Sales Force Automation (SFA)

Applications of computer and other technologies to make the sales function more efficient and competitive many sales people need to go to the prospective customer in order to demonstrate or illustrate the particulars about the product. Technology makes salespeople more effective and productive because it allows them to provide accurate and current information to customers during sales presentations.

Sales automation (also known as customer asset management and total customer management) implies that technology can be used to speed up previously inefficient operations. The Internet and related technology have affected the personal selling process. Product information on Web sites is available to customers and prospects. In the past, salespeople delivered this information to the customer. The Internet frees salespeople to focus on the most important aspects of their job (such as building long-term relationships with customers and focusing on new accounts). Information is shared among users in every department that touches the customer. Also, information sharing promotes more effective channel partnership.

Salespeople use computers (with communications devices, contact management programs, and email) to connect them (over the Internet) to their own company’s databases when they are out on sales calls. This gives them with the ability to provide the customer with extensive, relevant information almost immediately. Salespeople have access to current, relevant marketing materials, including data sheets, brochures, multimedia presentations, and proposal templates, online or via CD-ROM.

Salespeople have access to dossiers on prospects, customer and prospect companies, perceptions, loyalties and buying histories, personal interests, competition, etc. Online access to the company’s customer and prospect database gives the sales person the ability (and the responsibility) to update files from the field. In some cases, it makes sense to create a dedicated (and more manageable) sales database for a special initiative, product, or region. Salespeople become intelligence agents in the field when they feed that information directly into the data resources shared by the rest of the sales force and the company at large.