Introduction

Sales support systems were developed to assist the sales force in improving productivity. This improvement in productivity was through continuous communication with the field offices about customer activities and requirements. The sales force focus was on cultivating long and fruitful customer relation.

Before the advent of information system, customer-related information was recorded in individual sales representative’s personal books rather than on a centralized data center. This meant that the customer information would be lost with movement of sales representative.

Therefore, to preserve and utilized customer relation and improve performance of sales force, sales support system was developed.

Sales Support System

A sales support system can be divided into:

• Sales Activity Management
• Sales and Territory Management
• Contact Management
• Lead Management
• Configuration Management
• Knowledge Management

1. Sales Activity Management

   This module of the sales support system looks at offering calendar based activities to plan and coordinate meetings with customer relationship accounts. The module looks at consolidating team activities for a given period of time. The module provides in-depth analysis of the historical and current sales cycle.

2. Sales and Territory Management

   Sales force racks up into team member and team member into the sales manager. Therefore, sales manager has to monitor activities of more than one sales team. This module helps sales manager generate reports, which provide data point around current sale activities performed by the different sales team. This module helps sales force connect with various product specialists based out of various sales office locations. Territory-wise pipeline management becomes easy for the sales manager.

3. Contact Management

   One of the important needs of sales force and sales team is management of various contact points across different organization. Contact management module should be able to organize contact across current and potential client organization.

4. Lead Management

   Sales force work relentlessly to generate a sales lead. Lead management module provides management of leads, which come through marketing campaigns and referral management. This module also tracks characteristics of each lead as to highlight other possible leads.

5. Configuration Support

   Every organization has distinctive and varied product requirement. It is important for the sales force to have ready access to different product configuration and associated price. This module facilitates configuration support.

6. Knowledge Management

   The modern information system can hold large volume of data, which can be effectively converted into information.

   Advent of the Internet has simplified sales force access to centralized databases. It helps sales force stay in touch with each other as well as sales manager. Availability of the Internet has reduced the cost of managing communication. Mobile devices have further contributed to proliferation sales support system.

Post Sales Service Support

Another aspect of sales is after sales product support. Organizations have on-site or field service staff. The Internet has made field service management possible on a real-time basis.

Sales Support System & Customer Relationship Management

Sales support system enhances productivity and efficiency of the sales force. The sales force remains aware of development around the potential clients on a real-time basis. This increases probability of closing a sales deal. The productive sales force not only increases market share but also improves profitability of organization.

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