Effective and successful field sales management!

A well-trained field sales force has a great value for companies! We spoke with Giuseppe Poso, our Building Radar sales expert. He has been successfully active in sales for more than 20 years. During this time he supported many companies in finding new construction projects. Use his advice and expertise to enhance your own workflow or the workflow of your field sales managers!Visit our construction industry blog to read the full interview with our sales expert!1. Cooperation with the back office2. Route planning3. Time spent in the car4. Equipment5. Post-processing of appointments

1. Cooperation with the back office

Trustful and close cooperation between the field workforce and back office is vital. This requires an active collaboration of both parties.“Dialogs should not only take place electronically. I've heard that it's so much easier to convey emotions in a personal conversation ;-)”

Giuseppe Poso, Building Radar

A close communication improves the understanding of the others needs. The communication should be built on personal discussions and meetings. Also, processes have to be clearly divided to avoid misunderstandings. The office staff is responsible, for example, for the qualification of the contact person and the organization of an appointment. The objective is to take the pressure of the field sales manager. This way, the field workforce can concentrate fully on customer appointments on site.

2. Route planning

Field sales manager spend most of their time in their car. Insufficient time buffers, e.g., for traffic, will cause stress and delays. Thus, efficiently coordinating appointments is of great importance.Already 10 customer appointments result in over 3.6 million different route possibilities. Hence, the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence is a must to find the most efficient routes! Portatour is the market leader in route planning software. Various features optimize the planning process:

• Consideration of working hours and home travel times
• Connection to the calendar and CRM system
• Consideration of recurring appointments
• Automatic recalculation of the route in case of delays or cancellations
• Offline access to the planned routes

3. Time spent in the car

Sales representatives spend about 85% of the working time in the car. It’s advisable to use the time during a long car ride as efficiently as possible.“My colleagues and I see the interior of the vehicle longer than the wife, children or the own bed.”

Giuseppe Poso, Building Radar

Through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) it is possible to participate in audio seminars and audio workshops on the road. MOOCs are distance learning courses offered by universities, colleges, and other institutions. Those programmes are accessible to everybody. There are also a lot of interesting podcasts available. Sales trainer such as Anthony Lannarino or Stephan Heinrich offer podcasts that are perfect for the time in the car between appointments.Also, it's important to attach great importance to tidiness in the car. Use Boxes to store the most important utensils. Unnecessary things - especially drink boxes or other packaging - should immediately be removed. It takes 2-3 minutes to clean up the car at the beginning of the week.

4. Equipment

Access customer data, presentations, and forms from anywhere! Presentation apps like Salesphere, product information can be rendered interactively as an image, graphics, animated statistic, or video. Another important point is mobile access to customer data. Here, CRM apps also enable access to all relevant data while on the go.“Our Salesforce CRM system provides an excellent mobile app. As a result, I'm up to date very quickly and can just check back shortly before an appointment.“

Giuseppe Poso, Building Radar

5. Post-processing of appointments

Especially if there are several customer appointments every day, it is important to document them well. The best time to do so is immediately after the appointment when memories are fresh. Dictation is faster than typing. Voice Assistants like Siri or Cortana enable this process even from the car. It would be fatal if, after an eventful week, it would not be possible to reconstruct what was being discussed with whom.“I note the first impression of appointments with a scratchpad. Afterward, I use our mobile CRM App to provide information to the whole team. To offer the best customer service, everyone in the company needs access to the current status of the negotiations.”

Giuseppe Poso, Building Radar

After a week full of appointments, there are many business cards. It's necessary to save their data as contacts in your phone and CRM system. Some apps help to regain control over all collected business cards. Snapaddy helps to transfer the scanned business cards to your CRM.