Sales Force Automation (CRM: SFA), is typically a part of a company’s customer relationship management system, is a system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. CRM: SFA includes a contact management system which tracks all contact that has been made with a given customer, the purpose of the contact, and any follow up that may be needed. This
ensures that sales efforts arenot duplicated, reducing the risk of irritating customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is perhaps the most consistently misused term in our industry. The customer relationship that is being managed by the software category is an exceedingly broad term that must be narrowed to make sure we are comparing similar software. ATG breaks CRM into four distinct categories, based on the channel that is being used to manage the
customer relationship. The tools used by sales teams to manage salespeople, prospects, opportunities, and pipeline The tools used by customer service agents (historically in a call center environment) to manage customers or prospects The tools used by a service provider's customers to manage their own services or accounts. Tools a service provider's partner to manage customers or prospects A prospect in
the service provider realm is any person or entity that is not yet a customer. Prospects can be people on the internet searching for a service your company provides, people that visit your business, the entire population of attendees at a trade show, or any number of other general scenarios that end with them expressing an interest in your products and services. Generally, a lead is a person or company that has
an expressed or implied interest in the services you provide. Examples of leads include internet users that click through to your website from a link, folks that speak with your representatives at a trade show and exchange business cards, or somebody that calls or stops by your place of business. An opportunity is created when a salesperson believes there is a reasonable chance to make a sale to this person. The
selling process may be overt or subtle, but when benefits are discussed and interest is expressed, an opportunity is at hand. Examples of an opportunity include internet visitors to specific pages on a website with a buy button or verbal exchanges with sales and support staff in which the lead asks closing questions such as “When can I have service connected?” or “How much does this cost?” Opportunities are also created for existing customers. They could be
accounts with expiring contracts, up-sell and cross-sell potential, or avid promoters of your company that provide additional pipelines of opportunities for your organization. Opportunities typically involve numerous stages, with each stage having a different probability of closing. Companies often use the stage and associated probability that comes out of the box from the CRM: SFA tool. Others leverage common selling methodologies provided by sales effectiveness companies such as Miller
Heiman, SPIN Selling, Target Account Selling (TAS), and Consultative Selling. CLOSED: WON NEGOTIATION/REVIEW PROPOSAL/PRICE REVIEW VALUE PROPOSITION NEEDS ANALYSIS PROSPECTING The quoteis often the first commitment made by a business to new customers. Once the customer has selected the product or product feature set that meets their needs, a quote will be
presented that clearly demonstrates the options selected, the prices, and the discounts available to them. This ensures a complete understanding of what is being purchased, the contract terms, and any additional service details. Customers may not agree to the first version of the quote or seek to negotiate additional terms or services. Quotes should be easy to reconfigure to represent any additional changes at a near real-time rate. In another scenario, it may take time for a customer to
return with an answer to the quote. In such a case, the quote can be stored for future reference without having to re-engineer the quote or take the customer back through the entire process again. For many service providers, quoting is such an integral part of the sales process that many companies require functionality beyond what is typically available in most CRM: SFA solutions. CPQ has evolved to handle complex quote processing. ATG recommends that the quoting process follow the FACT Framework – Fast, Accurate, Clean, and Transactable. Every company is intentionally or unintentionally balancing the need for speed, quality, accuracy, and efficiency. Not only is this done for direct selling but also for channel selling and e-commerce.
For example, every sales representative will tell you that the fastest way to get a quote out the door is to eliminate any approvals. However, other business stakeholders know that there are financial or legal or other risks that need to be mitigated, hence the need for at least some approval process to ensure quality and accuracy. Each of the following questions must be asked and answers balanced to ensure an optimal selling environment. Are there too many approvals in the process? Too
few? What about data? Should addresses be validated up front, or only at order time? Should customer credit be checked? If yes, should it be early or late in the process? The quote process is as responsive as the customer requires. Provisioning and billing information is complete and accurate. Quotes and proposals are professional and add credibility to the selling process. Opportunities, quotes, contracts, and orders are integrated with limited need for redundant data entry. Knowledge
management is the process of collecting a company’s tribal knowledge, aggregating it, and then making it available to both internal and external users. From a customer-initiated interactions point-of-view, it means creating a digital library of product and service manuals, FAQs, white papers, case studies – really any non-proprietary information that a customer could use to answer their own questions without needing to use a company call center or sales resources. In a CRM:
