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SALES AUTOMATION Research Summary White Paper

"Most of the primary and secondary decisions about sales automation have nothing to do with software, hardware or IS"

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT BY READING THIS WHITE PAPER ON SALES AUTOMATION

This paper gives readers insight into a.) what Sales Force Automation (SFA) is; b.) what you should look for among the hundreds of SFA programs on the market; c.) and what to avoid and what you'll need to include when planning the implementation of yourcompany's SFA system. This paper will also deal with the human, emotional, political and turf issues surrounding SFA. We will discuss many of the critical success factors for automation projects. We will define and clarify what SFA is; we'll discuss some of the difficulty factors and automation problems that you must confront.


"Enterprise-wide Sales Force Automation is far more than field Reps with laptops and contact management software."

WHAT IS SALES FORCE AUTOMATION?

Here's a real life answer. Imagine a midwest manufacturer and marketer that installs MRI rooms and equipment for hospitals and clinics. MRI equipment sells for millions. Marketing reps for this company use laptops to configure, validate, price and quot e the cost of equipping an MRI room. When meeting with decision parties, the marketing rep will put the laptop in the center of the table and pull up the MRI Configure program. This is a graphic program that lets marketing reps visually construct an MRI r oom and place in it each piece of equipment that the hospital decision parties need or would like. The room dimensions and layout can be changed as needed and each piece of equipment can be placed, positioned, moved or removed as needed. After the MRI ro om configuration is complete, the Validator is used to check that all the equipment selected works together. After completion of validation, a key stroke calls up the automated price book which enables the marketing rep to easily assemble pricing for the validated MRI room configuration, automatically. After any necessary adjustments to pricing are made a tentative quote can be generated. This is an example of how the marketing reps of one client company use their SFA system to bring Sales Force Automatio n to life.

REAL LIFE SFA EXAMPLE #2:

A national soft drink bottler uses laptops and SFA to quantifiably convince retail grocery store chains that the bottling company should be allotted more shelf space in each of their stores. The daily start-up routine for the bottler's marketing reps i s to download from an east coast company that maintains and sells scanned price data from each of the chain stores' check-out counters through the last evening. When the bottler's marketing rep arrives at a grocery chain store headquarters, his/her lapto p is set in presentation mode. In addition to a multimedia presentation, the rep displays various types of statistical models using the downloaded data from the check-out scanners. The pie charts, bar charts, moving average charts, etc. along with the mul timedia presentation and the rep's commentary build an easy to follow and persuasive case for the additional shelf space.

REAL LIFE SFA EXAMPLE #3:

A manufacturer produces liner material that is an integral part of products produced by a diverse group of other companies. Each application of the liner is customized to the purchaser/customer company's specifications. Over the years the R&D and tech nical support departments of the liner manufacturer developed 100s of thousands of technical and chemical variations of their liner material... but only a small percentage of each variation was/is used by customers. When a marketing rep from the liner ma terial company calls on a manufacturer with products that could use their liner material the problem is always the same... How does the liner marketing rep decide which of the 10s of thousands of liner variations should be recommended as the best fit for his prospective user? A key ingredient of the rep's selling process is to create and maintain customer excitement about the solution possibilities of his liner recommendation.

To create the necessary buyer excitement, the liner company rep uses a CD-ROM equipped laptop to access a product applications database that contains over 100,000 examples of liner variations and solutions. Using a drill-down or hypertext process, the liner company marketing rep can easily select from broad topic categories, down to more refined categories and down to still more refined categories until an assortment of applications that are specific to meet the needs of each prospective purchaser are identified and displayed. The applications displayed present a graphic of the liner material, the detailed technical specifications, manufacturing process and specifications, etc. All this information can be printed on-the-spot, or left on disk with the p rospective purchaser. These automated selling steps require less than 2 minutes.

REAL LIFE SFA EXAMPLE #4:

A shoe manufacturer has a large number of Mom & Pop shoe stores that provide retail outlets for their shoe products. One drawback is that they (Mom & Pop) never know what's in stock at each shoe store. This means that manufacturing planning is imposs ible and backorders are a chronic problem... and sometimes backorders cause lost sales because retail customers buy elsewhere. To solve the problem, the shoe manufacturer automated their selling process and initiated a process for each marketing rep to us e a laptop during regular account management visits to each "Mom & Pop" retail store. Attached to the back of each laptop was a pistol shaped infrared scanning gun. At each store the shoe rep goes to the stock room and in a few minutes using the scanning gun "reads" the bar codes on all shoe boxes from his company. Now, the rep and his company know exactly what's in stock in each store. Next, while still in the store, the rep selects and loads the floor plan model for the that Mom & Pop shoe store. Each morning when the shoe rep begins his day, he downloads inventory and order data for his territory from corporate. He uses that data while on-site at each retail shoe store so that he can quickly and reliably know what each store has on order and what's i n the pipeline (been shipped).

