Recording & Reporting Salesman Activity

Mark Bradman, 15 May 2012

Reading a discussion in a Sales Manager forum I was surprised by the number of opinions listing reasons for easing reporting requirements on salesmen.

This was in stark contrast to my own experience that call reporting and call follow-up are two key areas of the sales process.

How can we as sales professionals be taken seriously when our leaders promote such sloppy practises as basing sales management on short weekly updates from salesmen on key accounts?

Let’s look at how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can help Sales Managers and Salesmen alike with superior reporting without compromising the time taken to produce them.

First of all, let’s agree on one thing – the need to record sales activity in a centralised database for access throughout your entire organisation.

Without that, you might as well give your company away to your sales staff because it is effectively they who are running it, even though all the customer complaints will still come to you. And you certainly won’t need a Sales Manager as your sales people can tell you anything they want without you being able to verify if a single word of it is true.

If it’s not in your Database, it did not happen!

So now that we only have people genuinely interested in Sales Management left reading this blog, let’s start examining what Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offer in this area.

1. By adding some JScript to your contact form, you can call a contact directly from the form using Lync by simply clicking the phone number fields.

2. Even if you don’t have this facility, out-of-the-box functionality allows you to start a phone activity by clicking an icon on your Task Bar, be it an inbound or outbound call.

3. On the road, reps can access your Database remotely through their laptops in real time and/or upload records when they’re back online.

4. CRM Anywhere allows access to your database through your iPad.

5. Phone call activities are date/time stamped.

6. All changes are fully auditable.

7. Tasks, emails, meetings can be automatically tracked in your database through your direct interface with MS Outlook.

8. Pipeline control can be monitored in real time on Dashboards and Reports.

9. Quotes can be produced from Opportunities in your Pipeline.

10. Quotes can be converted to Invoices upon agreement of sale.

11. Invoices can be copied into pdf-format and emailed to customers (refer 4).

12. Workflows can be created by non-technical people to ensure steps in your process are not missed.

13. Quick marketing campaigns can be created and emailed to your customers in minutes.

14. Each sales person has full access to create their own dashboards and reports from their own activity.

15. Sales Managers can create consolidated dashboards and reports with full breakdown across their sales team.

16. Through the cloud deployment allows remote access 24/7 from anywhere (ie. You can monitor what’s going on from your laptop while you are on holidays).

17. Add-on Connectors to your accounting systems can be purchased from around the world through the Microsoft Marketplace.

18. Customer queries can be handled by anyone in the company given that full list of activity on the file is available at a click of a mouse.

19. Regular upgrades n the out-of-the-box version by Microsoft.

20. Full training available through Microsoft approved online courses and Instructor-Led training through the Partner network.

I’ll cover off on some of the above in more detail in future blogs. Alternatively, click here to access a 30-day free trial.