SFA environment, knowledge management is typically used by sales professionals to help them identify solutions for their clients, and handle typical questions that arise during the wants and needs analysis of the selling process. Win themes, value proposition, competitive intelligence, and technical product details are often leveraged in SFA Knowledge Management environments. Beyond just gathering the data and making it available electronically, it needs to be easy to use and easy to
find. Good knowledge management solutions, whether built in-house, used as-a-service, or purchased to deploy on-premise, need to be well organized, use common speech search, and offer a quick connection to a chat or email resource should the current knowledge management system not fulfill the customer's needs. From a CRM: SFA perspective, customer service means having the ability to have a
comprehensive view of the customer. This comprehensive view is often referred to as a customer 360 view because you can see the full circle of all customer interactions and touchpoints. If it is a new customer, there may be limited information available. If it is an existing customer, it is important to have a comprehensive view of customer's interactions with the company. For example, if you are trying to get a customer to renew a service that has two open trouble tickets and a
billing dispute requesting credit for poor service, you may be in for an uphill battle. The customer service component of CRM: SFA is the linchpin of the recurring sales cycles. Often, the best opportunity for a company to win new business from an existing client is by providing superior customer service to that client from the beginning of the relationship. More and more, service providers are relying on renewal, up-sell, and cross-sell processes to expand revenue from their existing
client base. This pressure leads to an increased focus on customer service. In complex service provider B2B selling, CRM: SFA has traditionally focused on simply winning the first deal. In today’s omnichannel customer maintenance environment, salespeople, and the CRM: SFA function, are one cog of a complex, collaborative team structure required to manage the entire customer lifecycle effectively. Case
management is a broad term that can include issue management, trouble ticket management, exception or approval management, and dispute management. It is simply a mechanism for creating, managing, and completing requests initiated by, or on behalf of, a customer. Case management allows cases to be captured, then distributed to the necessary individual or team for resolution, while providing visibility of its ongoing status. There is typically a complete audit trail to
document what was done, when, and by whom. Effective case management provides an excellent opportunity to take a potentially negative interaction with a customer and turn it into a positive. The quote should provide an area for the customer to easily agree to the terms provided to facilitate the subsequent provisioning, activation, and shipping that is necessary to provide goods and services quickly and effectively to the
customer. The approvals are retained for future reference. Internally, approval may be required to provide a quote to a customer. In any case, requiring approvals for quotes, the process should be as efficient as possible. Approvals often ensure that quotes are accurate, meet internal revenue standards and margins, and the terms are sufficient. The approval process should involve the appropriate level of staff and be clearly communicated as quickly as
possible. Approvals are retained for future reference. Certain customers require special care. These customers may receive appropriate discounts added to their quotes, special services, or renegotiated price rates outside of what is available to the sales team at that time. These require even more speed and efficiency as well as a thorough review at the appropriate levels. Approvals during the quoting step are more important than any other step in the Lead to Cash process. Creating
and sending a proposal, estimate, or quote is typically the first time the customer sees the product information, pricing, or both. Approving before this step limits the flexibility of the sales representative to negotiate, and approvals after this step are passive, causing the client to become frustrated. Quoting and Approvals associated with quotes can reside in CRM: SFA, CPQ or sometimes both. CRM: SFA is the home for
reports and dashboards. Companies rely on sales forecasting to provide transparency for internal groups (for example, what sort of demand will be in store for products and services) and external groups (for example, the investment community in the case of public companies). Sales management uses CRM: SFA reporting to track progress/status at the company, unit, division, customer, and individual sales representative level. CRM: SFA tools typically provide
several out-of-the-box reports, as well as Dashboards that can be prominently displayed upon login. Many also allow users to easily build custom reports and dashboards that are tailored to their needs. In a CRM: SFA context, pipeline refers to the funnel of potential sales that may be coming to fruition. Pipeline begins with high volume/low probability prospects, which winnow their way