These data in combination with the inventory update scanned into the laptop database minutes ago are added to the floor plan model for the store. The result is a series of X,Y grids reflecting each shoe model carried by each store. As the shoe manufac turer's rep flips though the grids for each model of shoe the size and width coordinates are either green, yellow or red, etc. Each of the colored boxes on the grids define a specific size and width and specifies the number of pairs in stock, shipped or on order. The colors allow each store owner to easily know what they should immediately order, what they have in stock, or which styles should be "dropped." All of these automated selling and customer support processes require less than 10 minutes.

In each of the above 4 examples the sales rep achieved described results during ONLY ONE FACE CALL. Before automation, the same selling tasks required 2 to 5 face calls. Also, before automation 2 to 5 face visits required weeks or even months to comple te. Notice further that "contact management" was not mentioned in the above four examples. Why? Because it is integral to each of the systems described but secondary to the selling processes detailed. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. The coordination and sharing of data interdepartmentally among customer service, market support, marketing and sales management, telemarketing, fulfillment and other functional departments makes the automat ion horizon loom much larger than only automating the selling tasks of field reps.

SELECTING SFA SOFTWARE: DOUBLE AND TRIPLE DIPPING

One of the most serious and costly sales force automation problems a company will confront is the "second and third dipper" syndrome. This refers to making a wrong software decision, typically because selection was based on the wrong criteria. Many com panies purchase and install 2 or 3 SFA programs before finding the "right" one. Not only is this trial and error approach costly in money, wasted effort and employee aggravation; but also it substantially decreases productivity, creates job dissatisfactio n and often results in expensive employee turnover and ill will. We have seen companies lose 30% of their field reps and as high as 50% of their customer service people as a result of automation double and triple dipping.

During the course of our marketing and client service initiatives, our consultants speak with hundreds of sales executives across the country, each month. As a result of this on-going survey of sales and marketing executives we have found that over 50% of companies who say they have automated... in reality have only financed the "trial and error" double and triple dipper SFA software selection process.

HOW CAN YOU AVOID THIS PROBLEM?

Your understanding of how and why the problem evolves is the only way. This is typically what happens. 1.) Corporate management or senior sales and marketing management act on the suggestion of one or several sales Reps who, on their own, purchased a p ackage that they have been using and enjoy. 2.) The "tail" is allowed to "wag the dog." A company allows MIS/IS to drive the sales automation decisions and process instead of sales and marketing management.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE SCENARIOS?

Most sales automation software programs that are purchased by individual Sales Reps (even if they offer a LAN version) don't meet the enterprise-wide needs of a company. They lack required security, interopera bility, configurability, computational reporting capabilities, database engine performance, configurability of user-definable fields with nesting, linking (parent/child) and computational capabilities between fields, to name only a few common drawbacks.

WHO SHOULD MAKE MOST OF THE SFA DECISIONS?

To get it right the first time, you must know that most major and many secondary decisions about sales automation have NOTHING to do with software, computers or MIS/IS. Most SFA decisions must be focused on how the company sells, the day to day, step by step selling tasks of field reps. This means you must focus on the selling information flow, as defined by your sales & marketing management, i.e., what kind of reports do you (managers & reps) need?... which selling and sales support activities will b e tracked?... what data do reps need, how should it look on screen? how often do they need it... what data should reps input to the system and when should they up-load it... who in the corporate office will receive/needs data from field reps... what kind of communication and data sharing is needed between field sales, sales management, customer service, telemarketing, marketing support, customers, etc? All of these and hundreds of other selling tasks, sales support activities and interactions must be spe cified, detailed and documented BEFORE you can decide on software or needed features and functions.

BOTTOMLINE: The selling tasks that will be automated must be defined by sales and marketing management BEFORE any software or MIS types are brought into the loop. There's a phrase in the computer industry that applies to this crucial situation, "GIGO" which means... (G)arbage (I)n... (G)arbage (O)ut. If you attempt to automate the selling tasks of a sales process that is currently poor, out-dated or only loosely defined (every sales rep doing his/her own thing), automation will only amplify and intensify your problems... not make them better.

Without exception, sales automation is a serious corporate cultural change. To achieve successful SFA, your automation project team must seriously approach it with the uniform knowledge that it's a reengineering of the company's sales and sales support process. You can't waltz lightly into it as if you're rolling out a word processing or spreadsheet program.

