Field Sales Management: Overcoming the Major Challenges

If you're managing a sales team, you probably know how tricky it can be to keep your sales reps productive rather than wasting resources on non-selling tasks. A study by Forbes shockingly reveals that field sales reps spend only about 35% of their time indulging in actually selling. It comes to a meager 14 hours a week!

However, before damning sales representatives, it is important to understand that field sales is a lengthy, arduous, and complex process involving long follow-up cycles with prospects. Sales opportunities don’t manifest out of thin air; they require persistent efforts. More importantly, to take a deal to its logical conclusion, it is imperative for field sales managers to impeccably plan and subsequently execute well-designed sales strategies.

In this blog, we’ll discuss six major challenges faced by field sales. More importantly, we will deliberate upon how these challenges can be overcome to boost the team's overall productivity and efficiency:

1. Monitoring Sales Rep Activity

Sales reps spend a lot of time on travelling and meeting potential customers. This in turn makes it rather difficult for managers to know if the time at their disposal is being put to productive use. This, however, is not easily achievable which makes it hard to understand the tactics that are working and the ones that are not and need to be ditched. Managers as such need to find ways to monitor their reps without becoming too intrusive or hindering their productivity. This can be achieved by leveraging the power of modern technologies and employing relevant time management and sales techniques tools and methods.

Solution: The dual objective of keeping a close tab on a sales representative’s activities without being too intrusive can be addressed by providing managers with real-time visibility into their sales reps' activities, including their location and appointments. It helps managers monitor their reps from a reasonable distance, and aid them identify the tactics that are working, and the ones that are proving to be a dud. Moreover, the app can provide training on time management and sales techniques, helping reps become more efficient and productive.

2. Sub-optimized schedules of Salesperson

As sales reps spend majority of time travelling, it is important their schedules are optimized for maximum revenue generation. It is to be noted that sub-optimized schedules of field salespersons could lead to missing out on potential sales opportunities owing to ineffective and poor time management.

For instance, a salesperson may spend too much time on administrative tasks or prospecting, thus running short on time to take up actual sales activities, which could lead to missed opportunities and a lower conversion rate.

Poor route planning is another important cause of inefficient time management A lot of time intended for sales activities is wasted on commuting leading to depressed productivity.

Solution: By optimizing schedules and routes for sales reps using AI/ML, it is possible to prioritize high value opportunities. Additionally, calendar integration can prevent conflicts, improve productivity and enhance the chances of closing deals.

3. Repetitive and Routine Tasks

Sales reps are often inundated with tedious and time-consuming routine tasks, such as data entry into a CRM system, sending follow-up emails to prospects, and generating sales reports among others. This in turn leaves little time for strategic activities, such as building customer relationships and closing deals thus lowering the overall effectiveness of the sales process. Using automation tools like CRM software, email automation, and reporting tools, these activities can easily be streamlined.

Solution: Automating data entry tasks, such as logging customer interactions, updating contact information, and tracking sales progress, can save sales reps a significant amount of time, while at the same time keeping intact the overall integrity of the data.

4. Inability to Capture Sales Leads and Collections

The failure of sales reps to capture sales orders effectively can result in missed sales opportunities, delayed order processing, and increased costs associated with fixing orders. All these issues possess the risk of giving rise to customer dissatisfaction, which can seriously tinker with the overall reputation of the business and cause a massive decline in sales.

It is common knowledge that sales orders and collections are the lifeblood of any organization. They are the foundation upon which businesses build their revenue and profitability. Failure to capture sales orders accurately can have some disastrous consequences, including lost revenue, lower profits, and dissatisfied customers.

Similarly, failing to capture collections can create cash flow issues and make it challenging for a business to meet its financial obligations. This in turn can prevent businesses from reaching their growth potential and hinder their overall development.

Solution: The problem can be resolved by creating a dedicated application which seamlessly connects with CRM systems, enabling sales reps to access customer data, create quotes, and capture payments in real-time. It improves sales efficiency and also ensures that sales reps have access to the requisite information and tools they need to close deals quickly and effectively, regardless of their location.

5. Lack of Collaboration Between Different Teams

Field sales management requires coordination between multiple teams, including sales, marketing, operations, and customer service. A collaboration between these teams that is not seamless is bound to give rise to several challenges all with the potential to gravely impact the bottom line.

One of the primary reasons for inefficient collaboration is lack of proper communication between different departments. For example, sales teams may be working to close deals without considering the marketing messaging, which can result in customers receiving mixed messages or feeling confused about the product or service being offered. Additionally, operations teams may be unaware of the sales pipeline, which can lead to overpromising and underdelivering on products or services.

Solution: A shared platform using Sales Cloud can enable sales, marketing, and service teams to work together, manage leads, track performance, and access customer data. It helps to avoid duplicated efforts, improve communication, and provide a better customer experience.

Case in Action

Our client, Ambit Finvest, was facing a major hurdle in sales operations. The absence of any centralized repository for reports eventually meant the sales team had to spend countless hours manually processing data to glean actionable insights. They were in need of a modern cutting-edge solution to automate these tedious tasks and provide a more streamlined, user-friendly system. We developed a custom Salesforce CRM solution using Sales Cloud licenses to help client’s sales team manage their entire sales process digitally. It increased Real-time TAT evaluation and helped improve employees’ efficiency by almost 100%. You can read the detailed case study here.

The Crux

Establishing clear expectations and milestones is crucial for both the company's growth and customer satisfaction. The simple fact is that field sales teams may struggle to meet targets owing to a variety of challenges that need to be quickly addressed by the management. Finding and removing hindrances quickly is important for motivating the team and helping them meeting the sales objectives and targets. It is important to streamline workflows and fix underlying issues to improve overall performance.