- Introduction
- Things To Decide Before Choosing A Sales Management Software For Your Company
- What To Look For In A Sales Management Software?
Key Takeaways:
- It’s not about what features the software is providing you. It is clearly about what your business needs in the end of the day.
- The first thing that you absolutely must check is whether the software can be integrated with the other softwares that your business is already using.
Before we start with how to choose a sales management software, let’s understand what a good sales management software is. A good sales management software is not defined by its features. Rather, it is defined by how efficiently it can solve the issues of a business. And every business has its own set of issues that needs to be addressed.
For example, when you go to a doctor to get a cure for diabetes, he surely won’t suggest you painkillers just because it is the best painkiller in the market. In the same way, consider the software as a hand of assistance in business processes.
Here, a sales management software would help a business manage and automate all the sales processes of the business. And these processes might not be common for all businesses. Therefore, to understand which sales management software would be the perfect fit for your business, you will need to know what your business needs help with. The area of issue could be anything; from information management to lead and order management to all the other things that are involved in the process of reaching the products to the end users.
Three are a number of factors you would need to consider to determine the best software for your business. Let’s discuss the factors in detail.
Things To Decide Before Choosing A Sales Management Software For Your Company
In this section, we will be discussing about the factors that you need to look at while deciding on the sales management software for your company. While finding the answer to these questions, you might find that you are getting answers that are very uncommon. For example, if you want to answer the question: What is the objective of your company? – you might find the answer to be different from all the other company in the same industry. But you do not need to worry about that. That is the unique selling point of your business. And in thee market there are several companies selling softwares that can assist you in the course of your business management.
Now, let’s take a look at the factors that effect the necessity of features in a sales management software. And as you read it, why don’t you try to answer these questions for your business as well?
Company Objectives
Company’s from different industries have different requirements. For example, if you are from the IT sector, you would not need to worry about the distribution channels of the company. In the same way, if your company is selling products, then you would need to emephasise on the quality of your distribution management system. It all depends on what sector of your business you want assistance with. Many business might require to build an excellent customer service reputation. On the other hand, another business may require to focus more on their sales force management. In the end of the day, the best software should address the objective behind your need of a software.
Needing a software does not mean that you are failing to handle your business. All a software does is assist you in the process of managing the targeted department of your business.
Process You Are Struggling With
Another factor that you must consider while choosing a sales management software is the process you are really struggling to manage. There are businesses that at times face difficulty in either managing the process or adopting the best way to streamline the process. In this scenario, you might want to find out what processes in the sales process your employees are struggling to manage. They might be struggling to manage the leads of the business. Or they could be finding it hard to keep track of all the information of the customers in the database. The employees could also be struggling to allocate the right complaints to the right person in teh department. There are hundreds of problems that they could be facing. And that is exactly what you need to know. This way, you can choose the software that would really help with the problems you are facing, instead of charging you for the things that you are already doing just fine.
For example, you find out that the customer service department is struggling with all the complaints that are being registered on a daily basis. As a result, not all customer complaints are being addressed to, leading to poor customer satisfaction and ultimately your business losing sales. To solve this problem, you would need a software that would specifically solve the problem with customer information management and customer relationship management. It would help you keep a record of all the complaints from the customers, including the individual customer’s information. This way, when you go to address the complaint, you will find all the data you might need to solve the problem on the same platform. As a result, it will accelerate the customer service process.
Identify Your Needs
It’s not about what features the software is providing you. It is clearly about what your business needs in the end of the day. Hence, try identifying all the factors that your business needs help will, for example, customer service, sales force management or distribution management. Then you should be able to tell what exact software would the best for your business.
Identify Teams That Will Use Specific Feature
Last but not the least, identify the teams that would need the features of software. If you are facing problems with the distribution channel, then you might want to go and have a talk with all the sales team that are involved in every territory of your sale. This way, you can optimally utilize the software for the improvement of the process that you are targeting.
What To Look For In A Sales Management Software?
The only things that a sales management software should do, is assist in the process that you are struggling with. Hence, in accordance with all the factors discussed above, you must find for the exact features that you are looking for. For example, if you need assistance with automating repetitive tasks you might want to find the software that, well, automates repetitive tasks! It’s as simple as that. Other than that, there are a few features that you might want to keep an eye for while searching for the perfect software that would help your business that best. Considering the previous example, to automate the repetitive tasks you would need a system that would keep a record of all the information that you need to automate the repetitive tasks. Hence, that is an additional feature that you need to solve the issue here. In the same way, there are several other features that supports another feature to complete the solution.
Features Of The Sales Management Software
Till now, we have talked about the factors that you must consider involved in your business. Now, in this section we are going to understand about all the factors that you might want to look for in a sales management software. This should definitely be supported by your findings about your business. But, in this section, we going to study the commonly necessary factors while choosing the software. They are generally the factors you look for while buying anything in general, but it is specifically for a software. Let’s get into the details.
Integrations Of The Software
The first thing that you absolutely must check is whether the software can be integrated with the other softwares that your business is already using. This is a very important step before you buy the software. For example, if you are using a service management software, and new sales management software that you have bought cannot be integrated with the service management software. Now, that’s huge issue. You not only further complicate the issue that you were already facing, you also detach the service department from the sales department. And this barrier between these two departments are going to lead low quality of communication and other complications. Hence, it is better if you only buy a software that can be easily supported by the other software that you are already using.
Mobility and Accessibility Of The Software
Nowadays, every software has both desktop and mobile versions. And that is exactly what you need to find out. The software you want to buy must be compatible on devices that you generally use on a daily basis, for example, desktop and mobile phones. This features makes it incredibly feasible for the users to access informations and data from wherever they want to.
For example, you send a couple sales force members to a location. They would definitely need access to the information about the customer they are visiting, their address, about the product they are interested in and all the other stuff. How would they be able to access this information without their desktop? The easiest way would be their smartphones. If they are able to log into the software using the respective credentials they would easily be able to look at all this information and communicate with the prospect/customer with ease. This way, there is a greater chance that they are going to seal the deal!
Ensure Ease Of Uses
This refers to whether the software is easy to use and navigate through. It won’t be fun for the sales team to access a software that is complicated and confusing at the same time. What I am trying to say is, try to find a software that is easy to understand and use. Otherwise, it could take upto a month for you to train the team to use the software alone. And the software could lead to serious errors if not used correctly.
Support System
Take a very close look at the support system of the company that you are buying the software from. Because, after you buy the software, you would need to train your team to use the software as well. Contact with the provider and make sure that they provide a good support system and would answer all your questions regarding the software. Many companies would even offer you to train you or your team on the software as well. Moreover, in the future, make sure that they are providing with proper technical support to solve issues and glitches with the software.
Price Of The Software
This is probably the first thing you will notice about the software. It’s needless to say that the price is the most important factor that you must consider before buying the software. Every business has a budget. And it won’t do good for you to go beyond your budget to buy a software!
Users Reviews
This is as natural as it gets. Everyone looks at user reviews before they buy anything. Even a bottle of shampoo. Then why won’t you look at user reviews while such an important thing for your business? Here, user reviews don’t mean just the reviews on the internet. You might want to contact with a few people who has already used the software. You can go to their website and check out their clients they are serving and then contact them to have a genuine vision on the overall advantages of the software.
Sales Management Software is a software that can help you manage and automate the process of sales. It haas the potential to increase sales and profit of the business using it. However, there are a lot of conditions that might affect the statement. The first and most important factor would be the optimal utilization of the software. And doing it is not easy! You would need to understand both your business and the software to do it. Hence, it is important that you find out what your business needs first.
