Traditional forms of end of day sales activity reporting are possibly the least favorite part of a field sales rep’s day. Analyzing the fragmented information for the manager is cumbersome as well and getting actionable conclusions difficult. But the combination of mobile devices with intelligent APPs and Web Platforms can transform a time logging activity into insights that can drive sales productivity further while reducing chores.

Reduce the time you spend tracking your sales reps

Reporting of sales activities is a drag. Most sales reps we know dislike it. When you are on the road all day, the last thing you want to do when you get back home or to the hotel room is type up everything you did. This is another reason why sales representatives on the road might not fully utilize CRMs and keep track of conversations with clients. So for the sales manager keeping track of what’s going on in the road becomes also tedious with fragmented pieces of a puzzle here and there. Fortunately nowadays mobile devices might make this a lot less painful and more efficient. Leaving you time to manage your team better and drive productivity up. Most mobile devices out there, ipads, iPhones, and other mobile smartphones and tablets, have some way of tracking its location, with a user’s permission of course, from GPS tracking to cell tower triangulation to wifi signal triangulation. Furthermore, intelligent software on our smart devices can keep track of interactions with it and report this silently to a web server or API.

Automation is the key to overcome these hurdles

Various kinds of activity generate different sets of information, and software can bring it all together, digesting and presenting the information graphically in a way that is relevant to the manager and useful to the sales force. For example the manager could see a birds eye view of client interactions that resulted in sales, by rep or globally. And drill down into which interactions yielded a better outcome. For example: A bird’s eye view would show the teams number of sales calls vs the ones that resulted in sales. Or the teams overall use of collateral and which collateral resulted in sales. Or you could see that one particular rep is exceptional selling one of your products and drill down to see if there was anything about how he works, which collateral she uses, how long do they spend a certain collateral or per client and glean some useful information for the rest of your sales people in a fraction of the time with traditional reporting systems.

How the information is displayed is also essential

Ever try to decipher somebody else’s spreadsheet? Tables are not exactly the most intuitive way to display information. They say only the person creating the table really
understand the information at a glance. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is also true of statistical information.
How the reporting data is digested and visually presented to you also plays a big role in how useful it is and how efficiently you can analyze it. For example, if the information is in spreadsheet table format with the number of interactions vs sales, you could read every line and try to keep track of who among your many salespeople does better. That’s a lot of numbers to keep in your memory! But what if the information was displayed in a bar graph with longer bars representing those reps with a higher performance. At a glance you would be able to see who you want to drill down to analyze, to see if there’s something you can share with the rest of the team.

Spend your time devising sales strategies not analyzing data

With today’s mobile devices and business intelligence or analytics software the goal should be to reduce as much as possible the time you spend digging through the reports (the data) If the information you need is right there, pre-digested for you, in a format easy to read at a glance, then you free up time to think critically about the tools, the collateral, the campaigns and so forth that can drive growth.

Use mobile devices, mobile APPs and Web APPs to automate and reduce the time spent analyzing sales reports and activities and increase the time spent on coming up with new strategies and growing sales.

Concluding, reporting and analyzing sales calls activity and effectiveness has traditionally been a cumbersome task for both reps and managers. But software on the mobile devices and web APPs can streamline this process and add an intelligence layer to it with a double benefit end result: Less after hours activities for the reps, more productivity for the sales manager. Thus, eliminating a friction point for the reps and allowing the managers to concentrate in what at the end of the day really matters: driving sales and productivity of their sales team Up.