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What is Sales Force Automation?

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Whether your business sells goods or provides services, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard at least a little about sales force automation (SFA). Within the majority of sales-based businesses, traditional sales functions ran along relatively similar lines. Especially within small, local businesses, for example, the sales process was fairly linear. Virtually anyone within a certain radius was a potential customer, so sales employees often targeted certain geographic areas and used one of several sales techniques in an attempt to complete a sale. If the business was particularly progressive, those sales people might track their sales based on demographics and report that information to their employer. Even in small, local businesses the art of selling has changed drastically as computers and software applications offer business owners the opportunity to add functionality to their sales approach through the compilation and automatic dissemination of important sales data.

SFA stands at the heart of those changes mentioned above. Broadly defined throughout the sales industry, SFA involves the use of information systems that allow business owners to automate many of the functions of their sales force. Rather than a single business approach, SFA software usually includes a number of tools that help businesses of all sizes improve their sales approaches and customer relationships. Opportunity management, for example, allows sales managers to closely monitor potential sales opportunities throughout a relationship with a client or group of clients – from initial contact until the end of the relationship. Pipeline management offers business owners the ability to categorize and assign specific sales jobs to employees based on product type, geographic location and other detailed factors. Automation also occurs as sales employees enter sales and customer information into the business network. SFA software can shuttle that information to sales managers and business owners so that sales team management and workflow processes are more efficient.

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