Summary: Sales force automation solutions offer a broad range of functionality to make your sales processes more agile, efficient and effective. This article highlights the key features you'll want in your sales force automation solution.

Sales Force Automation Features to Boost Your Sales

Sales force automation solutions help make sales processes more agile, more efficient, and more effective. With sales force automation, a company can enhance collaboration and information sharing, and improve the productivity of sales-related activities by replacing manual, disjointed, and redundant tasks with simplified, tightly-aligned, fully-automated procedures.

Sales force automation offers a broad range of functionality that will address the needs of many different user types within a sales department. From sales representatives who need to effectively manage their prospects, to managers who want to track the activities of their teams, and analysts who have to generate accurate sales and revenue forecasts - sales force automation positively impacts end-to-end sales operations.

Most off-the-shelf sales force automation solutions provide the following features as part of the standard package:

Contact Management

This function, which is the cornerstone of most sales force automation solutions on the market today, enables sales reps to better coordinate and prioritize their opportunities. Reps can keep up-to-date contact information, as well as complete and thorough history of all interactions, for each account they are engaged with.

They can also generate a variety of reports that include timely data and statistics about their activities. Additionally, they can more efficiently manage their schedules by utilizing a fully-integrated electronic calendar that allows them to set appointment reminders, flag contacts for future follow up, and more.

Managers can also gain complete visibility into the activities of their sales teams. They can monitor tasks and interactions, track the status of opportunities in progress, and make sure each rep is on track to achieve their goals.

Sales Forecasting

The forecasting capabilities within sales force automation solutions make it easy for sales analysts and financial staff to accurately predict future sales revenue. This is accomplished through thorough in-depth analysis of past history and trends, as well as the status of all opportunities in progress.

Mobile Access

Sales representatives spend most of their time traveling to visit potential clients. That's why most sales force automation packages provide remote access - through a Web-based interface, or handheld devices such as a Palm Pilot, Blackberry, or Windows Pocket PC. This allows sales staff to access real-time account, inventory, and product data at any time, from any location. So, they can stay fully-connected, even when on the road.

Order and Purchase History Tracking

This function allows sales reps to monitor orders and deliveries, to ensure that customers receive their products and services in a timely manner. Additionally, it gives them the intelligence they need identify vital purchase trends, understand customer needs and preferences, and implement more effective up-sell and cross-sell strategies.

Sales Performance Reporting and Analysis

The reporting and analysis capabilities of a sales force automation solution allow companies to accurately assess the performance of individual sales reps, as well as sales territories, specific product lines, and more. Managers and analysts can measure actual sales against forecasts and quotas, revenues generated by product line, and other critical sales performance metrics. As a result, they can more accurately manage commissions, and identify areas in need of improvement.

Hosted Solution Model

Because most companies have limited technical resources, many sales force automation packages are available as hosted, Web-based solutions. Hosted sales force automation solutions can be implemented quickly, are easy to maintain, and require no additional infrastructure. So, they can significantly minimize burden on IT staff.

Customization and Personalization

Some sales force automation solutions provide robust customization capabilities, so they can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of your business. Individual personalization capabilities are also available in some sales force automation packages, so each member of your sales staff can structure the interface, data views, and other properties in a way that will work best for them.