As a Business, you ought to manage your human resources productively. But it is not an easy task. There are ups and down in each and every aspect, whether it is life or Business. There is one popular quote, “It is always the darkest before the dawn”. But what if you see no hope of a dawn? If you run a Business, you would easily co-relate this doubt with on-field Sales performance. You ask a Business suffering from poor on-field sales performance and they will immediately burst out their frustration in dealing with it.
Most business struggle with their on-field Sales. And there is a certain scarcity of solutions. This not only irritates you but also makes you helpless at times. You could assume how grave the issue is especially for Businesses which are yet to find a strong foothold in the market.
Here, we will try to address the worst nightmare that a Businesses are vulnerable to face, i.e. On-Field Sales. But before we get into the issues and find their solutions we must actually find the main reason why it induces a feeling of helplessness.
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How Do I Know My On-field Team’s Whereabouts?
When your team is out on the field, you can never figure out where they are located. You can’t do anything but rely on the word of your staff itself. However, it is unprecedented and dubious to rely on a person for the prospects of your Business, Isn’t it?
There is a practical solution for this problem. Today, technology offers so many options that were never known to humankind. GPS is one such service that has the solution to your problems. It can be used to track each team member’s real-time location. This not only provides a precise information about the location of a team member but also assures that your on-field sales team is always on your radar.
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How Can I Communicate When I Want?
This even more frustrating when you can’t communicate with your Team member while he is on the field. No matter how important it is, you are just unable to communicate to your staff. This leaves you with mere hopelessness.
When need to make sure that a member on duty is indeed available for communication at any given point. If you should ensure a communicative platform which is exclusively devoted to interaction with your Team members. This will enable you to suggest, advice or inquire your on-field sales staff while he is on the move.
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How Can I Ensure When My Team Reached The Client?
Your team member leaves for a client meeting and you presume that he should meet the client within two hours. But there is no way to find out if it happened or not? Here the problem begins. There is an air of uncertainty and dilemma about the proceedings. And when there is such a confusion, doubts start occupying your head-space leading to make it even worst.
If there is a way to find out whether a meeting has started or not? You can figure it out by using a staff-client meeting preposition feature. There are many mobile applications that let you do this. But it is hard to find any app which covers this feature to suit a team manager alone. There are few Team management applications which also offer this specific feature.
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How Long Did The Meeting Go?
In a meeting, there are no certain principles which state how much time is apt enough for any meeting. If the Team member forms an instant connect with the client, the meeting is more likely to last longer. In case, things don’t go as planned, the interaction turns out dismissive in the end. It is all about presenting oneself. But how do you find out the time your staff spends with a client?
It is important to find the duration of interaction between your team member and the client in order to trace the effectiveness of the meeting. You can use a meeting timer for this purpose. Whenever the meeting starts, your team member has to switch on the timer manually and stop it as soon as the meeting ends. By doing so, you can precisely know about the time your Team member spend with the Client.
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Can I Know The Outcome In Real-Time As Soon As A Meeting Is Over?
Most of the on-field teams conclude their respective efforts and the results of those efforts in their report which they usually draft at the end of each day. There is a time gap which allows dilution of a report and also paves way for manipulations. Most Businesses wonder if there could be a quicker procedure that could give them reports in real-time.
Whenever a meeting ends, you contemplate what the outcome could be. It’s better if you utilize instant connectivity which mobile internet applications offer and make it a compulsion for your team members to submit their reports just after they come out of a meeting. The real time report along with the meeting time is enough to suggest how the clients have been managed by the different individuals of your team.
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How Can I Find The Distance Traveled By A Team Member?
Let us say, your team member went to a place which you presume to be at a distance of 15Kms, but he mentions the same distance to be 18Kms in his report. Now, that can be true but you never know the truth. The precise distance traveled doesn’t always reciprocate your assumptions about the distance of that place. Here, a skepticism starts to crawl in and it is actually confusing for any human being to not associate the same especially if you have a large team.
GPS and GLONASS are not just about maps but there are vivid features that have been drawn on the basis of the geographical tracking which they offer. In fact, Google itself provides a distance calculator along with its app. So, you can easily track precise distance traveled by each team member through this intuitive feature. Technology has actually made the world more simplified, the point is, how you utilize it to your own benefit.
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What About The Attendance of On-Field Staff?
It may not be possible for on-field staff to reach the office just to mark their attendance. And in such cases when your staff is not able to reach the office due to an assignment or any other hindrance caused due to work based limitations. In such cases, transparency is ought to suffer unless you find out any practical solution that can actually sort the issue.
There are attendance management apps which are able to mark the attendance from anywhere. This gives the liberty to the on-field team to make sure that they are able to mark their presence while they are working on the field. Integrating their location whenever they mark their attendance will add to the overall transparency and effectiveness.
So these are few questions which frequently irritate on-field sales managers. How many of these problems have you faced? These are issues which are caused by the lack of transparency and a clarity regarding on-field tasks. Whether it is location or an activity, you don’t have any clarity in the information you get and if you want to make it clear, you should target a thorough connectivity.
Try these solutions and tell us how they helped you. If you find any issue that is also relevant to on-field sales, you can add comments for better. Simplifying the problems relevant to on-field sales management is all we aim for. Ultimately, We all want our respective businesses to blossom and grow fruits, don’t we?