Guest Article: Agile Field Sales Teams are the New Winners

Guest Article: Agile Field Sales Teams are the New Winners:from Jonathan Farrington's Blog by Jonathan Farrington

This will grow - be aware of what you may lose in transition and balance against the gains. 



Agile Field Sales is an emerging paradigm made possible by the rapid expansion of capabilities in cloud and mobile technologies.  Sales organizations, particularly those in Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) are beginning to develop sales processes that are focused on light-weight activities and transactions, highly streamlined data entry, and real-time visibility into field activities.  Emerging tools that require little or no IT resources to implement and run, enable sales management to examine, assess and adapt their tactics in direct response to what they see going on in the field.
Reps are eager to adopt these new agile systems since they are based on the premise that reps should be liberated from low value tasks like data entry and reporting.  These reps are interested in communicating at ‘Tweet-Speed’, never want to spend time organizing customer information to prepare for a sales call, and are happy to trade in their weekly sales reports for a higher degree of accountability; especially when they realize that this streamlined approach to sales management generates bigger commissions!
Agile Field Sales means managing a sales organization with minimal data, focusing only on the most relevant pieces of information, making data collection and field reporting extremely streamlined, and providing instant visibility to field activities to managers.  New tools and processes enable reps to enter small amounts of data as part of each normal field activity, and present the information to management in a way that provides an accurate and real-time view of what is happening in the field.  Enabling this approach with the GPS, Signature Capture, Configurable Forms and Photo Capture readily available on today’s wirelessly connected smart phones and tablets makes it possible for teams to create tremendous value through highly agile execution in the field.
This approach to Agile Field Sales merges the benefits to reps and management.  Enabling super light-weight data entry, ‘twitter-like’ communication and instant access to pertinent data on smart devices for reps gives management the ability to be in touch with everything going on in the field in real-time; and the resulting increase in accountability drives higher sales and commissions.  In addition to heightened accountability, an agile approach to managing field sales delivers this real-time field data to management in a consumable stream that can be assimilated and rapidly reacted to with in-the-moment coaching, or instant adjustments to process or field strategy.
Being Agile Drives Better Execution of the Sales Plan, and Deeper Market Penetration
One of the traits of the most successful outside sales reps is the ability to stay focused on the activities that deliver sales; things like making the right number of sales calls each day, presenting the key value points of the product or service at every meeting, asking the right qualifying questions at every step in the sales process… the things every rep is trained to do, but that so many reps fail to execute with the level of discipline management expects.  They may cherry-pick the prospecting visits they make, and come up with their own ‘gut’ assessment of how qualified a prospect is rather than asking the tough questions every time.  This leads to missed opportunities, and wasted time selling to un-qualified prospects.
With an Agile approach to sales, reps know that their managers see the results of their sales meetings in real time, and with the best systems, managers know exactly where and when the meetings take place.  These reps are much more likely to visit all prospects called for in the sales plan, to ask the right questions, and to present the products according to plan.  This results in broader and deeper coverage in the market, with more prospects being called on, and more of the right conversations occurring at these meetings.
Furthermore, agile sales teams can adapt the sales process quite rapidly.  For example, if sales management gets several reports about a new competitive promotion in a particular territory during the course of a morning, they can put together counter measures for reps to implement the same day.  Truly agile teams identify changes in the marketplace instantly, and can respond by adjusting their plans in real time.
Agile Field Sales is a new paradigm built on the culture of real time information access, instant communications and open sharing.  It leverages tools that exploit these evolving capabilities to make reps more responsive and focused on execution, and to give management the visibility it needs to better drive field strategies. Organizations that adopt an Agile Field Sales approach are emerging as the new winners.

Author: Matthew Brogie is GM North America for Salespod, Inc., Prior to joining the Salespod team, Mat founded MobilityCIO, a Boston based consulting firm focused on developing Enterprise Mobile strategies. Mat has lead the design and implementation efforts for global scale Mobility projects at several fortune 500 companies.

About Salespod Inc : Salespod, Inc.  develops and markets Salespod and SalespodExpress Agile Field Sales tools for managing Outside Sales and Marketing teams.  Salespod is changing the paradigm for outside sales management by leveraging powerful cloud and mobile capabilities to bring simple, yet powerful tools for driving accountability, execution, communication, efficiency and visibility into field operations. Find our more here