WHY CORP SENIOR MGMNT + SALES/MARKETING MANAGEMENT MUST BE INVOLVED

SFA is a change process... automating day to day job tasks of a company's sales and sales support people means you're focused on impacting the bottom line by impacting sales force performance positively, negatively or neutrally. Two of these possible o utcomes are not good if you're already "on the line" for money spent and if the anticipated results of SFA are not realistic. The point is, if your current selling, customer support and other sales support functions have problems or are not good for whate ver reasons, you will still have the same problems with your selling process AFTER automation. Sales automation will dramatically increase the speed and ease (PRODUCTIVITY increases and free more "face" time for actual selling) with which many selling tas ks are completed; SFA will dramatically increase the efficiency and effectiveness (lower sales expenses) with which day to day selling and support tasks are accomplished... but SFA will not change an outdated or inefficient selling or support process into a lean, mean selling/support machine that suddenly enables your people to knock out competition, etc. and other miracles.

In other words, SFA most often is a process of quantifying selling and sales support tasks that have never before been quantified and assessed. Typically, SFA reveals parts of a company's selling process that have never been brought to light... often h idden or outdated selling steps are not identified until SFA is underway. The point is... "HOW OBJECTIVE DO YOU THINK YOU CAN BE WHEN YOU'RE ASKED TO LEAD A PROJECT FOCUSED ON DRAMATICALLY CHANGING YOUR OWN JOB?" This is the dilemma confronting mo st sales and marketing management who are charged with initiating SFA to its operational phase. Appropriately, most sales & marketing management is graduated from field selling. Thus, they have credibility among and a bond with field sales reps.

A CLOSE BOND BETWEEN SALES/MARKETING MANAGER & SALES REPS CAN BE BAD FOR THE SFA SYSTEM

Unfortunately, for many companies that have tried to automate, this bond between sales and marketing management gets in the way when the hard decisions about the SFA process and implementation are made. How? This kinship between sales and marketing ma nagement and sales reps may hinder sales management from getting the necessary details for the system design. Sales management is less likely to reinforce the need for and to insist that sales reps regularly input detailed, daily call notes into the syst em. Sales management is also not likely to follow-up with reps about their system use, and to birddog sales rep learning and retraining needs. Experiences with S & M management has proven that their human condition means they are less likely to be objecti ve and focused on the "big picture" corporate goals when sales reps complain about how they must "stretch" for SFA, how much they must learn to use the system, etc. This is one of the reasons company's retain outside expert advice and leadership to birddo g required objectivity and to keep the project on focus with the company's BIG PICTURE and long term goals through the SFA planning, needs assessment, implementation and training phases. The understandable struggle for SFA objectivity among sales and mark eting management is the dilemma that also brings to life one of the crucial reasons why senior corporate management MUST be included and actively involved in the "inner circle" SFA process... to hopefully avoid or at least effectively control this human c ondition that could negate SFA success.

THE EIS... ENTERPRISE-WIDE

No, not an (E)xecutive (I)nformation (S)ystem, we're talking about an (E)MPLOYEE (I)NFORMATION (S)YSTEM... that is focused on the customer. The Employee Information System, or EIS is focused on and should be 100% about the customer... the paradigm shift from numbers to words for stronger customer relations.

While some companies view sales automation as a process and technology for sales and sales support people, companies that have SUCCESSFULLY automated have the view that..."EVERYONE in our company sells. If everyone in your company sells then you really have only two job functions, sales Reps who sell and everyone else in the company from CEO to shipping clerk who support their selling efforts.

"SPEAKING WITH ONE VOICE"

We call this philosophy for a company's selling success "speaking with one voice." This means that all employees who directly interface with customers or prospects must convey the same message about the company's products, services, etc. All employee s must make a positive contribution to the company's market image, enhance it and further it when interfacing with customers and prospects... ergo, they "speak with one voice." These front line employees must know what has been said, sent, how often has anyone/everyone been in contact with the customer, what promises have been made, who are the problem people in the account.. the power people in the account... what are the politics of the customer situation, etc. Your company's ability to build strong, unshakable customer relationships, your ability to motivate customers to bond to your company and product(s) is at the heart of the need to build a SFA system that shares the "right" kind of information, for use by everyone who interfaces with customers s o that they can "speak with one voice."

How does the "speak with one voice" philosophy translate into tangible bottomline results? Successfully automated companies combine GOOD SELLING PROCESS with SALES AUTOMATION and contact management tools focused on how their people work day to day. Th ese companies have created a reliable EIS.

