Friday, December 4, 2015

Front Row Sales Pro

The Front Row app and system works by having a company create a series of questions that they would like their sales reps to answer after every sales call. We refer to this series of questions as the ‘sales activity card’. The development of the activity card has several advantages to both the sales rep and the management team.

For the sales rep, the activity card:
1) Provides a clear understanding as to what the company needs from the field.
2) Allows a sales rep to quickly and easily provide a sales report using the Front Row app.
3) Enables success tracking and prospect validation.
4) Provides automatic task assignment to sales support team.
5) Auto syncs with Google, outlook, and mobile calendars to provide clear follow up notification.

For the management team, the activity card:
1) Provides a clear picture of sales goals and company direction.
2) Standardizes the information from the field for better analytic's and KPI’s.
3) Improves accountability.
4) Supports the sales team with a tool focused on their sales reporting challenges.

From our data base of several hundred sales activity cards, here are the 6 most commonly asked questions:
1) How did you contact the customer?  By appointment, unscheduled drop in, phone call, email, web meeting, other.
This information provides insight into each sales rep’s preferred contact method, as well as close ratios and average sales amounts based on each contact method.

2) Who did you contact (could include name)? President, manger, owner, secretary, other manager, etc.
This question is industry specific and answers vary widely between industries. The information from this question ensures your sales reps are calling on the right people as well as identifying best practise and training needs.

3) What is the purpose of the sales call? Introduction, presentation, financial discussion, needs analysis, issue resolution, follow up, contract, etc.
Every sales call should have a purpose.  Make sure your sales reps understand what the purpose of each meeting is and what purposes are acceptable. From that point, track compliance, activity and results.

4) What was the result of the sales call?  Made a sale, not interested, needs more information, delayed purchase, budgeting etc.
From the result of each call, you can track and audit your clients and prospects while also providing solid information for best practise identification and training needs.

5)  What issues are holding the customer back?   Pricing, features, service, back-orders, warranty, competition etc.

This question can change your company and the answer is only available from input from your sales reps. Find out what your customers are saying about you. Is your pricing out of line, are your features weak, and is your service acceptable? Without this insight, companies are making decisions blindly.

6) When are you going to follow up? This question reminds the sales rep to book the follow up appointment which is automatically populated into the appropriate calendar for improved follow up compliance.
The Front Row system provides management with a view of each sales reps follow up calendar. The information provides insight into best practises and training needs.

These are the six most common questions from our activity card data base but there are hundreds more.  Other questions focus on forecasting, competitive activity, prospect development, marketing insight, products presented and so on. The questions can asked in any combination of free text, multiple choice, multiple answer, true and false, yes and no, alpha numeric, and calendar.

Feel free to create your own set of questions, and contact us to create an activity card and populate an app for you.