Detailed below, workflow provides a much enhanced level of automation for a firm’s marketing and sales processes than is available in the ACT package by itself. Of course, native ACT performs many Sales Force Automation functions to an acceptable degree but workflow magnifies the automation to a much higher degree.
For example, native ACT allows sales staff to schedule meetings, calls, to-do’s, but it requires the user to schedule these activities manually and, once the activity is completed, to decide each time on the type of follow up. With ACT! alone, a salesperson spends excessive time manually interacting with the database and scheduling functions. In a busy sales office these time-absorbing tasks prevent even the most diligent salesperson from focusing their attention on those activities carrying maximum payoff: building the quality relationship that moves lucrative prospects toward a timely close and provide the superior service that retains them as long term customers.
Sales managers are equally victimized with the friction of manual intervention. Although ACT out-of-the-box provides several control and reporting mechanisms for keeping track of sales progress, (for example, Sales Opportunity module) these native functions are, more often than not, high maintenance procedures requiring consistent attention. As a result, experienced managers are prevented from focusing sufficient quality time on those activities producing increased sales revenue: providing skilled mentoring to junior staff and competently overseeing major accounts.
In summary, much of the labor and time investment in sales centers around follow-up. This is all the more true for firms whose sales success depends upon maximizing prospecting opportunities embedded within a sequential pipeline process, as is clearly the case for Broadcasting.
ACT is a great contact manager, but it requires users to manually create both “touch point” activities (calls, meetings and to-do’s) as well as follow up activities after a customer interaction. Although human judgment is still critical in separating those prospects most likely to close and moving them toward a timely purchase decision, much of the details involved are candidates for automation. Workflow liberates sales stakeholders (sales staff, administrative support, marketing and management) from the drudgery of repetitive, error-prone manual tasks. Appropriately tailored to fit a firms’ sales and marketing procedures, workflow commands the realistic potential to dramatically impact sales revenue. |
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