5 Ways How a Mapping Tool Can Make Sales Manager’s Work Easier

Apart from increasing sales numbers, sales managers have a lot of other tasks that help them reach their goals. Massive organizations prefer to divide sales regions into territories. Each territory might have territory sales managers.

Their task is to manage the clients falling in their territory and increase the client number. They have to manage a team of sales reps in direct contact with the customers.

For small to medium organizations, sales managers handle all the territories. They usually use a mapping tool to manage all their work tasks. Let’s find out how a successful territory manager manages territories and how a Dynamics 365 map plugin helps them.

How Sales Managers Use Mapping Tool to Complete Their Tasks

Sales Managers or Territory Sales Managers have a diverse range of responsibilities. Here are a few of them:

Client Analysis

They analyze the territories they are assigned based on various factors. They have to identify the current clients and who and how they can approach a prospective client.

As an essential requirement, they will need:

• Clients location
• Which product or service have they purchased?
• What challenges do these products solve for them?
• What made them buy your product?
• Is there anything specific in your territory that made them buy that product?

Answers to all these help them understand clients’ mindsets. They need a map plugin to help them understand the territory better to answer all these questions.

This plugin allows users to plot the data on a map. Managers can see their clients in their territory as geotag pins on the map. The geotag pins are loaded with customer information.

Various reasons can convince customers to buy the product, like weather, scarcity of products, habitats, marketing campaigns, etc. A Map plugin can help identify all this by viewing what is available in the given territory.

Goal Prediction

As a sales manager, it would be your duty to set realistic goals and predict numbers. You can plan marketing campaigns in some specific regions or territories with low client concentration.

Sales managers must consider the fixed number of sales they receive, and what more they can add to it with other activities. To receive that fixed number, they can target the areas to switch more clients or clients who make repeat purchases.

Based on the approved plan, a list of clients is assigned to the sales reps. They have a specific deadline to complete the list and bring in sales.

Virtual Tracking

Now that the plan is ready to execute, it is time to take action. They have to make a lot of calls and emails throughout the day. They also must keep track of the on-field sales team under their leadership.

When you don’t have your team under the same roof as you, it becomes challenging for the managers to handle a team. Especially huge teams.

Managers with no tools usually call their teammates to give them leads, suggestions, or details of essential appointments. But neither of them enjoys the process.

So what’s the solution?

Integrating the Dynamics 365 map plugin comes with a feature called live tracking. Managers can see the live location of their teammates. They can give them tips, information about new leads around them, and many more things.

Authentic Data

Decisions require authentic data. If sales managers do not have correct data, the decision they take will not bring results. From a managerial point of view, what and how your teammates are working is also essential. 

But to track the productivity of on-field sales reps becomes so difficult. They might forget to enter the data manually and then, later, enter the average to fill the sheets.

This makes it complicated as sales managers do not have total traveling time, meeting time, and sometimes even the feedback of the meetings.

To ensure everything is on track, the map plugin makes it mandatory for the sales reps to check in when they reach a client location. 

With the geofencing feature, the sales reps can log in only when they reach the client location and not anywhere else.

This feature benefits in multiple ways:

• Digital data of all the meetings
• No false entries of meetings
• Notes and documents attached to meeting details

Cost Cutting and Time Utilization

Sales managers have to allocate the budget for fuel and transportation. Whether your company delivers products or your sales reps have to meet clients for various other reasons, these charges can affect your balance sheet.

Fuel prices are surging and are a very unpredictable factor. It is necessary to keep fuel consumption as low as possible. And in the case of traveling via uber, less distance means less cost.

This means that when you have less distance to travel, it will also cost you less. 

Less distance = Less Fuel consumption

Let’s say if your client’s location is 20 miles from your place, we can not shorten that. But what we can do is find out other clients that are nearby.

So, when you go that far, ensure you make the most of that trip.

There are two features in the Map plugin that can help you reduce fuel consumption.

• Proximity Search

You can enter a location; this feature will show all the clients surrounding it. You can set the proximity radius to 5 miles and have the results on a map. 

Assign this location to sales reps so they do not have to travel a long distance just to meet one client. They can make the best use of their time and save fuel by not going to that location the next day to meet other clients in the neighborhood. 

The other benefit of this feature is that it helps in utilizing time. If any meeting gets canceled or you are free from one earlier than expected, proximity helps greatly. 

It allows them to find nearby locations and use their time best. 

• Route Optimization

Let’s say sales reps have ten clients to meet in a day. All the locations will be distinct. Manually, it is difficult to figure out the shortest route that covers all the locations.

Map plugin helps the sales reps by designing the shortest path. This route will have the shortest distance, avoiding traffic and road closure.

It will also show them the estimated time to reach the destination. Your sales reps will always reach you on time.

Companies will benefit because shorter distances and less traveling time mean less fuel consumption.

Data Security

One of the essential parts of a sales manager’s job is to keep all the client data safe. They are responsible for what data is shared with whom. 

The chances of misusing the data increase when you have all the information accessible to all the employees. But they have to share client information with their team as they will be the ones visiting them.

Then how can anyone share the information and secure it as well?

With the map plugin, users can create security templates. Sales managers can create these templates based on the job roles. Not everyone in the organization needs to have all the information.

Divide the data access based on job profiles. So employees will have access to some part of the data and not everything. Sales managers assures that everyone is given fair access. 

If required, sales managers can give access to other information depending on work and work requirements.

What Next!

As discussed above, sales managers have multiple responsibilities throughout the day. Sales managers face difficulty visualizing and understanding the CRM data without using any tool.

They have to make decisions with half the information if they visualize the data better.

The other part of their job is managing the on-field sales team. Sales managers don’t even receive correct data. Handling a vast team not under the same roof is tough to manage.

A solution to all these challenges is the Dynamics 365 map plugin. Simply integrate the plugin with your Dynamics 365 and unlock all the benefits.

You might have been confused about where to find this.

You can do two things: either get it developed or subscribe to their ready-to-use one. Reading and using plugins is a much easier way as you can start using them from the very next day. On the other hand, the development process takes time and is also a little expensive.

While subscribing to a tool, ensure that you buy a white-label app from a certified development company. They also provide free support until you get a change of this product.

Additionally, they have free lifetime updates available to all their subscribers. So anything new, you will have it. 

Go, find a tool that works for you. And if you find anything that is missing in the tool, feel free to ask for customization. 

The post 5 Ways How a Mapping Tool Can Make Sales Manager’s Work Easier appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.