Sales Force Automation Operations

What is sales force automation?

Sales force automation means tools that make selling more efficient and raise the selling power of the whole organisation.
Its characteristic is holding prospects, deal progress, deal status and activity history in one place, and making what salespeople do visible. That makes clear who holds which deal and what the process to an order looks like, and prevents the work depending on individuals. Well-known examples include HubSpot Sales Hub and Salesforce.
Adopting one does not by itself raise sales results. On the contrary, where the operating design is weak it is not unusual for it to add only data entry and never take hold on the ground.
NowVillage's management service designs to fit your processes and runs the system for you, helping build a setup that leads to results without burdening the sales floor.

The advantages and disadvantages

Used well, a sales system brings the following advantages.
Making the sales process visible makes individual activity visible and management easier.
Accumulating and analysing data reveals the patterns that win and what to improve, raising the productivity of the whole organisation.
Sharing knowledge prevents the work depending on individuals and creates an environment where anyone can sell repeatably.

There are disadvantages. Too many fields to fill in become a burden on the sales floor and risk the tool becoming a formality. And because configuration and operation differ between tools, a lack of know-how at implementation easily leads to the state of never really mastering it.
Implementation and licence costs also arise, so without a clear return it can be hard to win management's understanding. To resolve those concerns we take on everything from implementation through embedding to improvement proposals, delivering a system that reliably produces results.

Points to watch

There are several things to watch in making a sales system deliver. First, be clear about why you are adopting it. If the purpose is vague rather than something like more accurate deal management, visible sales activity or more efficient lead nurturing, the data entry becomes a burden and use does not continue. A simple design that fits the sales floor is also needed. Keeping the fields to a minimum and making it something salespeople want to use is the key to it taking hold. And it does not end at implementation; a regular cycle of improvement matters, reviewing the KPIs and the dashboards and improving the workflows as you go.
Results also depend on working with marketing and customer success, not sales alone. A tool that connects smoothly is a given; aligning the departments matters.
On that basis, our management service stays alongside you from implementation design through embedding on the ground and making the links between departments systematic to proposing improvements, building an operation that keeps contributing to revenue.