Why sales management software?
Sales teams need the correct contact details and relevant information at the touch of a button in order to act upon sales leads, finalise deals and report on their activity. If information is missed or not acted upon quickly enough it could jeopardise a sale.
Without dedicated sales management software this situation could become a common scenario, as the information will be stored in various locations, unconnected databases or even random spreadsheets.
Collating this information together then becomes cumbersome and time-consuming, resulting in the sales team manually inputting or managing data when they should be concentrating on actually selling and winning more business.
The sales team will also need access to sales analytics to help them with tracking and forecasting sales activity. This will help them track leads and act on them accordingly. It also helps management monitor conversions and key performance indicators to help make essential business decisions.
Collaboration and access to real-time data is essential at every level in sales. A dedicated cloud-based sales management application can therefore be a vital cog in any business, as it can be accessed on any device from any location.
The benefits of a sales team management application
Purchasing and installing a dedicated, sales team management application will assist your sales team with the complete management of customer data. This will generally include the ability to manage and access all existing accounts, new leads and opportunities as well as track all activities to improve and assist decision making.
Good sales team tracking software will enable your team to:
- Manage accounts, divisions, contacts (B2B) and consumers (B2C)
- Easily access all related information e.g. meetings, tasks, history, opportunities, etc.
- Maintain a detailed history of interactions with customers
- Manage events, tasks and history/notes in a calendar
- Create follow-up events and tasks based on completed items
- Get reminders for overdue and upcoming meetings and tasks
- Identify, analyse and predict sales trends and results
- Scale quickly in line with growth and success
With all the information in one system the sales team will also be able to track and manage the entire sales cycle, from opportunities and quotations to sales orders and invoicing, all from one central location. This can include:
- Sending new quotes as well as managing and monitoring existing quotes
- Establishing customer discount levels, quantities and tiered pricing rules
- Creating sales orders from accepted quotes – including order numbers, shipping methods and payment information etc.
- Creating and distributing invoices
Integrating business systems and automating manual tasks
If additional systems or applications are used within the organisation, the sales management software will need to have integration capabilities to make sure that all systems have the most up-to-date information available. If integration is possible, productivity and performance can be improved by automating many of the manual tasks that can hold businesses back.
A sales management application with integration capabilities can:
- Integrate CRM and Sales Management software with accounting, ERP, marketing and bespoke systems
- Automate the transfer of data between systems such as sales lead details from a website
- Automate the creation and delivery of the sales order in PDF or HTML format
- Automate the creation and distribution of invoices including approval processes
- Automatically generate an email order acknowledgement or tailor the requirements
- Monitor and cleanse data – check and remove duplicate information
- Automate notifications and alerts to customers or for significant events
- Automate the creation and distribution of reports
- Integrate email clients and automatically update records
[Related Article: Exploring the long-term benefits of CRM integration].
Firefly Suite
Firefly Suite is a fully customisable, cloud-based sales management software to quickly and easily manage critical business information at any time, on any device, regardless of location.
It provides complete visibility into leads, opportunities, quotes, pricing, sales orders and invoices, helping businesses streamline sales processes to improve lead management, increase the visibility of sales KPIs and generate new business.
Firefly Suite provides you with the flexibility and functionality you need to run your business cost effectively and efficiently. Not only does it provide you with a complete overview of essential business information to carry out the most essential activities, it’s flexible enough to allow you to customise and add functionality to suit your exact business requirements.
Firefly Suite can be easily integrated with the majority of accounting, ERP and marketing systems, thanks to strong relationships with the likes of Access, dotmailer, Epicor, MailChimp, Microsoft, Progress, Sage, SAP etc. Carefully plan your CRM integration strategy to ensure it aligns with business objectives.
The benefits of Firefly Suite
- Remove error-prone spreadsheets
- 24/7 availability – hosted in cloud servers
- Access to your application wherever you are on any device
- 100% compatibility with your business processes
- Quickly and easily consume any pre-existing database you may have e.g. MS SQL Server, MS Access, MS Excel, MySQL, Oracle etc.
- Easy to add colleagues and give access upon your needs
- Search and tag with multiple criteria
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ready
- Support future business requirements and expansion
If you would like to find out more about Firefly Suite, please call 0330 99 88 700 or email [email protected].