through lead and opportunity objects, which ultimately close out as deals that were won, lost, or abandoned. Typically, pipeline reporting focuses on the opportunity object, which contains opportunity amount, date of expected close, and probability of close. This combination of attributes can be used to value the pipeline, in other words, to predict how many opportunities will close, when, and at what total amount. Test your knowledge of key CRM: SFA terminology with of fast & fun crossword puzzle Remember, always check your work - you can download the PUZZLE answers here!The pressure is on! Test your CRM: SFA intellect with this short yet challenging testRemember, always check your work - you can download the QUIZ answers here!People, Process, and Technology of CRM: SFAPeopleCRM: SFA is typically the domain for a service provider's direct sales force. This usually includes field sales representatives, sales engineers or pre-sales, sales management, sales operations, inside sales, and often account management. Often, the marketing organization is involved as well in their responsibility for campaign and lead generation. In a complex product and selling environment, opportunity teams can be expanded to include product, engineering, legal, and operations, often for additional configuration or approval of a product or service. Finally, numerous users consume reports coming out of the CRM: SFA function, including finance and marketing communications for reporting to the investment community and commissions. SalesProductCustomer ServiceMARKETINGFINANCEI.T.ProcessATG maintains a set of 100 key business processes to support the management of customers and revenue for businesses. Twenty-nine of these processes originate or are impacted by the CRM: SFA function. Below are the key processes that touch CRM: SFA, categorized by the organizational unit that owns the process: SALES Opportunity ManagementPrioritizing, tracking, and managing of sales opportunities. SALES Quote - Product ConfigurationConfiguration of features and attributes of products and services prior to a sale. Typical in a custom solution environment. SALES Quote - Product / Service PricingConfiguration of product and service pricing available through the quoting tool. SALES Quote - Product / Service DiscountConfiguration of product and service discounts relating to certain criteria (e.g. volume discounts, geography, trying to win the deal, etc.). SALES Up-Sell Processing - Initial OrderSelling customers a better product or service than they originally expressed interest in, at the time of order. SALES Cross-Sell Processing - Initial OrderSelling a customer an additional product or service from what they had originally requested at the time of ordering. This process is separate from Cross-Sell Processing - Ongoing. SALES Partner Ecosystem ManagementOverall category for Management and integration of any of third-party resellers, partner, or add-on marketplace business models and oversight. SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE Order Entry - CRM: SFACreating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such Customer Support or Partners, as a culmination of the opportunity, quote, contract, and order lifecycle. SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE Renewal ProcessingMethods used to renew a customer's services, may be manual or automated. This could apply to renewal of maintenance and support for perpetual products, or renewal of a subscription term for Cloud products. PRODUCT New Product Introduction ProcessIntroduction of a new product or service to the Product Catalog and supporting quoting, ordering, contracting, provisioning, ticketing, invoicing, payment, usage, and revenue recognition systems. Includes definition of product attributes, pricing rules(usage, recurring, non-recurring), discounts rules, product/service lifecycle, revenue recognition, reporting attributes, and bundling concepts. PRODUCT New Product Introduction Process - MobileConfigure attributes and introduce new products and services, with specific focus on making the product available on mobile devices. PRODUCT New Pricing Introduction - New ConstructThis process is for creation of a new pricing construct for an existing product or service. For example, creation of a monthly subscription where previously there had only been annual. PRODUCT Promotion & Discount IntroductionThe configuration of standard, pre-defined promotions and discounts of products or services. PRODUCT Entitlement ProcessingManagement of active products and services within a customer account. Configuration and management of trial products that do not bill at all during an agreed-upon time frame, or under a certain set of use restrictions. Includes processes for provisioning and reporting. CUSTOMER SERVICE Up-Sell Processing - OngoingA central method for increasing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and is the process of moving a customer to a better or higher version of a product or service throughout their lifetime with your company. This process is separate from Up-Sell Processing - Initial Order. CUSTOMER SERVICE Cross-Sell Processing - OngoingA central method for increasing Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and is the process of selling additional product(s) or service(s) to a customer during the customers' entire lifetime with your company. This process is separate from Cross-sell Processing - Initial order. CUSTOMER SERVICE Customer InquiryThe process of routing customer questions & concerns to the right solution and tracking the outcome. Often referred to as '360-degree view of the customer.' CUSTOMER SERVICE Knowledge ManagementThe ability of a business to identify, create, and distribute information quickly across their customer base, organizations responsible for managing customers, and other key areas of the organization. MARKETING Lead ManagementThe process of managing leads that have been generated and nurturing into new customers, or up-/cross-sold existing customers. MARKETING Proactive Customer Notification - Marketing Focus (New Lead, Up-Sell/Cross-Sell Existing)Similar to pro-active notification from a Customer Success perspective, this process is specifically targeted to generating additional revenue from information captured about a customer, account, or user that can be turned into a Lead. FINANCE Payment ProcessingThe steps taken to process different payment methods from customers. CUSTOMER SUCCESS Retention/Churn MonitoringThe process of monitoring customer turnover. I.T. Maintenance & Oversight of Monetization EcosystemProcess around assuring that all touchpoints and connections in the ecosystem are optimized and working to their full potential.
