SALES AUTOMATION
A Modern Business Imperative

In a given year, the average salesperson fails to call on almost half of his/her customers! That may sound outrageous, but it is true. According to a survey of 4,000 advertisers and prospects of Cahners Publishing, a publisher of business magazines, as many as 41 percent of a salesperson's customers were not called on in 1991. Only 16 percent of sales reps made it a point to contact all of their accounts at least once that year, and 37 percent indicated that less than half of their clients were called on at least once. The main reasons for this poor follow-up were: illegible paper records (due to frequent updates); the difficulty of going through hundreds of records to determine account status, and lost files.

You can see why automating the sales force once considered a pipe dream is now a necessity. In fact, Dr. Warren MacFarland of the Harvard Business School has said, "In five years, there will be two types of companies: those using computers as a sales and marketing tool, and those facing bankruptcy." Fortunately, the drive to automate the sales force has been greeted with a greater-than-expected acceptance by salespeople.

In the future, sales automation software will serve the goals of sales teams, sales managers, and managers in every department of a company. The best sales automation systems will be oriented to a company's long-term mission, not just to short-term problems. In addition, sales automation will be treated as a strategic investment. It will be designed holistically, which means not only providing the requirements for increased sales production, but also giving marketing, advertising, product development, sales, customer service, training, and other managers the information that they need to understand and direct the course of the business.

The demands on sales automation software become especially urgent when you consider that salespeople are using more enlightened, collaborative selling techniques. This means they need to: spend more time with their prospects and customers; develop expert knowledge of their product lines and of their competitors' product lines; and have better and faster access to information to

provide their customers with a higher level of information. All this translates to a greater, faster, and more strategic use of information on a company-wide basis with the sales organization taking the lead. This dominant role and the use of sophisticated sales automation systems will do for sales and marketing what MRP did for manufacturing, and CAD/CAM did for engineering. This could very well be the beginning of one of the most significant transformations ever of a corporate function.

Shared Information For
A Common Mission

Staying close to the customer is what it is all about. All the technology in the world will not make or keep customers if salespeople do not maintain regular contact, pay close attention to details, and nurture their relationships. Contact management software helps salespeople do all these things, but the future demands that the rest of the company get involved in the mission to become customer-driven. Now it is time to take the information that salespeople have gleaned from their customers and use it to provide benefits to management at all levels.

Shared access to data is the most significant trend in sales force automation today. It is the best way for managers to keep up with what is happening in the field or on the sales floor. "Keeping up" does not mean playing Big Brother to the sales team; it means using customer information to fine-tune everything from product design to pricing.

The sales automation software of the future, which is available today, will produce measurable benefits for sales people and managers, including:

Better Customer Information. When customer data (needs, wants, complaints) are rolled into a master file or report, trends appear that enable decisions to be truly customer-driven. Add to this a concept that was proposed by Peter Drucker in a Wall Street Journal article in 1993: "Few businesses have tried to get information about their noncustomers, let alone integrated such information into their databases. Yet, no matter how powerful a company is in its industry or market, noncustomers almost always outnumber customers."

The direct application of Drucker's premise database marketing that includes nonbuying customers is the way of the future. Expanding on this premise, the directive is clear: everyone in the company must use the information that salespeople have gathered (about buying and nonbuying customers) to shape product design, product mix, advertising, promotions, direct mail marketing, and so on.

Full-Time, On-Screen Coaching The sales principles and strategies that salespeople learn in training classes or by watching videos are forgotten quickly if they are not applied daily. In the future, sales training will be integrated into contact management programs; again, serving the company and its sales team. The company will be assured of consistency because all its salespeople will be talking the same talk and walking the same walk. Salespeople will benefit from having an interactive "sales trainer in a box" that is always there to refresh their memories and coach them on the best next move.

Imagine a salesperson sitting down to call a customer on the phone. She could: review the customer's file; remind herself of the objectives for the call (given the current phase of the sale); brush up on possible answers to objections; review information-gathering techniques and specific questions to ask; consult a phone script, if necessary; receive coaching on relationship-building skills; and so on. The training possibilities are endless, especially with customized software.

Reduced Costs A well-designed sales automation system can reduce selling costs substantially by lowering operating expenses. Functions that normally require additional personnel are included in the software; for example, the generation of routine correspondence is made fast, simple, and easy. Sales force automation also allows salespeople to spend far less time in the office. Many companies are lowering their overhead by shrinking their offices and encouraging salespeople to telecommute as much as possible. This trend will continue as the prices of laptop computers come down.

Customer Continuity When a salesperson leaves a company, customers can suffer due to a disruption of service. When an account manager leaves, often no one else knows what is going on with his/her accounts. Sales automation provides a client's entire history, including all correspondence, phone calls, purchases, future needs, buying plans, etc.

Better Reports Salespeople often have an aversion to paperwork, which can lead to documents that are filled with missing or erroneous data. Sales automation software eliminates this by either guiding salespeople through the data entry screens (eliminating omissions) or filling in the repetitive information automatically. The result is better reports and more types of them that managers from various departments can use to keep their fingers on the pulse of the marketplace.

Improved Communication The ability to disseminate information quickly and accurately between people, offices, states, or countries is a valuable asset. Almost any corporate communication can be delivered faster and more efficiently with E-mail than any other medium.

Company-Wide Integration As mentioned above, the sharing of data is the only way to streamline an operation, improve customer service, and fine-tune products and services.

As a professional speaker and sales trainer, I am especially excited about one promise for the future of contact management software on-screen, interactive training. I have spent the last 15 years criss-crossing the country giving speeches and workshops on sales, relationship-building, communication, and customer service. I have made audio and video training programs and am now venturing into the most promising medium of all interactive software.

There is no doubt that people remember best the sales skills that are used every day. It makes sense, therefore, to incorporate sales training and coaching into the contact management and sales automation software that salespeople use every day. This can be done by incorporating an "expert system" into the software. An expert system knows exactly what a salesperson is doing, which enables it to give context-relevant advice. For example, if a salesperson is in the phase of a sale in which he is exploring customer needs, the expert system can provide coaching on general questioning strategies and/or specific questions to be asked.

Another example of an interactive, expert system is a capability of the contact management program that I am developing with my strategic partner, InContact Systems, Inc. In our program, InContact 4.0, the expert system combines my Collaborative Selling and Relationship Strategies models in a unique way. First, as a salesperson progresses through each phase of the sale, certain questions are asked. In the beginning, one question is, "What behavioral style is your customer?" When that question is answered (there are tests and guidelines for determining behavioral styles), the program can offer the salesperson the option of customized strategies, approaches, responses, and letters. A letter to a Director, for example, would be different from a letter to a Thinker or Socializer. The possibilities are endless and very exciting.

As David Joy of Stanley Tools said, "Sales automation is a fact of life...The companies who are making it are the ones who are taking full advantage of the computer. Those that are failing are still in the paper and pencil stage."

ARTICLE TAGLINE FOR DR. TONY ALESSANDRA

Dr. Tony Alessandra has authored 13 books, recorded over 50 audio and video programs, and delivered over 2,000 keynote speeches since 1976. The ideas in this article, and many others, are adapted from Dr. Alessandra's book, The Sales Professional's Idea-A-Day Guide (Dartnell). If you would like more information about Dr. Alessandra's books, audio tapesets and video programs, or about Dr. Alessandra as a keynote speaker for your group, call (800) 222-4383 or visit his website at http://www.alessandra.com.

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