Chapter Four Sales Force Automation

Presented by:
John Eddington Brooke Kendrick Laura Johnson Jenny Mayer

Where It All Began

Customer Relationship Marketing grew from a focused application to an enterprise-wide initiative and the growth has everything to do with the very beginnings in sales force automation

SFA: Now and Then

SFA were originally meant to improve sales force productivity and encourage salespeople to document and communicate their field activities They are becoming increasingly focused on cultivating customer relationships and improving customer satisfaction

Scenario One
You are on your way to a meeting with one of your best customer. Jim is not only one of your best customers hes one of the companys best. His firm accounts for 2 percent of this years revenues. Soon, you hope it will be 3. You arrive early at the customers building, show your badge at the desk and take the elevator to Jims office. He is in a meeting with a member of his staff, but quickly dismisses them when he realizes you are there. He is always willing to listen to a sales pitch. However, he is not placing an order today, in fact he may never place another order again. His entire firm has been at a standstill for the past 48 hours because of your product. Your product is still on the fritz and Jim and his people have been on the phone to your customer support center for the past day and a half. Your face displays surprise. No one told me about it, Jim, you stammer as you strive to recall any voice-mail messages you might have prematurely erased. Jim stands up from behind his desk, a wordless acknowledgement that hes far too busy to hear about your communication breakdown. After all, hes got a big one all his own to worry about. You think about how to make up for the 2 percent in revenue you and your company are about to lose.

Scenario Two
Jim is still the customer being discussed. En route to your customers site, you turn on your PDA which begins to beep. Priority one alert! Customer Impacted! Flashed on the screen. You pull to the side of the road and read more, according to the message the customer you are about to see has experienced a major outage. A field service rep has been contacted and is now working on the problem. Instead of going upstairs when entering the building, you walk to the back and find the service rep repairing equipment. When you find out that hes working to repair the problem and will have it fixed in the next thirty minutes. You feel relieved and walk upstairs to meet with Jim. Upon entering his office, Jim smiles and says he knew it would be taken care of. Then he asks when the company can get an upgrade. The revenue contribution also increases to 4 percent during the conversation.

About the Scenarios

Scenario One:
Salespeople need better tools to help them manage their accounts, track opportunities, establish and monitor the sales pipeline, and organize their contact list.

Scenario Two:
The scenario assumes that headquarters posses the necessary information and can communicate it quickly many did not and still can not.

The Cradle of CRM

Early 1990s a handful of software vendors realized that companies needed help Salespeople had various means of recording customer information and communication critical account news back to the home office

The Problem
When those employees with this information left, they simply took their little black books and forced the company to locate and re-collect customer data, from ground zero

SFA Warm-up
Salespeople took time to warm up to the idea of SFA It would make things easier but they would have to spend time learning and felt nervous about it

Todays SFA
Sales Process/Activity Management Sales and Territory Management Contact Management Lead Management Configuration Support Knowledge Management

Sales Process
Sales methodology:
Customized to the companys specific sales policies and procedures, known as sales process management Include a sequence of sales activities that can guide reps through each discrete step in the sales process Sales process tools are not sophisticated

Activity Management
Activity management:
Offer calendars to assist in planning of key customer events Automates both individual and organizational to-do list Team collaboration tools Provides valuable post facto analysis of a sales cycle; which allows the team to examine the duration and procedures involved in critical tasks Sales process and activity management are only as good as their ability to be tailored to intervals sales methods

Sales and Territory Management

Sales managers oversee tens or hundreds of sales teams and cannot stay abreast of every active sales initiative Sales management tools can enable them to manage this large task Offering data and reporting options to provide on-demand access to sales activities Teams can be linked to headquarters specialists Sales managers can track territory assignments and monitor pipelines and leads for individual territories Limits on territories

Contact Management
Contact Management:
Subset of sales force automation that deals with organizing and managing data across and within a companys client and prospect organization Software can contain various modules for maintaining local client databases, displaying updated organization charts, and allowing salespeople to maintain notes on specific clients or prospects
Can answer specific questions quickly Enable salespeople to communicate their schedules to the organization at large

Real value of CM is in its capability to track where customers are and who they are in terms of their influence with sales management functions