A NEW SHIFT

Sales Automation software is quietly bringing about a paradigm shift for many companies. This means that while accounting, order entry, billing, inventory, etc., are all still important, they are secondary to an EIS. This is true because many companie s have made the EIS the front-end on their computer system. As a result, it's easy for all employees to "speak with one voice." Effortlessly, without calling around to a bunch of other employees, everyone in the sales, support and S & M management loop c an know what's been said, sent, promised, how often customers have been contacted, who the problem people are in any account... who the power people are in any account... the politics of a situation, etc.

In summary, if your company wants to benefit from "speaking with one voice," you should consider SFA technology as the core of the EIS concept. Remember, that while all the numbers about the customer are important the subjective detail kept in the SFA EIS about business and personal interaction is what creates, maintains and builds the relationship with customers and bonds them to your company.

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR AUTOMATION PROJECTS

An informed estimate of SFA failures among U.S. companies is based on an ongoing, informal survey conducted by our account executives as they talk with S & M executives who either have tried or are in the process of implementing SFA. 60+% of U.S. compa nies who try to automate fail to SUCCESSFULLY complete the project.

For automation success, make sure you gather detailed answers to these questions.

SALES REP ENTHUSIASM FOR SFA: Did you literally document a Plan for building ADVANCE enthusiasm for automation among sales reps, sales support people and executive stakeholders?

PRElaunch PREPARATION: How extensive and what did your SFA preparation initiatives include?

CORPORATE CULTURAL ASSESSMENT: What parameters did you use? What did you include and how did you translate the information into SFA planning and implementation issues?

SALES REP PARTICIPATION/CONTRIBUTION WITH SFA PLANNING: What was the depth & detail of input from sales reps about automation issues relating to selling problems they confront day to day?

USER TRAINING: How was the training program for automation users designed, implemented and introduced?

- Training: Did you deal realistically with the "human condition" issues; i.e., fear of automation stemming from resistance to change and/or ones upheaval from familiar work methods, database sabotage via incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise unusable information, lip service participation, forked-tongue sales management, etc.

- Is the quality and accessibility of training sufficient to insure SFA success?

SOFTWARE SELECTION: Is your software selection process focused on functional requirements (driven by how your people work/job tasks) instead of focusing on technical capabilities of the system and how great the software screens look?

- Have you made it clear that use of sales rep laptops will be strictly limited to running ONLY approved corporate software?... and understanding why this is important.

"POLITICS" vs. FACT: Did you separate automation "politics" or editorials from facts? How? Are you sure?

- Is the level and depth of management participation sufficient and effective? Is management support visible and motivating in order to insure SFA success?

NEEDS ASSESSMENT: What criteria was used to develop user surveys & questionnaires?

- Specifically, what was your user assessment criteria?

- Specifically what method did you use to quantify and validate user survey results? How did you test your assessment methodology to ensure that you don't end up with the wrong software features and functions?

ROI GOALS: Did you document and share realistic ROI goals and timeframes for an automation project with everyone involved? How did you determine timeframe & ROI?

SFA PLANNING: Did you research and document a Plan For Automation that discusses step by step needs, methodologies and individuals that will be responsible for completion of the work; that details a walk through of the project phase by phase, so the unknown becomes known by each stakeholder who reads your Plan? Is your Plan focused on reducing fear of automation, lessening time, frustration and cost of SFA ramp-up for sales reps, sales support and corporate management?

- Did you put today's step by step selling process at the forefront of your automation design?

CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT: Did you consider macros, utilities, or custom applications that can be used to make repetitive functions go away or become 10+ times easier?

- Is the system equally accessible by inside/outside users?

- How will the system be linked with mainframe/mini to avoid slowdown of data duplication and synchronization?

- Since 20 to 100 "person" years of programming time has been invested in some SFA programs, did you use industry "best practices" to avoid reinventing the wheel?

INTERDEPARTMENTAL INVOLVEMENT: Have you lobbied for and won multi-departmental commitment to SFA? Did you share and educate interdepartmental managers about the reasons their involvement is crucial for SFA success? Did you identify and emphasize "what's in it for them?"

- Did you explain and document the impact of data generated in the field (by sales reps) on all company areas?

- Have you documented how interdepartmental data sharing and interaction will be carried out in the system?

- Have you thoroughly assessed how SFA will keep all interdepartmental and corporate users informed with product, customer, financial and distribution data?

WHAT IF ONE OF YOUR SALES REPS RECOMMENDS A SOFTWARE PACKAGE?

Some of the heavily advertised sales automation programs are so loved by Reps that they spend their own money on them. Nevertheless, when use of these programs is expanded from individuals or independent reps to an enterprise-wide scope for the entire sales force, they are a disaster.

