Door-to-door sales seems like a pretty simple thing to do, right? All you have to do is dispatch a couple of people on the field and see the magic happen. Well, if you have workforce management software, it could be that simple. Otherwise, no!
In our highly digitized world, if we make sales, we survive. Otherwise, we don’t. Therefore, you will have to manage your salespersons and their productivity appropriately with the right field force management software in your arsenal. Want to know how? Let’s learn in this article!
Challenges to Door-to-Door Sales
In this section, we’ve discussed some challenges salespersons and managers face with door-to-door sales.
- Attendance Logs: It is difficult for executives to mark their presence on the field without a defined system. It is also a challenge for managers to trust executives without a verified attendance management system.
- Task Management: How do executives know about the tasks they need to do without proper briefing? How do managers know if executives have checked and completed their tasks? These are some major issues with manual task management.
- Documentation Handling: Handling documents in the field is a huge hassle with the number of things executives might have to carry. Moreover, there is always the risk of losing or mishandling sensitive organizational documents.
- Confusing Operations: One of the biggest challenges executives might face in the field is the lack of coherence in management. This can mostly happen when task management, attendance management, and tracking tools along with communication channels are all on separate platforms. Using multiple software can become very confusing and cumbersome for anyone.
- Deviating and Roaming: Managers can set as many strict sales targets as they want. If executives want to procrastinate, they will. Without proper tracking tools, it is hard to tell which executives are actually working and which aren’t.
- Record Handling: Another problematic issue for managers is when they do not know how to handle records for each executive in the least confusing way possible. After all, managing files for hundreds of executives is not possible, neither is not keeping verified copies of their notarized documents for safekeeping.
- Progress Reports: Each manager needs to make progress reports for their executives. Otherwise, there is no way for executives to know where they are excelling or lacking, hindering their professional growth. Managers need help preparing these reports.
How You Can Use Field Force Management Software
Listing out problems is simple, right? It is especially easy when there are so many, to begin with! Even though manual task and attendance management had been the norm in the past, it is not easy to do the same now that teams have become larger and the door-to-door sales industry has grown exponentially.
In this article, we do not aim to only list the problems you need to take care of. Instead, we also aim to talk about ways in which you can solve the problems in your door-to-door sales team with a potent field force management software.
Location-Specific Solutions
- Fool-proof Attendance: With field force management software you can mark geocoded attendance and also get visual verification for the same. What makes workforce management software the best choice for your organization is that it helps you also keep a record of the live status of the battery in your executives’ phones.
- Live Location Tracking: Tracking your executives’ location in real-time is a terrific way of getting their productivity in check. When you know where executives are in real-time, you can be at peace that your work is being done. Moreover, executives too feel a sense of accountability knowing that they’re under surveillance.
- Employee History: Managers can easily see if an executive has been idling or not working to their full potential with employee history. The same goes for well-performing executives. Checking records in retrospect helps!
- Complete Geo-reporting: With field force management software, you always get to know where executives are, not by word of mouth but through verified data. Task, attendance, communication, documentation – everything has geocoded verification to it.
Communication And Task Management Solutions
- In-built Chatboxes: With workforce management software, you can rely on a single application to correspond with your team. In-built chat rooms in a field force management software help you keep track of the communication between executives and managers to avoid confusion.
- Task Allotment: With locational data and complete profiling, managers can see which executives are compatible with what tasks. Moreover, since both managers and executives get control over their tasks, the software helps make scheduling much more flexible.
- Insightful Reports: Any workforce management software makes things simpler for you with insightful reports. No more do executives have to worry about not getting enough input and managers do not have to care about making those reports manually.
Organizing Made Easy
- Digital Documentation: With the right workforce management system, documentation has become very easy. Digital documentation will help executives not have to carry too much much stuff on the field.
- Custom Fields and Forms: More often than not, sales executives have to collect a lot of information about all the sales they’ve made. However, most of this information needs to be customized according to the client. With workforce management software, executives get to manage the least number of things physically on the field.
- Dual App: It is very important to avoid confusion between features for executives and managers. However, this confusion can become unavoidable if both use the same app. Therefore, potent field force management software comes with two faces – one for the managers, and another for salespersons.
Make Management Your Priority!
If you have a team of field operatives, especially a team of door-to-door salespersons, there is no effective way you can manage it without field force management software. Attempting to do so is archaic and will only help you get so much from your sales team.
Next time you wonder why your sales team might not be performing too well, keep field force management software such as TrackoField in mind. The more features and insights you get through software instead of manual work, the more time you’ll get to strategize!