I.T. Cross-Training of Monetization Ecosystem ComponentsProcess for training organizational resources I.T. Data Stewardship Across Monetization EcosystemProcess of assigning ownership and sources of truth for data within the organization. I.T. Security Oversight of Monetization EcosystemProcess for maintaining and controlling access and permission to ecosystem components. I.T. Vendor Management of the Monetization EcosystemManagement of ecosystem component vendors including proactive communication of changes and general relationship nurturing. ALL Daily, Periodic, or Ad Hoc Reporting (ETL, Report, Dashboard)Movement of data between domains to create a single source of truth for reporting and dashboarding. Includes key metrics such as revenue analytics and other KPIs TechnologyCRM: SFA is a mature technology space, that has several key providers, with a few dominant players. This function has historically had one dominant provider, with several major players vying for second fiddle. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Oracle Siebel was the dominant provider, but over the past 10 years, Salesforce has assumed the top spot. Key CRM: Sales Force Automation Vendors
ESSENTIALS Founded: 1999 OVERVIEW Salesforce is a CRM platform designed to support sales, marketing, and customer support in both business-to-business and business-to-customer contexts. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a fully customizable product that brings all the customer information together in an integrated platform that incorporates marketing, lead generation, sales, customer service and business analytics and provides access to thousands of applications through the AppExchange. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Salesforce targets organizations in many industries and of any size. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 1977 OVERVIEW Oracle CRM On Demand is a cloud-based, integrated business application that enables organizations to drive sales, marketing, loyalty, and service effectiveness. It is designed to help sales, service and marketing departments make information-driven decisions and manage costs and performance. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Oracle CRM On Demand targets organizations in many industries. Target organizations are medium to large enterprises. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded:
1983 OVERVIEW Pega is a full-suite CRM provider, providing functionalities for marketing, sales, and customer service business units, among other products. Pega is well-suited for B2C use cases, and indirect sales management. It has increased and complemented its capabilities for B2B sales teams over the last year. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Pega targets organizations in many industries, including Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Communications, Government, Manufacturing, and High Tech, and are generally medium to large enterprises. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 1975 OVERVIEW Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a component of Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s end-to-end business-tools platform. Users can capture all customer touch points such as phone or email interactions, appointments, exchanged letters, and faxes to generate a single view of the customer. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Microsoft Dynamics CRM targets businesses in many industries and of all sizes. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 1972 OVERVIEW SAP, an acronym for Systems, Applications & Products, engages customers with on-premise customer relationship management (CRM) software across every channel. SAP CRM helps business users manage marketing, sales, and customer service processes. Within the SFA solution, accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and quotes are managed in one location. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET SAP targets organizations in many industries, including, energy, financial, telecommunications, healthcare and high tech. Target organizations are generally small-to-medium enterprises. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 2005 OVERVIEW Zoho CRM is a SaaS-only SFA solution that offers a broad range of native SFA. capabilities, including those that support digital or remote selling. The product suite includes native customer service, marketing, and digital commerce solutions. It is well suited to support B2B, B2C and indirect sales use cases. Zoho has a broad scope of implementation partners to support geographic-specific implementations. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Zoho offers a diverse range of products serving a diverse range of customers of all sizes and verticals. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 2010 OVERVIEW Freshworks provides organizations of all sizes with SaaS customer engagement solutions that make it easy for support, sales and marketing professionals to communicate effectively with customers for better service and collaborate with team members to resolve customer issues. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Freshworks targets organizations in many industries and of any size. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded:
2004 OVERVIEW SugarCRM offers an alternative to complicated CRM software, and instead, you get a simple user interface, focused content, and an intuitive customization platform. An AI feature called Hint accelerates call preparation time by providing sales representatives with all the customer contact and social network information they need with just a name and an email. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET SugarCRM targets organizations in many industries and of any size. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 2013 OVERVIEW Sales Creatio, Creatio’s SFA product, offers a full suite of core and near-core SFA. capabilities. Much of the platform is configurable via its low-code platform for business process management and has ample ability to deliver automation via a drag-and-drop canvas. It hosts deployments on both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET Creatio is well-suited to support midsize to large enterprise deployments in the B2B, B2C, and indirect sales use cases. CUSTOMERS
ESSENTIALS Founded: 2001 OVERVIEW CRMNEXT is a financial services CRM solution designed specifically for financial industry organizations, such as banks. It is also well established among insurance and life science organizations. CRMNEXT combines marketing, sales, and customer service functionalities into one product. Their platform integrates core-customer and other existing technology under one user interface (UI) for managing all customer and member information and completing tasks. PRODUCT & SERVICES:
TARGET MARKET CRMNEXT targets organizations in the Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Insurance industries of all sizes. CUSTOMERS
Ready to get started?Get in touch with our team. What is purpose of sales force automation?What is sales force automation (SFA)? The sales process is full of repetitive, administrative tasks, from data entry to task management. Sales force automation software automates many of these administrative duties so sellers can spend less time clicking around a CRM system and more time working with customers.
How does SFA help in CRM?Usually, SFA is part of Customer Relationship Management or CRM system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. Together they are used to track all communication with a customer while the purpose of the contact along with any needed follow-up are also being recorded.
Which automation is part customer automation and parts sales force automation?SFA can be part of a CRM system or a function of separate tools that are specifically designed to automate select sales tasks. SFA and CRM are not the same thing. A CRM is a tool to support sales and marketing efforts to track buyer journeys, identify revenue opportunities, provide customer support, and more.
What are the primary benefit's of sales force automation?3 Key Benefits of Sales Force Automation
Key areas that benefit from SFA include managing sales territories and lead routing, tracking opportunities and lead conversions, optimizing sales forecasting, and even streamlining order fulfillment.
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What is the focus of sales force automation package of electronic customer relationship management?
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