The bulk of sales automation packages available today are what we call 3rd tier ($50 to $500) programs. This means they were conceived, designed and built with the individual Sales Rep in mind FIRST, and the company second (or not at all). This is be cause developers of 3rd tier programs gave little or no thought to the typical administrative and management data flow and interdepartmental input issues that are important to a company. Many well known sales automation programs, that have the highest vis ibility in business and PC publications can accurately be characterized as 3rd tier.

TYPICAL PROBLEM #1: The glowing reviews given most 3rd tier programs in business and computer publications are bestowed by staff or free-lance writers who have no idea about the start-to-finish operations of a company's sales and marketing opera tion. They also don't understand how the corporate management and interdepartmental data flows to and from sales and marketing operates in a company. Their review is simply about what they see before them (a 3rd tier software program) not how or whether it makes sense for a corporate SFA system.

TYPICAL PROBLEM #2: The second problem stems from "I'll scratch yours if you'll scratch mine." Page through a PC or Business publication that has penned a glowing review of a 3rd tier software program and you'll likely see a full or half page a d for that same program.

TYPICAL PROBLEM #3: Don't be fooled into thinking that a LAN version of a 3rd tier program makes it a company-wide solution. It doesn't!

BOTTOMLINE for 3rd tier programs: To overcome the 3rd tier category, and for successful enterprise-wide usage, these packages would have to provide solutions for a diverse group of corporate users such as multi-level security, adhoc, frequency d istribution & computational reporting, data centralization, end-user configurability, interoperability, data compatibility, data transfer issues to name a few.

MAIN OPERATING SCREEN BASICS

It's essential for a SFA program to have a main work area we'll call the primary contact screen, i.e., a screen that has the basics ... customer name, address, contact person(s), telephone numbers, etc. The program should easily open, with only 1 or 2 keystrokes, a partial or full window (or lower portion of the primary contact screen) that can be used to display any kind of text information; e.g., pricing, product descriptions and statistics, transcripts of verbal explanations of product or services, telemarketing scripts or surveys; typically long term or permanent information such as one's birth or anniversary date, whether a public or private corporation, chairman's name, SIC code, etc.

With minimal key strokes, an SFA program should also allow you to easily set recall dates, whether for phone calls, meetings or additional mailings. Other requirements are user-definable fields, unlimited dated note field area, a word processor for mai ling lists and generation of personalized form letters, reporting capabilities and networkability to customize your package and to share its data with other users.

SFA WITHOUT NETWORKING IS ALMOST USELESS

Networking lets all field salespeople, telephone reps, customer service reps, supervisors, administrators and managers have quick access to the latest information and reports about contact(s) with a customer or prospect. All front-line people in the sa les and sales support loop can "Speak with one voice" to customers. With a key stroke, telemarketing and customer service can quickly share details with reps in the field or sales management when data is synchronized; with a key stroke details about selli ng opportunities or delivery problems surfaced by customer service can be shared with interdepartmental stakeholders. With a key stroke on a laptop, field reps can update a customer, or telemarketing, customer service and sales support about situations th at need follow-up or action, etc. Your company can build strong customer relationships if you provide the automated tools for your sales and support teams to capture and speed information access/sharing, combined with user training and backed up with an o ngoing Quality Assurance Program (retraining for users, system monitoring and maintenance) so that everyone knows how to use automation to their day-to-day advantage.

DO CUSTOMERS BELONG TO REPS OR THE COMPANY?

Sales people typically change jobs frequently. Although a company's customer and prospecting files should not leave with departing sales reps, they often do. All customer files created by and/or worked on by sales people essentially are the property of and proprietary to the company. No matter where the customer or prospect files may be physically located... in field offices, on laptops, in telemarketing or customer service desks or sales administration and support department(s) file cabinets... all o f these records belong to the company and should be periodically "cleaned" and centralized. To protect and maintain these valuable files the sales automation system must have a network, strong import/export and/or client/server features to keep a central repository of ALL company customers and prospects. This central repository should be routinely updated and backed-up at a predetermined (on-line, daily, weekly, biweekly) timeframe through a data synchronization process. Some of this can be accomplished through the use of client/server (C/S) and SQL technology but in-depth discussion of these methods is beyond the scope of this white paper. However, these technologies may or may not be advantageous to consider in your sales automation plans. Procedure s and standards are a problem that must be resolved before these technologies can effectively be used in mission-critical situations. For example: If you select a client component from one C/S application vendor and the server portion from another C/S ven dor can you depend that they will work together? Not always.

CRITICAL NEED FOR A RELIABLE SECURITY SYSTEM

Since your SFA program will be used by more than 1 person, your system must have security controls. Better SFA programs offer several levels of security. For example, each user will be required to log on with a name; then, a password must be keyed in to enter the system. This security requirement should be consistent for all laptop users.

