SFA is an abbreviation for "Sales Force Automation", which in Japanese means "sales support system". SFA is said to be indispensable for improving sales efficiency, and the number of companies introducing SFA https://slimtime.co.jp/ is increasing every year, but the benefits of SFA and how to introduce it are still not widely known.
In this section, we will give you an overview of SFA, the differences between SFA and CRM/MA, as well as the functions of SFA, and introduce how to utilize SFA and how to implement it efficiently.
SFA is the abbreviation for Sales Force Automation, which translates to sales support system. It refers to a method and a tool for supporting sales, visualizing the progress of sales from the start of a business meeting to the receipt of an order, and managing the activities of the sales force.
The work of salespeople covers a wide range of tasks, such as creating customer lists, making telephone appointments, preparing proposals, quotations, and plans, sending information to potential customers, visiting customers, handling complaints, and following up with existing customers.
If this part of the process can be automated, salespeople will be able to concentrate on their core tasks such as approaching promising prospects, which will lead to increased sales.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is often referred to together with SFA.
CRM is called "Customer Relationship Management" or "Customer Relationship Management" in Japanese. It is a customer-centric marketing method that aims to record and manage customer attributes and their contact history with the company through various channels, and to increase the number of fans through customer-specific communication, leading to increased sales and profitability.
In a broad sense, CRM includes the support and management of sales activities, so I imagine SFA as one of the parts that put CRM into practice.
Important functions of SFA
Currently, there are a variety of SFAs in the market, each with different functions and characteristics.
These are the core of SFA, but since they were originally created as tools for sales support, their basic functions are almost the same as follows.
A "deal management function" to manage individual deals along with their timeline
What is the status of the deals that the salesperson is dealing with, are there any stagnations or obstacles in the negotiations, and what is the probability of closing the deal? The deal management function of SFA manages the information related to each deal.
Sales operations go through a number of stages, from finding potential customers to closing the deal. Managing how many business negotiations are in progress at each stage and taking actions tailored to each case is a means to secure steady sales.
Are you making progress, are you making proposals that meet the needs of the client, and are you getting to know the key people at the client? If there are any shortcomings, we will make up for them. If we see any problems, we will improve them to close the deal. The case management function of SFA enables us to take appropriate actions along the timeline of the sales process.
Activity Management Function" to realize lean sales activities
For salespeople, making effective use of their limited time to communicate with customers is an essential skill. However, even if they think they are working efficiently, there are often leaks, overlaps, and uneven activities in unexpected places.
For example, the frequency of visits may vary greatly depending on the project, or the timing of the proposal may be delayed due to a lack of visits, which may result in losing a promising potential customer to a competitor.
It is the activity management of SFA that can find the weak points of such activities. If you only want to record the activities of your members, you can do that with ordinary groupware, but in the case of SFA, it is linked to customer information and case information. Therefore, it is possible to more accurately evaluate how much a salesperson's actions have contributed to closing a deal and whether they have led to sales, and brush up on efficient sales activities without waste.
Customer Management Function" for Strategic Sales Practice
In general, if you examine the sales of each of your customers, you will notice that a small number of customers account for most of your sales. According to Pareto's law, "20% of all customers account for 80% of all sales. By examining the characteristics common to these 20% of customers, such as company size, type of business, and company structure, we can see the characteristics of "companies that choose our products.
If this is the case, it will be possible to pick up companies with such characteristics and take further sales actions to maximize sales.
In the past, such strategic sales activities relied heavily on the intuition and prospects of individual members and managers. However, by utilizing the customer management function of SFA, it becomes possible to formulate strategies and take actions based on actual data.
Advantages of SFA
SFA provides a number of benefits by constantly sharing the latest information and utilizing various functions. This will increase your operational efficiency and change your sales style. Here are some of the benefits of SFA.
Information sharing eliminates dependency and improves sales organization.
In the past, sales operations were highly individualistic, with each member holding both customer information and sales know-how. A major problem that arises from this is that even customer service becomes an individual responsibility.
In the event of a customer inquiry or a customer problem, if the person in charge is not available, it is impossible to take the appropriate action on the spot. In addition, if the person in charge is not sufficiently informed when he or she is replaced, the customer may feel that the new person in charge is not good enough. The accumulation of these factors leads to a decline in customer satisfaction.
However, if customer information is always shared through SFA, stable customer service can be provided even when the person in charge is not available, and by referring to past records, it is possible to take appropriate action for each customer. This makes it possible to organize sales operations that previously relied on individual players.
Visualization of each and every sales activity
When sales operations are organized through information sharing, it becomes possible to visualize who is working on what project and what kind of action they are taking. Therefore, when a difficult situation arises, the manager can quickly detect the situation, send advice to the members, and assign other members to support.
In addition, some SFAs allow users to check and write information on the go using mobile devices, which increases efficiency by eliminating the need to return to the office to report to the manager or create daily reports.
Highly accurate sales forecasting
SFA accumulates all kinds of information about customers and deals. Based on this accurate information, you can make more accurate sales forecasts than ever before. This is a big advantage for managers.
In an environment with a strong sense of autonomy, the probability of closing each deal and the progress of each deal are largely based on the subjective judgment of the person in charge. However, if a common set of standards is established so that objective judgments can be made, individual intuition and assumptions can be eliminated, and fluctuations in sales forecasts can be kept to a minimum.
Don't miss the right moment to act
After submitting a proposal or quotation to a client, when should we follow up? This is an area where each individual member has a different way of measuring the timing. However, if we analyze past cases and determine the best timing for each individual action, we can follow it.
For example, if you find that the most accurate time to call is in the morning two days after the proposal, then you can set an alert to go out in the morning two days after the proposal to encourage action.
It's not easy to keep a perfect schedule of daily activities. By using SFA, you can reduce such carelessness and take action at the most appropriate time.
Sharing of know-how contributes to raising performance and human resource development
When SFA eliminates dependency, not only information but also know-how can be shared. In other words, by analyzing and standardizing the methods of the members who can do the work, it is possible to bridge the gap between the abilities of individual members. This is not only useful for raising the performance of the entire department, but is also a great benefit in terms of training for those who are newly assigned to the sales department.
For example, when training new recruits through on-the-job training, not only the good parts of the person being taught but also undesirable habits may be imprinted on them. However, if SFA is used to standardize knowledge, the know-how of members who are capable of doing the job can be imparted to newcomers, contributing greatly to the development of excellent human resources.
Improve customer satisfaction with proposals that fit their needs
SFA allows you to analyze your customers' needs more accurately and in detail. By incorporating this information into management, it is possible to develop products that meet customer requirements and optimize inventory and distribution. It can also be used for after-sales service after a contract is signed.
These results can be achieved if the management team takes the lead and effectively coordinates the various departments. This is nothing less than the realization of "customer-first management. And if the results of the customer-first approach permeate the field, it will lead to the customer-focused awareness of employees in all departments, which will contribute to the improvement of customer satisfaction.
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