Shift Your Focus to Quality Leads with SFA

As today’s marketing strategies become more aggressive and more sophisticated, sales force automation (SFA) solutions are helping sales and marketing professionals across all industries efficiently manage a growing volume of leads and quickly identify those prospects that are most likely to make a purchase.

The problem that currently exists is not about lead “quantity,” but rather lead “quality.” The emergence of cross-channel marketing initiatives has prompted businesses to launch a wider variety and a greater number of campaigns and programs than ever before. This increase in activity is resulting in a higher number of generated leads – although those leads are not necessarily qualified.

As marketing departments ramp up their efforts, sales reps are often left to dig through hundreds, or even thousands, of “raw” contacts to find the ones that are most interested in their products and services and that also have the highest probability of buying something.

According to leading analyst firm Gartner Research, “Improvements in lead generation are at the expense of better lead management, resulting in an overabundance of unqualified leads of differing quality that cannot be handled by current resources and sales capacity.”

So, how can a SFA package help your business address this growing challenge?

A SFA solution makes it easier for your sales and marketing staff to identify and work the real opportunities that come from your promotional efforts. Your marketing team will have the tools they need to improve the quality of the leads they acquire, while your sales reps will be able to efficiently evaluate, prioritize, and manage all the leads that are pushed to them.

A SFA application facilitates more effective lead administration by providing features and functionality that can help your marketing and sales departments more effectively manage prospects throughout the various stages of the sales cycle. SFA enhances related processes and activities from end to end – from the time a prospect is identified and qualified, until they actively engage with a sales rep, become part of the sales pipeline, and make a purchase. So, your staff members can avoid wasting time and money on low-value prospects and instead turn their full attention to the most valid opportunities while they are still “hot.”

With SFA, your marketing team will have instant access to vital intelligence about the needs, preferences, and behaviors of your target audience, so they can launch campaigns that are more relevant and more successful. These programs will be more likely to generate leads of a higher quality, while improving the speed and accuracy of the qualification process.

Additionally, SFA can help marketing departments closely monitor the status of all leads from the first point of outreach, until they are acknowledged as true prospects with a high likelihood of buying your products or services.

Your sales reps can then leverage your SFA system to more effectively follow-up on those qualified prospects and better manage the resulting opportunities, deals, and activities. Productivity is dramatically increased, and win rates are significantly improved. In many cases, the efficiency increases that SFA delivers can even boost the average deal size, further maximizing the impact of SFA on your company’s profitability.

If you’re looking for more information on specific SFA solutions make your next step to check out our exclusive Top 10 Sales Force Automation software report.