How to maximize your field reps sales potential

Field Sales is a very different type of selling. It requires a unique type of rep who has no fear and can make a great first impression. Being organized on the road has its own challenges. Here are some of the best practices we have seen for being successful as a road warrior:


1) Marketing Tool Box. To avoid papers sliding all over your car, pick up a portable filing cabinet from staples or an office store and protect your contracts, marketing slicks and paper work from heat, cold, folded corners and being trampled. This will ensure you have all the paper tools you need and will make it obvious when your quantities are low. There is nothing worse than showing up and having to show a brochure with a boot print on it or a contract that looks like it went through a wash cycle.

2) Get a Tablet. Instead of relying on paper or to augment your paper requirements, invest in a tablet. Tablets still have wow factor and you can easily show products, services on a tablet without the pomp and circumstance of booting up a computer. Your prospects will think you are tech savvy, organized and credible. It doesn’t have to be an $800 ipad. An 8g anything will do. I picked up the Blackberry Playbook when it was on sale for $199 for one of my clients reps and it has helped them tremendously – even the simple stuff like email on the road becomes faster.

3) Use a CRM for field Sales. Not all CRM’s are created equally. Many of the CRM’s are great for in office sales or reps that go back to an office in between meetings but choosing the right tool for your road warriors is important. Front Row CRM has some very cool features for field reps. It has a mapping feature that shows you other prospects/leads/customers on a physical map so you can plan your route better. If the reps enter notes as they go, the Manager can see the actual route they took to coach them on better uses of time. It also has a CRM updating feature that can be used via TEXT in the event you don’t have a tablet. This is a stand alone or a bolt on to other CRM systems. CRM that works, is easy to use, simple to populate and actually facilitates sales is key to a field reps success

4) Keeping you office clean. I believe all companies with field reps should pay for an inside and outside car wash once a week. Keeping your car clean forces you to stay organized, helps you feel professional and in the event that a customer sees your car rolling up, it doesn’t look like it’s been off roading.

5) Fuel. Fuel is important. Your body and mind need good fuel to keep you at top performance which can be challenging when you are on the road. Drink lots of water and pack fruit & veg snacks. Apples, grapes, oranges, carrots, celery will all keep for days in a cooler. Don’t over think this. Just grab an apple on the way out or hit a grocery store between meetings. If you feel good, you will sell more.

And to state the obvious - you absolutely need a GPS!

It’s little every day changes that make a long lasting positive impact.

Happy Selling!

Top 10 Reasons for Sales People to use CRM

I was at a dinner party awhile back and two guests were fretting over the implementation of CRM software at their company.  Their main concern - now their company would know where they were all the time! The first thought that comes to mind is how much do these guys goof off that they are this concerned?

Perhaps they don't know what's in it for them?  Many CRM benefits are directed to Management. Having worked with NetSuite, Salesforce, Zoho, Front Row CRM and Goldmine (to name just a few) the question is, Why should Sales People to use CRM? 

Top 10 Reasons for Sales People to use CRM:

1. It will help you close more business. Using probability ratings will help you understand where to spend your energy. It bubbles deals in the sales funnel up to the top so you can see them and give them the love they need to close.
2. You will work smarter. CRM is a great organization tool. It helps you understand who to call, when and about what. Everything is in one central location - no scraps of paper, no wondering what you should be doing next, no lost numbers. If you use dashboards, it lays it all out for you. So simple.
3. It makes prospecting faster. Have you every had to build your own list? It can take hours. It is so much easier to upload a list or even better, find a list worked by previous rep and dig in. Calls are faster, sometimes warmer and the research is less monotonous
4. Your memory isn't as good as you think. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night realizing you forgot to call someone or send an email? CRM reminds you to touch base or what the next step is to move the deal along. As long as you enter the details, they will be there for you so you can sound like you remember everything your contact said. You will look like a super star!
5. Having a compelling reason to call. Almost all CRM systems have filters that allow you to sort by address, City, vertical, company size and more. It is so easy to create a compelling reason to call. I am in your area, we are hosting an event that is relevant to your business, someone in your vertical just bought our product and they love it so you should buy from me as well!
6. You never told me that! Have you ever had a Manager say that they did not know about something you were working on? Or that you hadn't updated them on a deal? Well, CRM gives your manager access to all of your data which should (in theory) relieve you from having to reiterate details.
7. Avoid others from scooping your deals. Lead conflict happens everywhere. If your company has a policy on deal registration then CRM will protect you. No more worrying that someone is working a deal behind your back. If you work in verticals or territories, you can run a filter and see who is working deals in your patch. Avoids run ins with your piers and protects your hard work. It is fantastic! Unless, of course, you are one of those people doing the scooping.
8. Mass Market to your base. If your CRM has email blasting, you can create email letters, advise of promos, send PR announcements to keep your prospects informed while keeping you top of mind. With some CRM platforms, you can integrate with outlook so that all of your correspondence is tracked in the CRM. Makes searching so much easier.
9. Never lose a prospect. Some companies have dormant or untouched lead rules. For example, if you have not reached out to a prospect in 90 days, they can be approached by another rep. Set up filters to catch prospects before they are removed from your base.
10. Make more money! By learning how to use your CRM and understanding the previous 9 items, you will make more money. In the past, the volume of deals and prospecting may have kept a portion of your business is your peripheral vision. CRM will keep you sharp and help you earn more commission.

If you invest the time watching the CRM tutorials and really learning the product, it will pay dividends to you in many ways. It will help you work smarter as outlined above but it will also earn you respect and recognition from your piers and the management team. Since so few people really take the time to learn CRM, you will become the subject expert and bring value to your organization.

Happy Selling!

How can any company survive without CRM?

Having moved from the Telecom Industry to Software, CRM was an epiphany of what Sales and Reporting could be like in the promised land! How can anyone work, thrive or be successful without CRM!

I came across some stats on CRM adoption by the Sales Lead Management Association (www.salesleadmgmtassn.com) and was surprised and not surprised by the results:

Their 2nd annual Sales Lead Management Study, conducted with 144 businesses in Southern California, revealed the following results:

68.8% don’t qualify leads before sending them to their sales teams
52.4% have no formal process for compiling sales forecast reports
82.8% don’t track ROI for lead generation investments
55% rated low satisfaction with their SFA/CRM system, at 5 or less on a 10-point scale
52.1% use no SFA/CRM system to track the lead process


Prior to joining NetSuite, I had the pleasure of working for mid size companies and most recently a start up. We used Outlook for Sales Force Automation, and with the consistent turn over in our Direct Sales Force, leads would be lost with every rep turn over. We must have misplaced thousands of leads and lost millions of dollars in unrealized revenue.

When the start up I worked for was going through the due diligence of being aquired, there was no doubt in my mind that not having a CRM cost them millions as well. Without CRM, they had excel spread sheets of corrupted prospecting data that took the reps and the Managers hours (more like days) to compile.

My old company not only lost leads every day but also in the lost multiples they would have received when the business was sold.

CRM is not only a day to day must have but also an exit plan! No matter what your exit plan is: go public, buy out, merger....

I have to put a plug in here for NetSuite. I bet if you surveyed every current and past employee, all of them would tell you what an unbelievable product NetSuite is. The reason is because we all use it all day, every day and I am Wowed consistently.

Whether you choose NetSuite or another CRM solution, do your company a favour, buy it, use it, spend the money and have it implemented properly and force your employees to adopt it. Without a corporate culture of CRM adoption, your results will be less than stellar.

Honestly, how can any company survive without CRM?



Susan Corcoran