Frameworx Application: Direct Sales Force

Category: (2) TAM Application Type

Application Identifier: 3.4.1

Maturity Level: 4

Overview

The Direct Sales Force application is used by CSR’s, Field Sales, Sales Administrators, Analysts and Managers to generate/qualify sales opportunities, generate revenue, maintain and optimize the sales process, territories, quotas, view forecasts.

As a Customer Service Representative (CSR), you have first contact with potential customers. Incoming telephone calls and emails enable you to capture customer information and qualify leads according to the guidelines set by your company (cf Customer Information Management). If the lead satisfies your criteria, you can promote that lead to the status of a contact, and an opportunity. Sales opportunities are dispatched to sales representatives in the field to pursue if the size of the sale has the potential to exceed agreed monetary thresholds. If not, you can respond directly to customer inquiries by creating and dispatching literature requests and/or sales quotations. Orders are submitted for processing when you receive acceptance for the contract that has been negotiated with the customer (cf. Order Management).

A user of the Direct Sales application can have one of the following roles:

• Customer Service Representative (CSR). As a CSR or agent, you generate and qualify sales opportunities and dispatch leads to field sales representatives. Your primary method of communication with the customer is by phone and email.

• Field Sales Representative. As a field sales representative, you create and manage customer accounts, develop sales opportunities, and generate revenue.

• Sales Administrator. As a Sales Administrator, you manage the design and maintenance of the overall sales process and stages in the sales cycle according to business requirements.

• Sales Analyst. As a Sales Analyst, you manage sales territories and quotas and generate sales forecasts and pipeline analyses.

• Sales Manager. As a Sales Manager, you define sales territories, and manage the sales process and forecasting.

Functionality

Opportunities Dispatching-Create and dispatch opportunities to relevant employees/sales personnel.

Sales Quotes Dispatching-Create and dispatch sales quotes to legal, finance, sales manager for approval. Campaign execution: A campaign is a planned marketing effort to promote a single product or range of products. The direct sales application should enable the capture of details of the campaign promotion, such as the duration of it and the products, pricing strategy, and media channels you want to use.

Forecast Analysis: This feature should enable data analysis of your sales pipeline and predict the revenue that will result when opportunities are won and deals are finalized. Forecasts are either Sales forecasts, which one can apply to anticipate the consumer demand for and consumption of the CSP’s product range and the revenue the CSP expects to result. There are also Order forecasts, which enables CSP’s to determine whether the supply required is available to meet expected consumption levels. This should integrate to logistics systems for auto-replenishment and order management applications.

Opportunity & Quote Management

Territory Management: A direct sales application can structure sales territories to assist structuring of the CSP’s sales organization. For example, CSP’s should be able to organize territories by geography, industry, named accounts, service lines, or opportunities. One should also be able to compress many territories into a single territory. You can assign territory-specific roles to your sales employees as members of a team. A single employee can perform many roles within a territory, or one or more roles in other territories. If required, you can structure territories according to a parent-child hierarchy.

Supported Business Services

Typical contracts for a Direct Sales application are to Document Design or electronic document generation applications, and Enterprise Management applications for legal & regulatory approval.

(2) TAM Application Type Direct Sales Force

Appears on these diagrams:

• 3.4 M/S Channel Sales Management

Issues

• Application Framework 12.0 Deletion

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