing

Salesforce automation software provides real-time field data which helps in crafting effective marketing campaigns. Consequently, sales reps can work on the quality leads generated through effective marketing. Both departments can collaborate & share contacts, deals, and insights to fast track the sales cycle.

Make Accurate Sales Forecast

Its business intelligence, forecasting & analysis tool makes it easier to view and analyze deals and tasks that are coming in and out. Additionally, deals which are moving or are already abandoned can be identified, giving you patterns for forecasting customers’ buying patterns and preferences.

Accumulate Data Fast

Insights, sales numbers and pipeline details are all collated by this software. Your sales team doesn’t need to spend time accumulating data from different marketing platforms as the software does it. This allows for easy and quick analysis of data.

Mobile Friendly

Almost every sales force management software is mobile-optimized and can be used on Android and iOS-based devices.

Cloud-Based Solution

The software can be availed on a cloud-based purchase model. Cloud solutions eliminate the need to maintain hardware and it’s a safer long-term option for businesses. That’s because, in case of property damage caused by any reason (earthquake, fire, flood, short-circuiting), your business’s data is securely saved & stored on a remote server. This ensures that your data isn’t lost, and you don’t need to start from scratch.

Buy SFA Software Online

Before making a purchase, you should ensure that the software resolves your needs. Making the right decision about SFA software will help save time and resource, ensuring higher profitability.

Define Your Need

Why do you need this software? Is it to automate your sales management processor to successfully manage leads? Is your primary objective from using an SFA to make better business decisions?

Answering such questions will be useful in making the right purchase decision before buying an SFA. Depending upon your business requirement, you can go for SFA with the right set of features.

Ease of Use

If the SFA of your choosing is difficult to use, it will create a massive dent on your budget and resource, affecting your bottom line. SFA software should help you improve your sales funnel and increase your business’s profitability, to stay ahead of the competition. Thus, look for a software that can be easily used and understood, without much effort.

Vendor Support System

How quick & effective is your vendor’s response time in case of problems? If you face problems while using this software, you will need immediate support from the vendor’s end. Delay in support will cause a serious problem for your work flow. Ensure that the vendor you go with has a quick response time and is effective and supportive.

SFA Software Demo

By using a demo/trial version of any product, you can assess the positive and negative characteristics of the software. Before buying, ask vendors to provide you a demo/trial version to better understand the solution.