When the concept of Sales Force automation was first adopted in FMCG & Consumer Good industry, it was merely a sales team tracking tool that provided a record of the activities occurring during a sales reps field visit. As retail centered brands started developing on the idea of a sales force tracker, there were several modifications such as GPS tracking, geo-fencing, route optimization, etc. The concept of sales force tracking in 2021 is not merely an attendance tracker or location tracker, it has evolved with several technological modifications that add more value to an FMCG/CPG organization.
Now sales force automation has not only automated monotonous sales processes in general, but has also led to an increase in overall revenue output from the market with it’s combination of features enabling sales reps and retailers. While sales force tracker merely managed the data of attendance, prospect/retailer visits and follow up visits of sales team a few years ago, sales force automation software’s today undertakes complete workflow automation like Visit/Beat Planning, Route Optimization, Order collection, Performance Analysis, Visual Merchandising Audits etc. besides sales team tracking, in order to drive field efficiency and productivity.
Sales Force Tracking App/Software: Pros
A sales force tracking app/software aids an FMCG & Consumer goods organization to to get visibility of sales activities happening on ground for effective field visits. Some of the salient features of sales team tracking software that boosts the efficiency of the sales force are as follows.
- Store Profiling: Sales force tracker app helps onboard new stores, monitors retail visits, store purchase history etc. to help monitor and analyze data of individual stores. This data provides sales forecast to help the field teams drive probable revenue generation.
- GPS Intelligence: The integration of GPS intelligence in sales force tracker software rules out the mundane task of updating every sales activity in the field. Moreover, it also ensures location specific lead assignment that can help sales reps to enhance their performance.
- Route Optimization: The best way to increase facetime at stores by less travel is route optimization. Sales reps are provided with planned visits with least distance to travel in order to maximize the productivity and efficiency.
- Performance tracking: The sales manager can view data of every sales reps and assess their performance from day-to-day, monthly, quarterly, yearly. The centralized system provides complete visibility of the sales process.
- Follow up management: Sales team tracking app/software provides alerts and notification for follow-up with leads and existing customers. It is essential to manage the follow-ups to understand the demands and requirements of the leads and existing customers.
- Leave management: Sales force trackers help sales managers to get a synchronized and organized data of employee attendance. This is an essential function for leave and payroll management.
In a nutshell, sales force tracking software is a powerful tool for sales team management and monitoring of field activities.
What’s Better than Sales Force Tracking
Sales force tracking enables the company to monitor and report field activities. But does that drive profitability or productivity? Most FMCG & Consumer Good Brands will admit that just a sales force tracking software alone does not help a company to optimize sales processes to maximize field output. The reasons for the changing requirements for a sales force tracker to be upgraded into SFA CRM software are as follows.
- Problem detection: Instead of just policing field reps, the sales manager must understand the underlying problems in the sales process. While the sales force tracker fails to provide insights about the performance except the data, SFA utilizes artificial intelligence to compile, compare and analyze data to help the managers detect the real problem.
- Customer awareness: Sales is not about just selling products but understanding customer demands and selling them the right product. While a simple sales force tracker can only provide purchase history of customers, AI based CRM technology can analyze customer behavior and help the company strategize to enhance customer experience thereby boosting sales and sustainability.
- Directions to achieve sales excellence: Even though sales reps are aware of their sales target, they may not be able to identify the steps to be taken for improving their productivity. A sales force tracker only tracks the progress towards the specific goal but fails to provide any recommendations. On the other hand, an intelligent SFA software can help the sales reps with available schemes and offers available to them in order to boost their productivity.
- Sales Behavior: A sales force tracker can monitor the field activities, but it fails to detect the sales behavior of field reps. Contrastingly, BeatRoute Goal-Driven CRM SFA software enables the company not only monitor but also improve sales behavior enhancing ground execution thereby driving efficiency.
A sales force tracker acts as a rope for the sales force. Anyone will hate to be tracked and chased every minute. Therefore, it is necessary to upgrade your sales team tracking software with SFA to ensure that your sales force can work freely and efficiently without being chased after every activity.
The Ultimate Sales Force Tracking Software
BeatRoute is a sales force automation platform with integrated CRM, DMS and Retailer App (WhatsApp BOT) which help FMCG/CPG companies fulfill their business goals by streamlining sales and marketing processes. Besides acting as a sales force tracking software, BeatRoute has adapted a goal-driven sales approach for unprecedented field sales growth of retail oriented brands in general trade, modern trade and B2B models.
Along with the basic sales force tracking and automation, BeatRoute offers the following advantages that can help companies to enhance their sales productivity.
- Goal-Driven Sales Approach: BeatRoute helps companies achieve their business goals on ground by converting them into bite size targets assigned to sales reps to achieve.
- Easy-to- Deploy: BeatRoute’s Zero code platform ensures easy and quick deployment without any technical expertise.
- CuesBOT: Avail insights, analysis and reports with BeatRoute’s AI assistance that helps companies detect and solve underlying problems.
- Easy-to-Use: User-friendly interface enables distributors, sales reps and retailers to adopt BeatRoute without much difficulty.
- Gamification: Input based rewards encourage employment engagement and the scorecards helps analyze KPIs and performance to detect training needs.
- WhatsApp BOT: Most of the retailers and distributors use WhatsApp in general for communication, BeatRoute’s WhatsApp BOT enables retailers and distributors to order directly via WhatsApp.
- Integrated DMS: BeatRoute integrates sales force tracking with distributor management system. This integration ensures an end-to-end optimization of the sales process by taking into account inventory management and secondary sales management.
BeatRoute has integrated advanced technology to help companies utilize optimal functionality of SFA and CRM in order to achieve their business goals at ease.
The Bottom Line
With the transforming scenario of FMCG & Consumer good industry, every company requires to look beyond sales force tracking to enhance their sales productivity in this cut-throat competition. BeatRoute offers such an all-inclusive sales force tracking, automation and augmentation platform to aid your business from every aspect of field sales management.