Field Sales Software 2024: Complete Guide

Field sales is traditionally the term used to describe the process of sales representatives going out into the market and selling directly to prospective customers.

Over time, businesses have evolved to a more complex sales process that needs both the internal sales team (to collect leads, make initial contact) and field sales teams to demonstrate the product and sell.

With more than 2.3 billion people making at least one purchase online in 2022, it’s not surprising that many companies today sell from within the office. Even so, for many industries, field personnel are still a critical part of the sales team. Research indicates field sales will continue to be relevant beyond 2023. A research survey conducted by Spotio indicate that more than 41% of the respondents said face to face communication channel is more effective for prospecting.

What is Field Sales Software?

Field Sales software offers the outside sales team or field sales team the ability to effectively manage prospects and customer data. For competitive businesses, technology is now advanced enough to be able to offer enterprise mobility and innovative tools that help the field sales force to simplify their daily tasks, boost productivity and reduce costs.

Research shows that the actual time spent by sales reps on their core activity, selling, is only around 14 hours in a 40-hour week. A Field Sales software can help boost that number dramatically by reducing time spent on administrative tasks and paperwork, and thereby positively impact sales, and thereby employee morale.

Field Sales software also helps the management keep their field sales team agile and productive by assigning jobs, managing quotes, and tracking the time of personnel on the ground. It keeps all customer information in one place making it easily accessible, helps manage sales calls and sets reminders for follow-up.

With modern field sales teams needing to closely collaborate with internal sales, a software that helps them manage the day-to-day field operations can help save time and enable a greater focus on critical functions.

Efficient Day Planning for Sales Agents

Field Sales software helps field agents to plan their day efficiently by automating many of the planning activities - number of meetings scheduled, goals for the day, routing for the various meetings. It further optimizes their activities by suggesting any nearby customers and quickly scheduling meetings during the course of the day.

Close Deals Faster

Because Field Sales software utilizes real-time data from master systems within the company, sales personnel can create orders with a click of a button, without any further interaction with the back office. Very often they have access to all the necessary customer and order data which helps in closing deals faster.

Improve Productivity

The workflow in a Field Sales software enables field sales to save time on non-core functions such as going into the office, printing and filing, documentation and approvals.

Offer Personalized Experience

By empowering the Field Sales reps with data on the customer’s preferences in real-time, they have the ability to personalize their approach and increase order value (through cross-selling or upselling) and enhance the chances of closing the deal.

Optimize Sales Routes

Field Sales software offers route planning, which calculates the best possible route field sales reps should take at a specific moment, based on current traffic data. In fact, with CRM integrations, the field sales employee can plan the optimal time to spend with each customer.

Improved Inventory Management

Integration of Field Sales software with ERP makes inventory management accurate in real-time and assures field sales personnel that they are selling only in-stock items. This, in turn, reduces time delays in checking inventory or waiting for the inventory manager.

Real-time Data Sharing

Real-time data sharing in a Field Sale software allows an overview of order status, inventory levels, and deal closures, enabling managers to optimize sales performance, meet targets and make quicker decisions that impact sales results.

Easier access to Marketing Collateral

With access from the Field Sales software, sales representatives can access product information and showcase videos and demos with ease, answering questions and calling up statistics based on the customer’s questions, with ease.

Which industries use Field Sales Software?

The emergence of Field Sales Software has simplified field operations and employee management for a wide variety of industries. It has proven especially beneficial to organizations dealing with surveys, retailers (FMCGs, apparel, and CPGs), service, sales, merchandising, and inspection operations.

Who are the users of Field Sales Software?

Employees whose job requires them to be in the field such as sales reps, medical representatives, insurance agents, inspection agents, and service/support providers can use Field Sales software for on-the-go sales information support.

Additionally, managers of these teams such as sales and category managers, and operational managers will be able to stay on top of their field teams’ activities using this software.

Managing field employees is a serious challenge that involves a high level of coordination. Not only do field managers need to manage administration but they also need to formulate effective strategies to meet customer expectations, optimize their field team allocation, and meet targets.

Loss Due to Productivity

According to the SalesHacker field sales report, over half of a sales rep’s time is spent planning and managing sales, not prospecting for their potential leads or customers. Field force automation software helps in streamlining the workflow enabling the field force to increase productivity. Even if you have a few workers to manage, this software can yield fruitful results.

Keep Field Employees on Schedule

Knowing where your workforce is while they are in the field, helps managers optimize work orders and enable optimized task distribution. But it can be hard to know whether employees are maintaining assigned schedules when they are away from the office. With Field Sales software, managers can access real-time location, and keep track of completion of assigned jobs and working hours.

Save Costs on Follow-ups

For larger businesses, underused resources can affect profitability. Companies need to ensure jobs are completed as far as possible during the first visit to meet performance goals.

A Field Sales software can help reduce the number of location re-visits by ensuring the representative has all the information needed at his or her fingertips.

Avoid Miscommunication

Miscommunications can lead to loss of customers, and this, in turn, can have a huge impact on the success of the business. Customer-facing employees such as field sales, need to be able to know who they are meeting, what the historic transaction has been, and the expectations to be met. Field Sales software can help enable this by offering relevant data and supporting material for the Field Sales team to efficiently service the customer.

Reduce Time Spent in Performance Management

Businesses with large sales teams can often find it difficult to monitor sales performance against targets effectively. With in-built reporting modules, Field Sales software can bring together a lot of data points to help decision-makers stay on top of sales activities without time-consuming manual labor.

