Sales insights and sales reporting are only as good as the data in Salesforce.com (or whatever CRM system you are using). If the data in Salesforce.com is incomplete, missing or unreliable then its hard to trust the sales insights being reported. SalesDirector solves this by automatically capturing all sales related emails and calendar activities (meetings, etc) and feeding them into SalesForce.com.
Best Practices of Calendar Activity Capture
In order for this to be a seamless process for the sales rep – the best practice is to always schedule a Calendar Meeting (in Outlook or Google Calendar) and invite the customer/prospect to the meeting.
This ensures that SalesDirector is capturing the:
1) Event Type
2) Time/Date of the Event
3) Attendees Invited
Unscheduled Meetings / Calls
If the sales rep makes an ad-hoc or unscheduled phone call without scheduling a Calendar Event – the best practice would be for the sales rep to Log a Call (Event Type Call) in Salesforce.com. This ensures that the ad-hoc call is captured for future reference and historical analysis.
Partner/Channel Meetings
When sales reps are working in an indirect sales model (Channel or Partners) be sure to include the Customer/Prospect’s Company name in the title of the scheduled calendar event in the subject line. This enables SalesDirector to associate the Calendar Event with the appropriate Contact Record in Salesforce.com.
If your sales team schedules personal reminders or Calendar Events (without inviting the customer) to call customers these activities will not be captured since SalesDirector would not know what account to associate the activity with.
SalesDirector eliminates the need to manually log additional information in SalesForce.com and frees up countless hours for sales reps. This gives them more opportunity to sell and focus on activities that move the needle.