DATA COPYING, DELETION, EDITING:

Selectively, you should be able to grant or deny access to various people, to various portions of the program or functions within the program. Another critical feature is the ability to deny data copying, editing or deletion of data without clearance from the system administrator. The security system should also protect customer or prospect data from destruction, damage, alteration, theft, viewing by "wrong" or unauthorized persons or from foreseeable distributi on to competitors. One disgruntled employee can cause irrevocable harm to a company via tampering with its marketplace data... in extreme vulnerabilities, a company can be put out of business through wrongful or careless access and misuse of its proprieta ry data. Be aware, SFA databases, when used properly, quickly become the most important data in your company about the customer. It has the most up-to-date, detailed and most sensitive information about what's going on with your customers. Security is VERY important if your serious about doing SFA right.

COMPUTER OPERATING PLATFORM

A SFA package that operates in the MS-DOS/Windows environment will give you the broadest selection of programs to choose from. Unix could be another alternative. Data Code, On-contact, Aurum and a number of other packages are Unix-based with flexible tool kits that enable you to configure and customize these programs to your company's specific needs.

While the Unix operating system is generally more powerful and technically robust than MS-DOS/Windows, it requires more expert talent to maintain it. Our experience is that Unix, AS400 and DEC based programs are not as intuitive and user-friendly as D OS/Windows based programs. And, typically Unix based programs are more costly. The selection of programs to choose from in Windows-based programs compared to Unix is about 25 to 1.

TREND TOWARD AN INDEPENDENT MARKETING DATABASE

Many companies have chosen to set-up an independent computer system and SFA database for the marketing and sales operations that is 100% separate and independent from the company's mainframe/mini operations. In most companies, the sales operations must be immediately responsive to customer needs and inquiries. The point is that sales reps, sales support people and sales management cannot afford to be put on the MIS/IS waiting list for a project to be run. Sales response time is a critical component of the company's success or failure. With today's software programming technologies, API "hooks", OLE, DLL and Windows 95 a company can generally link one system to another whenever needed.

IMPORTANCE OF USER-CONFIGURABLE, USER-DEFINABLE FIELDS

You can tailor-make any program to your company's specific business information needs by using the program's user-definable fields. When shopping for the best program for your needs there are a number of features and functions to look for. How many use r-definable fields does the program give you? Also, there are various levels of sophistication among user-definable fields. For example, you'll usually have 5 to 30 fields that you can define/label. A few programs offer pop-up windows from which you can select from a list of predefined choices.

Some programs offer more flexibility. A few offer an unlimited number of user-definable fields. In addition, a pop-up file of unlimited length, can be created and attached to each user-definable field. This might contain words, numbers, short phrase s that can be selected and entered into the field.

Look-up lists or pop-up windows eliminate the need for the operator to remember the correct spelling of a word. They also ensure uniformity of words selected and entered in a field, from operator to operator, so a later search of that field will produ ce the best results possible. A pop-up window or the look-up list feature will be invaluable in reducing the stress your sales or telemarketing people may experience in learning and using the system.

A few of the better SFA programs let end-users not only custom label an unlimited number of user-definable fields, define what data can, should or must be entered in the fields response area, but also let you define and carry-out a series of mathematic al calculations between fields and link user-definable fields together.

This linking and mathematical capabilities let users design and easily develop user-definable fields in a form or window structure. A form which can be called up to the main work screen and used. What can the forms or windows be used for? Use your i magination. An order entry form, forecasting, gathering demographic or psychographic facts form, an inventory lookup (with look-up lists of inventory attached) form, a bid or quote form, problem tracking form, collecting research data form, year-to-date sales, etc.

HOW DO YOU PUT CAPTURED USER-DEFINABLE FIELD INFORMATION TO WORK?

Think of user-definable fields as input. You use them to capture certain information that, in most cases, you want to calculate, list, tabulate or total in some specific manner. The output of that input will usually be a report or form. Do you think any of the SFA vendors you're talking with know what you want included in your reports, or know exactly what your forms look like? If not, make sure your SFA program choice has a full function computational report writer (RW) as an integral part of the package instead of just a set of pre-defined reports. These report writers are similar to having Lotus or Excel available but within your SFA program. In the Windows environment, with the OLE, DLL and API hooks, programs like R&R Report Writer, SnowWrit er, Report Smith could be good reporting choices.

