Phil Gibson - Marketing | Building Brand Experience
Phil Gibson - Marketing | Building Brand Experience

Sales Force Automation (SFA)

As we covered above, CRM systems are for the benefit of your customers.  Here, we remind ourselves that Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems are for the benefit of your sales people or channels.  Of course, both of these systems have benefits and leverage for your entire company but their primary function is clear.  Successful CRM and SFA implementations understand this definintion.

 

SalesForce.com and their Force cloud infrastructure is the eminent SFA system used today and it got to this status by focusing on ease of use and the productivity of the sales person.  Adoption of SFA systems can be a cultural challenge at most companies but this is mainly due to conflicting objectives that arise from confusion over the reason they are used.  As soon as the focus becomes making the sales person more successful, adoption takes off and productivity follows.

 

Do a good job of profiling your customers and understanding your resource map.  Engage and qualify your visitors through your email marketing dialogs and this will generate qualified leads that you can distribute into your SFA systems for follow up.  It's as simple as that.

 

Along the way, your SFA systems will prioritize your top opportunities, support your biggest customers, and act as the communications hub for your corporation.  Done right, these systems are essential in focusing your resources for customer delight.

 

Now the problem of course is that not all of your partners will have automated SFA systems so you will probably have to build or mock up a lot of file transfers or other manual procedures for getting your leads to to your sales resources.  Time is the enemy here.  Qualified leads typically have about a 2 day half life.  Engage them before that or you may as well not bother because someone else already did.

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This Web site is aimed at capturing some of the basic concepts I use when creating integrated marketing programs and leveraging the internet.

 

 Phil Gibson ©2016

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