Research shows that an average field sales rep spends only 35% of his time on actual selling, while most of his time is often consumed by administrative and other non-sales activities.
Picture this: you are traveling to a distant location to meet up with your distributor or retailer – have you ever considered which other retailers and distributors lie within the same area. If you could visualize the daily beat plan and number of touch-points in a given area, this could help improve market coverage.
The definite solution for this problem is the implementation of geolocation tools, which utilizes Salesforce CRM and geospatial data to help your field-sales representatives to plan their journeys, beat management and track / analyze customer locations; even navigate towards them and bring authenticity of the visit record.
The driving need for Geo-location enablement
Deep-dive in analytics : Through visualization and analytical tools you are able to segregate your retailers within a specific region based on demographics, purchasing behavior, or level of opportunity. This helps your field sales rep understand market-size and concentration and be proactive in keeping local prospects from getting weaned away.
Further your field sales rep is able to predict the behavior of the retailer, before he even enters his store, based on the data thus made available to him.
Fig # 1: Sample market size and concentration maps for review
Optimization of visit-routes: They help you plan routes between multiple beats, retailers in an area based on the most direct sequence of visits. Further through real-time updates, they are made aware of nearby new retailer that might arise. The latest solutions even have built-in GPS and voice-navigation services completely integrated with your Salesforce.com CRM.
Fig # 2: Map showing the geographical locations of your customers in a region (these can be subsequently route-optimized)
Consistent engagement: You are now able to contextualize content and offers to your customers based on location-specific behaviors. Through establishment demand relevance through geospatial data (relevant products/services, relevant content & relevant offers), field sales reps are equipped to drive better engagement with prospects and customers. Thus they are able to optimize their sales efforts and drive more success.
Further through real-time data capture, it is possible for field sales reps to see their beat-plan progress, log-in orders, capture opportunities, offer promotions to dealers and complete any other activities without leaving the map module.
Fig # 3: Geo-spatial and engagement information with the customer being captured without leaving the map module
The step-by-step approach towards building your Geo-location solution
The foundation towards building a scale-able geolocation & geo-fencing solution is to acquire a ‘Mobile first’ CRM software like Salesforce.com which offers ‘mobile-first’ apps across all its editions and licenses.
The first step is to map your business processes where you would like your geolocation data to integrate with. Perhaps you would like these features to be integrated with each of your Retailers, Distributors and Order entry points, Travel and expense management. Or you would like to monitor your field visits through a separate check-in and check-out module.
Secondly, you would like to choose the Geolocation interface that would be compatible with your Salesforce CRM. Salesforce.com has an entire library of geolocation tools and applications. Technically also Salesforce.com CRM is more competent to allow track your distributor & retailer visibility through geocodes.
Finally you would like to work with a knowledgeable Salesforce.com partner who would help you integrate the entire solution and bring in the tracking, review and real-time data generation mechanism.
KVP has hands-on experience in implementing and scaling up geolocation solutions for a wide range of industry field sales applications. For more information. We have previously migrated over 15000+ users on various Salesforce.com platforms and enabled digital transformation across industry sectors. We are always ready to take up your geolocation integration challenge.
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