Some SFA vendors may tell you they have "custom designed reports to meet all your needs". What that probably means is that they include a series of reports that have been pre-defined, and you must adapt your reporting needs to whatever forms they offe r. A RW should let you freely create the visual design and structure of any reports you need. A good RW should let you duplicate any report or form you now use. Can the RW extract data to use in your report or form from any field in the any customer co ntact record? Can it extract data from any user-definable field? Can the RW, at a minimum, add, subtract, multiply, divide, figure percentages and total the extracted data before it is placed in the proper location in your custom designed report or form ? Will it let you, at your option, generate a detailed listing of all your information or give you a summary one-liner with just the cumulative totals?

In some of the more sophisticated SFA programs, user-definable fields and reports let you, as mentioned earlier, create order entry systems, survey forms, inventory look-up functions, invoicing procedures, etc. Its possible to be quite creative with s ome of the better programs. Some may even offer output to an accounting or other type of program to let you manipulate or massage the data even further. DDL and OLE technologies available in Microsoft's Windows program will let you do many of these oper ations in Windows. In Windows 95 many of these features are far more refined that in Windows 3.1.

SFA'S MOST VALUABLE TOOL: DATED NOTE FIELDS FOR SUBJECTIVE INFORMATION

The one essential feature of any good SFA program for building strong customer relationships, is quick access (1 or 2 keystrokes) to an unlimited note field, attached to the contact record. A note field that let's the operator record detailed, dated n otes about every face-to-face or telephone conversation with a customer or prospect.

These notes should be used for review before every future contact to be current with the customer or prospect situation and be able to, in a very matter of fact way, sprinkle in some information you've recorded from previous conversations. This will help build a solid, long-term relationship with customers. It is also an excellent tool to separate you from your competitors. Recording and using detailed notes about every conversation you have with your customer or prospect will bond them to you by m aking them feel that you really "know their stuff". The SFA program you choose should have a key word search feature that will let you find a word or phrase in these note fields. Ideally, the SFA system should automatically date and time stamp notes and add the name of the person recording the notes. This way you always know who said what to whom. Some programs do not allow notes to be changed once saved. This can be a very valuable feature.

FINDING PEOPLE AND COMPANIES: SORT AND SEARCH FEATURES

A good SFA program should offer search capabilities on all the fields in the main profile record as well as all the user-definable fields. The most intuitive and user-friendly method for searching is called search (or query) by example. It will prese nt the main profile screen or user-definable fields blank and you enter the words, numbers or dates into the fields you want searched.

Some SFA programs may let you search on partial words or numbers and may even let you search on a some selected range of letters from A through Z, numbers or dates. Some of the better programs will let you carry-out concurrent, multiple searches. For example, let's say I want to find every customer in the zip code range 60610 to 60660 who is in the 3421 SIC code with over 50 employees and gross yearly sales from 5 to 10 million dollars. Assuming all the needed information is contained in your SFA pr ogram, some programs would let you enter all 4 of these search criteria and give you an answer with one pass through the database. Look for programs that offer search or query by example and avoid programs that require you to learn and use boolean logic for searches. Boolean logic is a programming process that a number of these program use for doing multilevel searches. It is not easy to learn or remember. In our experience, sales people and boolean logic mix like oil and water.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH SPEED

One important characteristic to look for when evaluating search capabilities is the speed of the operation. Speed can be reduced by a number of things including the programming language, the design of the program, the underlying file handling utility, etc. However, two of the main determining factors in search speeds are file handling capability and structure and whether the field your searching is a primary (the fastest) or secondary (a little slower) indexed search field. You don't want your field sales person or telemarketer waiting minutes every time they need to search for the next record or find a customer who called in. Some of the more sophisticated programs let you selectively index fields for faster searches and sorts.

Look for SFA programs that use file structures and file handling routines that are fast. Generally a D-base file is going to be accessed or transferred slower than a file that is using a file handling utility like Btrieve. This SFA program feature ca n be a serious problem with larger databases and is many times overlooked. Some of the better SFA programs will run either native or use ODBC against Oracle, Sybase, etc.

WORD PROCESSING AND FORM LETTERS GENERATION

SFAs should have the capability to easily generate personalized form letters for direct mail campaigns, fulfillment, pre and post sales call contact, etc. Ideally you should be able to, at the conclusion of each conversation, enter 2 to 4 keystrokes an d select for mailing the most appropriate letter from a list of previously created letters. Depending on the size of your operation, these letters can then be sent one at a time as generated to the printer or batched for printing later. In Windows, we h ave also set-up SFA systems so that a batch run of letters can be sent to a fax for delivery.

