Changing the way salespeople do their jobs can do more than just change corporate culture. The American Institute for Foreign Study Inc. (AIFS) found that sales automation can actually help turn around a company in trouble. Even better, AIFS's switch to automation was relatively quick, easy, and cheap.
AIFS, in Greenwich, Conn., is a $90-million 150-employee company in an unusual niche: it matches students around the world with work, cultural, and educational opportunities in other countries. In 1992 AIFS's au pair division was in a slump, with sales falling and competition heating up. AIFS had no inside salespeople and did virtually no tracking of potential customers. "Community counselors," or local subcontractors, did sales as well as local troubleshooting and coordination for the students and the host families.
Like Opex, AIFS turned to SNAP's sales-tracking package. It took only two days for AIFS managers to decide what new information they needed -- and for Sales Technologies to customize the package accordingly. To gear up for its sales-force automation, over the course of a year AIFS spent about $9,500 on software (including training and support) and about $37,000 on hardware, which included nine desktop computers, six notebooks, one laser-jet printer, and 12 modems.
AIFS first created a database of potential customers, including information such as the number of children each customer had, the type of child care each used, and where each had heard about AIFS. AIFS's inside salespeople now can do more effective follow-up and relationship building, leaving the local subcontractors to focus on speaking with prospective families and setting up the proper matches between foreign students and local families.
The results: after falling in 1992, new business from AIFS's au pair program rose by 60% in 1993 and is up another 20% this year, says senior vice-president of marketing Bill Gertz. Other AIFS services that received the SNAP treatment are "up by 10% to 20%, right across the board," says Mike DiMauro, manager of database marketing.
At Opex, Wallace says, his people are more productive because the system leaves them nothing to hide behind. That makes them want to show the boss that they're on top of things. "Some salespeople say Big Brother is watching," says Wallace. "But we are looking anyway; you are always accountable."
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Jennifer deJong is a freelance writer in Boston who writes frequently on business and technology. Robert L. Scheier is a senior editor at PC Week.
TEN STEPS TOWARD SUCCESSFUL SALES AUTOMATION
1. Do a structured analysis of how you already work. Follow an employee or a purchase order around and see where things get bogged down. Brainstorm with your best people from across the business.
2. Automate only what can be improved by automation. Computers are no cure for poor sales management, ineffective sales techniques, or weak strategy. They can even make a bad situation worse more quickly.
3. If you don't have it already, get support from top management by providing a well-documented return on investment that includes strategic benefits and cost justification. Your companywide computing costs will go up in the first year, but so will quantifiable benefits such as sales, and the amount of time your salespeople spend with customers rather than paperwork.
4. Buy and deploy your technology carefully. If you use a consultant or a systems integrator, don't let that person dazzle you with technology.
5. Get the users of the system on board. Make sure the system works the way they really need it to.
6. Do rapid rounds of prototyping. Let software developers tweak versions of each new application with users looking over their shoulders. If your users want to turn into computer gurus, make sure they know what they're doing. Those users-turned-gurus may turn out to be the core of your in-house computer staff.
7. Train, train, train -- both in the technology and in new work habits. Training in new work habits can cost one and a half to two times as much as the technology does.
8. Do some back patting and provide motivation. Keep reinforcing the reasons the system is good for everyone. One motivational tool: make sure people get three useful pieces of information whenever they log on.
9. Administrate the system. Doing so means making sure the data in it are accurate and relevant to your business. A technology-savvy user might become a part-time database administrator.
10. Keep measuring the impact the system is having on your company, and keep communicating that impact to management so it will stay committed. Build on your initial successes for the next project.
Source: Based on a methodology recommended by Barton Goldenberg, president of Information Systems Marketing Inc., in Washington, D.C. Adapted by Robert L. Scheier
THE STATE-OF-THE-ART NOTEBOOK COMPUTER
Apple, IBM, Compaq, Toshiba, and NEC dominate the notebook market, though literally dozens of players offer similar machines. In the IBM-compatible segment, the state-of-the-art notebook is based on the 486 chip (the unit's microprocessor, or "brain"). Machines based on the more powerful Pentium chip (currently Intel's fastest microprocessor) are beginning to appear and will become commonplace by spring 1995. Also keep an eye out for notebooks based on the new PowerPC chip, the product of an IBM-Apple-Motorola venture. The PowerPC chip is designed to run both Apple- and IBM-compatible software. Other features to expect in top-of-the-line notebooks: built-in pointing devices; color screens; weights of less than eight pounds, with some units weighing as little as four pounds; battery life of at least three to eight hours; and larger hard disks (of 300 megabytes or more). Coming soon: notebooks with larger, clearer screens and CD-ROM drives.
Each of the vendors listed below offers more than one model; models are available at various price points and with different sets of features.
