Manual tracking of records, on spreadsheets, e-mails and phones may seem to be easier, but they are either too labor expensive, or sometimes just impossible. In business, time is money and automation helps you save both! It has thus become a strategic necessity in the competitive marketplace, and more and more companies are attempting to get on the bandwagon as soon as possible. Sales automation allows better communication and better management of primary, secondary and tertiary sales management, sales return management, warehouse stock management, target and forecast management, price protection management and many more analytics.

When does Sales Automation become Crucial?

While it is easy to track & monitor primary sales, things start getting out of control when they reach the secondary and tertiary levels in the sales distribution channel. Hence it is crucial to track the sales at secondary and tertiary levels to get a seamless visibility across channels, measure real-time sales data and keep track of target Vs. achievement to take right decisions at the appropriate time.

In addition, automation techniques like implementing sales automation software allows you to be informed, and review the ongoing transactions that have been happening in the sales channel. The following points bring focus as to why automating your sales processes is crucial.

Key to information- The key to every business process is information. Automation structures the mass amount of data in useful information. For example, you can identify your product’s primary sales, stock transfer, sales return, and other reports like sales vs. target report. This easy flow of information from user-to-user ensures up-to-the-minute information for quicker decision making.

Reports for analyzing and managing sales flow- The lack of properly placed information offers no basis for accurate reports to analyze the sales flow. This often leaves you uninformed about your product’s placement in the entire sales cycle, which inadvertently leaves no real basis for production planning.

Measure real- Time sales data- The sales data is no good if you aren’tgetting the reports out of it in right time. Sales automation lets you measure real-time sales data and can be used for retrospective analysis of business data that can generate significant business value.

Ability to set and measure user’s targets- An all-encompassing sales management software offers the ability to set targets for different users like the vertical heads, sales heads or zonal managers. This also offers the ability to review the targets and analyze the target vs. achievement reports on how your sales channel partners are performing.

Reduced sales processing time- Reduced customer engagement and increased internal communication, which is possible due to sales automation, leads to reduced sales processing time, which thereby leads to optimize the sales life-cycle.

Facilitates Schemes and Offer Handling- Schemes and offers are based on factors like time and stock. With up-to-date information on inventory, you can formulate schemes effectively. A sales automation solution allows the manufacturers to run schemes on the basis of various parameters like scheme concept, validity period and other scheme related details.

Sales automation allows you to identify the blockages in the sales process and effectively use the information for managing the entire sales lifecycle. If you are planning to implement sales automation software for your business processes, you can begin with identifying your unique requirements with your software partner, while keeping the above mentioned points in mind.

Rakesh Kumar is a business consultant of Zed Salesâ„¢. Zed Salesâ„¢ is a leading sales management software & sales tracking software in India. For more information about sales tracking software or scheme management software, visit our website now!

Visit the Author's website: http://www.salesmanagementsoftware.in

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The focal point here however is of “monitoring the sales“. It is ironic that with multiple channels, the sales funnel gets widened with an inverse effect on the visibility over sales processes. The inventory is scattered over the country and there is little to no visibility over the in-transit, delivered and supplied stock. This article draws attention towards some of the complexities involved in managing channel sales. Some of them are highlighted below:

Handling Relationships: There are usually three parties involved in channel sales- the vendor (primary level), the resellers or partners (secondary level), and mom and pop shops or modern trade stores (tertiary level). For all these three levels you have to set the credit limit, product price list, terms and conditions, and monitor if all are adhering to it. While you can supervise the immediate next level, that is the primary level, monitoring secondary sales channel is a challenge that decimates the multi-channel sales operations.

Credibility of Channel Partner: Handling the responsibility of your product sale to your distributors and dealers is a matter of great trust. Channel partners should be your credible advocates to push your product to final sales. This activity of measuring partner’s performance and credibility can be done on the basis of facts and figures. The absence of any tool to automate and quantify the performance level often leads to disoriented partner channel.

Inventory Management: The best thing with channel partners and distributors is that they eradicate the hindrances of time and geography in multi-channel marketing; but the bad thing is that you don’tget to keep a direct control over the inventory. To recognize the revenues exactly, you don’tjust need to have an understanding of what you have in hand, but also in what your partners at all levels- secondary and tertiary have.

Price Protection: Price protection is one of the very steamy parts of sales management. When a distributor or reseller partner buys the goods at an old price, they are almost always entitled to be "protected" against the decrease in cost. Calculating price protection at all levels becomes a challenge, resulting in dissatisfied partners / resellers.

These are some of the basic hurdles that come in the way of multi-tier product selling. This however, does not humble the immense impact of channel marketing on your profitability. Every challenge becomes an opportunity if these processes are automated and integrated with Secondary Sales Management Software. This would result in improved efficiency and agility, while costs are lowered. Automating the sales channel is the key- you just have to turn it right by choosing an accurate and comprehensive Secondary Sales Management Software.

Rakesh Kumar is a business consultant of Zed Salesâ„¢. Zed Salesâ„¢ is a leading Secondary Sales Management Software in India. Zed Salesâ„¢ has lots of innovative features including Secondary Sales Tracking Software, Sales Order Management Software, etc.To know more visit our website www.salesmanagementsoftware.in now!

Visit the Author's website: http://www.salesmanagementsoftware.in

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