You should be able to select the same or different letters for each contact. Each letter, if necessary, should be easily modifiable without leaving the contact screen to add a sentence or two that personalizes it even more. The better programs will g ive you access to Word Perfect, Word or Amipro. In Windows programs you should expect to be able to use any of several full power word processing programs because of the Windows environment.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING DATA

Sending and receiving customer or prospect files is an essential part of any SFA program. Transferring and synchronizing files from field laptops to headquarters, from field to regional offices, from telemarketing to the field, from field to customer service, from sales management to company management's mainframe are just a few information transfer operations you may need to perform. Be sure the program you select is up to it.

A good SFA program should have a section of the program which will let you set-up the field structure (length) and type of field (alpha, alpha-numeric, date) for files to be imported and define the format (ASCII, etc.) of the files to be exported. This transfer process should be set-up and defined in advance by the administrator or manager of your SFA system.

One other facet of importing and exporting data that should be addressed is spinning off and merging back data files. When a transfer of data is needed you must be able to quickly identify and spin off the files to be transferred. So that the compute r is not disabled for other uses, this spin off process should be fast. Once spun off into a subdirectory the export function in your SFA program should ideally have the ability to speed the modem transfer of data by compressing the files before they are sent. This will reduce phone line charges and reduce the time the computer is not available for other purposes.

In addition to the data synchronization process built-in to some of the SFA programs their are other options. Mobileware, DataSync, Anyplace are programs that specialize in using intelligent agent technology and communications to take care of data tra nsfer and synchronization processes.

MACRO CAPABILITIES ESSENTIAL FOR USER-FRIENDLINESS... NO-BRAINER OPERATIONS

Once screen formats and file structures have been defined, the better SFA programs will let you automate much of this process through the use macros. This key stroke capture process is used to carry-out regularly scheduled, repetitive reporting or ope rational routines. To use this process you simply turn on the function and then as you press the keys needed to do the routine or process you want done, the utility records every key you strike. Other programs have you write down the keystrokes needed t o carry-out the operation or activity to want to automate and then enter them in the macro utility area.

The beauty of a macro is that it can reduce a complex process down to 1 key stroke. This keeps sales, sales support and telemarketing people focused on getting the data transfer or any other task done quickly rather than figuring out how to do it or g etting frustrated by not being able to do it. There are several excellent macro utility programs for Windows. These let users create their own macros within programs that don't have macro utilities built-in.

ACCESSING MAINFRAMES AND MINIS FROM PC'S

What if your company decides it would really like to go with an MS-DOS/Windows SFA package but your order entry, inventory or customer buying history records are on a mainframe or mini computer. How can you get at and use that information and those re sources from a PC? As mentioned earlier, you may want to consider client/server and SQL technologies here but a simpler, and much quicker to implement way would be to add terminal-emulation and an application switching or multitasking functions.

The emulation program will let your PC look like a terminal on the mainframe... letting you read and enter information into the mainframe. The multitasking or switching program, will let you, with one keystroke, switch back and forth between the SFA pr ogram and the mainframe terminal produced by the emulation process. X-Windows technology is another option that will give similar capabilities but with more flexibility to easily lift and transfer data from one OS window to another.

BOTTOMLINES:

1. HOW IMPORTANT SHOULD SALES FORCE AUTOMATION BE TO YOUR COMPANY?

A recent Harris poll of Chief Executive Officers and Chief Information Officers in Fortune 1,000 and Business Week 1,000 companies listed sales and marketing automation as their number one project for the next five years. More importantly, one or more of your competitors have already automated or are likely in the process of automating.

Automating a company's selling process and sales support functions can payoff BIG in productivity increases (MORE SALES), better customer relationships (keeping customer promises & faster access to more and the most current selling information), increa sed quantifiablility (better and more timely selling activity reporting) and better interdepartmental coordination of customer status (different employees telling the same story). Automation will also have more impact on the productivity of your people an d the profitability of your company than any other investment or initiative the company has implemented.

2. YOUR SFA AUTOMATION EDUCATION

Consider what you've just read as a condensed educational course on SFA program technology. With it you should be better able to define what you really want in a SFA program. You should also be better able to know what questions you need to ask and w hich answers are acceptable and which are not.

3. Free Sales Automation Survey

Our Executive Briefing and Workshop on Sales Automation and Database Marketing for New Business Development was designed to help senior and middle sales and marketing managers and executives learn, in a non-technical way what Sales Automation is from the most basic to the most advanced, how to cost justify it, get a look at 8 to 12 programs and learn strategies and tactics that can be used in conjunction with SFA to make them more proactive in business development efforts for their company.

Free Sales Automation Survey.

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This material was developed by David Hubanks


Copyright © 1996 Road Warrior International.

Please send comments or questions to bobmc@contact-mgt.com