Lead Management
Also known as opportunity management and pipeline management
Aims to provide foolproof sales strategies so no sales task, document, or communication falls through the cracks

Tools:
can provide qualified leads through marketing campaigns or lead referrals can also track other prospect attributes These capabilities can result in answers to questions that previously demanded guesswork

Sales people follow a defined approach to turning opportunities into deals

Configuration Support
Tools:
Allow a salesperson to input client and prospect information into an easy-to-use tool CRM products have evolved to leverage this information by providing product-specific configuration support to companies who must build products for their customers Often use graphical sales process (Figure 4-2) Page 82 Order stage is reached, the tool can calculate a product configuration and price quote automatically Can then provide forms that facilitate electronic communication of the information to other areas of the company

Knowledge Management
The more information the better
Plethora of information To effectively use this information salespeople need easy access to it
Intranets are a solution

KM are systems that can locate and store this information and provide users with a single application. Geographical boundaries are now non-existent

SFA and Mobile CRM

From Client/Server to the Web:
Web has simplified information availability Intranet eliminates traditional support costs of managing communications Salespeople no longer need act as systems programmers, setting up their communications options, modem settings, and the like

SFA goes Mobile:

CRM vendors intend to unburden it altogether Handheld devise technology is evolving fast (PDA) Personal digital assistants can support anytime/anywhere

Field Force Automation

Field Force Automation Field Service implies the service or repair of customer equipment on the customers premises Each communication can be performed using wireless technology Wireless technology ensures near real-time repair updates allowing CSRs and sales reps to interact with the same data in real time FFA is the fastest-growing area of CRM

SFA Benefits CRM

Sales force automation leads to better informed and more productive reps Increases likelihood of closing a sale Enhances customer relationships, not to mention the bottom line

An SFA Checklist for Success

An SFA Checklist for Success Sales force automation leads to better informed and more productive reps Increases likelihood of closing a sale Enhances customer relationships Seven SFA suggestions

SFA Checklist for Success Cont

Understand the infrastructure necessary to support wireless technologies Let SFA use affect sales compensation. Change hiring practices and job role descriptions to include use of CRM.

Hewlett Packard
Hewlett Packard
Quality printers, high-end servers, and a crack management team. One of their main goals is to provide an industry-leading customer experience. Global Scale- customers range from the largest companies in the world to small mom-and-pop operations.

What they did

What they did
Hps initial CRM effort focused on the organization that touches the customer most: THE SALES FORCE.
Its goal was to provide the companys global sales force with an automated and standard way to perform contact management and account planning. HP chose a CRM solution from business partner Oracle and has deployed the Oracle Sales online product to customer-facing employees in North America and other countries around the world. With Customer activity data in an Oracle customer master database, HP can provide a remote salesperson with the ability to track a customers activities across organizations. Overlys CRM team has made the ability to share information about customer touch points across organizations a key CRM success measure.

What They Did cont

What They Did cont
Improvements Dynamic personalization for web visitors Automated lead routing from marketing to the internal sales staff and HP partners. Overly says Were in the solution business, were not just interested in solving todays problems. They was access to a range of Customer information. The goal is to enable customers to control their relationships with Hewlett Packard.

Challenges
Challenges
Deploying CRM has its trials.
Sales reps all over their world share the goal of being as productive as possible; however, every sales person has a preferred way of getting the job done. Overly and his team have had to surmount habits and assumptions that are often not only organizationally entrenched but also cultural. Were no longer talking about every countrys having a unique personal productivity tool, but about an HP solution.

Good Advise
Good Advise
Overly, CRM Program Director at HP advises others who might be deploying CRM on a similar global scale to be mindful of three success metrics:
1. Obtain sustained executive presence, meaning that executive leadership must be engaged throughout the CRM lifecycle. 2. Always keep one eye on todays problem, and the other on tomorrows problem. 3. Ensure change leadership, with emphasis on the word leader.

The Golden Nugget

The Golden Nugget

You tell me how a person is measured, and Ill tell you

how they behave.
In keeping with this core cultural tenet, HP continues to establish and meet a series of CRM performance measures.

Were putting measures in place to reinforce the behavior were looking for. Three measures:
1. Increased revenue 2. Decreased costs 3. Industry-leading total customer experience

THE END
Any Questions?