Mr. Manager (Anonymous) was a new recruit, the Sales Manager (Field) in a reputable Financial Management Firm. His team included 10 field executives who spent most of their time on the field meeting the clients(leads). But sadly, the performance of firm wasn’t going well of late. So much so, that the previous sales manager had been fired for inconsistent sales performance.
Mr. Manager was although a sales veteran but, he had yet not managed the field sales process prior to it. The firm was facing serious performance issues and unacceptably slumping sales graph. It was possibly the reason talented Mr. Manager got hired as a replacement. The sales team was expected to remain on its toes to make the ends meet. The firm was smartly leveraging the website to gather a good volume of interested leads whom the field force was supposed to target for sales.
User Engagement and Content Discovery tool was doing its task exceptionally well by engaging the website visitors and collecting the contact details of those who showed interest. Once the leads were verified and captured, Mr. Manager got the verified list to target them for sales with his team of 10 executives.
Even though the process didn’t feel complicated from the outline but the inconsistency of the sales figures indicated otherwise. The conversion rate and revenue generation, both showed a steep decline in past few months. Even though, it was hard to doubt the quality of leads being junk because each lead was verified before handing over to the sales team.
Being new to field sales, Mr. Manager had certain apprehensions about the management system of field process. He was somehow unconvinced due to lack of transparency and accountability of executives. But, he observed closely what was actually causes this slow impending death in the sales.
First, and foremost, the sales team came to the office every morning, merely to mark their attendance and get the daily objective. This was actually wasting a lot of time. The manager wanted a solution to cut the long process short to reduce time wasted and thus increase the productive hours. The manager wanted an alternative option that saved time without compromising on accountability.
For the part of assigning work, the manager felt a need of assigning work without his team having to come to the office for it. One thing which concerned the most was being clueless of the work which an employee did during a day. Similarly, it was also problematic to confirm that a member has actually met a client before reporting him ‘not interested’. Just to avoid tanning under the afternoon sun.
There was no way to adjudge consistency at work. Each time an employee ignored a client, the business potentially lost one sale, and therefore a lot of revenue which one sale brought with it. The daily sales reports were provided in the morning of next day when the members came to the office for attendance. This meant Manager can’t improvise in accordance with the team and conditions. He could just assess the work later on in the next morning. The manager could already see its flaws.
( Do you know – An average sale requires at least 4 follow ups. )
One thing which the Manager was really sad about was the lack of accessibility to reach his team while they are not with him. The manager found it harmful for employee productivity. The field allowances were also claimed without being confirmed because there wasn’t a way to do so.
He decided to analyze the overall field process into different variables that were having a negative impact on the conversion leads into sales. The stats shouted loud and clear about the uselessness and unaccountable sales model.
Mr. Manager sought the reports under the previous managers and he was convinced that reports had some serious flaws in consistency. It was evident from the figures presented in the reports which didn’t synchronize as they are ought to.
The stereotyped ‘average’ was hard to digest. And even though the process was clearly inefficient yet he couldn’t find a more compatible replacement for it.
Sales performance of the team under the previous manager
Average Working Hours – 9 Hrs
Total leads to be targeted (Weekly) – 150
Leads Assigned (Per Employee) – 15
No of Employees – 10
STATISTICS (SALES REPORT)
No of Sales Pitch – 116
Most Sales Pitch by an Employee – 13
Least Sales Pitch by an Employee – 10
Number of Successful Conversions for the Week – 18
Most Conversions by ‘one’ Employee – 4
Least Conversions by ‘one’ Employee – 0
Number of Employees with 0 Conversions – 4
Field Expenditure allocated to One Executive – ¼ X (X – Salary)
Minimum Expenditure (in %) – 83%
Maximum Expenditure (in %) claimed – 100%
No of employees who claimed 100% of their Allowance – 8
Doubtful Assertions
- 80% Employees claimed the complete field allowance, although even one had not approached all 15 leads assigned to them.
- Most employees complete just about the same frequency of meetings.
- There is no way to ensure how long the meetings happened.
- There is no way to find out if an employee actually tried but to reach the leads.
- Why the meetings frequently ended with not interested?
- Did the team pitch products convincingly?
- How to help sales productivity when I don’t know what they are doing.
Being a new start-up, Mr. M wanted to manage his employees in a more transparent and real-time environment. He searched for Sales force Automation solution and finalized Teamspoor Employee Tracking App after a week’s free trial. This turned out to be a more reliable, trustworthy and convenient solution for management of sales activities.
These were the fundamental changes which were seen after implementing Teamspoor Employee Tracker.
- The Employees needed not to come to office just for marking the attendance.
- Mr. Manager easily got updated about the progress being made by each team member during a day.
- The location of each team member was always under the nose of the manager.
- Productivity calculator recorded the time which the employee spends with each client.
- The manager could easily manage efficiency through real-time accessibility.
- The On the Spot Reporting ensured no hollow claims could be made.
- This proved to be a brilliant sales management platform for him with precise information at disposal on his desktop screen within a few clicks.
