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|  |  An article by CRM Canada President, Neil Saviano: Take Action on Your Information September 4, 2009 Business intelligence and graphical/analytical reporting offers companies a plethora of information to use as they drive sales and marketing programs. Though the use of information is a vital cog in driving sales and profits in a normal economy, taking almost immediate action on conditions that information presents is even more vital in an economy when not only is there less business to go around, but profits are being squeezed significantly as well. Consequently companies need to consider call to action tools that implement tactics aimed at getting results quickly. CRM and sales Force Automation (SFA) software comprise a tool set that fills this role. It is a missing link for most companies. Tactics and strategies that are devoid of automation lack the consistency of touch needed to significantly address customer scenarios that company information sources present. Historically this involves areas such as: less than desired levels of current and new customer penetration, drop-offs in customer margin and drop-offs in order frequency. Many other customer and prospect segmentation examples surface over time that need quick action, not to mention the need to constantly stay on top of prospecting efforts in order develop new business and address normal customer attrition. Sales Force Automation is in an almost literal sense a virtual sales assistant. In this context it’s important to know the difference between SFA and conventional CRM / contact management software. While CRM and contact management offer the capacity to gather information, it’s use in processing or “taking action” on information is limited. As an example, true SFA can automate a series of repetitive tasks to address one of the customer scenarios listed above. An example of automated repetitive tasks, or automated processes, is the following: a series of timed e-mail flyers with sales person direct contact scheduled at desired intervals. This represents tasks that with typical sales people historically fall through the cracks through no fault of their own. Ironically with better sales people their high levels of customer activity and ongoing issues that ensue prevent them from the follow up and touch necessary to grow their existing business and develop mew customers. This a “catch 22” scenario that SFA addresses while performing the virtual sales assistant role alluded to above. Along with automating repetitive tasks, targeted e-mail marketing programs are implemented as well. In fact, existing wholesaler and buying group e-mail marketing programs can be integrated with most SFA software. E-mail flyers from these programs, as an example, can comprise an automated e-mail task that is followed by sales person follow up. This synergy with SFA software provides an added dimension to how companies can benefit from their existing promotional sources. As some vendors and industry associations provide their own mass e-mail marketing service to companies, or integrate with sources such as Constant Contact, most SFA software can export customer and prospect segments to these sources with unlimited levels of granularity. While SFA software synergies with business intelligence and graphical/analytical reporting software provides vast market segmentation and customer touching processes and campaign capability, the need for reporting on the all important sales and marketing activities needs to be highly addressed as well. Monitoring activity simply lets a company know if the investment in complementary pieces of software is worth it! Questions such as: “Are the follow up activities being done”, and if they are what are the ratios that need to be monitored telling us? Some examples: “Are we attaining the levels of new customer conversions “? “Are we completing the levels of existing customer meetings necessary to achieve deeper customer penetration and retention? Subsequently automated reporting of sales person activity becomes a crucial element in assuring the ROI is there from sizeable investments made in business intelligence and SFA software suites. No matter how technologically capable companies become they must ascribe to the following overall sales and marketing tenet that has transcended time: activity is still one of the single biggest predictors of sales success! Investment in the correct suite of software solutions is crucial if a company wants to truly leverage the powerful benefits of CRM and Sales Force Automation software. As related here, a crucial element is synergy with business intelligence and graphical/analytical reporting. Another crucial element is making sure that there is direct connectivity to popular industry back-end systems. CRM and SFA software needs to also be able to easily call on information from the back-end and convert it to viable customer segments and have the platform necessary to take the appropriate sales and marketing action. The capability to take action on information by using automation to drive sales and marketing programs and campaigns need not be a missing link for companies. The prevailing “catch 22” faced by companies and sales people - not enough time to touch customers and prospects in a business environment that dictates that they do in order to remain viable - can be addressed significantly by employing technology that takes on the role of a virtual sales and marketing assistant.
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