According to a study by Nucleus Research, sales reps experience an increase of 26.4% in productivity by using the Field Sales software.

Let’s look at some of the key features that enable this.

Dashboard Management

Effective Field Sales software allows managers to view and organize all resources and work orders, tasks and events in one place.

Route Optimization

Field Sales software often incorporates GPS to help field employees manage their routes, plan and track visits in real-time.

Fast Estimates

Field Sales software provides an easy way to generate immediate estimates and work orders to facilitate quick service delivery for customer-facing personnel.

Invoices

Raising invoices contribute to a large part of the paperwork for field sales. Field Sales software enables easy invoicing through payment reminders, auto generated invoices, and workflows for optimized approvals.

Mobile Apps

Mobile app support is one of the key added functionalities of Field Sales software. This allows the field sales teams to stay connected with their managers and the back-office systems, wherever they may be. Additionally, mobile apps can give the field sales team a quick snapshot of critical data from internal systems, making it easier for teams on the move to access.

Online Payments

Field employees rely on their Field Sales software to help customers make payments via electronic or credit card transfers and using technology integrations with third-party accounting tools.

Time Tracker

Field Sales software can help field employees coordinate with the back office providing real-time details such as location, which will, in turn, help efficiently schedule meetings, and plan work hours.

Controlled Access

Field Sales software provides necessary authentication and authorization support to control access to the internal systems of the company. This helps businesses to protect their critical data and ensure data privacy while allowing mobile workforce access to internal systems.

Workflow & Collaboration

Field Sales software helps create an optimized workflow for deployed field teams, using instant messaging, shared files and alerts.

Spot Allocations

Field Sales software enables managers to fulfill deliveries on-demand, allocate activities to agents in real-time, and enable immediate payment collection.

Field Sales Software and AI

Anticipating Customer Needs

Field Sales software that is powered by data science and artificial intelligence (AI) can increase revenue by anticipating customer needs. According to Accenture, 4 out of 5 people (81%) will want companies to understand their purchasing habits and have appropriate suggestions offered. With this trend also entering B2B expectations, field sales software can enable sales employees to meet customer expectations more effectively.

Sales Automation

Artificial Intelligence is impacting sales by taking over the repetitive tasks of finding and sorting leads, monitoring the required orders, and automating a number of manual activities, freeing up valuable sales time and minimizing human errors. Field Sales software that are AI-enabled can help sales personnel stay on top of their game by freeing up valuable time.

Smarter Scheduling

AI is also changing how tasks are organized and distributed amongst field staff. By bringing in data points such as real-time location, experience, workloads and more, Field Sales software can use AI to ensure optimization and best deployment of field resources.

It is essential to choose a Field Sales software that is not too complex but provides the critical features and functionality to help your field-based teams close the sale. This way, they can focus on the job at hand.

Scale and Performance

Field Sales software needs to support a number of users which is related to the size of the team. It needs to have the necessary performance to support a large number of users simultaneously. Even if the company starts with a small team for initial adoption, it is quite likely the scale will increase as the organization grows. This has to be factored while selecting the software.

Integrations

Field Sales software needs to integrate with a number of back-office applications and while selecting software should be assessed for the integration capability.

Cloud-based Technology

Several of the features of a Field Sales software such as employee accountability using GPS, custom order forms, and photo archives, are using cloud-based technology. So it is necessary to assess the company’s cloud adoption strategy to ensure that Field Sales software is aligned with this strategy.

Multi-device support

With mobility being the key job description, Field Sales software these days is often mobile device enabled. This may include mobile apps, but could also include IoT devices, and tablets for greater convenience and flexibility.

Industry Vertical

Things like order forms and quotes are highly specific to the product or service being offered. Be sure your Field Sales software is enabled for your industry. Check to see if it has the requisite templates or whether customization will be possible.

Challenges in Deploying Field Sales Software

Companies may face few deployment and adoption challenges while implementing Field Sales software.

Integration Silos

Field Sales software must work in association with other systems like accounting software, CRM and ERP. This means integrating with the existing platforms or legacy systems, which can be a challenge.

Costs Due to Wireless Data Usage

While the paperless process can have its benefits, the downside to a Field Sales software would be the incremental costs due to extra usage of GPRS and network connectivity to conduct field activities. Also, there could be some initial costs of procuring devices for field sales.

Network Connectivity

Field Sales software can be largely impeded by poor networks. If the sales team is operating in an area of poor connectivity, they will not be able to access data or update information and may even be hindered in knowing where to go next!

Training and Onboarding

Companies need to plan appropriately training and onboarding schedules for rolling out Field Sales software. If there are any initial glitches in the usage, there might be resistance for further usage. This can have an adverse impact on RoI. Having proper playbooks, guides and online help will help in easing adoption challenges.

ROI for Field Sales Software

Field Sales software when implemented can create RoI for your business in multiple ways:

Eliminate Wasted Time

Field Sales software can help reduce wasted time by eliminating non-core activities and enabling salespeople to spend more time closing deals.

Produce Better Sales Outcomes

Businesses can enjoy better sales results by enabling field sales teams with quick access to current information and tools, which in turn produce higher win rates and faster cycles.

Analytical Insights

Data-driven decisions require a real-time understanding of the metrics that enable your field sales to perform at their highest levels. Field Sales software can offer that insight for management to reduce redundancies and optimize efficiency.