Sales force management-1

Proponents claim that sales force automation systems can improve the productivity of sales personnel. Here are some examples:
1. Rather than write-out sales orders, reports, activity reports, and/or call sheets, sales people can fill-in prepared e-forms. This saves time. For blinds business online, online reports and online sales effort helps them to sell their vertical blinds and roman shades products easily.
2. Rather than printing out reports and taking them to the sales manager, sales people can use the company intranet to transmit the information. This saves time.
3. Rather than waiting for paper-based product-inventory data, sales-prospect lists, and sales-support information, they will have access to the information when they need it. This could be useful in the field when answering prospects’ questions and objections. For example, online instant life insurance rates company who are providing life insurance quotes online, they provides everything of insurance online without any paper.
4. The additional tools could help improve sales staff morale if they reduce the amount of record keeping and/or increase the rate of closing. This could contribute to a virtuous spiral of beneficial and cumulative effects.
5. These sales force systems can be used as an effective and efficient training device. They provide sales staff with product information and sales technique training without them having to waste time at seminars.
6. Better communication and co-operation between sales personnel facilitates successful team selling.
7. More and better qualified sales leads could be automatically generated by the software.
8. This technology increases the sales person’s ratio of selling time to non-selling time. Non-selling time includes activities like report writing, travel time, internal meetings, training, and seminars.

Ref: Wikipedia

Customer service

Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. According to Turban et al. (2002), “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”

Its importance varies by product, industry and customer. As an example, an expert customer might require less pre-purchase service (i.e., advice) than a novice. In many cases, customer service is more important if the purchase relates to a “service” as opposed to a “product". Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. Examples of self service are Internet sites.

Customer service is normally an integral part of a company’s customer value proposition. Some have argued that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy.

Ref: Wikipedia