Field Managers are most frustrated and annoyed human being you will ever come across. I can say this with complete confidence from my own experiences I have had with Sales Managers. But I understand their frustration and feel very relieved to find myself away from such a tense life. Their head is always boiling with the immense pressure of delivering the Sales target. It is really hard to imagine how I would have reacted if I was a Sales Manager.
SaaS Sales Softwares have immersed a new life into the field sales process. And thankfully, it has relieved the heavy burden loaded over Sales Managers. But as a Manager, you need to be aware of how to use a Field Sales Software to attain maximum output with the help of it.
There are certain practices which increase the efficiency of Management. Here we will discuss the best practices for managing field sales representatives with field sales software.
- Proper Task Scheduling
Any procedure must be planned and each task must be scheduled in an apt manner that could hold together the entire process. Otherwise, it is really hard to coordinate your team and extract optimum results. Things are always more favorable if you schedule your activities in such a way that they stay connected to reach the desired outcome. So, it is a necessary but inefficient compulsion which every sales manager must follow if he wishes to achieve his set target. A Sales Software can actually help you schedule your tasks in an organized way.
- Tracking Your Field Resources
If you are a Sales Manager, you ought to know the specifics about your team members, like where they are or what they are doing. Real-time tracking would not have been possible without a GPS device. Most of the mobile phones today are GPS-enabled and can do this work automatically through synchronization with an app. In this way, you can get the precise location of team members without putting in much of an effort. This enhances your ability to mobilize your human resources for managing the clients.
- Defining Coverage Areas
It is essential to define the regional attributes of each team member to maintain his efficiency. If you ask a person to cover a bigger region, it will not waste their time in traveling but also make for more travel expenditure. This is, therefore, more convenient to restrict the activities of a person to a specific region.
This will also help in the management of your team members a specify their limits. That’s also a convenient way of avoiding unnecessary disputes such as a mix-up between two team members. There are few managers which complicate the area related issues which create tension and arguments between two team members. Why do you want to step into a problem even though you are aware of it?
- On The Go Guidance
There are times when a Manager faces hardship in communicating with his team members while the member is working on fields. Neither call or message, no mode of communication seems working at such a time. If you make it a compulsion for your team members to be logged in through a mobile application and use the same app for sending messages then you can make sure that you are in touch with your team consistently.
It is most effective in case an urgent message is to be passed or a certain information is to be conveyed but unable to operate through regular communication channels. Such a dependable mean of communication is essential to stay connected and have a complete authority over the entire tasks which your team has been assigned.
- Real-Time Reporting
I remember an incident from my personal experiences about reporting. I was with a friend of mine at a fast food joint. A person came and sat on the table next to us. The person turned out to be an employee from the same company my friend worked for. So, they knew each other and started to have a discussion. He was from the field sales team and my friend was a copywriter.
While listening to their interaction, I found that the person was on duty but he was simply passing his time roaming around as the meeting which was to be conducted had been canceled without any prior information of the company. When did I ask him what about the report which he is to submit? He told me that he would simply say that I waited for the client but he never came and I waited at that place for 4 hours but the Client didn’t visit the place.
I wonder if it had been the same as the Manager known his whereabouts and that he was nowhere close to the place where the meeting was ought to happen. Unfortunately, he didn’t know and the report which was to be given at the day’s end helped the sales guy cover up his leisure time. Will it be the same if a manager gets the real-time report knowing a member is not at the concerned location?
- Performance Analysis and Motivation
It is actually hard to assess the performance of field sales team or the efforts they put by view of one’s sales chart. Their performance is rather decided from the Sales they completely ignored.
When a Manager has the track of his team members, then he can easily evaluate the efforts of the team members individually. He will know the effort which each member has put in at an individual level. He can spot the hard working team members as well as the undisciplined ones. As of now, the Managers give more weight to sales completed rather than the overall competence of an individual. A person can pull off two sales on a given day with much lesser effort if he is lucky enough to get very keen clients whereas a very hardworking and punctual member who puts in a lot of effort may not perform a single sale on the same day if he gets poor and uninterested clients.
As of now, the Managers weight a person’s caliber on the basis sales completed’ rather than the overall competence of an individual. A person can pull off two sales on a given day with much lesser effort if he is lucky enough to get very keen clients whereas a very hardworking and punctual member who puts in a lot of effort may not perform a single sale on the same day if he gets poor and uninterested clients.
It is better to assess the performance on the basis of the work they do, not just the sales they produce. And this is only possible if the Manager has a real-time access to his team members. A mobile based software is best to develop such a connection that helps to track the sales team while they are on the field.
A manager should always motivate those team members who put in more effort and work punctually towards the completion of the assigned target. It will help them to jump back from the poor performances and deliver good results consistently.
It is the duty of the Manager to mobilize the efficient members and help them latch on the right opportunities at the right moment! He should make sure to extract the best out of each team member.
Sales Manager has a hectic task. They always need to look for the right moments and capitalize on them. And in the end, they are always pushed against the walls to complete the set targets successfully.
If you look at the conceptual practices on whole, most of them are rooted in the basic concept of strengthening the sales ethics. The sales software must empower the root and only then, one can expect a software that actually enhances the sales management. You can’t just sit and wait. With real-time awareness, there must be a real-time responsibility and readiness. And if you manage to balance it out, you are rightly moving towards the set goal.
